In response to there not always being many musical threads for debate and discussion (as suggested in other threads), here is one!

I was wondering the other day whether musical performances have become too perfect in recent years? This goes for both live and recorded music.

I was listening the other day to a performance of Stainer's Crucifixion sung by a parish church choir in 1987. OK, it was a bit ropey, but probably more authentic than the CD recording I have which is absolutely perfect in every way - the performance, the recording etc.

I have been to several concerts recently where the performances have also been perfect, almost to the detriment of the music itself. I've got some wonderful recordings by groups like Polyphony, but I wonder how much time and effort it took to get the performance to be so accurate?

So, are we in danger of losing the very essence of musical performance - the organic nature of it and the spontaneity - in favour of accuracy and perfection?

David

I agree with you about the 'perfection' of recorded music, but I don't think I've heard many perfect performances. Certainly plenty of spontaneity and organic imperfections etc at the concerts I play...

Yes, I think the answer is to buy recordings of a performance rather than a studio session, where the temptation is to blot out every minor imperfection.

Music should communicate the enthusiasm of the performers, and perhaps some of the good orchestras do approach the point at which it becomes just another perfect performance without any of the zing which comes from the joy of those performing. It's probably difficult to feel that joy when you're playing the piece for the thousandth time!

It's the same with acting, I think. Several years ago now we went to Lincoln for the weekend, and attended a professional production and an amateur production. We felt the professional one was somehow dead; they did nothing wrong, but everything was polished to perfection and somehow lacking any spark. The amateur one was full of minor mishaps and slips, but buzzed with joy and life and fun - we enjoyed it so much more.

I think radio and CDs have raised our expectations so much, too. Because we're used to hearing perfect music all the time, our local amateur orchestras can seem less good than they really are. It's definitely worth supporting the amateurs in your area; they have the enthusiasm and desire for improvement which can sometimes seem missing from perfect performances.

I think the problem with a recording not being 'perfect' is that, after repeated listenings, rather than simply enjoying the music the tendency could be to steel oneself for that annoying bit where the soprano sings flat, for example.

I know what you mean - i have a recording of myself playing my first ever sax solo - it was from the song "I need your love so badly" ( i think that's the name anyway) played as part of a 50s? medly along with blue moon etc. It was a great performance, full of spark etc BUT i am completely off beat
How I don't know as it's really thumped out and so obvious on the recording but I suspect it was the nerves and being an inexperienced performer on sax. Whatever...., I can never listen to that piece without cringing.

We also have another recording of when a group of local people got together with the local radio station the other year and went out and about playing carols etc at christmas light switch ons and things. The recording has a wrong note in my husbands guitar solo of we wish you a merry christmas - again cringe every time hearing it.

BUT I also agree that music needs life and a spark (as do acted performances) and if that means a couple of minor imperfections e.g. a squeak or an odd wrong note then so be it.

This is definitely an interesting thread.

My own taste runs to accurate recordings and live performances with what imperfections and mistakes happen. Performances are so much more than just the notes. A happy greeting at the door, beautiful surroundings, uncomfortable seats and a host of other things can make concerts memorable!

I'd also rather see a group of people enjoying making music together than a group of automata playing all the right notes but with no communication either with each other or the audience.

Val

An interesting idea.
I don't think the classical genre's quite as bad as areas of the pop/rock industry where they use Truetone technology to automatically make the musician (singing/playing) sound as though they're playing the right note - I hadn't realised that some artists do this live as well.

I think it's true that performances can sound too polished, but very VERY good musicians can nearly always produce the spark that's needed to make it more than just a technical masterpiece: that's usually why they're viewed as very very good.

Some faults can liven things up a little - I recently went to a performance of Mozart's famous Horn Concerto by the regional orchestra, in which the horn came in 20 bars early. That woke people up, not least the accompanying orchestra!

Wrong notes, exaggerated rhythms, phrasing errors etc. are forgivable in a live performance, because next time the performer plays he/she will make different errors.

On recordings they become intolerable after a few listenings.

But it is true that too much attention on precision and superficial perfection can result in a cold, lifeless performance. It is a great skill to achieve accuracy and emotionally moving musical effect at the same time, and not many have it.

