From our Historical Interviews:

Bruce Duffie talks with the composer Lowell Liebermann

Bruce Duffie: Do you feel, though, that it's a collaborative art between you and the performer?

Lowell Liebermann: No.

BD: You don’t want the performer to put anything into it?

LL: No. They should bring something to it, but it’s not like the performer is taking your piece and then layering over their own ideas on it. Not at all, because they might as well just rewrite the notes while they’re at it. To a composer, almost the whole dynamic framework comes before the notes. It’s almost like the notes are what are being filled in when you compose, not the dynamics and the articulations. A lot of performers do think that the notes are sacred, but beyond that they can sort of do anything they like to a piece. I think the act of performing and interpreting a piece is trying to come as close as one can to what was in the composer’s imagination. Now, more often than not, that’s not entirely clear, and you have to interpret and figure out what did the composer mean in a lot of respects. But no, I don’t feel it as sort of a collaborative thing where the performer is an equal.... To me, it’s the bad performers that impose their own personality onto the music and end up with something that is not what the composer intended, necessarily.