How performer-composer interactions look like left-hemispheric hubris

In The Matter with Things, Iain McGilchrist describes patients with right hemisphere strokes who present cases of ‘hemineglect’ or simply ‘neglect’. As the right hemisphere maps on to the left side of the body and the senses, symptoms include: left side paralysis, completely missing anything in the left side of one’s vision, or only eating the right half of the food on one’s plate. These patients then fail to notice that there is any difference or problem with their experience compared with the past or compared to others.

It’s not simply a sensory difference. These patients’ ability to draw conclusions from additional evidence that was presented to them, which they clearly reported observing, was impaired—they simply could not see what they could not see. Instead, they were insistently continuing their narrative to suit the view that everything was fine, and anything “missing” was some problem in the world around them which they were then affected by, through no involvement of their own. Instead of using rationality to understand all the evidence in front of them, they rationalised their own point of view.

Another one of these patients would often bump into people on his left side but had no awareness that he was at least partially involved: “’Well, sometimes I bump into things, true. But that is only because there’s such a lot of people out and about – and people are so inconsiderate’” (p. 881). This patient also insisted his vision was fine and that there was something wrong with his glasses. There seemed to be some annoyance, but not a sense of missing or injury, and no awareness of being the one who was doing the bumping. Again, these aren’t simply changes in sensory experience: they demonstrate a deficit in emotional and cognitive depth. McGilchrist adds that this is sometimes understood and framed as a sense of denial.

Another case involving right hemisphere deficit, results not only in dismissal and denial, it also shows a lack of care:

A 40 year-old woman with a right parietal tumour reported that she was ‘half a woman’ and that her left side was dying away. At the same time she was euphoric, displaying a complete lack of concern, and what is described as a ‘j’m’enfichisme total’: she absolutely couldn’t care less.

Including about the truth: there is a strong tendency to disown problems, fail to take responsibility, and to maintain to the last that it is ‘nothing to do with me, guv’. The right hemisphere-damaged, left hemisphere-reliant, patient is always in the right. (p. 89)

Contrastingly, “patients with a left hemisphere stroke, whose right hemisphere is therefore intact, complain, understandably and sometimes bitterly, of their handicap, often having severe emotional reactions” (p. 88). These people knew something was wrong and were quite upset by it. They seem to care about it and feel the sense of injury. Rightly so, being injured sucks.

These are all, obviously, severe neurological cases, and I’m not about to make a case that performers or composers have brain damage. And I’m certainly not about to say that they don’t care. But the shifting of blame is a trend I couldn’t help but notice recently, specifically in contemporary classical contexts. It mirrored, far more softly and understandably, this inability to see one’s personal role in what was wrong with what was happening in the music. Not in a pathological manner, but in moments that accumulated. It appeared to me as a frequent attitude. Not constant nor incessant, but also not an anomaly.

In the contemporary classical chamber context, the creative onus is asymmetrically on the composer in conjuring the material. Also, as an improviser I feel obligated to add, due to the lack of improvisation in this music, most choices are made in advance by the composer for the performer. A bit like how a mother (with the help of a father, of course) creates and develops a child. But the material struggles to come to life without all parties being involved, in their respective roles.

In rehearsals, I’ve noticed responsibility shifted to composers in cases where it seemed a bit presumptive. In my view, once the initial creative work is done—once a score is presented, the responsibility for the composer is to have expressed their ideas with clarity and to make appropriate edits in response to feedback, and for the performer to practice and play the material as well as they can. When we played something slower than the composers’ intent, one remark was along the lines of “well, you could just ask us to play it faster if you want it faster,” but, the score already had a tempo marking and we weren’t playing at that tempo. Shouldn’t we all have learned our parts and gotten them up to tempo in our roles? If the material is impossible or extremely difficult to play at that tempo, that’s an issue which should be addressed, but our ability to parse out the difference between 60, or 80 bpm is on us as trained musicians and players. We also all have metronomes and can check a tempo ourselves.

I’m struggling to recall other specifics, but I often observed and felt an asymmetric directionality of responsibility. The performer telling the composer to write something differently or communicate with the ensemble differently. There were things which straight up needed to be changed: for example, writing a high G-flat on a vibraphone part, I just don’t have that note on a 3-octave. But occasionally, it would feel like we just hadn’t practiced enough and we just wanted the part to be sight-readable and also in a way that suited our individual preferences for playing our instrument. Preferences, not limitations or actual technical constraints.

In 2018 I was at the bang on a can summer festival at MASS MoCA, and there, it seemed like the composers were of a higher distinction and status (although they were ‘hierarchically’ equal learning participants). We (the performers) admired them and I don’t recall questioning or criticising their choices massively. Technical things came up as needed, and difficulties were dealt with honestly. ‘Blame’ seemed to be negotiated appropriately, not that anything was framed in terms of blame. At the same time, that’s a highly selective programme, especially for composers, and not necessarily a sample of how all composers one encounters are met.

As a student at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (2017-2019), I recall group feelings of resentment towards student composers we were working with, less so towards the pros who would come by for paid work. Some of it seemed just at the time, and I think I felt the resentment too, but it also spilled into the personal: when we didn’t like someone’s music or part of it, we also didn’t seem to like them as a person. These were, after all, students, so there was much to learn. But we seemed to have ignored that information.

Across other experiences in the performer-seat, relating to a composer, I don’t recall observing this type of shifting of blame, but most of these were with composers I specifically chose to work with, and whose creative voice I already knew I liked. We would just have normal feedback sessions where I would relay what worked and what didn’t, and edits were made accordingly.

These blame-shifting experiences seem to be something I’ve observed more often in contemporary classical settings in the UK, less so in the US, and more so with students. I’m not going to make any cultural conclusions, but wherever these relations do occur, I can’t help but notice we seem a bit like bratty children telling our mothers (the composers) that they need to do everything for us. Babies obviously need everything done for them, toddlers can start to do stuff, and so forth. As children grow they can do more themselves.

I recall my mother teaching me to clean as a child and I also recall helping with babysitting my little brother. At some point, I was old enough to load and unload the dishwasher by myself, or to hand wash something, so it would have made less and less sense with age to complain that the forks weren’t where they normally are if I knew to find one in the sink or dishwasher, and if I could wash one myself.

Nowadays I no longer live with my parents, so if I need a fork and they’re all dirty I’m screwed. Unless I can wash one, or use a spoon instead, or just not eat. But I seem to always have a choice here and it’s not really anyone else’s fault or responsibility for the forks to be clean all the time. I live with housemates, we share the responsibility.

A right-hemisphere stroke patient with a functioning left hemisphere bumps into people on his left and decides they’re inconsiderate. But this person has an injury which results in this way of being and walking and thinking and that injury is what leads to his not knowing or being aware of these deficits. A contemporary player tells a composer they didn’t communicate sufficiently with the players in rehearsal. But this performer knows the information that’s on the score right in front of them yet seems not to have bothered to check if they were honouring that information before shifting blame to the composer in that moment.

An adult professional musician with agency and responsibility is expected to show up having learned their part. And look, composers also need to write playable things. And of course, people are busy and don’t have endless time and energy to practice, so some rehearsals might be better than others. And yeah, this music is hard, but the people who tend to play this music tend to sign up for that willingly and deliberately. I’d prefer to come to a rehearsal and say: ‘look, I still have more work to do on this (I just hadn’t yet done it because of other life constraints) but it seems achievable and you don’t need to rewrite it just yet.’ Or I might suggest doing it or writing it another way. But I’m not convinced I should be telling the composer they’ve done something wrong after I was the one who didn’t do my job properly. That’s hubris.