Some of the excitement of a live performance is the thrill of seeing a difficult task performed under pressure. It can go wrong! But the excitement can enhance the musical message too. There is no such excitement in a studio work. Fluffed passages can be re-recorded and spliced in. Duff notes can be digitally edited out and replaced. In a recording the musical effect and "büzz" of the live event are often lost - but the mistakes and exaggerations get preserved all too well.

But recording a live performance, imperfections and all, may be dubious for other reasons. A major point of a live performance is the fact that it is ephemeral. In the same instant the music is created and is gone forever. Which makes it more like life, and more poignant. The mistakes are gone immediately - but so too is the beauty. And there is no certainty that it can ever be repeated.

Very good topic.

I think these minor imperfections that add character to a live performance are part of the joy of being in the audience. If the same experience was available on CD then live performances wouldn't be the same.



This is a very good point. Minor errors seem a lot more serious on a recording as you have nothing else to do but to listen to every note, and this can get even more annoying the more times you listen to it. In a live performance, the fact that you have something to watch and also the overall atmosphere make most glitches go unnoticed. And, of course, the mistake only happens for a fraction of a second before it's in the past. In a recording you can listen to it over and over again and the more times you listen the more things you notice and think "yes I thought they split the note slightly there" etc.

I don't see much of a problem with perfect recording, as the fact that it is lacking something 'organic' makes seeing a live performance more special. Plus mistakes in a recording would annoy me somewhat, and there is a fine line between a 'stylistic slip' and an irritating flaw.

What is perfect? Come to that, what is a flaw?

I suppose that playing or singing the right notes is more or less a given, but even then there is bound to be some interpretive variation in the realization of ornaments for example, or the length of a fermata or the exact shaping of the phrases, or the tempo or any (or all) of a number of other things that have to be brought to life for any performance, live or recorded: Is any one right? Are all the others wrong? Most studio recordings are spliced together from very few actual studio performances, so even the most acclaimed studio recording can still be regarded as a performance, unique in it's way and quite possibly as irritating in it's flaws and idiosyncrasies (Glen Gould humming over his otherwise wonderful recordings of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier for example) as it may be rewarding.

In musical performances, as in diamonds, flaws make some worthless but others priceless. As for which is which, beauty is in the eye (or in this case the ear) of the beholder.

I really like this description! It says what I would have wanted to say, but I'd never have said it so well.

A live performance is much more a means of communication than a recording will ever be. A performer will get away with perhaps a little more rubato when in front of an enthralled audience, or will maybe be able to make more of a rising bass line, without sounding as if he's overdoing it. Played as a recording ad infinitum this type of thing just might not work, but a good performer will hold his immediate audience's attention.

Has anyone ever noticed, by the way, when listening intently to (piano) recordings of what we're trying to perfect ourselves, it's the bass that doesn't come across as well as it does in a live performance?

Me neither - do you think that's partly to do with egos and not wanting to sound anything less than perfect?

I think this thread ties in to a certain extent with the 'How to play with emotion' thread - in a lot of music it's the underlying emotion that makes a performance 'perfect' for me (ie goosebumps and similar) rather than technical perfection.

Me too. It's the same as preferring a garden with a few weeds to a garden with no flowers.

No it's largely because many pop singers can't hold a tune in a bucket and need all the help they can get.

I'd agree that striving for 'perfection' has become the ultimate goal in perfomances, rather than spontaneity.

Perfection is very subjective in a musical sense, but when it comes to a lack of errors within the performances or at least, perceived/noticeable errors, then we have become far too critical.

Many times I've heard non-musical public make scathing remarks about a soloists performance. They are unable to criticise constructively or comment on the music per se, so instead, they just nit-pick or tell you they thought it was a "terrible performance", without being able to add any logic their comments.

I'm certain that the modern engineered recordings of today are to blame. In the classical music world even so-called 'live recordings' are rarely live. I know for a fact that the LSO (and others) often go back into the hall to do what the recording industry calls 'patching' - a small section of the performance is re-recorded because for some reason it didn't sound just right during the concert, maybe a horn player split a note, a woodwind solo entry was a fraction late etc. To me this is not a good enough reason to do things again.

