99

Over and Over and Over…: Performing Scripted Music

ABSTRACT BRUCE BRUBAKER

A musician considers the signifcance and implications of repetition in the Artist, writer, and pianist Bruce Brubaker has premiered music by , performance of western classical music. Varying practices used by musicians are , , and Mark-Anthony Turnage. He described and contextualised with a series of accounts of performances of Philip has performed at Tanglewood, the Hollywood Bowl, the International Piano Glass’s repetitive, minimalist piano piece Metamorphosis 2. Te evolving concept Festival at La Roque d’Anthéron, New York’s Avery Fisher Hall, the Gewand- of repetition is explored in relation to mechanical sound recording and mass haus in Leipzig, London’s Wigmore Hall, and Finland’s Kuhmo Festival. Recent production. recordings include piano music by Glass, Alvin Curran, William Duckworth, Meredith Monk, and Nico Muhly. A long-time faculty member at New York’s , Bruce Brubaker now chairs the piano department at New England Conservatory in Boston. His essay “Time is Time” appears in Unfolding Time: Studies in Temporality in Twentieth Century Music (2009). He co-edited Pianist, Scholar, Connoisseur: Essays in Honor of Jacob Lateiner (2000). 100 PARSE JOURNAL

pitch adjustment remains outside the player’s control. Ever-newer waters fow on those who step into the same rivers. What varies noticeably from performance to perfor- 1 Heraclitus mance are phrase organisation, infection, tone, tonal balances, and matters regarding time, rhythmic

proportions, the nature, speed and pacing of beat. First of August 2015. I am just outside the Cloister Te acoustics of the concert space will afect the way at the medieval Abbey of Silvacane in La Roque sounds sustain and how they are perceived by the d’Anthéron, France. I’m about to begin a solo pi- audience and the performer, and this will afect the ano recital by playing Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis performer’s work. Te physical responsiveness of a 2. I’ve performed this piece many times. I expect particular piano will strongly infuence the actions/ to be able to play the music well, yet usual pre-con- reactions of the pianist, and the seemingly unchosen cert anxiety and exhilaration are afecting me. nuances that occur in performance. In my opinion, the specifc audience present at a concert can afect I’m not a drug addict. Yet, many times each year I the music that is made. Music is a group activity. get a fx, strong stimulants fow through my body. Te collective scrutiny of many listening ears alters I give concerts. And almost always, through fear, the musical and artistic awareness of each person— public performance brings me to heightened con- including the performer. sciousness. Adrenaline makes me intensely aware, and perhaps more able to play well. Accounts Te word commonly used in the French language here, of my performances of American minimalist to signify practising a musical instrument is composer Philip Glass’s solo piano piece Metamor- “repetition”. Rehearsal coaches in opera houses phosis 2, regard specifc performances that occurred are called “répétiteurs”. Surely the understood at the times and places mentioned. With words, I sense of this language is that in repetition change might evoke the regularly repetitive yet never-the- arises, improvement or progress. It is not exact or same task of the performer of scripted music—each literal repetition. “Re-peat” is based on the Latin repetition continuing a line made from more and word “petere”, and so, “to seek” again. From the more loops, more and more passes through pre- time of Walter Benjamin’s analysis or earlier, the existing musical text. Metamorphosis 2 contains understanding of artistic repetition changed.2 In multiple literal repetitions of material, concentrat- the postmodern, industrialised world—a world of ing the opposition/balance of sameness and variety mass production—a repeated product or recording present in the performer’s repeating of any music. is clone-like. Te presence of near-exact copies is a As hand and fngers fnd increasingly efcient ways pervasive feature of present-day manufacturing and through a piece of music, the performer may also life experience. Te nature of repeating a perfor- fnd artistic insight. Tough not necessarily sought, mance, and the desire to do so, may have been very analytic awareness may arise through the process of diferent in the pre-industrial world. repetition, and in the laboratory of the concert.

