Schumann's Dichterliebe: From the problem of performance to the performance of the problem

• Main Author: Lucia D'Errico
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: ACT 2019-12-01
• Series: La Deleuziana
• Online Access: http://www.ladeleuziana.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/DErrico.pdf

This paper proposes a new approach to the performance of Schumann’s music, in particular to his song cycle Dichterliebe op. 48. Starting from the many productive instabilities and inconsistencies that characterize the compositional approach in Dichterliebe, I ask under which conditions we could think a performance practice that embraces these inconsistencies instead of stabilizing them into a finished performance. To do so, I propose the appropriation from music performance of the philosophical notion of “the problem” as formulated by Gilles Deleuze, connecting it with the “pre-individual” in Gilbert Simondon and the notion of “outside,” mostly in the acceptation of Maurice Blanchot and Michel Foucault. A critique is enacted of what I suggest calling the traditional “image of musical thought.” From this critique can emerge a performance practice that moves away from the “problem of performance,” regarded in its traditional form as a representative practice oriented towards recognition, and that embraces instead the “performance of the problem,” where the problematic dimension of Schumann is enhanced and further dynamized.