Surely, a spontaneous performance, warts and all, is what we should return to. If we don't, then the act of continuing to sterilise music (and even the musicians) into ever increasing machine like performances will continue.

Whilst actors want to be seen as professional, the odd ad lib in times of error or forgotten lines is seen as a good thing, even in recorded material for TV. That's what makes a performance individual and organic. Music should be the same.

I think you may be right. Some people take it to extremes. I've heard of recordings being edited to remove the sounds of pages being turned and the movements of instrumentalists in their chairs! How flat and lacking in warmth those recordings must sound.

My personal preference is for vitality in a performance - whether on a recording or live. I don't like to hear mistakes either, but I'll forgive them in an otherwise effervescent performance. I don't know if anyone's heard any of Fabio Biondi's recordings - there is no doubt that the man is an amazing violinist. He takes some of the pieces at an incredible pelt and there are mistakes in the recordings, but the music absolutely sparkles with life and is a joy to listen to. Check him out if you haven't already.

I totally agree with you, Amanda. We are getting to the point where the perfection almost detracts from the music.

Another trend I dislike is the way soloists (and sometimes orchestras) destroy pieces by playing them so fast that all musical sense is lost. It's as if they're so busy showing off their own virtuosic abilities that the music is secondary. Actually, if you want something played ridiculously fast, it can be produced much better by electronically speeding up a slow, very accurate and musical performance; these days adjustments are easily made to ensure that the frequencies don't alter just because the speed does.

Now this is an excellent point. On piano almost everyone these days plays everything too fast. Beethoven suffers especially badly, but Mozart and Bach are raced through way too fast as well.

I'm often afraid to play at a piece at the speed that I think it works, in case the audience thinks I am only doing it because I am incapable of playing it any faster.

The sad thing is that once you ARE capable of playing fast it is often easier than playing more slowly. Kinaesthetic memory is more reliable at speed, it is easier to avoid variations of tempo, and many slight errors - glaring at slower speeds - don't seeem so bad when you are rattling along.

Maybe we should play everything twice?? Once fast (To show that we can, if we want to) and once slow (to create some music).

Son Airman and I have a related discussion quite often. He typically listens to not-quite-mainstream Japanese pops - so the content is a bit unusual, but the singing style is "standard starlet".

Singers are often out of tune on high notes, and sometimes a little out of tune all the way through. I don't have a particularly sensitive ear, but I find it hard to listen to. If I comment, though, Airman always says that I ruin his pleasure when I carp about "minor details". Obviously, if it sounded grossly out of tune to him, he wouldn't enjoy it as much, so I guess "too perfect" or "lovably imperfect" is mostly a case of one man's musical meat being another (wo)man's poison.

Robodoc touched on the point i wanted to make here: perhaps the problem is not so much "mistakes" vs "perfect", but rather that as musicians focus on producing the most accurate rendition of what's written on the page, the personality of the music is lost.

now, i'm no expert on classical music, so i can't comment authoritatively here, but to me, if one were to play a piece of music exactly as written (say, when played by a computer), the result would be fairly uninteresting to listen to. a good performer should not only be able to play the piece correctly, but also add their own interpretation, whether that's just subtle changes in dynamic, or slight changes in tempo or rhythm, or even ornamentations not notated in the music. furthermore, this is something that needs to be done "on the fly", to suit that particular performance. when this is done well, it can be the difference between a performance that's "competent" and one that's "wonderful". (but when badly, it just sounds like the player isn't very good.)

i think it's quite possible to play music 'perfectly', but still with this individual character; and perhaps this is what makes a less technically skilled rendition sound better than the perfect performance.

of course, i only play trad music, which is heavily ornamented by the performer (often differently every time), so perhaps i might be biased here ;-)

Or perhaps our conept of technique is all wrong. Perhaps the performance that sounds better is actually the technically more proficient. What - after all - is technique for, if not to produce a performance worth listening to? A great performance might be a bit deficient in those aspects of technique that are more obvious and flashy, like 100% correct notes and great speed, but superior in other more subtle (and more important) aspects like creating appropriate tone quality, architectural balance (the overall conception of the piece), tonal balance, precise control of tempo (especially subtle ritardandos, ritenutos and accelerandos), and phrasing?

