Performance an as Extreme Occasion - Edward W. Said

Edward Said, best known to me as author of Orientalism, a staple of any class touching on the subject of the "other" or related issues (ie. class, gender, race), always surprises me with his thoughts thoughts and writings on music.  This is a book of three chapters, each a lecture delivered at the University of California as a part of the Wellek Library Lectures in 1989.  Although I believe a good portion of the text is over my head at a first cursory read, I can still appreciate his mastery of the topic and insight.  The first chapter, "Performance as an Extreme Occassion," focused on Adorno's points from various publications and Toscanini and Gould as examples of modern performance.

Adorno's points, as Said understands them, are as follows:

1. The death of Beethoven ushered in an era marked by the complete separation of music from the social and plunged it completely into the aesthetic.  Adorno believe that Schoenberg fully grasped this new direction of music and embodied it in his compostion.  Thus music became a "pure" form of cultural expression which reflected the isolation and alienation of composers from their listeners and the world.

 2. Music has relevant to other cultural studies and modern thinkers were able to link these various disciplines with music and society itself.  However, now these disciplines are no longer integrated and even disciplines within music are split (into theory, history, ethnomusicology, composition, performnace) reflecting the current fragmentation of music (into the public and the private, between composer and performer).

3. As an autonomous, "mysterious" art form, fully privatized with Schoenberg's composition (as begun during early romanticism, the gap between the public and private in music is bridged through today's performance practices.

I enjoy Said's dramatization of the performance.  He discusses everything that comprises the performance, but which occurs beforehand such as the practicing involved, ticket sales to a willing audience, time, and money all to create a single event, unrepeatable, temporal, and unable to be revisited.  This extremism of the performance is exemplified in Toscanini and Gould.   My knowledge of Toscanini was previously, and embarrassingly limited.  I knew of his connections to the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the location of his annotated scores in the basement of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library Central Branch and that I fully appreciate his recordings of the Beethoven Symphonies, but that's it.  Said applauds his memory, command of the orchestra instruments, and mastery of the score.  There is the problem of his domination over the music, and how he manages to strip it of individuality, that of the composer or performer.  Gould is another noteworthy example, especially in the case of the disappearing composer as master performer of his own work.  This is where I wanted to attempt to tie this reading into my recent Frank Sinatra exploration, but I'm necessarily sure it applies completely.  However, Sinatra like Gould, makes his performance almost a new composition through the interpretation.  Modern performances have the ability to concurrently redefine performance practice and compositions of the past.