The Exhilaration and Dread of Beethoven?s Sonatas

So much of this is simply projection?the performer can?t really know what the audience is experiencing (and of course, an audience is not an indistinct mass, but rather a collection of people, each having his own unique experience), and given that impossibility, the audience becomes a very convenient object on which the performer can place his own desires and insecurities. But that does not make the feelings any less real, or the relationship any less vital; after all, what relationship does not involve projected feelings? The performance of a piece of music is, in essence, a three-way conversation between composer, interpreter, and listener. Performers have, out of necessity, learned to deal with the absence of the composer?or rather, we have created a different and more one-sided kind of relationship, based on studying and communing with the music, not an actual connection with the person who wrote it. Consequently, though, the physical presence of the audience has become more important to us than ever.

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