well... i see your point, but i think we still need to draw a distinction between 'technical' proficiency and, shall we say, 'emotional' proficiency. if one simply isn't good enough to play a piece, then no amount of additional 'interpretation' will help. the performer just doesn't have the technical skill to create a good performance. but at the other extreme, a MIDI sequencer is technically perfect, yet it lacks the emotional component of the music. a good performer needs to combine both of these skills to produce a good performance, but a lack of one can be made up for - to a certain extent - with more proficiency in the other.

i'd like to add something about interpreting directions written in the music vs. those added by the performer, but i need to consider that a little more or i think this post will end up as an incoherent mess ;-)

(hmm, this brings up an interesting question: could someone suitably skilled with a sequencer, and a decent MIDI patch set, produce a performance of a piece which rivaled a real performance of the same piece? or are the subtle variations in dynamic, tempo, vibrato, etc. produced by a real person just too difficult to capture?)

while i was writing this, i found a couple of YouTube videos that i think illustrate the original point well. in the first, a classicical violinist obviously picked a tune from O'Neill's, and plays exactly what's written in the music. as far as that goes, it might be a competent grade 2 (?) exam piece, but it's pretty uninteresting. whereas in this version, there are a couple of audible mistakes, and the tune definitely sounds less "clean". despite that, i think you'd be hard pressed not to declare this the superior version.

for people who have taken exams (ABRSM or otherwise) at mid to higher level (say, from grade 6-7 to diploma), i'm curious to know how you feel the exam handled this - is there enough emphasis on the entire rendition of the piece, or is the focus more on the technical side?

I'm sure you could get close. The recording pianos used before acoustic recording were pretty remarkable (I have recordings by Mahler and Rachmaninov). The recordings are stored on punched card or tape much like a simple pianola roll but contain expression data as well. So an early form of digital sequencer.

Going back to "too perfect performance" I reckon seeing the Lindsay String Quartet was always an experience to savour and Peter Cropper's first aim always seemed to me to be to communicate the excitement in the music.

I thnk both ways of looking at it have validity. The danger is of mis-communication if I use the word "technique" in a broader sense to include the subtle skills of creating a memorable performance, and someone else uses it in the narrow sense of robit-like accuracy, precision and speed.


Have to agree with that.

I'd say the hairy chap in the messy bedroom has the better technique. Sadly the entertainment world probably prefers a mediocre performance from a pretty girl cavorting in a tight dress. You can of course have the lot: technical quality, emotional intensity, and good looks, e.g. Vanessa Mae - though her choice of material can be dodgy, or in classical piano, any number of drop dead gorgeous brilliant female East European pianists (Valentina Lisitza, Olga Poletinskaya etc.)

You have rather contradicted your first comment. First you say 'sadly' the media would prefer a pretty woman playing the violin and then your next comment smacks of exactly what the media force onto us.

In our modern and very shallow-minded society (in general, not just from men) where the outer visual shell of our body is seen and the most important thing, beauty and youth are the overriding factor for anything and modest/plain looks or a mature body is seen as a bad thing, does this mean that a musically, emotionally moving and technically competent performance from a woman who physically doesn't resemble a Barbie-doll film star is simply not worth hearing or watching? Their male counterparts in the music world are not necessarily so beatiful to look at, but that doesn't appear to preclude them from success as much as women....

it's worth noting that while orchestras (hopefully!) don't choose their membership based on appearance, they also don't usually give performances wearing old jeans and a t-shirt[1]. even there, physical appearance has an impact; the audience has an expectation from the performers beyond and unrelated to their musical ability. (although i do wonder if it's rather harder to play your instrument while wearing a dress or suit - not something i'd be especially thrilled about myself.)

i don't think this phenononem is restricted to attractiveness of the performer, either. nowadays, popular music is often only a single piece of a larger subculture shared by a majority of their fans, and there's an expectation from the artists to fit in there. this is especially evident in hip-hop, for example. it's hard to say if this is a bad thing or not; while i see nothing wrong with people coming together under a particular style of music (whether that's grunge, emo, goth, or whatever), it's hard to deny that when this is applied to pop/mainstream music, where the expectation is that the artist should be beautiful and musical ability is secondary or worse, the overall impact on society is detrimental.

