Interpretation

In music, interpretation refers to the understanding of a musical work. This aspect of music arises from the inherent need to reconcile the differences between notation, which preserves a written record of the music, and performance, which brings the musical experience into renewed existence. Many times interpretation has also been used to codify performance practice and to signify the way in which notation should be interpreted as in books by Arnold Dolmetsch, Robert Donington, and Thurston Dart. The idea of interpretation begins, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, as “the rendering of a musical composition, according to one's conception of the author's idea.” Musical interpretation, however, extends far beyond the interpreter's conception of the composer's ideas and, instead, conveys the interpreter's own ideas about the music, embodying understandings of what can be considered latent in the score as well as his own view concerning the chief strategy for exposing the audience to that idea during performance.