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My second post on this subject tackled the ‘well what do I actually do?’ part of the question about how to deepen our interpretations. And whilst it came up with a bunch of things that I know to be useful and effective in developing imaginative and expressive musical performance, taken together they don’t add up to a total of ‘deep interpretation’. It’s like if someone asks you why you love your life’s companion, you can list lots of things about them that you adore, but the fact of your love is always more than the sum of those parts.

[Looks across the room at Jonathan, smiles fondly, but decides not to interrupt him just now to tell him about the examples I considered including but decided were unnecessary for the argument. I’ll tell him over dinner tonight instead. If you know him you can probably guess anyway.]

You don’t have to do all of those things to find the deeper layers in your music (though you will almost certainly do some of them), and there are plenty of other things you might choose to do that I didn’t list. I organised those lists by type of activity (brain/body/ear), but you can also categorise them by relationship with the music.

Some activities put music into the lab for analysis. You dissect, you put the music under a microscope, you try it out in different conditions to see what you learn.
Other activities put the music into a wider context, exploring its genesis, its performance history, its relationship with other music with which it shares and exchanges meaning.

Both sets of activities however involve becoming inquisitive about the music. Why is it like that? Where did it come from? What does it mean? What is distinctive about this piece? What is typical? The study of classical music has traditionally asked these questions through the lens of trying to infer the ‘composer’s intentions’. Which as a literal enterprise is essentially impossible, but as a means to find your way beneath the surface and into the detail is actually pretty productive (which in turn is why people are still asking the question despite its philosophical problematics).

And I think this also offers an answer to the worry about undermining the performers’ confidence and pleasure in the music. Because you’re not trying to replace current understanding, but to enhance it. You’re taking a nice design of dress that suits you, and making it prettier. Your work on the substrate of tone production upgrades the fabric it’s made from, the increase in precision and technical control gives you neater stitching and finishing, your exploration of musical moments adds subtle detailing and embellishment, and your increase in insight and discernment helps it all fit better so it is both more comfortable and more flattering.

And my experience is that this is a rewarding process. Perceiving aspects of the music that were there all along but you never noticed them before is a pleasurable experience in itself. And having that experience is what tells you that your understanding of the music – and thus your capacity to perform it with increasing vividness – is developing.