Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 1
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions
Demonstrate That His “Reception as Genius” Was “Work”
An Essay Presented
by
Sean L.A.M. Bennett
To
The Department of Music
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Master of Philosophy
in the Subject of
Musicology
Wolfson College
Cambridge University
Cambridge, England
January 18, 2002
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 2
Critics on Horowitz: “How dare Horowitz tamper with Mussorgsky’s original masterpiece?” Horowitz’s reply: “They say I put graffiti on Mussorgsky, but I don't give a damn. I worked hard on that transcription; I'm not ashamed of it. I am proud of the transcription. I did a good job, and I think perhaps I played it very well. You see, I felt the Pictures had to be brought forward. They were too introverted, and this was possibly because Mussorgsky was a little bit of a dilettante, and he was not really a pianist. Ravel orchestrated the work, and I "pianostrated" it. When I change any thing, it is only to make a better piano sound. And Mussorgsky did not know how. I'm sorry but that is true, and the score is also much more awkward to play in the original.” (Dubal, 1991, p. 11)
Introduction
What constitutes the “work” in musicological terms has been an oft-debated question.
In the example above, and when Vladimir Horowitz performed any of his piano
transcriptions -- what constitutes the “work?” Is it the original Mussorgsky score? Is it
a written score of the performance that Horowitz may or may not have completed? Is
it anything other than the “original” as Horowitz comments above? Is it my written-
down, note-by-note, dynamic-by-dynamic, articulation-by-articulation rendition of the
transcription from a recording? Is it the recording itself? Until the 1980s,
musicological debates of “work” were largely couched, like the critics and questions
above, in linguistic and terminological debates always favoring the idea of a physical
entity defining the “work” (Bradshaw, 1998). Seldom did “work” debates move to the
ideas of Ingarden (1986) to look at possible “work” definitions other than the
traditional musicologically denoted score, performance, or recording, and even more
seldom did the debate challenge the necessity that there must be a “work.”
However, with Ingarden’s (1986) The Work of Music and the Problem of Its
Identity and Lydia Goehr’s (1992) The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: an
Essay in the Philosophy of Music, we have new accounts of the “work” that expand
existing musicological notions this term. First, Ingarden acknowledges that “a musical
work is not a real but a purely intentional object and, strictly speaking, one of a higher
order” (p. 119). He allows his “work” of “a higher order” to exist by insisting that
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 3
both sounding and non-sounding elements comprise the musical “work.” One of these
non-sounding elements allows “emotional impressions” to constitute a portion of the
“work.” For example, a composer might want to convey the impression of
“happiness” with his composition, and thus “happiness” comprises part of the “work.”
While Ingarden allows the emotions of a composer to constitute part of a
“work,” he rejects the idea that conscious experiences or the emotions of listeners are
part of an autonomous “work.” This is because he reasons that, most likely, there is no
longer a definable “work” when one begins to remove the centrality of the composer.
However, he does acknowledge that perhaps psychologists or sociologists, after much
effort, may demonstrate the importance of listener’s perceptions in relation to the
“work.”
Goehr, in a variation of Ingarden, presents the idea that “work” is a
construction reliant on the post-Bach Germanic canon of performances in formal
concerts. She believes that anything musical that has been performed since 1800
currently falls within the boundaries of the “work-concept” debate. While Goehr’s
account of the “work” is controversial (as challenged in one way or another by Solie
(1993), White (1997), Erauw (1998), and Josipovici (1993)), one aspect of her theory
suggests that the solidification of the divide between “creation” and “reception” in the
post-Bach concert era confirms that “reception” could constitute a partial
understanding of the identification of the “work.” Additionally, Goehr explains how
an emotional impression, such as an audience describing music as “beautiful,” in itself
helps to create an aesthetically appreciable “work.”
Ingarden’s “non-sounding emotional impressions” as “work” and Goehr’s
“reception opposite creation” as “work” gives new insights into the identity of the
“work” – and the combination suggests that it may be possible for an emotion or
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 4
impression gained through audience reception of a performance to indeed constitute
the “work” itself.
Tagg (2000) does a good job of facilitating an additional understanding of
what is meant when Ingarden’s views and Goehr’s views are combined. In his essay
questioning whether the musical “work” exists or not, he gives us the following
excerpt from the Oxford English Dictionary defining “work” in its four English
senses:
[i] the application of mental or physical effort to a purpose;... [ii] a thing done or made by work; the result of an action; an achievement;... [iii] a person's employment or occupation etc., esp. as a means of earning income; [iv] literary or musical composition.
Where traditional musicological definitions of “work” have focused on [iv],
specifically a score or recording, theories of “reception as work” focus more on the
“achievement” part of definition [ii]. In order for a performer to “achieve” anything
requires that, in the philosophical sense, several audience-acknowledged criteria are
present to recognize the achievement. These audience members, with their criteria for
identifying achievement, constitute the whole of the reception of the performance.
