Performer's role

The relationship between composer and performer is quite simple, really.

It is the composer who invents, creates, the music. The content, the meaning, the imagination, the expression, in short: its multiple imaginary worlds of emotional experience is his achievement. Not the performer's.

The performer is the gifted person whose deep understanding of the music brings the cool score with merely signals to life, and fills the abstract structure with the warmth of his/her real subjectivity. The performer's task is to present the work to the best of his/her understanding in its real nature to the listener and assumes the role of the dedicated servant, or midwife, it is a representative and mediating role, not the role of the initial creator. The midwife is not the child which is the heart of the matter.

Both composer and performer are entirely dependent on each other, but it should be clear that the gifts of the composer are of a much more important nature than the gifts of the performer who, after all, does not create something, but interprets the created work, hence his/her role as servant of the music, not the creator.

Without the composer, the performer is nothing. Without the performer, the composer is still entirely a composer, and his works will rest for better times when there are again capable performers.

For audiences, the performer is the only living presence, hence the cult around some of them. The composer has mostly withdrawn into imaginary space and in case he is still alive, often is a rather disappointing figure. Performers who consider the music - any music - as mere stuff for THEM to express THEMSELVES, are prostitutes, damaging the art form. That attitude merely reflects their ignorance and arrogance, and their looking-down upon the creative act without which they would never have existed, is one of the greatest embarrassments of our time.

The performer however who is capable of his/her great gifts to bring great music to life, is the greatest when he/she is able to use his/her own subjective personalty and ego entirely as a vehicle in the service of the music. The truly great performers are the ones who achieve this magical 'marriages' of souls and thereby both enhance themselves and the music.