Another hermeneutical parable

For centuries, piano virtuosos had thrilled audiences with audacious performances of Liszt’s seventh Etude (in G minor, “Eroica”). Liszt scholars had written analyses of the music, and critics had compared various performances to one another and to what they believed was Liszt’s original intention for the music.

An industrious Liszt scholar then discovered by diligent study of Liszt’s notes and manuscripts that the Etude had been mistakenly transcribed since its first publication. It was written in G major, not minor, and the score was full of divergences from Liszt’s own composition. The scholar meticulously and compellingly proved his case.

Liszt scholarship had to be revised. Pianists relearned the piece, and critics revised their estimates of performances based on a radically revised score. (Mysteriously, a church in South Carolina split over the issue).

Moral: Every text generates a tradition of performance. But the text remains the touchstone of performance, such that it is always possible to point to the text and say “You got it wrong here.”