This logic explains how the “reception” of a performance by an audience can equal
the “work” in a new musicological sense.
This essay will demonstrate that Horowitz, during 1928-1968, his prime
transcription performing years, created a set of circumstances where there was no
“work” in the traditional sense of definition [iv]. In the place of the void where there
was no “work” in that sense, Horowitz left behind, through reception, the impression
that he was a “genius.” Thus, it could be said, and will be argued, that when
examining the performances of Horowitz, and particularly his transcriptions, that the
resulting “reception of Horowitz as genius” is equivalent to his “work” in the sense of
definition [ii]. Thus, this essay will defend the idea that “reception as genius as work”
is a valid musicological analogy when placed in the appropriate context.
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 5
Not any one single aspect of Horowitz’s talents or abilities contributed to this
“genius as work” result – rather, a unique collection of his individual skills and
distinctions interacted to form the basis for this notion.1 With Horowitz, we have
perhaps the only 20th century instance of a classical pianist creating a set of
circumstances that allowed him to [indirectly] control what constituted his “work.”
However, first, to adequately understand how Horowitz’s performances of
piano transcriptions have created this notion of “reception as genius as work” it is
helpful to consider some background about the Horowitz piano transcription.
Therefore, let us consider what is meant by “Horowitz’s performances of piano
transcriptions” and briefly explore the history that surrounds them.
Then, there will be an explication of the four categories of Horowitz’s skills
that have secured this definition of “reception as genius as work.” The first section
will examine how the distinctive characteristics of Horowitz’s performance practice
dispel traditional musicological notions of “work.” The second section will examine
how Horowitz as a master arranger but mediocre composer was discouraged from
conforming to traditional musicological definitions of “work.” The third section will
examine how Horowitz’s utilization of the complete topographical capabilities of the
piano parallels audiences’ cognitive predispositions and how this parallel allowed his
listening audiences to perceive him as a “genius.” The fourth section will examine
how Horowitz, as a master marketer, placed the audience and media context ahead of
the score and the performance, and how this action allowed Horowitz to self-
determine the entities people would label as his “work.”
Then, to conclude, there will be an examination of the role that intellectual
1 Because this collection of skills and circumstances, like most collections of skills and circumstances is not linear and unidirectional like the progression of an essay, there is some conceptual overlap between the main four points.
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 6
property disputes and impinging technology are playing in the downfall of
musicological and legal definitions of “work” using examples related to Horowitz.
This last argument will also explain how the legal notion of “recording as work” is
faltering throughout the music industry – and that ultimately, Horowitz’s self-
construal of “reception as genius as work” is one of the only possible paradigm shifts
for the immediate future of the musicological term “work.”
The Definition of “Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions.”
The meaning of “Horowitz’s performances of piano transcriptions” throughout this
essay should be clarified. First, the “transcriptions” of Horowitz most colloquially
would be considered “arrangements” or “paraphrases.” Horowitz’s transcriptions take
an existing musical score either for piano or for some other instrumentation, change
sections and notes while retaining the original principal themes, and add elements of
virtuosity. The “Horowitz transcription” label is traditionally applied to the dozen or
so pieces Horowitz performed live from 1926 until 1968 ranging from a completely
original composition based on one borrowed theme (the Bizet-Horowitz Carmen
Fantasy) to pieces where most of the performance followed the written original score
with a composed or altered ending (the Liszt-Horowitz Hungarian Rhapsody #2). In
between these two extremes were such pieces as the Saint-Saens/Liszt/Horowitz
Danse Macabre and Horowitz’s “pianoscription” of Sousa’s Stars and Stripes
Forever.2 To define the “performance of these piano transcriptions,” this essay refers
not just to the recordings, but the actual unique concerts, at specified dates on Sunday
afternoons, in which Horowitz performed his creations.
Historical Context of Horowitz and his Transcriptions
It is also useful to know a bit of the historical background concerning both Horowitz
2 A list of the major arrangements with recording dates that constitute “Horowitz’s performances of piano transcriptions” for the purposes of this essay are listed in Appendix A.
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 7
and his transcriptions to set the groundwork for exploring the circumstances that
created Horowitz’s “reception as genius as work.” In 1926, at the age of 22, Horowitz
started to concertize seriously outside of Russia. It was in this year that he wrote his
first transcription for piano, the Carmen Variations, based on a theme from the last
part of the second act of the Bizet opera3. With a successful group of European
concerts, in 1928, Horowitz gave his American debut at Carnegie Hall playing
Tchaikovsky’s 1st Piano Concerto with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting. Soon after,
in his Carnegie Hall solo debut, Horowitz played his Carmen Variations as his encore.
