The Art of Repetition 

When we interpret a piece of music, we are engaging with signs

that represent sounds and with it we are part of an understanding

about what it is that we are repeating, why and how.

When we interpret, read, play any piece of music, a score, a leadsheet, a transcription, we are engaging with the signs and symbols in front of us. These signs are connected to specific sounds that we learned to create and repeat. These sounds are connected with many different sounds that can represent time periods, values, socio-cultural contexts, aesthetics and so forth. They can indicate social behaviour, codes, sometimes even political ideas, movements, trends. But let us now imagine that we would leave all that behind, and wake up one day without even remembering our own names. For example: When we hear the church bell ring – the sound of the church bell – we wouldn’t know it represented a building, that represents a religion, the religion that represents values, believes, structures of society. All that were left with is the sound itself  – tik tak. But it is not only the church bell that is embedded in context but so is every piece of music, every piece of art, text, poetry. So to interpret any piece of music, any score, or leadsheet, could be Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, could be Gershwin could be a Blues form is embedded in whole systems of values, believes, aesthetics that we knowingly and unknowlingly repeat, re-enact, connect with, break with and engage with these systems, values, aesthetics and beliefs. To interpret a piece of music is also always an interpretation of our past and our present that through repetition through wieder-holen (literally translated "bringing-again") an event to life that becomes our present and then again our past. We could say that with one single note we always repeat what has already been repeated. 

Let us start from the present moment and as I'm typing this, the present - as in every typed letter - already becomes my past. From every moment of the present, we interpret the past differently - with every typed letter, the already typed is expanded, changed. With that constant movement of change, the meaning of the already typed letters is changing too - and as the present is constantly moving into the future, our past is constantly changing through our evolving present because through it, our field of understanding [Verstehenshorizont] is constantly moving and changing with it.  Our field of understanding as in the way we interpret and understand our context, the way we hear and interpret sounds, words, objects constantly changes because our past and our present constantly co-exist, re-define and co-relate at any given moment.

Through this cycle of repetition and events our past and our present are constantly changing – when we interpret we are bound to repeat within an everchanging context. 

"Im Anfang war die Wiederholung" - "In the beginning was repetition"^* The importance in that quote for me lies in the German ‘Im’. Arno Böhler does not say Am Anfang [At the beginning] , he uses Im Anfang [In the beginning], which is an important difference. The ‘Am’ indicates that there is a definitive moment of origin we can start from, whereas ‘Im’ opens up the beginning suggesting that any beginning does not bring a definitive moment of beginning with it, but is embedded in beginnings. To me this means that the beginning has already begun and can be found within beginnings. So where do we start? What is the original? This question has followed me since I started working with the adaptation of lieder into songs. When somebody asked me, if it is allowed to sing Schubert songs the way I did, they are implying that there must be a version that is considered the correct or ‘original’ way. How is it supposed to be sung is also asking how was it sung and heard in the beginning?

Circle in the sand

Imagine drawing a circle in the sand with your finger, it is there in front of you and now imagine with the intention of finding out how it came to be you start again, you put your finger into the same spot and you start to re-trace the circle, re-trace the past in the search to find the moment of origin, to find out, how it first appeared, looked like, sounded like. But by doing so, through the act of retracing, the circle is not undone, we cannot determine the moment of origin, the beginning. Through retracing, researching, repeating, it is altered and every grain of sand moved into a different position. In Limited Inc. Jacques Derrida explicitly refers to the Sanskrit word “iteran” which at the same time means “repetition” as well as “alteration”. Iterability entails repetition and alteration at the same time. 

So we see the piece of music, the white sheet of paper filled with dots and lines but in the moment we see it, recognize and categorize it - we are already late, too late - we will never know what it was in its very moment of emerging. And through retracing we are already altering.The search itself brings about changes. Our search for the original becomes the search for our interpretation of the idea(l) of what it once was, what it might be, what it could be and foremost our interpretation of what it should be.

As I'm questioning what it could or should have been, I’m at the same time asking what it could or should be and mean for me. 

„Since the mid-nineteenth century, audiences have routinely adopted music as a sort of secular religion or spiritual politics, investing it with messages as urgent as they are vague. Beethoven’s symphonies promise political and personal freedom; Wagner’s operas inflame the imaginations of poets and demagogues, Stravinsky’s ballets release primal energies; the Beatles incite an uprising against ancient social mores. […] Music cannot easily bear such burdens.”*

In that sense our interpretations might be saying more about ourselves, the time we live in, the community we are representing, than about the work themselves. In that sense our interpretations might be saying more about ourselves, the time we live in, the community we are representing, than about the work, as the sounds remain regardless of us. Are we not searching for ourselves, for answers, meaning, a sense of purpose through the work for ourselves and not for the work through ourselves? 

The Werktreue ideal gives direction, orientation, a purpose to follow and carry tradition and values that we lay upon these works. But what if one day we wake up and had forgotten all about our past - the sounds would still exist - what are they without our opinions, categories, hierarchies, interpretations. It is us who lay opinions, categories, hierarchies, interpretation of Zeitgeist, values in and upon the works.

Melodies could be described as musical sentences notated in signs, black dots on lines of on paper, a musical thought that someone left to be repeated and interpreted. Interpreting musical thoughts of a stranger may be as personal as reading a diary, but in a more abstract way – the mindset of a complete stranger, the musical vision of stranger becomes part of your own, making it possible to develop a personal connection with somebody one has never met. I’m repeating, interpreting ideas, thoughts of someone I have never met and with it they become part of my journey, part of my life, part of my performance. Through interpreting we are bringing musical thoughts (back) to life, thoughts that the moment we start to repeat them, haunt us and become part of our thoughts. The obligation towards the composer and the composed lies in exactly that - in us being haunted through repetition. When we interpret we are entering a relationship with the person who left the signs behind for us to discover and when we perform, we are entering a relationship with the audience who experience our self(s) in the process of sharing what we discovered and keep discovering through the art of repetition. 

To be able decipher the notes in front of us, to read them and connect them to sounds is just the beginning. It is about the way of doing repetition. When we practice our disciplines under the premise of Werktreue we keep asking how something has been repeated in the hope of a pure and ideal form of a way of doing. Through trying to retrace we are already repeating and changing. To interpret is focusing on the how of repetition, on the way of doing. As we repeat and focus on the how the art of interpretation becomes the art of repetition. 

Every Interpretation is a search through the act of repetition regardless of genre. It is the rules of the way of repeating that build the difference in our search. The search for interpretation as a classical musician might be build around the ideal of getting as close as possible to an interpretation of the idea of the original,  the jazz musician might be searching through improvisation while repetition. 

But regardless of genre, it is the search and our ways of searching that keeps us engaged  Even if we can not catch up with the moment of origin, we can keep searching and like the sound itself, can the search remain. 

Bringing our interpretations on stage, our search becomes a blank canvas on which the pieces of music appear in different colours on a background of white, the open space between the one piece of music and another.  How do we fill it? How do we draw the line between repeating the past while letting it become our present and presence on stage?