Page 85 - 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

musical interpretation: specifics of working with textual statements ...
parallel can be drawn with the visual arts: even when we see, for example,
a black and white photograph from our school years, our brains can auto-
matically and authentically complete the colour continuum. Of course, this
ability – whether in acoustic or visual perception – is developed different-
ly in each individual, but objectively it is there. But back to music: it is clear
that each generation has its own generational taste, or rather a certain pal-
ette of different variations of generational taste. Its application to older in-
terpretations should always be justified and the question of meaningfulness
should be answered first. There is nothing to prevent us from comparing
several different interpretations from around 1920, for example, and here
the comparison offers the hope of breaking away from today’s ideas and
making a more objective assessment in general.
In the musicological literature there is a type of text that is devoted
to the description of historical recordings. Publications describing record-
ings of the music of the founder of Czech modern music Bedřich Smetana
have an important place in Czech music. Mirko Očadlík, the author of the
anthology Smetanovská diskografie. Kritický soupis gramofonových snímků
Smetanovy hudby [Smetana Discography. A Critical Inventory of Gramo-
phone Recordings of Smetana’s Music] (Prague, 1939), concentrated on the
basic description of the form, the quality of the performance and the tech-
nical aspects, and also assessed the adherence to the intended interpreta-
tion. To give an example, a recording of Lukáš’s aria in D major from Act II
of Smetana’s opera Hubička (The Kiss) is described as follows:

Richard Kubla, accompanied by the F. O. K. Orchestra, conducted by
Dr. Václav Smetáček. Esta 7159 (2995). From 1938. B-side: Aria from
Smetana’s Dalibor. – As flawed as the previous recording, especially un-
balanced in declamation and at times dropping in intonation. Other-
wise sung quite conventionally, with a tendency towards rubato, and vo-
cally leaning towards creating large tones that ultimately fall out of the
overall framework of the performance. The orchestra is flexible, though
a little loud. Recorded clearly. 3
Such an assessment does not pertain solely to the performance itself
but also, to a large extent, to “how the performance sounds on the recording.”
For example, the loudness of the orchestra may have been caused by poor
placement of the microphones, and the imperfections in intonation may

3 Mirko Očadlík, Smetanovská diskografie. Kritický soupis gramofonových snímků
Smetanovy hudby [Smetana Discography: A Critical Inventory of Gramophone Re-
cordings of Smetana’s Music] (Praha: Orbis, 1939), 84.

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