A piece of scripted music—conventionally notated Twenty-eighth of July 2015. I’m sitting in the western classical music—is greatly variable in Green Room on the eighth foor of Broadcasting playing. Even played by the same solo pianist over House in London. In about 15 minutes, I’m going and over and over, a piece of music will emerge to play Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis 2 on the BBC diferently at each instance, each iteration. Each programme In Tune, a daily live show on Radio piano has particular tuning, timbre, and sustaining 3. I’ve already tried the piano in the studio, a capabilities. In terms of conventional piano playing, Hamburg Steinway C, and chatted a bit with the BRUCE BRUBAKER 101

interviewer. After my playing, we will recording studio he will necessarily 1. “ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμϐαίνουσιν, talk on the air. I’ve been asked if I will encounter a wider range of repertoire ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα read a question that’s part of a UK- than could possibly be his lot in the ἐπιρρεῖ.” Tis is repeated by wide competition. Te winner receives concert hall… It permits him to Plato. Te reference comes down to us in many forms tickets to a BBC Proms concert. encounter a particular piece of music and with embellishments. It and to analyze and dissect it in a appeals to me that such an idea, apparently a parable of Repetition can give an appearance most thorough way, to make it a vital change, can be repeated so of order. Musicians are accustomed part of his life for a relatively brief frequently and in so many to repetition. Even music that isn’t period, and then to pass on to some ways. especially repetitive is subject to consid- other challenge and to the satisfaction 2. Benjamin, Walter. Te erable repeating in a musician’s life. One of some other curiosity. Such a work Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduc- month, as an adolescent pianist, I began will no longer confront him with a tion [Das Kunstwerk im each day’s practising by playing through daily challenge. His analysis of the Zeitalter seiner technischen “cold” (without warming up) Chopin’s composition will not become distorted Reproduzierbarkeit (1936)]. Translated by Harry Zohn. “Black Key” Etude, opus 10, number 5. by overexposure, and his performance In Illuminations: Essays and Replaying is our practice, a structuring top-heavy with interpretive “niceties” Refections. Hannah Arendt (ed.). New York: Harcourt, of time, and, for the player, a structuring intended to woo the upper balcony, as Brace. 1968. https://www. of life. In making a repertory, musicians is almost inevitably the case with the marxists.org/reference/ strike a balance between repeating overplayed piece of concert repertoire.5 subject/philosophy/works/ ge/benjamin.htm (Accessed material and exploring new material. 2015-09-07). Some pianists play a huge number of 3. Eno, Brian, and Schmidt, pieces. Others delve into a few. How Tirtieth of May 2015, Wuhan, China. Peter. Oblique Strategies. many times, and in how many ways, I’ve been backstage at the new Qintai 1975. http://www.rtqe.net/ did the celebrated pianist Ignacy Jan Concert Hall for a couple of hours. ObliqueStrategies/Ed1.html (Accessed 2015-09-05). Paderewski perform the “Moonlight” Coming back here from the hotel this Sonata? Or rock music icon Mick Jagger afternoon, trafc was much heavier 4. Mechanical sound recording existed well sing “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”? than trafc this morning. Tonight’s before recordings were concert includes a number of musicians made that could be played from the festival that I’ve been part of back. Already in the 1850s Repetition is a form of change. and 1860s, Édouard-Léon this week. I am going to play a single Scott de Martinville made 3 Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt piece: Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis 2. sound recordings with the “phonoautograph.” See the In my playing of the piece, two passages work of the First Sounds that used to seem technically graceless research group: http://www. In 1966, pianist Glenn Gould described are much easier to play now. frstsounds.org/research/ scott.php (Accessed 2016- the change he believed was occurring 01-24). in the musical performer’s work. After In recent years, I have given many per- 4 5. Gould, Glenn. Te producing a repeatable sound recording, formances of repetitive piano music by Prospects of Recording. a musician need not perform the same Philip Glass. In the playing of phrases Reprinted from High Fidel- music over and over and over: or whole sections of repeated material— ity 16. no. 4. 1966. In Te Glenn Gould Reader. Tim material that is notated without Page (ed.). Toronto: Lester Conceivably, for the rest of his life he variation—I welcome some changes & Orpen Dennys. 1984. pp. will never again take up or come in of emphasis or rhythmic infection in 335-336. contact with that particular work. the performance. It’s a delicate, even In the course of a lifetime spent in the precarious balance. Wilful changes are 102 PARSE JOURNAL