According to Dubal (1991), after each variation increasing numbers of audience
members stood up in amazement. His next wave of transcriptions, which included the
Mendelssohn-Liszt-Horowitz Wedding March and the Saint Saens-Liszt-Horowitz
Danse Macabre were written and first performed in the early 1940s.
From 1944-1950, Horowitz composed the majority of his piano transcriptions.
These included the Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody arrangements and his most famous
transcription, his piano rendition of Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever, which stunned
a 1945 Carnegie Hall audience and later millions in New York City’s Central Park. In
1953, he took a 12-year retirement from performing and quit writing new
transcriptions. He created immense “hype” upon his return in 1965 with a series of
Carnegie Hall recitals that had concertgoers queued around the block to purchase
tickets.
Horowitz continued to experiment with his first transcription, Carmen, until he
made his last recording of it in 1978. However, Horowitz stopped performing his
transcriptions publicly in the late 1960s because he felt that they were causing him to
3 It is interesting to note that Horowitz made exaggerated claims concerning his transcriptions. Horowitz claimed that Carmen came about as a series of improvisations after playing the Sarasate version of the Carmen Fantasy with Milstein (Schonberg, 1992). It was later noted by individuals living across from Horowitz’s apartment that he spent countless hours working on perfecting the Carmen and his other transcriptions (Carolyn McCracken, 1994).
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 8
shrink artistically and intellectually (Dubal, 1991).4 For the rest of Horowitz’s career
until his 1989 death, he attempted to find obscure works to interpret in place of
transcriptions, and if he arranged, he generally only added some cadenza-like
technical runs and passages to the coda of a work. His recordings and performances of
obscure works included but were not limited to Clementi Sonatas and lesser-known
Scarlatti. However, to this day, his recordings that contain transcriptions are among
the high revenue earners in the classical music industry.
I. Horowitz’s Defining Characteristics as a Musical Performer in Relation to the
“Work”
As the preceding historical context suggests, Horowitz was a truly distinct performer.
This can be demonstrated further by considering that he was the only classical
performer ever to have a book of 125 remembrances written on his behalf after his
death (Dubal, 1993). His characteristically original performing style is the first skill
that helps to explain why he did not perform “works” in the traditional musicological
sense.
Horowitz’s first distinct performing characteristic was that he maintained a
most liberal view about interpreting other’s music. One of his quotes exemplifies his
attitude towards interpreting and performing quite well: “A performer may sit down
and play one passage one way and then perhaps exaggerate the next, but, in any event,
he must do something with the music. The worst thing is not to do anything. It may
even be something you don’t like, but do it!” (Sachs, 1982, p. 170). This passage
demonstrates that Horowitz was anything but a purist. He often disregarded the score
entirely when he performed, rather choosing to interpret works in his own way.
4 However, Horowitz didn’t object to his transcription recordings being produced, as long as he was paid for it (Plaskin, 1983).
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 9
Horowitz’s very act of creating transcriptions shows that he did not consider the
composer’s score to be the final, autonomous, musical “work.” Horowitz thus gave
himself a great deal of interpretive freedom – and it is this freedom from the score as
a “work” which forces the musicologist to consider other options which might
embody “the work” when describing Horowitz and his performances.
A second distinct performing characteristic of Horowitz was his use of
contrast to manipulate an audience. Arthur McKenzie, who attempted to write down
some of the Horowitz transcriptions, explains. He noted that Horowitz “was very
streetwise on the stage: he spent much of his time playing pppp so that when he felt
he might be losing his audience he could jab them with one of his fffffs. He could
manipulate an audience better than any other pianist.” (Plaskin, 1983, p. 250). By
exaggerating his pianism, he could appear to be a transcendent musician. This helps to
explain why audiences might not remember specific performances as Horowitz’s
“work” – rather they would remember the impression his performance left.
The third distinguishing aspect of Horowitz’s performance is seen through a
comparison of Horowitz and another contemporary transcriber, Georges Cziffra.
Pianist Cyprien Katsaris praised Horowitz heavily but also spoke highly about
Cziffra: “Georges Cziffra combines rigor and discipline… his own amazing
transcriptions… are unparalleled for their technical brilliance.” (Dubal, 1993, p.175).
However, there is a distinction between Horowitz and Cziffra. While Horowitz aimed
to please the audience, Cziffra had no patience for the desires of the audience, and
performed rather to please himself. So while Horowitz and Cziffra may have had
equal talent for the technical aspects of piano playing, Horowitz, much like Liszt, paid
attention to the impression left on the audience. When audiences attended a Horowitz
concert, they received more than Cziffra’s quick notes and thunderous octaves – they
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 10
received a performance that had been tailored specifically in many non-technical
ways to impress them5 (Dubal, 1991). This is a major indication that positive
reception was the central element of the Horowitz performance – and indeed that this
bid for positive reception was Horowitz’s main “work.”
