In this week's episode, Lydia Bangura analyses her own performance choices in comparison to a professional recording using Jennifer Ronyak’s framework of co-performance.

This episode was produced by Zach Lloyd along with Team Lead Megan Lyons. Special thanks to peer reviewers Shersten Johnson and Daniel Barolsky. Additional thanks to David Kjar, Marc Hannaford, Kim Loeffert, and John Peterson for early feedback. 

SMT-Pod’s theme music was written by Maria Tartaglia, with closing music by Yike Zhang. For supplementary materials on this episode and more information on our authors and composers, check out our website: https://smt-pod.org/episodes/

[Intro Theme by Maria Tartaglia.]

Welcome to SMT-Pod, the premier audio publication of the Society for Music Theory! In this week's episode, Lydia Bangura analyses her own performance choices in comparison to a professional recording using Jennifer Ronyak’s framework of co-performance.

Playing Dress-Up: Co-Performance with Mozart’s Abendempfindung K. 523. Often, I struggle to explain why my favorite recordings of a given song resonate so strongly with me. Sometimes it seems random why I prefer one over another; perhaps a recorded performance just catches me in the right place at the right time?

[Fischer-Dieskau’s recording of Schubert’s Winterreise]

Musicologist Jennifer Roynak shares this experience, as she was so captivated by the performances and recordings of baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau that they in part inspired her to study the German language.

[Fischer-Dieskau’s recording of Schubert’s Winterreise continues]

In her article “Meeting Barthes at Fischer-Dieskau’s Mill: Co-performance, Linguistic Identity, and a Lied,” Ronyak (2017) describes the sense of loss that she experienced at the death of the German baritone. Ronyak explores the idea of co-performance with recordings by noting that her relationship to Schubert’s music, embodied in Fischer-Dieskau's performances, makes the score indistinguishable from the recordings–to her, the recordings “have become equivalent to the songs themselves.”

In this podcast episode, I will demonstrate my own use of co-performance by comparing soprano Barbara Bonney’s recording of “Abendempfindung” K. 523 by Mozart to my own recording, investigating the tone colors that Bonney employs and how my voice is informed by this recording. Combined with my theoretical and contextual understanding of this piece, I use both music-analytical and performance-analytical frameworks to inform performance decisions.

Ronyak articulates exactly the relationship I have with my favorite recordings, whether a popular song, a cinematic orchestral soundtrack, or an art song. When I am tasked with the challenge of learning a new art song or aria for the first time, I embark on my YouTube pilgrimage to find treasured recordings to cling to during the rehearsal process. I have never paused to ponder the effects of this ritual on my perceptions of song, my rehearsal process, or ultimately, my performances of vocal music. The framework of co-performance allows me to analyze my own performance choices in relation to a recorded performance, noting how that performance influences my interpretation of the music.

Ronyak distinguishes performance from co-performance. For her, co-performance is inherently corporeal on the part of the listener because it involves feeling (or imagining) what it would be like to sing or play like the recorded artist(s). It therefore connects the bodies of the performers and listeners and requires a special kind of active listener participation.

In co-performance, the co-performers are the listener, the composer, the score, and the recorded performer. Historically, it has been common practice to reduce both the performer and the recording to secondary status, in favor of uplifting the composer and the score. In Ronyak’s interpretation, however, the performer and the recording are more than simply the “vessel” for the composer. They are an integral part of the music making themselves.

As Daniel Barolsky (2007) writes, “performers are analysts and historians of a different kind.” A performance itself is an account of the performer’s understanding of historical performance practices, language, and musical details. It is not only the dialogue between music academics but the conversation between performers that deserves consideration.

Similarly, Arnie Cox describes embodied music making through mimesis, writing: “When we take an aesthetic interest in something, whether people-watching or attending a sporting event or a film or a concert, our responses can be understood as if we are implicitly asking, What’s it like to do that, along with the corollary question, What’s it like to be that?... In effect, it is as if we are responding to an invitation to somehow imitate and to thus take part.” The impulse to take part is co-performance, whether it’s an attempted imitation or the urge to expand upon a performance.

