READING CREATIVITY FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS: PROCESS AND PRODUCT REVISITED WITH HERBERT VON KARAJAN’S LEGATO AESTHETIC AND HYPERMASCULINITY

Abstract

One issue central to research in musical performance studies concerns the notion of musical product and process. Most empirical studies of recorded music focus on products in the sense that they begin with finished articles—i.e. recordings—and work backwards. Similar observations can be made about score-based analytical research and—to a lesser extent—practice-based approaches. Several musicologists have challenged this recently and highlighted the neglect of creative processes in musicology and music performance studies, often by pursuing ethnographic studies of rehearsals. Building on this rethinking, this article considers the potential of merging the values of such ethnographic studies with techniques of performance analysis. In it, I pursue a case study of Herbert von Karajan’s 1965 rehearsal and performance of Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120 with the Wiener Symphoniker. I critique what I call Karajan’s hypermasculinity in the film, assess how his legato aesthetic takes shape over the rehearsal, and analyse how both of these things come together in the subsequent performance of Schumann’s symphony.