[1] personally, it wouldn't bother me, as when i really want to enjoy a piece of music, i listen with my eyes closed. i imagine i'd get some funny looks doing that in public, though.

Well - not really. If Lisitza and Poletinskaya were merely good looking you'd have a point, but first and foremost they (and a lot of other good looking East European girls and women) can play piano extraordinarily well. Vanesa Mae can really play violin too, but unfortunately she chooses to play a lot of rubbish. In all three their good looks are a bonus. It is not like the pop/rock world where looks and image can count for more than talent and ability. But even in pop/rock/MOR generally it is a compromise: the singing/playing is often good, very good by all normal people's standards. Take That for example did not earn their success entirely by being good looking boys that can dance. But once the level of performance is good enough then looks and image (and drive, determination, and some luck) decide who is commercially successful (All Saints, Eternal, Avril Lavigne... etc.). This seems to be less true in the world of "Classical" music.


As my boyish good looks disappeared years ago, and as my pectorals are heading for where my navel ought to be, I completely agree, if only for selfish reasons. But like most men I cannot help enjoying looking at a pretty girl. However, I'd like to believe that does not cloud my objective judgement of what they can do.

My favourite lady pianist would get nowhere on looks, but I would take her piano playing over almost anyone's. That is Dinorah Varsi.

It may be the case that the stereotype holds: that talent and ability seem to count for more than good looks in men, whereas physical beauty counts for more in women. And that is unfair on both plain but capable women, and handsome but empty-headed men (I think pretty boy is the approved term). But whole books and Ph.D. these have been written on this.

And therefore equality in the true sense - if based solely on ability to get the job done regardless of being male or female - is still very much a pie-in-the-sky ideal.

I realise this digresses somewhat from the original post, but, I'm certain that the physical appearance of a performer does affect general public opinion. Stereotyping and the perception of what a particular person should look like, crops up in most careers and we have the modern media circus to blame for that too.

Back on topic, I thought I'd share this email from my teacher, in reply to one from me about being stressed and not ready for a recital this Sunday, and about the pieces still having lots of mistakes and not coming out how I want them. I have changed the important bit to bold:

"Don't worry, we look forward to hearing you! What's the sense of being
perfect? Just love the music, and we will certainly hear that!"

There definitely seems an emphasis in many parts on getting technical fluency to the detriment of musical development. I'd rather beginners initially progressed more slowly in order to establish proper musical foundations, a connection with the music, listening and interpretative skills. I have just been searching around Youtube to compare supposedly grade 8 violin renditions and there are a huge amount of robotic reproductions where a child of about 9 is pointlessly bashing out the same performance as the next one on her teacher's list with a totally dead expression of concentration on her face. It's technical, but it's not music. It's like what you'd get if you programmed a robot to play the violin. It is claimed that these children pass their exams - what a shame! I suppose perhaps the gap between pass and distinction is in musicality and if you bang out a technically sound performance you can get through rather than aim to make music. I've downloaded a few concerts where yes it's a live performance, but it's a whole group of dead-eyed kids scratching out a tune from memory in an identical robotic fashion, it's like listening to a midi system play back your written score.

Our orchestra always used to say we'd rather hear you play a wrong note with confidence, expression and good tone, otherwise what's the point having music performed by people rather than computer systems hooked up to expensive synth kit? (not that you can't programme a synth to produce pretty good music, I mean the unadulterated version produced by those who aren't experienced with music technology)

Anyone here suffering from hearing perfect performance, even to the point of contracting 'perfectionitis', will be pleased to know that a complete antidote is available. I can state unequivocably, that not only have no listeners to my playing ever caught the disease, but those already infected have been able to declare themselves cured within a few bars of my rendition of......... just about anything.

Treatment available 24/7 from :-

Chris Baker - The Incompetent Organist - Durham, UK