Daphne Leong observes how the combined study of performance and analysis can display multiple ways of knowing. In the German language, this is demonstrated by three separate words to describe knowing: “wissen (knowing that), können (knowing how), and kennen (knowing, as in knowing a person).” Co-performance allows for these varied ways of knowing, and accounts for feeling familiar with music through a performance. These all empower the listener with a well-rounded understanding of how they might approach their own performance.

Another aspect of co-performance is what Ronyak refers to as linguistic materiality, by which she means the “corporeal sources, perception, and effects of spoken or sung language taken together.” Singers have the unique musical challenge of mastering the materiality of foreign languages and must expertly differentiate between the feeling of different languages in the mouth.

We must hypothesize through co-performance what it is like to sing in our language of choice. We constantly try on different lip and tongue positions, we experiment with foreign vowel sounds and consonant combinations, and we battle with text stress and syllable emphasis. Singers inevitably bring a bit of their native tongue to any foreign language they pursue, coloring the listener’s experience of their linguistic performance. Singing in foreign languages requires singers to be theorists of music, language, and poetry all at once.

For the purposes of this podcast, my implementation of co-performance acknowledges my simultaneous roles as a constant audience member for these recordings and as a performer. These professional recordings help me become a professional myself as I mimic them, attempt their maturity, and clumsily experiment with their linguistic prowess while still maintaining my own sense of originality. Music theory often involves looking at the score as a fixed art object.

For me, co-performance values both the score and the recording as fixed archival objects, in concurrence and in relation to each other, in order to develop one’s own performance choices. In the next section, I consider how a singer might co-perform with Mozart and the score to “Abendempfindung” before evaluating my own co-performance with Barbara Bonney’s recording of this Lied.

[Elly Ameling’s recording of Mozart’s “An die Hoffnung”]

Mozart’s collection of lieder, while not particularly extensive, is representative of German song in the 18th century: melancholy and sentimental, sometimes with themes of death and the exploration of the afterlife. Several of Mozart’s songs set texts that explore these themes, including “An die Hoffnung,” “An die Einsamkeit,” and “Abendempfindung”. Weighty and rolling, “Abendempfindung” shows Mozart’s skillful ability to interpret text in music in profound ways. This song offers many opportunities for singers to show off with long phrases, dramatic key changes, dynamic text, and formal ambiguities.

[Accompaniment to Mozart’s “Abendempfindung”]

Mozart’s harmonic journey in “Abendempfindung” begins in F major, and he explores that key and its relation to other keys in an ambiguous three-part form that invites the singer to consider several performance possibilities.

By far the longest section of the piece is the B section. By devoting the most time and harmonic complexity to the B section, Mozart unconventionally stretches the form and fully explores the inner stanzas of the text.

The harmony blossoms during this section, where the key changes at least every phrase. The elaborate harmonic voyage paired with the dense poetry makes for a dramatic result not unlike an opera aria.

At first I gravitated towards this piece because of the pronounced harmonic pivots; it was one of the first pieces that made me feel like an opera singer, even though it’s an art song. My musical instincts directed me to accent every cadence and emphasize moments of chromaticism in the melodic line. The piece, especially when considering the sentimental text, also has delicate moments of harmonic stability. The poet, Joachim Heinrich Campe, wanders through complex musings of reckoning with one’s own mortality.

Of course, this all makes the song quite challenging to perform. With the average performance time for the song running just under five minutes, it requires an advanced level of stamina, breathwork, and understanding of the momentum of the poetry and vocal line from the singer. The grand and rolling nature of the vocal line suggests that this is a Lied for a more mature singer. As I attempted to learn the song with my developing voice, I sang alongside Barbara Bonney’s recording of “Abendempfindung.”

