A Brief History of Re-performance
by
Nicholas Patrick Seaver
B.A. Literature Yale University, 2007
SUBMITTED TO THE PROGRAM IN COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN COMPARATIVE MEDIA STUDIES AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
JUNE 2010
© 2010 Nicholas Patrick Seaver. All rights reserved.
The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created.
Signature of Author: ______Program in Comparative Media Studies 11 May 2010
Certified by: ______William Uricchio Professor of Comparative Media Studies Director, Comparative Media Studies Thesis Supervisor
Accepted by: ______William Uricchio Professor of Comparative Media Studies Director, Comparative Media Studies
A Brief History of Re-performance
by
Nicholas Patrick Seaver
Submitted to the Program in Comparative Media Studies on May 11, 2010, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Comparative Media Studies
Abstract
Discussions of music reproduction technology have generally focused on what Jonathan Sterne calls “tympanic” reproduction: the recording and playback of sounds through microphones and speakers. While tympanic reproduction has been very successful, its success has limited the ways in which music reproduction is popularly imagined and discussed.
This thesis explores the history of “re-performance,” an alternative mode of reproduction epitomized by the early twentieth-century player piano. It begins with a discussion of nineteenth-century piano recorders and the historical role of material representation in the production of music. It continues with the advent of player pianos in the early twentieth century that allowed users to “interpret” prerecorded material, blurring the line between performance and reproduction and inspiring popular reflection on the role of the mechanical in music. It concludes with the founding of the American Piano Company laboratory in 1924 and the establishment of a mechanically founded rhetoric of fidelity. Bookending this history is an account of a performance and recording session organized by Zenph Studios, a company that processes historical tympanic recordings to produce high-resolution data files for modern player pianos. Zenphʼs project appears futuristic from the perspective of tympanic reproduction, but is more readily understood in terms of the history of re-performance, suggesting a need for renewing critical attention on re-performative technologies.
Contemporary developments in music reproduction such as music video games and sampling may make new sense considered in the context of re-performance. This alternative history aims to provide a ground on which such analyses could be built.
Thesis Supervisor: William Uricchio Title: Professor of Comparative Media Studies
Table of Contents
Figures ______7
Acknowledgments ______9
“The past is not surpassed”: Making Pianistic History!______11
Tympanic reproduction ______14
Re-performance ______15
Pianistic reproduction ______17
A brief history ______18
1. Representation: Reading, Writing, and Recording Performance!______23
Musical writing ______25
Werktreue ______27
Virtuosi ______28
Translations and natural language ______30
Geist ______35
Situated legibilities and musical reading ______36
Hybrid legibility ______40
2. Reconfiguration: Machines to Play for Them!______45
Locating pianism ______46
Redistributing pianism ______48
Pianolism ______50
Interpretive expertise ______54
Skill ______57
Towards re-performance ______61
3. Mechanical Fidelity: Materiality, Piano Science, and the Perfect Copy!__63
Finding touch ______65 Piano science ______67
Mechanical objectivity ______69
Quantification ______70
Mechanical fidelity ______72
Calibration ______76
Mechanical identities ______77
“We make data”: Futures of Re-performance!______81
Representations, data, and excess ______83
Reconfigurations, binding, and rendering devices ______85
Mechanical fidelity, voicing, and mapping ______88
Futures of re-performance ______90
Bibliography!______93 !!Figures
1. Pinned cylinders ______23
2. Ornamental expression ______24
3. Hybrid notation ______26
4. Mechanical translation ______31
5. Pianolist literacy