II. Horowitz as Master Arranger but Mediocre Composer Explains His Dislike
For the Traditional “Work”
Horowitz was a master arranger and performer but a mediocre original composer.
Born in 1904, he started composing before the age of 8. The teenage Horowitz wrote
many works judged by his teachers as of high quality, including his only recorded
original composition, Danse exotique (Schonberg, 1992). However, Horowitz would
not sustain his compositional calling and nor would he publish any of his original
works, which included several piano pieces, a cello work, a violin sonata, and a few
songs.
Horowitz often claimed that the Russian Revolution forced him to perform
rather than composing. In 1977 at a Symposium at the University of Michigan at Ann
Arbor, Horowitz spoke of himself as a frustrated composer and not a performer – and
that this frustration led him to write transcriptions (Dubal, 1991). However, one
critic’s opinion was more likely -- Horowitz’s talent was on the piano as a performer
and he actually had little patience for regular creative composing (Dubal, 1991). This
is supported by the fact that Horowitz barely passed his theoretical studies at the Kiev
Conservatory but was clearly the most outstanding pianist in his class (Dubal, 1991).
While Horowitz continued to believe that he was a composer first, and a
pianist second, his only sustained hint of composition was in his transcriptions. The
times when Horowitz tried to compose, such as his desperate attempts in 1957 to
expand his Carmen Variations into a large-scale composition (even test recording the 5 See section III for an explanation of these ways.
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 11
result in Carnegie Hall), proved mediocre. Horowitz himself realized that his
compositional strengths were limited to the short transcriptions he had become most
famous for and usually abandoned his compositional projects completely (Schonberg,
1992).
The fact that Horowitz was an arranger and not a composer, supposedly did
not write his compositions down6, and constantly changed his performances of his
transcriptions demonstrates that neither the score or the single performance could
have denoted an autonomous “work” as it is traditionally musicologically defined.
Rather, the perception of the audience, the group Horowitz had in mind when
arranging in the first place, must be the source for the identity of the “work.”
Horowitz’s audiences may not have remembered his technical tricks, the melody, or
the rhythm, and certainly did not remember the complete details of his performances
and arrangements, but they did remember the sensation, the emotion, and the feeling
they had after the performance was finished. The audience did remember that
Horowitz was a “genius.” This is exactly as Horowitz wanted it7.
III. Horowitz as Master Topographer of the Piano As It Relates to His “Work”
Being Labeled “Genius”
Horowitz’s ability to see the topographical ways in which the piano could be aurally
and visually more stunning to the perceptions of the audience allowed him to exploit
an element of reception which is growing in popularity in musicological debates: a
match between performance practice and the cognitive predispositions8 of the
6 However, this is quite a controversial point as you will see in Section IV. McKenzie claims that Horowitz kept notated copies in a safe in his New York apartment. Several recording engineers have testified that Horowitz used bits of written down manuscripts in the recording process for his transcriptions (Dubal, 1991). If this is true, it just reinforces the idea that Horowitz wished for something other than “the score” to be synonymous with his “work.”
7 Horowitz did however note later in his career that this notion of “Horowitz as genius” was exactly the problem that was ruining his artistry. This is one of the reasons he abandoned his transcriptions in concert: he wanted people to remember works that were on the program, not just Carmen or Stars and Stripes (Schonberg, 1992).
8 By cognitive predispositions, I refer to triggers in the brain that cause an audience member to
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 12
audience (Bradshaw, 1998). This was no accident: Horowitz has been quoted as
asserting that one must know the way the audience’s minds work in order to perform
effectively on the piano (McCracken, 1994)9.
Having written down several of the Horowitz transcriptions myself, I can
safely assert that there are technical parameters that were exploited on the piano by
Horowitz that no other contemporary concert pianist had used up to that point10. For
example, Horowitz “cheated” extensively, but not so much that the difference between
“cheating” and “not-cheating” was perceivable. He skipped steps in chromatics to
make the sound more brilliant and the execution easier. He rewrote passages
interchanging hands during thirds, chords and octaves to create a more sensational
run. When Keith Albright played his version of the Stars and Stripes for Horowitz in
1988, Horowitz showed him how he could make it easier by leaving imperceptible
notes out. Horowitz strove for the absolute maximum effect with the least amount of
effort in his transcriptions (Dubal, 1991). By “cheating,” Horowitz was able to focus
again on optimizing his audience reception – a trait that further allowed his “genius”
to be remembered.11
Horowitz also stressed the rhythmic impetus over the melody, the harmony,
attend more to performance at hand. They are likely created by a combination of genetic, hormonal, environmental, and auditory factors. For example, extreme contrast in dynamic level causes the normal human brain to attend more to the sounds presented. This is an example of a match between topography and cognitive predisposition Horowitz used to capture the attention of his audience.