Embodied in this performance is everything I wanted my own performance to be: she sings with bright, pleasing vowels, incredible breath support and stamina, prolonged consonants, and the perfect amount of drama. This performance had a huge impact on my conceptualization of the song and continues to affect not only how I perform it, but also how I imagine my own voice.

I turn now to this professional recording of “Abendempfindung” to evaluate Bonney’s performance interpretations, consider our similarities and differences, and examine her use of and familiarity with the German language. I note my favorite moments in her performance, as I tried to imitate them in my own recording.

[Barbara Bonney’s recording of Mozart’s “Abendempfindung”]

American soprano Barbara Bonney (b. 1956) brings a bright, clear sound to all of the music that she performs. Both an operatic and concert soprano, Bonney is well-known for her recordings of lieder. Her interpretation of “Abendempfindung” (with pianist Geoffrey Parsons) features forward vowel placement, prominent rolled Rs, and delicate dynamics. Because German vowels tend to be darker than other languages, such as Italian or English, they can lose resonance when sitting further back in the mouth and throat. But Bonney’s pronunciation places the vowels in the mask area of the face, vibrantly sending the sounds forward towards the listener. This can be heard especially when she sings the word “sonne,” the word “tanz,” and even with the umlaut sound on the word “schönste.”

[Barbara Bonney’s recording of Mozart’s “Abendempfindung”]

Her focus on these vowel sounds also assists her legato; each word is seamlessly connected to the last, despite the constant consonant clusters. I have accomplished this in my own performance, but only sparingly, as this forward placement is quite difficult to develop. Once the melody drops below an A4 [recording of A4], bringing vowels forward in the mouth becomes increasingly difficult for me as the melody descends. Therefore, I revere Bonney’s pronunciation of the word “tanz,” sung on an E4 [recording of E4].

Bonney shows flexibility in terms of tempo, accelerating and slowing down especially in the first and last sections of the piece. Her pace feels natural and conversational, and the German consonants sound at home in her mouth. I have often been instructed to keep the tempo at the same pace in order to correctly articulate the German text. Bonney’s quickened tempo signals an ease and familiarity with the text that I do not yet have.

In contrast, Bonney ends the piece with a series of ritardandos throughout the last section. In order to stretch the already long phrases, this musical choice requires incredible stamina. Slowing down towards the end of the piece has the potential to make it feel heavy, like it is dragging towards the finish. When I attempt to slow down these final phrases, my struggle to finish each phrase is audible and causes the end of the piece to feel fraught with tension.

[Lydia Bangura’s recording of Mozart’s “Abendempfindung”]

However, when Bonney adds this tempo flexibility, it is both sensational and sophisticated, adding a sense of finality to the song.

[Barbara Bonney’s recording of Mozart’s “Abendempfindung”]

Through these tempo choices, her agency as a singer is asserted and portrays to me, as a listener, a sense of confidence that I long to have myself.

I also admire Bonney’s consonant pronunciation. One of my favorite instances is on the word “rollt.” This melodic gesture of falling by a fifth signals the transition into the B section of the piece. Bonney takes her time pronouncing the rolled R, drawing it out for almost a full second. This is followed by a second and shorter rolled R on the word “herap.”

[Barbara Bonney’s recording of Mozart’s “Abendempfindung”]

I, too, aim to make this moment quite pronounced, as I understand the harmony to be making an important shift. However, I am limited in my performance capacity because I am only able to flip my Rs. (I know, I know; an opera singer who can’t roll her R’s? Yes, it is embarrassing, but rest assured, I’m working on it!)

[Lydia Bangura’s recording of Mozart’s “Abendempfindung”]

I have yet to successfully roll my Rs, and therefore can only imagine what it feels like in the mouth and on the tongue.

I am also limited by my understanding of the linguistic materiality of German. I have a basic grasp of vocabulary, but a fledgling understanding of how German is supposed to feel in the mouth and throat when sung or spoken. Here I am co-performing (false) linguistic fluency that doesn’t account for my own native linguistic identity.

