Abstract
The present article attempts to discuss several aspects of the corporeal identity of an art music performer, pianist more specifically, as significant carriers of the meanings of the performance itself. The richness of potential significations that a musical performance is capable to communicate is emphasized here, and for that purpose three semiotic models are employed that can contribute to the investigation of corporeal semiosis within the phenomenon of musical performance. Firstly, elements of the inner self and the outward identity, individual and collective subjectivities of the performer’s corporeality are outlined within the framework of the semiotic square of performer’s subjectivity (after Greimas and Tarasti). In addition, the author’s contribution to the already-existing discussion on performer’s corporeal identity and communication combines two other celebrated semiotic models: the Peircean icon-index-symbol classification of sign relations, and the model on the functions of language formulated by the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson. Having explained in general terms how these particular theories by Peirce and Jakobson work within the field of performers’ corporeality, the suggestion is made to combine the two, for the purposes of encompassing the topic into a single model thus encapsulating different forms of analysis of performers’ corporeality.
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Notes
- 1.
This article draws on some previous research carried out by the author while preparing her doctoral dissertation, as discussed in Navickaitė-Martinelli (2014).
- 2.
Due to its wide usage and familiarity, here, the semiotic square is employed merely as a schematized illustration, without its further theoretical explications.
- 3.
- 4.
Several authors in the field of semiotics have been dealing with the concept of Semiotic self (originally introduced by Thomas A. Sebeok in 1979), which consists usually of two aspects: an inward and an outward side within the subject. Among these dualities, we have, for instance, the “I” (self as such) and “Me” (“I” in the social context), as used by George Herbert Mead; Moi and Soi by the French authors (Ricoeur, Sartre, Fontanille use these concepts in their writings); Controlling, deeper self versus Critical self by Charles S. Peirce; or the Bergsonian differentiation between the “superficial” and the “deep” ego.
- 5.
Modalities of Will (vouloir), Can (pouvoir), Know (savoir) and Must (devoir), offered by Greimas in the field of linguistics, were for the first time applied in musicology by Eero Tarasti. Modalities provide music with the semantic meaning. In that they can be endogenic, i.e. inherent to the immanent meanings of the music, or exogenic, that is, “activated” from outside depending on how the music is interpreted and performed. While talking about the composer’s work, Tarasti explains the modality of “Will” as follows: vouloir appears in, say, Beethoven’s sonata in those episodes where the composer is particularly heroic, that is, the way he wants to be (here and below—from Tarasti’s Musical Semiotics seminars at the University of Helsinki, year 2005).
- 6.
“Can” is an inner force, the possibility to express one’s Will. In composition, that would be the author’s creative power, compositional ideas.
- 7.
“Know”, in composition, means how the composer masters his/her compositional technique, and how well s/he is capable of employing the knowledge (of certain rules, for instance) while composing.
- 8.
“Must” is the genre-determined and other rules, norms, etc. that the composer must follow in his/her work.
- 9.
- 10.
For instance, when observing rehearsals or masterclasses by Ivo Pogorelich, a pianist whose tone range is perhaps one of the most remarkable features of his pianism, one sees how many hours may be spent for only achieving the right way to produce (and to make it last) one single sound.
- 11.
Despite the fact that some of the aforementioned ease may indeed look “artificial”, it is very interesting how, commonly, the portrayal of the performing musicians in cinema ends up as a failure. Anybody familiar with the process would perhaps agree that performers while playing, first of all, are doing their job and listening to what is being conveyed through their bodies. When watching the recording of, say, Wilhelm Kempff playing the Moonlight sonata (EMI Classics 2003), what strikes first and foremost from the corporeal side is a very still posture and evident listening to himself. In other words, the performer knows what s/he wants to do, and then tries to achieve it physically. In all the movies on musicians, on the contrary, a bodily portrayal of the “feeling”, as intense and apparent as possible, is attempted.
- 12.
See, e.g. “The golden boy”, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPizyP4x30I (last retrieved: August 2017). The impression is only reinforced by the early demo of the song featuring Mercury’s voice only, where he also sings the later-operatic part of Caballe (cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08qGc43xS10, last retrieved: August 2017).
- 13.
It is often revealing how one is seen and interpreted from outside, in this case – what is the image of an art music concert ritual in popular culture. The Cat Concerto cartoon from 1947 (with the cat Tom, a piano virtuoso, giving a piano recital) is a telling parody of the behavioural clichés and the existing codes of on-stage music making.
- 14.
This talented pianist was received with open controversy based not as much on his interpretations (which earned him first prize in the competition) but on his on-stage manners: too “arrogant” entrance (indeed slightly reminiscent of Ivo Pogorelich during the famous Chopin competition), movements and looks not appropriate to a classical musician. This situation, and Broja’s behaviour in particular, was even discussed on the TV-programme after the competition, where his colleagues (and former contestants) pianists were sharing their opinions on the matter.
- 15.
From personal communication with the pianist, Geniušas 2008.
- 16.
Famous are the difficult character and maniacal demands of the likes of Keith Jarrett, who, on more than one occasion, has not hesitated to interrupt his performances if the least, imperceptible sound was produced by the audience. There is no discussion, at this point of Jarrett’s career and fame, that this attitude has contributed to his public personality, in all kinds of directions (from veneration to irritation, up to the audience’s comprehensible terror to even produce the occasional, and traditional, cough). Among the classical pianists, Ivo Pogorelich is known for unpredictable reactions to any possible distractions on the part of his audiences; a rather harsh ‘morale’ by another pianist, András Schiff, to a coughing audience of his all-Beethoven recital at Helsinki Festival in the year 2007 was personally witnessed by the author.
- 17.
That of intentionality in semiosis (communication, in particular) is by far one of the most critical questions, and a great matter of contention among semioticians, particularly those interested in the establishment of the so-called “semiotic threshold”. I do not intend to participate in the debate, here, but simply point out that, intentionally or not, performers and audiences are connected by several instances of signification.
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Navickaitė-Martinelli, L. (2019). Musical Performer’s Corporeal Identity and Its Communicative Functions. In: Olteanu, A., Stables, A., Borţun, D. (eds) Meanings & Co.. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91986-7_9
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