The Structural Characteristics And Their Causes Of Instrumental Performance Style In The 20～(th) Century

The performance style of instrumental music has changed remarkably in the 20^th century. The early historic recordings may make the modern listeners unconformable for its very fast tempo, casual freedom rhythm, excessive use of portamento, lack of precision in ensemble synchronization and techniques etc. But away from the firmness, literalness, evenness and control of the late 20^th and early 21^st century performance, the early recording generally expresses unconstrained artistic imagination, meaning, and individuality that moves the listener in a more sincere manner. Based on the analysis and contrast between early and modern recordings as well as a research into written evidence, the purpose of this study is to explain the core characteristics of this changing style and its main causes in the viewpoint of both science and tradition. This will help to deduce the authentic problem and future development of music performance.The computer assisted visualization analysis used in this study stresses the time related organic structural characteristics of the changing style such as tempo and rhythm etc. with Gaussian window smoothed tempo curve, dynamic curve, performance worm and IOI curve etc. The result shows that in the more accurate, smoothed and coordinated late 20^th century performance tempo rubato and rhythm flexibility is more restrained, although the flexibility of tempo and rhythm is also an important method to communicate structural information of music.The expression of performance requires some united systematic variations from the score, so this trend of exactness, evenness has gradually restricted the artistic creation. From the aspect of tradition, most of the performance conventions such as tempo flexibility, independence of melody and accompaniment, tenuto and agogic accent, over-dot, under-dot, notes inegales and unwritten arpeggiation etc. have a long history and they are usually part of the composer's expectation. The modern performance seeking excessively for the accuracy from score itself may actually depart from the authentic and original idea of the composer.The development of recording and media technology is one of the most important causes of this changing style: the spontaneity, improvisation vanished, the attention to detail and technical perfection raised, and there is a homogenized standardized and globalized tendency making the music performance lost its individuality. The academism teaching methods and excessive music competitions have also accelerated this trend.This research focuses both on acoustic parameters of recordings and traditional literatures and will display distinctly the process of the changing style and clarify some amphibolous concepts of music performance that can not be well described in words or even perceived by human senses. The significance of this study including promotion of the scientific foundations of musicology discipline and the conclusion will be helpful for the performers of the 21^st century information era to make their valued artistic choice.