Chopin and Karate – a parallel?

 

I find I have many passionate interests in life I try to follow a bit.

 

One of them is to try and understand classical music better. I enjoy an extremely wide range of music but my musical education has always been extremely limited.

 

Over the years I discovered BBC Music, a British magazine dedicated to classical music that also includes CD’s with complete works (unlike other classical music magazines that have CD’s with pieces to try and get you to buy those CD’s).  I find it very interesting to gain some more knowledge about things I enjoy.

 

The May 2004 issue has an article “the Final Score – can a score ever tell us exactly what the composer intended us to hear” by John Rink that I feel incredibly parallels many issues in the transmission of Karate, especially on the question about a kata’s original composer. 

 

Consider how exacting music has been transcribed for hundreds of years.  Exact notation in infinite detail, much more than the shape of kata. Yet the article suggests other issues worth considering.  From page 30.

 

“Performers often say their goal is to realize ‘the composer’s intentions’.  On the face it seems noble enough, but can such an  ambition ever be achieved, and if so to what avail?  And which composer’s intentions’ do they mean: those at the time of the music’s conception, or when the first manuscript was finished, or when proof sheets of the first edition were corrected, or at the first performance, or after years of performances and if so corrected by whom?  What if those intentions conflict – and what if the composer’s view of the music was less fixed than our own might be, whether as listeners or performers.”

 

“These questions are difficult to answer, and they challenge any simple truths we might choose to hold about how music “should” sound.  The fact of the matter is that when it comes to composer’s intentions, we believe what we want to believe – and our beliefs are inevitably based on knowledge that is less than complete. Taking hold of someone else’s music, whether in words or in performance, requires educated guesswork on the one hand and our own creativity on the other.  That partly explains why no account of the music could ever conform to what the composer intended: we as interpreters and co-creators get in the way. And for all the convictions we might have about how composers X and Y wanted their music performed, no one has the requisite insight or authority that some have proclaimed over the years…..”

 

“Chopin offers a particularly interesting case study of how ‘composer’s intentions’ can change over time. His artistic convictions were more or less immutable and passionately, if quietly, held, and with few exceptions, he dismissed those performances of his works violated the aesthetic principles that he professed.  But he was far from rigid when performing his own music. ……we know from Alfred Hopkins… that Chopin never played his own compositions twice alike, but varied each according to the mood of the moment.’…..”

 

“…his creative genius was irrepressible and forever engaged.  To that extent he continually modified his compositions on paper as well as in performance….. Chopin reveled in the music’s creative potential by indulging in all manner of variants, whether in a given piece or at successive stages of the compositional process.”

 

“… So which reflects of the two extant manuscripts best reflects Chopin’s intentions: the earlier of the two, prepared when he was most alert and his ideas freshest, or the later one, copied out more of less mechanically but with the opportunity to refine initial thoughts and introduce new ones?”

 

Think how this parallels so many questions we hold about the origins of the Okinawan arts?  What was the right version of Seisan kata? The original created one?  Or later versions on the theme?

 

I think that a link  such as karate to Chopin’s music may suggest the study of the kata may never have been a fixed shape as much as a theme to work with.

 

If the originator of a kata could return today? Would they be distressed that kata drift occurs, or would they be thrilled their original theme continues with new life generation after generation.