Performative Analysis: Reimagining Music Theory for Performance.By Jeffrey Swinkin

Abstract

Performers and researchers have, over the last two decades, rethought the relationship between musical performance and analysis, discarding long held stereotypes of an incompatibility between the two areas and uncovering a burgeoning and fruitful field of contact. A decisive step has been to admit that forms of “prescriptive analysis,” common in the history of music theory because of the influence of scientific paradigms, are usually indicative of particular performance styles and thus cannot claim universal relevance. While the Society for Music Theory’s Performance and Analysis Interest Group (PAIG) has been active since 2004, research in the area has also received major impetus from musicologists assembled in the large UK-based projects CHARM (Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music, Royal Holloway University of London, 2004–091) and CMPCP (Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice, University of Cambridge, 2009–142). These researchers gradually shifted attention away from prescriptive analytical-theoretical “systems” to the actual practices of performers; combining analytical, sociological, and empirical methods, their studies revealed a confusingly broad spectrum of performance concepts and styles, past and present, which are not easily assembled into a linear or coherent historical narrative of musical performance.3 Other perspectives to have emerged recently include the scrutiny and contextualization of historical concepts of “performance,” “interpretation,” and “execution” (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2011–174); projects aiming at the understanding of performance practice before the advent of recording focusing on editions and score annotations by performers and conductors of (mainly) nineteenth-century repertoire (University of Arts Berne, 2011–175); and another that combines research into historical sources, reception-sensitive analysis, recording history and performers’ expertise (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, 2017–206). Theorist-performers such as Robert S. Hatten and Edward Klorman have further enriched the field by their performer-sensitive accounts of musical gesture, agency, and intra-ensemble communication.7