9 It is interesting to note that the “cognitive predispositions” that the audience desired: faster notes, broad sweep, visually changing pianism were not the “cognitive predispositions” Horowitz sought for himself as an artist. After his transcriptions became his trademark, Horowitz remarked that his pianism had become too fast. (Dubal, 1991). For the remainder of his career after 1968, Horowitz mostly interpreted works for his own enjoyment, and thought less about the audience. However, he was unable to get away from certain cognitively impressive interpretive gestures or his masterful marketing, and thus, even when performing obscure works supposedly to his own liking, his reception by the audiences contained the same enthusiasm and ovation as before.
10 It is important to note that these technical parameters were not any more difficult to perform than those utilized by Cziffra, they were just more visually and musically exciting to the audience.
11 It is interesting in light of this argument to note the comment of [email protected] on YahooGroups in 2001, “As an aside, now that these pieces are becoming common property, I've noticed some people are starting to denigrate them as being much easier to play than they sound'. This may be true, and it may well be one of the main reasons why Horowitz guarded them so jealously.”
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 13
the dynamics, or any other parameter of the music. He heightened the tensions by
bringing out countermelodies and internal themes. He never repeated the theme
directly – each time he added more daring and visually exciting technical tricks. He
insisted on biting dynamic contrasts and his tone at times had a brassy and plangent
quality.
Plaskin (1983) put it well when he noted that for most of the 20th century,
Horowitz’s transcriptions were accessible only to a Horowitz. By expanding the
technical and musical limits of the topography on the piano, Horowitz “cast a spell”
over the audience in a way that other pianists, dependent on composer’s scores,
recordings, and less cognitively optimum creative outlets could not. He individualized
himself further than other performers, a trait which won him much regard with his
audiences, and ultimately secured as his “work” his wish of being known as “genius.”
IV. Horowitz as Master Marketer Creates His Own Notion of “Work”
His other talents aside, as Horowitz was a brilliant marketer, he was able to
manipulate audiences into believing that he was the greatest pianist in the world. By
virtue of his marketing stunts, Horowitz demonstrated that he thought about the
audience first, and his music second. Which such care and attention to ensure positive
reception, Horowitz knew he had the ability to create “impressions” among the public
that would be synonymous with his “work.” To demonstrate some of the ways this is
true, let us consider how Horowitz successfully marketed.
First, it is crucial to note that the Horowitz piano transcriptions were not
published, and were not available to anyone in score format except perhaps one
recording engineer in the 1960s (YahooGroup). This allowed Horowitz to perform as
he wished, increasing his ability to persuade an audience. This persuasion had already
led to widespread “hype” by the 1930s. With widespread “hype” in place, Horowitz
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 14
was able to take advantage of the fame created by it throughout his career.
Psychologically speaking, an audience primed to believe that Horowitz is the greatest
ever would automatically give more curtain calls, remember features of the
performance as “brilliant,” and would quickly buy LPs and more tickets. Horowitz
knew this, and used it to do such things as successfully taking a 12-year retirement at
the height of his career.
To further demonstrate that Horowitz relied on the lack of a score (or one
might say, lack of a “work” in the traditional musicological sense) for his marketing
“hype,” consider the following. Horowitz was neurotic about seeing scores of the
transcriptions whenever any pianist, such as Ian Hobson, Arthur McKenzie or Kong
Ju claimed to have written one of them down (Dubal, 1991). Horowitz managed,
through a combination of his intimidation and charm, to stop each of these pianists
from performing the transcriptions publicly. Horowitz likely went to these extents
because he viewed these pianists as a threat to his marketability: the illusion of
complete spontaneity in his transcriptions would be damaged if other pianists were
playing his works, and would be ruined were his transcriptions to be published. Even
though Horowitz knew that pianophiles were writing his transcriptions down, when
speaking to the media he stuck to a story that he had not written them down and that
they were impossible to write down (Dubal, 1991).
