PERFORMANCE

Evan Parker, the saxophonist, who must be one of the most widely experienced musicians in the performing of "composed" open form improvisation and also in "free" open form improvisation, gave his views ... in an address to the Society for the Promotion of New Music. The following is an excerpt: I am a perfoming musician, but I don't use scores and it's not that the score has refined itself out of existence, as Werner Goldschmidt seemed to think was the case for the New Phonic Arts Group. It has never existed for me except as something to look at and to think about, to compare with others of its type. Now that I am forced to rationalise this attitude, it is along these lines: if the score represents some kind of ideal performance why does it ever have to be performed? Surely it would be better for the music-lover to read the score, alone or with others, conducted or unconducted as his preference dictates? If it is objected that this attitude is itself too unemotional, then I would reply that the score is itself too unemotional; and since it concerns itself with the description rather than the emotions themselves it would be more appropriate to consider score-making as an esoteric branch of the literary arts with its own criteria rather than as anything to do with music. [Bailey 80]