The performer's role: Storytelling in Ballades of Chopin and Brahms.

Abstract

Often overlooked in musical analysis, the performer plays an important role in the recreation of musical works. This dissertation incorporates the performer's perspective by focusing on social, physical, and mental processes of learning and playing music in the classical piano repertoire. Drawing on studies in music and narrative, I argue that a narratological approach can extend beyond the listener's perspective to analyze the performer's experience. The first two chapters are theoretical, the last three, analytical. Chapter 1 proposes that performance is an oral culture, akin to storytelling or folksinging, based on three criteria: performance is an event that unfolds in a particular place and time; it presents different versions of a single work; and it is largely defined by the performer's interpretation and listener's reception. Performers are comparable to storytellers, as both shape their works for particular aesthetic and emotional effects. Chapter 2 explores the performer's role in relation to an intersubjective cultural context that includes standard performance practices as well as individual conceptions of good and bad playing. This context helps determine what kind of playing is considered legitimate, and gives performers and listeners a common basis by which to judge a performance. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze two piano Ballades by Frederic Chopin and Johannes Brahms (Op. 23 and Op. 10, No. 1, respectively). I study the performer's role as a storyteller using narrative techniques observed in stories associated with the Ballades, the Edward poem with the Brahms piece, and a tale of my own devising with the Chopin. Chapter 5 considers several recordings of these Ballades from a listener's standpoint, examining the relationship between pianistic technique and musical affect. The dissertation contributes to studies of performance and analysis, a subfield of music theory that is primarily concerned with how to analyze performed music. To understand the role of the performer, I propose an analytical model using narrative concepts, like chronological ordering and the function of the storyteller. I contribute a perspective on piano pedagogy as well by emphasizing how the use of narrative in teaching methods and performance techniques profoundly impacts a student's interpretation of music.