Sometimes I gravitate towards emphasizing a German word because of the way it feels to sing; even if that word isn’t significant within the context of the phrase or the stanza, it is unique to my American ears and mouth, and therefore exciting. I will prolong the experience of singing it simply because it feels good.

Towards the end of the B section, for example, the vocal line moves upward in a dramatic key change. A singer can project the excitement of the moment through the “ü” vowel, but that vowel sound belongs to the demanding word “pflücke.” The singer must pronounce all three beginning consonant sounds (“p,” “f,” and “l” in rapid succession), a remarkable expedition through different mouth positions to produce the necessary sounds. This consonant combination is uncommon in English and exhilarating for me, as a non-native German speaker, to sing.

[Lydia Bangura’s recording of Mozart’s “Abendempfindung”]

This word is a point in the piece where I deviate from Bonney, who performs this moment with little fanfare. She pronounces “pflücke” so delicately that the consonants are barely heard, whereas I attempt a dramatic pronunciation.

[Barbara Bonney’s recording of Mozart’s “Abendempfindung”]

Our differing interpretations could certainly be because of the clunkiness of the German language in my own mouth, but I also attribute it to one of the only moments in the piece where the piano and voice have synced rhythms. I want to call attention to this moment through prolonged pronunciation. There are many more musical choices that I wish to pursue that I do not yet have access to as a young singer. So I hold this recording close, hoping that one day I may actualize my ideal performance decisions.

Ronyak’s idea of co-performance encapsulates my own relationship to certain recordings. Both my theoretical analysis and my obsession with this recording solidify my own performance choices. But the analysis of co-performance bears questioning: do I sound like me, or do I sound like a mishmash of my favorite recordings? What is the difference? What does it mean to sound like me when my instinct is to first consult professional recordings? Where did my impulse to consult professional recordings at the start of my rehearsal process even come from?

Ultimately, I am limited in my musical expressions and performance choices, not only because of my current abilities as a singer (for example, not being able to roll my R’s), but also because of my limited agency as a younger performer. Due to a combination of historical performance practices and to my teachers’ preferences, I am frequently blocked from listening to my own musical impulses. (I am referring now to stylistic choices, not choices relating to technique.)

The feedback from my teachers is the same, that I am to perform said piece like a given recording. I wonder, at what point in my career do I have the agency to make my own musical choices, separate from the interpretations of my predecessors? The combination of my current vocal abilities and lack of artistic authority can feel stifling.

Classical singers’ voices normally “fully” mature between the ages of 30 and 35, when they will more or less solidify into the voice they’ll have for the rest of their performance career. The voice still changes throughout its lifetime as the body ages, but the changes are minute compared to the changes in one’s voice that happen throughout one’s twenties. Therefore, I latch onto recordings due to a lack of my own vocal identity; I don’t know what my mature voice will sound like, and neither do my teachers. How do you train a hypothetical voice, a voice that doesn’t exist yet?

A teacher may shepherd it by having it imitate something that is tangible, like a recording. After all, one cannot give a developing voice too much freedom. So it is tempting to suppress one’s own voice in favor of simply imitating; it keeps the young performer’s focus towards their future professional self. However, instead of fixating on someday, what do I do with the voice I have now? Co-performance offers young performers the chance to witness what is possible and allows them to dream up performance choices beyond their current inhibitions.

I’d like to thank David Kjar, Marc Hannaford, Kim Loeffert, and John Peterson for their feedback on earlier drafts of this research. I’d also like to thank my peer reviewers, Sherston Johnson and Daniel Barolsky, for their valuable feedback. Finally, my thanks to Megan Lyons, Zach Lloyd, and the rest of the SMT–Pod team for their help with producing this episode.

[Outro Theme by Yike Zhang.]

Visit our website, smt-pod.org, for supplemental materials related to this episode and to learn how to submit an episode proposal. And join in the conversation by tweeting us your questions and comments @SMT_Pod. SMT-Pod’s theme music was written by Maria Tartaglia, with closing music by Yike Zhang.