Technical, interpretive and aesthetics issues in the performance practice of contemporary music

Authors

  • Lewis Nielson University of Georgia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35699/2317-6377.2000.57813

Keywords:

music performance, music interpretation, contemporary music, twentieth-century music, performance practices, rehearsal practices

Abstract

This paper addresses five common performance questions encountered in contemporary music: (1) the historical demands placed on the performer and the technical solutions rooted in practice and rehearsal modes of long-standing usage, (2) the subtle issue of interpretive decisions based upon both internal-practical and external- extra-musical features of a work, (3) the technical and interpretive issues through the invention of idiosyncratic notations and score concepts that can create performance problems, (4) the tradition of exploring existing instruments for new sound possibilities and, finally, (5) compositional procedures that generate problems of music realization or prevent accurate performance. Drawing largely upon my own conducting and compositional experience, this discussion will take place in the context of music by some of the most important composers writing over the past thirty years.

Author Biography

  • Lewis Nielson , University of Georgia

    is a professor of composition and musical analysis at the Oberlin Conservatory, USA. He has held the chair of the theory and composition area at the University of Georgia and conducted the University of Georgia Contemporary Chamber Ensemble for over two decades. He holds a Ph.D. in Composition and Music Theory from the University of Iowa, USA, and also studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and at Clark University in Massachusetts, USA. With an eclectic background, he was a blues and rock musician and interned at IRCAM in Paris. As a theorist, he created a complete Schenkerian reduction of Wagner's Parsifal and has analyzed hundreds of 20th-century masterpieces. As a conductor, he has conducted major 20th-century chamber music masterpieces, including the Brazilian premieres of Alfred Schnittke's Septet and Violin Concerto No. 3, Sir Harrison Birtwistle's La Plage, and his own Duo Concertant: Danger Man for double bass and percussion. As a composer, he has written about one hundred works, including symphonic, choral, chamber, and solo music, opera, and electronic music, most of which have been published by the American Composers Alliance and Seesaw Music. Many of his works have been commissioned by groups such as the Lake Placid Sinfonietta, American Composers Orchestra, Fresno Philharmonic, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava, the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Prague, and the Moscow Radio Tchaikovsky Symphony. Among the various awards he has received as a composer are grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Delius Foundation, the Fullbright-Hays, the Georgia Council for the Arts-Meet the Composer program, the University of Georgia Research Foundation, the Georgia Bicentennial Commission, the Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges in France, and the Ibla Foundation in Italy.

References

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Published

2000-01-07

Issue

No. 02 (2000): General Topics

Section

Articles

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Copyright (c) 2000 Per Musi

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How to Cite

“Technical, Interpretive and Aesthetics Issues in the Performance Practice of Contemporary Music”. 2000. Per Musi, no. 02 (January): 50-88. https://doi.org/10.35699/2317-6377.2000.57813.