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 John Cage, performance of western classical music. Varying practices used by musicians are Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Nico Muhly 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 Juilliard School, 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.