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Steven Pinker

The List: 2019

The List: 2019

In a year packed with highs, lows, and plenty of news, here’s a look back on some highlights, both worldwide and personal.

Performance Design: Repositioning Interpretation

Performance Design: Repositioning Interpretation

Interpretation is a commonly understood term among musicians, a term denoting the “stylistic representation of a creative work,” (Stevenson 2010).[1] However, interpretation is often wrongly believed to be a self-consistent and complete toolset for preparing the score for performance. Rather than merely augment the accepted definition of interpretation, I argue that a new term must be used to represent the superset of tools valuable to the performer, of which the traditional methods of interpretation are a subset. I argue for the use of the term Performance Design (PD) to indicate the totality of means and methods by which live concert performances are planned and prepared. Included in these means are tools from Neuroscience, Information Theory, and other audience-centric disciplines. 

The Musico-Linguistics Meme: Recursion and Musical Meaning since Bernstein in Boston

The Musico-Linguistics Meme: Recursion and Musical Meaning since Bernstein in Boston

Leonard Bernstein's Norton Lecture Series of 1973 has played a critical role in helping to define a particular landscape of thought which might be best described by Bernstein’s own (admittedly nonacademic) term, "musico-linguistics". While not a formal discipline, the term characterizes and encompasses the body of thought upon which he speculates in six multi-hour lectures at Harvard. 

Jordan Randall Smith is the Music Director of Symphony Number One.