Old Media, New Media: Robert Levin, Fortepiano e Pianoforte

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Last night we Bogliasco Fellows had the pleasure to attend a concert by a former fellow, the composer and pianist Robert Levin. He played the exact same two sonatas by Beethoven on the fortepiano and then on the pianoforte, the latter being the huge grand piano on which modern audiences have heard Beethoven played many times. Beethoven was not Beethoven on the fortepiano for which he composed. Hmmm . . . was McLuhan really right in that technodeterminism, that the medium is the message? (Short answer: no, but, well, let's think about it).

Levin believes that, to make older music relevant, we have to anchor it in today (that's a paraphrase of his quote on his Harvard webpage). But what struck me as fascinating at last night's truly brilliant concert was that Levin played first on the fortepiano--no pedals, very little resonance in the Big Piano sense, much more percussive and, to my ears, staccato. Not so twinkly as a harpsichord, but far more Enlightenment in sound than Beethovian Romantic. The program came with a clever timeline that placed Beethoven (1770-1827) there with Jefferson, Mozart, Kant, Napoleon, Hegel . . . A transitional time, and transitional not just intellectually and aesthetically but also technologically.  Think the advent of mass printing, and revolutions all over (US, Haiti, throughout Europe). A big and turbulent time. 

Because I only know Beethoven on the pianoforte, it took my ears a while to settle down to hear Beethoven as BEETHOVEN on the tinier, tinnier fortepiano. Ken said it was like hearing a forties Blues song you'd heard recorded over and over suddenly played on 78, the technology on which it was originally recorded. For a strange moment in the first sonato (Sonata in mi bemolle maggiore op. 7), I thought I was hearing Mozart. But that's because I've often heard Mozart played on a similar instrument.  I was hearing a mismatch, a music my ears were used to in one technology reprized on another.  My ears were picking up the differences, working so hard that I almost could not hear the sonata.

Then my ear adjusted to the unfamiliar technology--which is to say the old fortepiano--and I heard Beethoven again. However, in the second half of the performance, Levin switched and played the exact two sonatas again on the familiar pianoforte. it was the Beethoven we know and love . . . but different.  Slimmer, sparer, pluckier, lighter, more lilting, not the pounding Romantic Beethoven but Beethoven as a Balanchine dancer. Lithe and at times even sprightly. Even with the pedals.

ENCORE: Levin went back and played another piece on the older fortepiano again. Very clever. He knew that accustomed ears had to be defamiliarized again. Already, by the end of the second sonata on the modern piano, I'd forgotten the older sound.

Dear Cat in the Stack Readers: I bet, after all these blogs over the last two years, that I don't even have to draw the moral of this story. So I shall keep my moralizing short this time: The media isn't the message. BUT the media is one of the messages.

That plurality is extremely important since reducing content to its pipes is clever, but it is a reduction that cheats us of content's ability to migrate across and among technologies. It wasn't that fortepiano Beethoven was "finer" than pianoforte Beethoven. Or that MP3 blues is less accurate than 78 blues. It is that the medium changes the content and the content makes us reassess the medium. Do I want my Beethoven on the old fortepiano? Actually, yes, sometimes I do. Beethoven Unplugged. Right up there with Eric Clapton. Sometimes, yes, we need to pull the plug.