6. Freud, Sigmund. Ratschläge für den Arzt bei der psycho- garish, too noticeable. Yet, small irregularities of the human analytischen Behandlung (1912). In Gesammelte Werke—Chro- nologisch geordnet 8. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer. 1999. p. 376. hand and mind lead to a changeable musical surface that ofers difering and desirable musical experience, in comparison, 7. Tristano, Francesco. Red Bull Academy Lecture: Francesco for example, to precisely unvaried automatic rendering by a Tristano [Video]. http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/ lectures/francesco-tristano (Accessed 2015.09.07). machine. I may discern the diferences as they happen in my playing, rather than trying consciously to make diferences 8. Quoted in Lahr, John. Te Sphinx Next Door: Julianne Moore and her imagination. Te New Yorker. 21 September occur. Tone, rhythm, infection, use of the piano’s pedals—are 2015. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/09/21/the- in a relationship so interdependent that I imagine my mental sphinx-next-door-profles-john-lahr (Accessed 2015-09-16). state as what Sigmund Freud describes as “gleichschwebende 6 9. “Il y a à tout moment une infnité de perceptions en nous, Aufmerksamkeit”, often translated in English as “evenly mais sans aperception et sans réfexion, c’est-à-dire des divided attention”. Freud suggests this is the ideal mental state changements dans l’âme même dont nous ne nous aperçevons pas, parce que ces impressions sont ou trop petites et en trop for the psychiatric analyst. grand nombre ou trop unies, en sorte qu’elles n’ont rien d’assez distinguant à part, mais jointes à d’autres, elles ne laissent pas In the parlance of mechanical player-pianos, “hand-played” de faire leur efet…” Translation by the author. In Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Nouveaux Essais sur l’entendement human. described a piano roll that was derived from a real-time Paris: Flammarion. 1921. pp. 9-29. https://fr.wikisource.org/ human performance. After initial punching, the roll could wiki/Nouveaux_Essais_sur_l’entendement_humain/Avant- propos (Accessed 2015-09-07). be retouched. (A long roll of paper punched with patterns of small holes causes keys on the player-piano to play, as the paper 10. Stearns, David Patrick. Van Cliburn and his fraught gen- passes across a “tracker bar”.) Alternatively, an entire roll could eration. Condemned to Music (blog). Arts Journal. 2013.02.28. http://www.artsjournal.com/condemned/2013/02/van-cli- be prepared by directly punching holes, measuring physical burn-and-his-fraught-generation/ (Accessed 2015-09-07). distances on paper to make rhythm—no piano playing required.

11. Quoted in Beigel, Greta. Finally, a Return Engagement: Beginning in the 1940s, composer Conlon Nancarrow took the Pianist Van Cliburn is hitting the concert trail… Los Angeles rhythmic possibilities of piano-roll punching to mathematically Times. 3 July 1994. http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-03/en- complex, superhuman extremes in his studies for player-piano. tertainment/ca-11419_1_van-cliburn (Accessed 2015-09-06). In today’s electronic music, especially in dance music, repeating patterns, or loops, generated by a computer may be extremely regular and regularly repetitive, down to the level of millisec- onds or frames. Te boundary-defying musician Francesco Tristano has described his preference for playing repeated loop-like material live on the piano,7 hand-played, while many computer programs that produce musical rhythms include pos- sibilities for mimicking the irregularities of human playing.

