Page 18 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2025. Glasbena interpretacija: med umetniškim in znanstvenim┊Music Interpretation: Between the Artistic and the Scientific. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 8

glasbena interpretacija ... | music interpretation ...
considered down to the smallest detail, utterly crushed the essence of a
symphonic work. As a result of his false “objectivity” (Sachlichkeit), in oth-
er words pedantically predetermined dynamics and phrasing and a gener-
al “protective focus” on the work, without taking into account performance
and interpretation traditions, Toscanini, according to Adorno, “prevented
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the music from coming to life” in his performances. Of course, Adorno’s
views on Toscanini have been questioned from many sides. 10
Such constantly recurring ideological antagonisms between the com-
poser’s intention on the one hand and the subjectivity of the interpreter
on the other were particularly pronounced in the interwar period, when
the divisions between Toscanini’s camp and Furtwängler’s camp deepened
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in the early 1930s. In contrast to Toscanini’s approach, the great German
conductor belonged to the rubato tradition and, in his interpretations of
Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner and other giants, dominated the most im-
portant concert venues in the German-speaking world. It may be true that
Toscanini’s interpretations, frequently based on Urtext editions, have more
mechanical features than expressive ones, yet is not every interpretation
unique, no matter how meticulously structured in advance, in that it is
based, to a greater or lesser extent, on the performer’s subjective decisions?
There is always an interweaving of the scientific and artistic approaches to
the musical material or the interpretative act itself. Thus in questions re-
garding the artistic and the scientific in music, these are never two abso-
lute categories. On the contrary, the coexistence of the artistic and the sci-
entific points to two complementary faces of the same whole. In the end,
the greatness of an individual musical work and its interpretation lies in
its many-layered nature, which in its always imperfect approximation, like
a fleeting vision of the eternal, can occasionally be glimpsed in individual
performances. It seems that it is only this interweaving that defines a true
work of art and makes it immortal.
This monograph in the Studia Musicologica Labacensia collection in-
cludes a range of papers on a variety of topics, beginning with a keynote
9 Theodor W. Adorno, “Die Meisterschaft des Maestro,” in Musikalische Schriften I-
III, Band 16 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982), 66.
10 These include works by Bernard H. Haggin, Deryck Cooke, Gustav-Hans Falke etc.
I.e. Gustav-Hans H. Falke, “Warum Adorno Toscanini nicht verstanden hat,” Musik
& Ästhetik 26 (2022): 53–7.
11 Herman Danuser, “Wilhelm Furtwängler versus Arturo Toscanini,” in Musikalische
Interpretation, Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft, Band 11 (Laaber: Laaber-
Verlag, 1992), 40–3.

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