Interpretation- a step too far?

[Silhouette]

I've interpreted all the E's in a piece of music as B flats and left all other notes as they are.

Ok, this is obviously an extreme interpretation, but how far should you go?

Should a piece of music be how the composer intended, or how the performer interprets it in a modern society?

What's everyones' opinion on this?

[Thorolf]

Ok, you recomposed the piece. No biggie. If it’s better, cool! If it’s lesser, throw it away.

(What you did falls outside any meaningful definition of the word ‘interpretation’.)

Regards

[Silhouette]

Lol I didn't actually do that but hey I could if I felt like it! (It's questionable if it would sound any good of course though)

Alot of people would say you are 'ruining' a piece if you so much as change a little bit, but if you think how much of this music is altered over time, especially the dynamics, I don't see what the fuss is about, and universities seem to like it. I suppose its comparable to interpreting a poem.

I do however, get annoyed when pieces from eras such as baroque, are sang (or played) in a more modern way, with heavy use of vibrato and such, when at the time, many composers were after a 'pure' sound. Am I a hypocrite?! :S

[Ballaw de Quincewold]

Originally Posted by Thorolf

Ok, you recomposed the piece. No biggie. Regards

Unfortunately, this is a biggie with so many "purists" in the "classical" music world. These purists claim that the score must be followed exactly as it is and then come back and talk about interpretation within this limitation (How any "interpretation" of any value can arise from such a limited way of thinking is beyond me) Personally, I think rewriting notes is a wonderful and important aspect of interpretation, as do many musicians in most strains of popular music. What piece did you change these notes in?

[Silhouette]

Have any of you guys completely re-wrote random notes of a piece? If so, did it sound any good? I think it might be dependent on the type of piece. I mean, I know loads of people who've changed notes because it's not in their instrument range or something, but not really for the sake of interpretation.

[Ron Ofir]

Most of the interpretations I've heard are usually changing the style of the piece (Jazz->Rock, Classical->Metal) and not the melody, but I guess it could be done as well!

[Silhouette]

Good point

[ttw]

Jacob Obrecht once took his melody and sorted it by note sizes. That gave a new melody (with new sizes assigned, of course.) For the next variation, he sorted them in reverse order by size. Etc. This works well with popular music.

[Silhouette]

Wow that sounds like a really good idea, very interesting! I bet the score looked really nice as well! Hehe