Second, in addition to not publishing his transcriptions, Horowitz’s marketing
stunts to win over the media helped him to secure the widespread awe of audiences
everywhere. For example, In Carnegie Hall on March 28, 1945, Horowitz unveiled his
Stars and Stripes transcription as a surprise so that he would maximize his likelihood
of being chosen by the media to play for millions in Central Park on “I am an
American Day” (Schonberg, 1992). The following review in the New York Times
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 15
gives you an idea of how he succeeded:
“In music where pianistic craft is the raison d’etre, Horowitz rises to a level that no living pianist can match. His Stars and Stripes is sheer pianistic prestidigitation and, as such, can arouse a sharp esthetic response. Of course it is a stunt, just as running a mile under four minutes is a stunt, or flipping from one trapeze to another doing a triple somersault in mid-air. But it is a stunt on a transcendental level, and anybody who cannot enjoy it, admire it for what it is, has little sympathy for craft as such. You don’t laugh at things like The Stars and Stripes Forever when it receives a performance like this; you laugh with it, and at the end you are a little limp from empathic alliance with the performer; Will he falter? Break down? But Horowitz never does.” (Schonberg, 1992, p. 198)
Horowitz had his concert with the millions in Central Park (while using the
opportunity to publicize the fact that he had recently both raised 10 million dollars in
a War Bond Concert and had been granted American citizenship), but the review was
propaganda. The truth was that Horowitz did falter often – he had many memory
slips, played many wrong notes, and engaged in terse conversations with other
pianists and even the media. The reason Horowitz successfully navigated through
these blunders was because he was a “master puppeteer” of marketing via the media –
even though half the critics shunned him, he knew how to use the half who could not
praise him enough to his advantage. He would have his management at Columbia
position his positive reviews in such a way that the potential audience and critics
knew nothing but “Horowitz as genius.”
Third, Horowitz marketed hysteria and the idea of “performing magic” to
generate income after establishing to the public that his “work” was “genius.” By
Horowitz’s last concert in Paris in 1928, playing Carmen, the audience had become so
unruly that the police had to be summoned to bring order to the hall. Horowitz
periodically mentioned this example throughout his career to the press to impregnate
the idea of general hysteria among his fans. In 1965, hours after he had his wife
Wanda Horowitz proclaim to the media that he was “like a fifth Beatle,” he raised
ticket prices for his return-from-retirement concerts. He also created a shortage of
tickets, then personally went down to the street level where fans were lined up around
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 16
the block to hand out free coffee. As a result, he immediately became the highest paid
classical performer to date (McCracken, 1994). Similarly, Horowitz always scheduled
his concerts on Sunday afternoons. He always claimed that he scheduled the concerts
this way because of the indescribable electric magical feel of the afternoon (Dubal,
1991). However, it is more likely that Horowitz chose this time because it was the
time of the week that the most people were likely to be free to attend his concert, thus
creating more demand, more hysteria, more income, and more widespread love of his
pianism.
Fourth and finally, Horowitz able to market himself through a fake modesty
that created huge contrast when he played12. In a 1977 interview, Horowitz claimed
that he couldn’t play anymore, and that he had forgotten the Stars and Stripes.
Minutes later, with the camera rolling, he sat down and played the transcription
brilliantly. Horowitz used this self-deprecation to enhance the dramatic contrast of his
pianism in interviews – and it worked with his audiences everywhere. (Plaskin, 1983).
V. Horowitzian Intellectual Property Disputes and Technology Advancements
Affect the “Work” Notion
It has become increasingly clear within the past 20 years that the authors of notated
scores and recordings of originally unwritten transcriptions do not pay or owe
royalties to original performers like Horowitz (Shemel & Krasilovsky, 2000). The
lack of enforced laws in this area, the improving ‘sound to notation’ computer
technology, and Internet file sharing portals assure that royalties will likely never be
paid and the sanctity of the traditional musicological definition of individual “work”
will never be the same.
In 1996, Arcadi Volodos recorded two of Horowitz’s transcriptions on his
12 Close friends, such as Arthur Rubenstein, acknowledge that Horowitz’s modesty was fake. (McCracken, 1994).
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 17
debut CD for RCA. They were note-perfect renditions of the Horowitz recordings. At
this time, Wanda Horowitz, Horowitz’s widow, contacted Volodos to attempt to retain
a royalty for his recording of “her husband’s works.” In my personal interview with
Volodos in 1998, his interpreter revealed, “Wanda tried desperately to retain the
‘ownership’ of her husband’s famed transcriptions. She attempted to sue me after I did
not agree to pay a royalty. She eventually dropped the case shortly before her death
earlier this year [1998], admitting that only Volodya’s [Horowitz’s] recordings, and
not the notes contained within would be immortal.” While Wanda Horowitz’s
beneficiaries could still sue Volodos, the floodgate of soon-to-be-released Horowitz
Transcription recordings will likely prevent this action from occurring.
