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For the past few weeks I’ve been studying the music I’m preparing for grad school auditions by listening to recordings and watching countless guitar videos on youtube. A few nights ago I worked my way through a few recordings of Mexican composer Manuel Ponce’s Sonatina Meridional. I’ve always been curious about Mexican composers—how many can a music student/lover name? True, there’s Silvestre Revueltas, but smart money says his name is just a blip in most music history textbooks, somewhere towards the back of the book in a desperate attempt chapter to balance out the dead white Europeans with the rest of the world. There’s Cesar Chavez, although his name is probably just as popular. Both have symphonies and assorted works floating out there, but how often do you really hear them?
Anyway. Mexico, guitar…right. I was listening to Cuban master Manuel Barrueco’s recording of Sonatina, and a certain passage in the first movement stood out like a knife wound. This one bit is brief and simple: a single note line running up and down, connecting two contrasting sections, a flight Ponce seems to dare the guitarist to showcase and sculpt in some way. Barrueco, for whatever reason, unceremoniously rushes through the line like a child doing chores, as audibly romantic as binary code.
The next morning I scoured youtube for videos of the same piece and found Croatian superstar Ana Vidovic’s interpretation (illegally?) nicked from her new DVD. Same single line passage, nearly identical passionless run through. I have the music (with dynamic markings, I add), I’ve been coached on the piece before, and I’ve heard other recordings, enough to know that there isn’t just one way to interpret the line—it’s just as open to lush imagination as I think it is. Barrueco’s and Vidovic’s versions are separated by a good twenty years, so it can’t be some sort of “in vogue” interpretational statement of the times. What strikes me, however, is the fact that Vidovic studied with Barrueco, and it’s entirely safe to say she didn’t touch this piece until she began working with him.
I shouldn’t be surprised—study with someone and you’re likely to take on their characteristics, especially in music, especially if you’re studying with someone as renown as Barrueco. Still, well on my way to grad school auditions, there’s the unavoidable fact whomever I study with will have an outcome on how I play. Influence aside, I’m reassessing the idea that it’s a matter between processing the lessons like an apprentice or coming out a clone. The legacy of Segovia disciples, in my mind, casts an ominous shadow on the teacher/student relationship (for those not as nerdy as myself, Andres Segovia was/is the granddaddy of classical guitar, and his famous students carry on his romantically rich/archaic style of interpretation with fervor, scolding anyone who doesn’t submit to His style).
Then again, this has always been my skewed view on classical music. I’ve never been one to admit I’m the best student, and I know I’ll never be, but it’s odd to think that for some musicians there’s just one set way to interpret a piece of music—more freedom dilutes the “point” and more conservation stifles the “artistic intent.” What that interpretation may be and what taking it too far in either direction is always up for grabs, but the notion that there is just one way of doing it “right” is, well…
Naturally, not everyone thinks this way, and for me to imply this is the norm throughout the spectrum of classical music is a bastardly generalization. However, I know the totalitarian mentality is out there, and I don’t mean to imply Barrueco thinks this way (although Segovia, notoriously, did), but I’ll play my irresponsible, reckless youth card and say it’s dangerous. I just finished Rob Kaplilow’s brilliant book All You Have To Do Is Listen, and in his chapter about the artist and interpretation he makes the claim that while certain dynamic guidelines are written in for a reason, an artist’s interpretation of a piece will constantly change back and forth to their matured voice, no definite statement solidifying until the piece is finally recorded. I’d like to go a bit further and wonder if, once it’s recorded, pressed and sent off to the stores for sale, isn’t the way the musician played that piece nothing more than just how they felt it should be played at that moment? Just because it’s out there for the public for good doesn’t mean that’s how a musician will feel about a tune for the rest of their career. Things change, attitudes towards gestures, motions and “that one damn note” have every right to flip like a bipolar’s whim.

I hope I get this whole classical music thing sooner or later. Even if I don’t…it’s still kind of fun.

Listening: Imelda May—Love Tattoo
Everyone should own this.