Today, “music” signifes recorded music. Live music is not the norm; the adjective “live” has become necessary. We are arriving at a new understanding of recording (already reached in some pop music). Recently, I participated in a recording session of a chamber music piece that I never played continu- ously from beginning to end. Yet, sufcient material was captured to assemble an intimate, improvisatory, and ephem- eral-seeming performance. Perhaps, such a process is like flm-making. Film actors do not perform a script from start to fnish. Te American actor Julianne Moore said: BRUCE BRUBAKER 103

I really know my lines. I really think about what a few phrases from the recording, I recognised the I’m gonna do. Sometimes people think that means playing as mine, but barely. I’ve already played the part in my head. Tat’s not true. I know the parameters. Ten, when the In earlier times, the presence of human musicians camera goes on, I’m ready to have an experience. I was required in order for music to be heard. Now, don’t want it to happen in my living room. I want pervasively, we have playback of recorded music. My it to happen on camera.8 chamber music coach, the violist Paul Doktor said, “Never twice the same!” It was a Middle-European My goal in practising for this recording had little mantra of chamber-music playing. Consider legions to do with preparing a coherent beginning-to-end of musicians playing the same texts over and over reading of the entire piece. My interest was in and over—but never in exactly the same way. Te achieving spontaneous, vivid line-readings through repeated playing of a sound recording yields a more one- or two-minute sections of the piece—“correct”, precisely repeated sonic result. but generally played with more uncertainty and more risk of failure than I would tolerate in a concert. In post-production, attention can be paid to At every moment there is an infnity of perceptions in us, that coherence and overall continuity. we do not refect upon or notice, these are alterations in the soul itself, of which we are unaware because these impressions After a “take” in a recording session, I often fnd it are either too minute and too numerous, or else too unvarying, desirable to continue recording again right away. Te so that they do not distinguish themselves individually, But when chance of achieving very similar rhythmic treatment they are combined with others they do nevertheless have their and phrase shaping that can match well with earlier effect… takes seems to diminish as minutes elapse. Today, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz9 classical performers, in their live playing, seem ever more easily able to repeat musical material with great sameness of detail and expressive nuance. Is Classical performers have difering views of repeated this an outcome of the use, or existence of sound performance. Te pianist Van Cliburn maintained recording? Is the generally increasing instrumental that after arriving at a satisfying interpretation of a profciency of classical performers an outcome of the particular piece of music he did not want to change prevalence of recorded sound? it.10 He intended to achieve the same reading in every subsequent performance. Cliburn said: “If I learn something, it’s not to play for this week or that Fourth of April 2008. I’m backstage at the Harris week, but forever.”11 Teater in Chicago. Tonight, I’m playing in a gala performance with Hubbard Street Dance Alastair Macaulay describes something quite Chicago. Alejandro Cerrudo has choreographed diferent from Cliburnian Platonism. Macaulay a piece that utilises recordings of piano pieces recounts his impressions of watching on flm the including my recording of Philip Glass’s evolving performance of Janet Baker as she sang the Metamorphosis 2. For tonight’s performance, I role of Vitellia in Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito: will play the music “live”. In our frst rehearsal, the dancers were surprised. My playing didn’t Te revelation of repeated viewings was to correspond exactly to my commercial recording of discover how, each season, Ms. Baker’s musical Metamorphosis 2, the precise rhythmic nuances of and physical manner changed… In 1974, when which they had absorbed in their limbs. Hearing the production was new, Ms. Baker was possessed 104 PARSE JOURNAL