To give an idea of the Horowitz notation developments in just the past 18
months, consider that in October of 2000, [email protected] released a message
on the Horowitz message board on YahooGroups with links to MIDI iterated forms
and recordings of the various versions of the Carmen Fantasy. Within 5 months of his
post, I had used a free software program from CNET’s Download.com that slowed the
recordings without altering the pitch to write down the remaining Horowitz
transcriptions and to become the first to record the original Saint Saens-Liszt-
Horowitz Danse Macabre and the 1967 Bizet-Horowitz Carmen13. Throughout 2001,
Marcel Mombeek used the power of the Internet to gather all the notated versions of
all the recorded piano transcriptions of the 20th century (including several Horowitz
transcriptions) together on a single bootleg CDR to be sold to enthusiastic pianophiles
by wire transfer from a nonexistent address in Belgium. In the last few months, with
file swapping rampant on such sites as KaZaa.com, PDF files of scores of some of the
13 It is ironic that one can liken the activities of [email protected] and I as transcription in another sense: that spoken of by Shelemay (1990) – anthropological transcription. Thus, the Horowitzian creation of audience memory – “reception as work” lives on in the art of “transcription” as it is classically defined, even if the context has changed and the new audience will never see a living Horowitz perform.
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 18
famous transcriptions are becoming freely available at the click of a button.
Had these technological advancements existed when Horowitz was in his
performing prime, he would not have been able to successfully navigate his
“reception as genius as work” scheme. This is because not having his transcription
scores available to the public was too important of an element to his success at
disabling the reception of “score” or “recording” as his “work.” While the era of the
unique transcription writer as performer is virtually over, this does not mean that
another “reception as genius at work” artist could not exist. In fact, there is a current
void, not just in classical music, but also in pop for a musician who will embody the
Horowitzian distinctions and characteristics. The closest modern day equivalent may
be Madonna, an artist who has clearly spent a great deal of time contemplating and
changing her visible image to fit the demands of the public audience. Any modern
performers who embody this “reception as genius as work” role will have to do more
than Horowitz or Madonna though – they will have to present new and irreplaceable
skills in addition to wooing their audiences to assure their “genius” is remembered as
their “work.”
Legally speaking, for about 20 years, most intellectual property disputes
regarding music that have been debated in court have ruled that the only “work” that
may be copyright protected is the recording (Cronin, 1998)14. However, these
copyright protections of “recording as work” are faltering as badly as the “score as
copyrighted work” challenges because of the same technological advancements
already mentioned. Whereas 20 years ago the notion of “recorded work” in the Glenn
Gould tradition might legally constitute an original and copyright protected “work,”
the advent of digital sampling and Napster file swapping technology has pushed even
14 In some places, a score may constitute a legal representation of a “work.” However, one has to prove an “intent to copy” on the part of a defendant in order to sue them for illicit use of the score. This has proved to be a very difficult task to achieve in court (Lebrecht, 1997).
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 19
this definition and conceptual boundary into disrepute. Courts will only protect the
likenesses of recordings that garner the greatest market share of revenue. This is
because in present conditions, the amount of capital expenditure to fight the necessary
battle to win a copyright dispute is only economical in large-scale cases (Cronin,
1998). Thus, any individual in the classical music industry, with a current 3% total
market share in record sales, is unlikely to garner the attention that Metallica was able
to in their fight against Napster. Even the Metallicas of the world are finding
themselves unable to protect their recorded “work” – as soon as one file sharing site is
shut down, several more start up in countries that do not enforce copyright
restrictions. Thus, with anonymous worldwide information accessibility over the
Internet and little likelihood of internationally agreeable copyright law anytime soon
(Frith, 1998), it looks like even the notion of recording as respected “work” is in
danger15.
These advances in technology and information distribution may possibly
destroy the ability to frame any entity as “a work,” especially if we view the original
musicological conception of a “score or recording as work” as economically and
legally rather than philosophically or linguistically constructed. No longer is it
sufficient to define a musical “work” as a “score” – what does that make the 47
different in-print recordings of Rachmaninov’s 3rd Piano Concerto (including 3 of
Horowitz’s)? Neither can the “recording” adequately describe the “work” – what does
that make Darude’s 25 sampled versions of the techno-dance track Sandstorm that all
share the same sampling segments and borrow heavily from other recordings? These
difficult questions leave us longing for a new conception of “work.” It seems as if my
15 Perhaps a cynical view, but I would predict all intellectually original “work” in the traditional physical sense is in danger of losing its copyright protection because of technological advancements. Even if laws are put in place, the pace of technological advancement seems as is it will still outrun the legal barriers.
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 20
combination of Goehr’s (1992) and Ingarden’s (1986) idea of “reception” as “work”
may be the most promising and indeed the only foreseeable direction for the
contemporary notion “work.”
