vienna and phnom penh

One of my students is getting ready to perform in Beethoven's Fifth Symphony for the first time. He clearly feels this is a momentous event in his musical career. Perhaps it is. He is very excited and very nervous, and I spent a lot of time today helping him with the part.

I wonder a lot here about context. Could my student find Germany on a map? Does he know where Vienna is, and about Beethoven's ambivalence towards Napoleon? Does any of this matter, if he is pressing the right buttons at the right times? I know from experience that asking them to connect pieces of music to European or American historical events is a losing proposition--they don't study that in school! I always try to provide myself with as much context as possible when I'm learning a new piece, but I wonder if I'm not deluding myself. Is everything I need in the score?

I'm reading a book about the history of the Khmer Rouge, and I've got no context for the story besides the (meager) knowledge I have about American involvement in Vietnam. The book is fascinating and scary, and yet I wonder how much more powerful it would feel for someone who had holes for all of its pegs, so to speak. And I wonder if a person able to put this story into context would be able to see farther into the author's mind: logical fallacies, factual errors, original insights, and so forth. For me, I've got to take almost all of what she writes at face value because I've just got no basis for understanding the issues more deeply.

I have to think that context does matter, in music just as much as in Cambodian history. Otherwise, why bother going to music school and studying with a master teacher? Why not just treat the score like a blueprint, reproducing the composer's marks? There's something we call style (or, if you're so inclined, performance practice). When I've thought about it a little more I may attempt a definition, but for now I'll content myself with the certainty that performance practice, style, or musical intelligence is rooted in knowledge.