On beauty, taste, and 'Hearing the performance'
On beauty, taste, and ‘hearing the performance’ (Part 1) The philosopher of music Peter Kivy establishes a useful distinction which, although originally applied to classical music, can serve equally well to contextualise the discussion that follows. It is possible, Kivy argues (2007), when listening to classical music, to hear the music but not the performance. What he means is that any given musical score is both played and interpreted: played , because the notes are there, along with most dynamics (e.g. loud vs soft, crescendo, accents, tempo), and any instrumentalist will play what is written. Interpreted , because there is space enough for a musician to give their own twist to those notes and indications – taking a passage more slowly than indicated, playing legato instead of staccato, accentuating this note rather than that one, and of course changing the tempo. So in the words of Kivy, a performance is a token (a sort of example) of the music-type, and each perfor