The Artist as an Effective Communicator
How many different ways do we communicate as a professional musician? 1. With our music. This is pretty obvious. Our music speaks for itself. It tells the story intended by the composer. Sometimes it's an image, Mussorgky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." Sometimes it's a feeling, Wagner's "Liebestod." Often it is an actual story, any of Schubert's Lieder. In all of these examples there is a specific message which is conveyed through the compositional skill of the composer. Some performances convey that message better than others but for many pieces in standard rep, the story is often able to transcend the actual performance. Thanks to program notes and the advent of Wikipedia, it's easy to know what you are listening to even if the performance isn't necessarily telling you. But there is a second aspect to performance that also communicates to the audience. It is sometimes more obvious and sometimes subtle depending on wh