Analysing ‘from the inside out’: Frederic Rzewski’s De Profundis from a Performer’s Perspective

Abstract

In the musicological discourse on Western Art Music, music analysis and music performance are commonly seen as essentially different activities that generate ontologically different results. The convergence between these activities is that both performers and analysts are engaged with questions of musical meaning: analysts endeavour to generate knowledge of the syntax and structure of musical works, in order to contribute to a deeper understanding of musical compositions, whereas performers uncover musical meaning from within a constellation of different factors afforded by their practical involvement with a composition. Analysts and performers can therefore both be said to engage in acts of ‘analysis’, but with different resultant outcomes. Analysts usually articulate the results of their analyses in the form of written research output, while performers’ engagement with analysis most typically becomes embedded in the actual performance of works. This article explores possibilities for a performer of music to extend their primary insights on the musical meaning of compositions, usually embodied in their subjective experiences of the music rather than articulated in a medium available to a wider audience, and investigates ways to translate these experiences into a more generally accessible discursive medium. The ideas put forward in this article will be applied in an analytical reading of Frederic Rzewski’s composition for piano and spoken voice, De Profundis.