12. Macaulay, Alastair. Janet of many kinds of stillness. In Act Was Glenn Gould right? Do multiple Baker’s Voice, a Singu- I, the way she listened balefully to performances of a scripted piece by lar Instrument, Lingers Like No Other. New York Sesto… was deadly; in Act II, the a player lead to “overexposure” and a Times. 13 August 2015. p. way she stood still for “Non più di performance “top-heavy with interpre- C1. http://www.nytimes. com/2015/08/13/arts/music/ fori,” singing it in blanched, resigned tive ‘niceties’ ”? Often-played pieces may janet-bakers-voice-a-singu- tones (virtually monochrome), was wander from denotative reading of the lar-instrument-lingers-like- supremely poignant. text. But the function of a musical text no-other.html (Accessed 2015-08-31). may not be simple representation. Yet, in 1975, Ms. Baker drenched 13. My work with Nico Muhly eventually led to that same aria in a wide palette of When I started working on Morton Haydnseek, a collaborative colors while seeming racked by her Feldman’s duo For Christian Wolf, I project in which my live per- own vocalism. I can’t forget how, aimed to learn the notated rhythms formances of piano sonatas by Franz Joseph Haydn were apparently now incapable of stillness, accurately. Te published score is a overlaid, contextualised, and she kept clutching her hands together reproduction of Feldman’s hand-written sometimes drowned out by new electronically-synthe- and transferring weight from foot to musical text. Some things puzzled me. sised sounds. foot — as if possessed by the need to Tere are measures that don’t add up to transmit this new range of nuance. In the expected number of beats—mistakes? 14. In a non-conventional reading, I made Bruce 1976, she had changed again. Ten In other measures, the fute part and Brubaker’s Mahler’s Ninth she seemed in full physical control, but the keyboard part are not rhythmically Symphony. Te piece is a piano quartet fashioned from played the role — that aria, above all aligned visually. Perhaps, in performing my favorite simultaneities — with a marvelously heroic supply of For Christian Wolf, fastidious coordina- taken, in order, from the period gestures, weighted and forceful, tion of beat between fute and keyboard last movement of Gustav 12 Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. evoking Racine tragedy... is not necessary?

15. In Babbitt: Portrait of a Serial Composer [Film]. Te classical music community tends Robert Hilferty (dir.). 2009. Twenty-third of October 2001. I am in to share the belief that pitches and https://youtu.be/sf_Zf- my dressing room at Alice Tully Hall rhythms written by a composer ought pq3gqk (Accessed 2015-9-4). in Lincoln Center. Te frst music I’m to be performed accurately. Tere are 16. Ferneyhough, Brian. playing tonight will be Metamorphosis many views regarding the specifcity and Aspects of Notational and 14 Compositional Practice 2 by Philip Glass. I am curator of, nature of that accuracy. In the playing (1978). In Collected Writings. and principal performer in the annual of difcult new music, getting the pitches James Boros and Richard Irene Diamond concert, honouring and rhythms “right” can be challenging Toop (eds.). Amsterdam: Harwood, 1995. pp. 7-13. one of the Juilliard School’s important or impossible to achieve. I imagine frst benefactors. It is my frst concert since performances of Te Rite of Spring and the World Trade Center attacks. Some Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, indeed, parts of the event, like the dinner that every symphony by Beethoven. By today’s precedes the Diamond Concert, were standards of accuracy, it seems likely more subdued than usual, in keeping that those performances were deeply with New York City’s collective fawed. As musicians struggled to bring sombre mood. Te concert includes coherence to a complex piece by Milton frst performances of chamber pieces Babbitt, he quipped, “Life is short and by Nico Muhly and Kati Agocs that I my piece gets long”.15 Apparently the commissioned for this event.13 players could not go fast enough for the music fully to make sense. I frst BRUCE BRUBAKER 105

