An interview with Janet Schmalfeldt

Abstract

Between May 6 and 11, 2002, Dr. Janet Schmalfeldt presented a series of lectures on the theme 'Analysis for Performance' at the Graduate Program in Music at the University of Rio de Janeiro (Uni-Rio). A pianist with an active career in the United States, Ph.D. in Theory from Yale University, Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Tufts University, and author of the book Berg's Wozzeck: Harmonic Language and Dramatic Design, she has also written numerous articles on aspects related to cadence, form, and voice leading in 18th- and 19th-century music, and about an ideology she identified as 'The Beethoven-Hegelian Tradition.' She is currently developing philosophical and analytical perspectives on form as a process in early 19th-century European music. The issues addressed in this interview, granted in Rio de Janeiro, involve a reflection on performance and analysis, complementary activities that involve, to varying degrees, intuition and rationality. In studying the importance of intuitive and analytical knowledge in musical training and development, Keith Swanwick*, a distinguished English educator, states that, on the one hand, the former is the basis of musical experience, acquired through direct apprehension and personal contact, while the latter seeks to name, conceptualize, and bring to consciousness what lies hidden, reconstructing possibilities and, thus, creating new ways of feeling. It is on the beautiful and harmonious intertwining of performance, analysis, and historical musicology that Dr. Schmalfeldt reflects in this interview, published here in Portuguese and in the original English.