Conclusion
Horowitz’s performances of piano transcriptions lack a “work” in the traditional sense
of Tagg’s (2000) Oxford definition [iv] --- they instead sublimate the idea of “work”
with the reception-contingent achievement (definition [ii]) that Horowitz was a
“genius.” This idea of “reception as genius as work” derived from a synthesis of two
novel ideas about the work concept by Ingarden (1986) and Goehr (1992). This essay
has examined the four major criteria that suggest that Horowitz’s “work” was his
“reception as genius.” First, it examined how the distinctiveness of the Horowitzian
performance phenomenon disproves the existence of a traditional “work” and instead
embodies the notion of “reception as work.” Second, it looked at how Horowitz as
master arranger but mediocre composer shunned the idea of a traditional
musicological “work.” Third, it examined how Horowitz’s mastery of the topographic
capabilities of the piano parallels audiences’ cognitive predispositions thus placing
“reception” as the central “work” of concern, not the “score” or “recording.” Fourth, it
showed that Horowitz as master marketer was able to place the audience and context
ahead of other modalities of categorization to create an image of “genius.”
Finally, this essay argued that through intellectual property disputes and
impinging technology, many of which Horowitz was central in, artists are losing the
ability to label scores and recordings as “works” in the traditional sense. Ultimately,
reception will become the only musicological embodiment of “work,” and possibly a
new “reception as ‘genius’ as work” artist will emerge in the coming years, much like
the transcription-performing Horowitz of two generations ago.
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 21
Appendix A
List of arrangements that, for the purposes of this essay, constitute “Performances of Horowitz Transcriptions.” The year a version of the transcription was recorded is included in parentheses following each listing.
Bizet-Horowitz Carmen Variations (often also called the Carmen Fantasy) (1928, 1947, 1967, 1968, 1978)
Liszt-Horowitz Hungarian Rhapsody Number 2 (1951)Liszt-Horowitz Hungarian Rhapsody Number 15 (1950)Liszt-Horowitz Hungarian Rhapsody Number 19 (1968)Mendelssohn-Liszt Wedding March (1946)Moszkowski Etude in Ab Opus 72 #11 (1942)Mussorgsky-Horowitz Pictures at an Exhibition (1950)Saint Saens-Liszt-Horowitz Danse Macabre (1942)Sousa-Horowitz Stars and Stripes Forever (1950)
Horowitz’s Performances of Piano Transcriptions Show “Reception as Work” 22
References
Bradshaw, S. (1998). A performer’s responsibility. In Thomas, W. (ed), Composition – Performance – Reception: Studies in the Creative Process in Music. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Cronin, C. (1998). Concepts of melodic similarity in music-copyright infringement suits. In W. Hewlitt and E. Selfridge-Field (eds), Melodic Similarity: Concepts, Procedures, and Applications. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Dubal, D. (1991). Evenings With Horowitz: A Personal Portrait. London: Robson Books.
Dubal, D. (1993). Remembering Horowitz: 125 Pianists Recall a Legend. New York: Schirmer Books.
Erauw, W. (1998). Canon formation: some more reflections on Lydia Goehr’s Imaginary Museum of Musical Works. Acta Musicologica 70, 109-115.
Frith, S. (1998). Copyright and Music. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Goehr, L. (1992). The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: an Essay in the
Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ingarden, R. (1986). The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity. London:
MacMillan Press. Josipovici, G. (1993). Review of Goehr, L (1992) The Imaginary Museum of Musical
Works: an Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Music and Letters 74, 86-87. Lebrecht, N. (1997). Who Killed Classical Music? : Maestros, Managers, and
Corporate Politics. New York: Birch Lane Press.Mach, E. (1980). Great Contemporary Pianists Speak for Themselves. New York:
Dover. McCracken, C. (1994). Personal interview, Northbrook, IL. Plaskin, G. (1983). Horowitz. London: Macdonald and Co. Sachs, H. (1982). Virtuoso. Thames and Hudson, Essex. Schonberg, H. C. (1992). Horowitz: His Life and Music. New York: Simon and
Schuster. Shelemay, K.K. (1990). Musical Transcription: The Garland Library of Readings in
Ethnomusicology Volume 4. London: Garland Publishers.Shemel, S. & Krasilovsky, M. W. (2000). This Business of Music: A Practical Guide
to the Music Industry for Publishers, Writers, Record Companies, Producers, Artists, Agents. 8th Edition. New York: BPI Communications Inc.
Solie, R. (1993). Review of Goehr, L (1992) The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: an Essay in the Philosophy of Music. NOTES 50, 604-605.
Tagg, P. (2000). ‘The work’: An evaluative charge. In M. Talbot (ed.), The Musical Work: Reality of Invention? Liverpool, England: Liverpool University Press.
Volodos, A. (1998). Personal interview (with interpreter), Chicago Symphony Hall, IL.
White, H. (1997). “If it’s Baroque don’t fix it”: reflections on Lydia Goehr’s “work concept” and the historical integrity of musical composition. Acta Musicologica 69, 94-104.
YahooGroups (1999-2001). The Horowitz Experience Message Group. http://groups.yahoo.com/the_horowitz_experience
Zaehr (2000). http://www.epinions.com/content_36053880452.