became aware of Debussy’s D’un cahier d’esquisses During one month, and I gave by listening to a recording of the music by pianist four performances of For Christian Wolf, at the Walter Gieseking. Later, looking at the notation of Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Later, the piece, I realised that Gieseking read a note in listening to the recordings that were made of each the penultimate measure as if it was written in treble performance, it seemed to me that some of the most clef; it’s a bass-clef note. I rather liked the “F” that satisfying music-making occurred when we were not Gieseking played, and in my ear it had primacy. “together” in a conventional sense. We did or didn’t do what the notation represents. Do the notes in a written composition represent what the listener will hear? Or does written music merely put the performer into a condition for Eighteenth of October 2013. I am ofstage at La making music? Te composer Brian Ferneyhough MaMa in New York City, waiting for my cue to writes: enter the stage and begin playing Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis 2. I’ve played this music many What can a specifc notation, under favourable times. I’m fairly confdent of being able to play conditions, hope to achieve? Perhaps simply this: it adequately, yet usual pre-performance anxiety a dialogue with the composition of which it is a and exhilaration are afecting me. I repeat this token such that [the] realm of non-equivalence sensation of adrenalised awareness many times separating the two (where, perhaps, the “work” each year. In this show, I collaborate with the might be said to be ultimately located?) be sounded dancer/movement artist Maureen Fleming. out, articulating the inchoate, outlining the way Tonight is the ofcial opening night of our twelve- from the conceptual to the experiential and back.16 performance run. Last night, I was here for the preview performance. Tis morning I had to be in And then, the efects of a notation (fxed in writing) Boston—so some quick travelling. I arrived back change, as new generations of musicians read it in New York at the theatre before 5 p.m. In this (repeat it). Te resulting music necessarily changes, production, the recorded voice of Ruth Maleczech and keeps changing. So it is in reading every sacred is heard. Te text begins with the words: “What text. Even if the symbols remain the same, their would be the point in remembering.” Tis text is signifcation (what they signify) does not remain repeated several times, with varying emphasis. the same. For much of my life as a classical music It’s almost formulaic, as Maleczech lands on one performer, I believed that a mistake-flled perfor- word (“What…”) and then another (“point…”), mance of a piece was not really the piece. A per- then another (“…remembering”); the shifting formance either was the music or it wasn’t. Now, implications are vivid. Many years ago, Ruth I have a diferent belief. All the sounds that result directed me in a show in Boston, in which I played from a written piece (a musical text) are the piece. music onstage. As I hear the recording of her All performances of that piece ever given add up to voice repeating this text each night, I remember the identity of that music. Such a range of results performing in Boston. represents a limit of all possible musics that might be made. In this way, a composition is never fnished Te pianist and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski but always subject to further completion, repetition, played Beethoven’s so-called “Moonlight” Sonata understanding, reading, misreading, exploration, very many times. It was a feature of his public and mistake. Each repeating adds to the totality, programmes for decades. I have speculated about re-centring it. And repeats, at least “hand-played”, how many times Paderewski might have performed cannot be identical. the piece… (He can be seen and heard playing part 106 PARSE JOURNAL

17. In the , the of it in the 1938 feature flm Moonlight Over a period of more than a hundred French word “encore” is used to designate an added piece Sonata.) How many pianists have played years, ensemble players became better played at a concert after this music? How many times has it been able to stay together. Conductors the announced or printed repeated? Te Moonlight Sonata is in the became adroit in beating very regularly. programme. In France and elsewhere in Europe, such 1936 French talking-picture Un grand Te rise of the symphony orchestra, an additional piece is termed amour de Beethoven, directed by Abel with its increasingly intricate large- a “bis”. Usually, in today’s practice, encores are not Gance, in Gus Van Sant’s flm Elephant scale repertory, brought great change. pieces already played in the made in 2003, and in dozens of other Orchestral players of the eighteenth concert. Sometimes, how- flms. At the present moment, right and early nineteenth centuries primarily ever, they are pieces already played in the concert… now, how many people are repeating the played opera; the playing of symphonies Moonlight? was rare. Te basic musical experience of 18. Schoenberg, Arnold. Today’s Manner of Perform- those earlier players and conductors was ing Classical Music. In Style accompanying singers, accommodating and Idea: Selected writings of Twentieth of October 1998. I’ve just the delivery of a sung text. Arnold Schoenberg. Leonard Stein (ed.). Berkeley and Los come ofstage at Miller Teatre at Angeles, CA: University of in New York. Increasing beat-regularity was, I California, 1975. pp. 320-21. My programme fnished with John believe, the outcome or refection of 19. Schoenberg, p. 323. Adams’s Phrygian Gates. Now I’m several musical and societal changes: going to play an encore,17 Philip mass production, the standardisa- 20. McLuhan, Marshall, and Fiore, Quentin. Te Me- Glass’s Metamorphosis 2. Tonight’s tion of time keeping, time zones, the dium is the Massage. Jerome performance is a collaboration between metronome, sound recording, the ascent Agel (prod.). New York, NY: Bantam. 1967. p. 63. theatre director Ian Belton, lighting of conducting, full scores, the practice of https://designopendata.fles. designer Ben Kato, and me. Te show rhythmic “subdividing” by performers, wordpress.com/2014/05/the- contains sound efects, voice-overs—a and even notions of an egalitarian mediumisthemassage_mar- shallmcluhan_quentinfore. reimagined concert experience, we society. Tere was widespread accom- pdf (Accessed 2015-09-08). hope. modation of old music to highly regular

21. McLuhan’s evocative repetitive beat. Arnold Schoenberg’s term. It may be that the taste for, and value of 1948 article describes the great change repetition varies as place, time, or context that was occurring. He writes: alters. In a world without mechanical reproduction, before mass production, Almost everywhere in Europe music is the steady hand of the craftsman played in a stif, infexible metre—not repeating a design, making a chair or a in a tempo, i.e. according to a yardstick fork, very consistently, over and over and of freely measured quantities... A over, was highly esteemed. In our world change of character, a strong contrast, where exact reproductions are prevalent will often require a modifcation and inhuman, our sense of the value of of tempo. But the most important human irregularity may intensify. changes are necessary for the distribu- tion of the phrases of which a segment Increasingly precise repetition of is composed.18 musical performance was facilitated by the strong, regular beat that became Discussing a piece he aspired to conduct, pervasive in the performance of classical Schoenberg writes, “It seemed to me as music by the later twentieth century. if the conductor has taken a wet sponge, BRUCE BRUBAKER 107

erasing all traces of problems by playing whole I’m hearing another pianist’s YouTube recording movements in one stif, infexible tempo.”19 of Philip Glass’s Metamorphosis 2. Tough the familiarity of the music is striking, another aspect So, classical music was remodelled, regularised, and of the experience is how much I am surprised. made more regularly repeatable. I’m constantly comparing these recorded sounds that emanated from another performer to my mental store of what’s what. Te new details are Twenty-fourth of October 1996. I’m ofstage at St. not revelatory or illuminating necessarily— Mark’s in Greenwich Village in New York City. nonetheless, the shock of the new joins with the I’m about to play a piece by Philip Glass that I familiarity of the repeat. have just learned—Metamorphosis 2. Tis is part of a dance performance with dancer/choreographer Can it be denied that with our repetitive acts we Polly Motley. At each performance, I need to fnd measure our way towards death—one tennis match, the precise speed necessary for the dancers. After one car ride, one meal, or one performance of Bee- Duet, set to Metamorphosis 2, there is a longer thoven’s Moonlight Sonata at a time? With concerts, piece, in which I will take phrases from Glass’s the public performer of scripted music ritualises music as material for extemporising. such increments. For the musician, the playing of a particular piece may be associated with a particular Te balance or opposition of variety and sameness period of time, or particular places. A piece of music is a dichotomy providing essential friction in a lot of may disappear from the player’s repertoire, or keep art. Personal preference for variety or sameness may recurring over and over and over. I am planning to lead to preference for a stylistically varied concert perform Metamorphosis 2 again on 29 January 2016, programme, or the grouping together of similar 30 January 2016, 31 January 2016, 1 February 2016, pieces. It may explain why some performers learn 3 February 2016… many new pieces and others repeat only a few. And this preference may have to do with place and time. If linear thinking is no longer possible, as Marshall McLuhan assessed it,20 perhaps sameness is more a virtue now? If linear thought and experience prevailed in the past, variety might have captured attention. If the allatonceness21 of today threatens to overwhelm, then sameness can compel.