Period instruments: final thoughts
michel...@usa.net
Michael Solonenko writes:
[I am making many, many snips here, and taking phrases out of two
different levels of the thread to respond to them. My apologies to
"Mike S.," whose contribution is more-or-less completely edited
out.]
>>> The main idea was this: Since modern instruments provide, generally
>>> speaking (that is, much more often than not) larger set of tools to a
>>> musician, they are, generally speaking (that is, much more often than
>>> not), the best ones to perform _any_ kind of music.
This is your central argument. It has been unsatisfactory from the
beginning and is not improving on repetition.
An instrument is a tool. Tools are useful *for purposes*; it's
senseless to rate them outside of any consideration of what they are
to be used to do. My computer is far more versatile than my
can opener, but if I want to open a can it is not going to do me
much good.
You'll contest that example, of course; you'll argue that
"modern" instruments can do everything "period" ones can, and more.
But when I pick an instrument to use in a particular piece, I
want to know what it can do for me *in the piece*, not what
it can do in the abstract. You prefer the "modern" to the "baroque"
violin, apparently because the "modern" instrument has a wider
dynamic range. But if I'm using the instrument in eighteenth-
century music I may not *need* the kind of volume potential I'd
need for the Sibelius Concerto (in fact, I might rather not
be able to play that loud, since with a quieter instrument I
could use the very top of my dynamic range without overwhelming
the music, while with the louder one I'd have to hold back at all
times).
The same goes for the bow. You prefer the "modern" Tourte-
model bow to the earlier sort, since with the "modern" bow you
can make a continuous crescendo. In fact, I can make a
continuous crescendo with a baroque violin bow, though it's
much harder than with a modern one. But what if I don't *need*
to make a continuous crescendo? And what if the music I'm playing
happens to involve a gesture--like, say, _notes inegales_--that
happens more naturally, easily, and plain *musically* with the
older style of bow? (I can play _inegalite_ with a "modern"
bow, too, but it's much harder work and not nearly as fun
or engaging.)
Say I have to run a smallish course laid out with traffic
cones--a course with a lot of tight turns. I can choose
whatever vehicle I like for the course. I want to use a
bicycle, but you insist I drive a car--after all, the
car is far superior, since it can go much faster and cover
far longer distances. I protest that I don't *need* to go
very fast or far; I just need to do these tight turns for
which the bicycle is much easier to use--but you are
unrelenting. The car is obviously the better vehicle;
there is "no justification" for driving anything else.
I have repeatedly posed another question to which you have
never responded. If performances on "inferior instruments"
"cannot be justified" where "superior instruments" are
available, how can we justify using "modern" instruments
that are demonstrably "inferior" in your terms to other
"modern" instruments? Doesn't the demonstrable "superiority"
of the cello to the viola (in range, agility, & projection)
mandate performance of all viola music on the cello? For
that matter, doesn't the superior dynamic range of a
large orchestra mean that smaller orchestras are musically
suspect? How can a performance with ten violins "be justified"
when forty violins would make for a superior orchestral
"instrument"?
> I am tired to repeat: I AGREE there are great performances
> on period instruments. I claim, nevertheless, that yet better
> ones are possible (not in all, but in most of the cases) if
> modern instruments are used. I accept this or that particular
> period instrument can be indispensable in this or that particular
> piece. I don't see what you find so absurd in this statement.
The trouble is that your claim isn't substantiated. You don't
show how the "superiority" of the "modern" instruments would
translate into a better performance. You just say "greater
expressive potential" over and over again, without showing us
how it could be put to use.
Take the violin, since it's your favorite example: how,
exactly, does the "modern" violin have greater expressive
capacity than a "baroque" violin, when used in, say, a Handel
sonata? Is it the greater dynamic range? (Probably not; no one
uses every last ounce of dynamic potential playing Handel.)
Is it that "continuous crescendo," supposedly forbidden
by the baroque bow? (Not really; there are places you'd
want to crescendo in Handel, but none that an early bow would
make difficult.) What is it then? The strings? (But
players were using gut strings right up through WWII. Did
Kreisler have a limited "expressive range" because of his
gut E?) The shorter fingerboard? (Inconvenient if you're
playing Locatelli, OK, but not a problem in Handel.) Or
what? Is a flat bridge some sort of mysterious "expression
sink"?
> First, I never claimed
> that modern instruments are "better": "better" or "worse"
> describe tastes and preferences. I said that modern instruments
> (strings in particular) offer a performer more tools for expression.
> Like, oil colors offer an artist more tools for expression as
> compared to chalk or pencil. From that, by no means it follows that
> chalk or pencil are "worse": each technique has its own masterpieces,
> as I said before.
And yet...and yet, a search for "Chalk drawings--a hoax?" on DejaNews
turns up no entries. I doubt you'd go into a Usenet art group and
declare that drawing with chalk is "not justified," given that
more versatile media, like oils, are out there.
>>> In my opinion, much more often than not, the period instruments
>>> nowadays are used not because of their possible advantages in
>>> certain pieces (after all, whole movements of some symphonies are
>>> performed with strings muted),
[I don't want to interrupt your chain of thought, but I really
don't know what you're talking about here. What on earth has
the use of mutes (composers do ask for them occasionally, you
know) to do with the relative merits of "period" and "modern"
instruments? I am mystified.]
>>> but as a marketing tool to sell otherwise questionable
>>> performances. More often than not period instruments are used
>>> to conceal the musical ineptness of performers and (or) conductor.
>>> A certain "set of rules" to perform old music on "original"
>>> instruments was developed, and the public is made to beleive that
>>> as long as those rules are followed and instruments are "original",
>>> it is getting a "quality product". Of course, it has nothing to
>>> do with what is really happening.
>> ["Mike S.":] That's a string of assertions for which you've offered
>> no evidence.
>> True, I did not offer any evidence. The reason being - it is
>> my opinion, not a fact (as I stated at the very beginning of the
>> quote). I wrote of an impression that I acquired for the last few
>> years; it seems to me the things are going this way, and I was
>> wondering if anyone would share the concern.
I see. It's your *opinion* that the "period instrument" label
is a "marketing tool" designed to sell "otherwise questionable"
performances. It's your *opinion* that "more often than not"
period instruments are used to "conceal" musical "ineptness." It's
your *opinion* that a set of "rules" "was developed" (by whom?),
and that the public has been bamboozled into believing that
where the rules are followed, the performance is a good one (a
formulation that, to work, requires a public that knows what the
"rules" are--do they really?). And since all of this is *opinion*
none of it needs to be substantiated.
Actually, your paragraph is full of testable assertions.
We might, for example, look at what a representative cross-
section of "early musicians" were doing before they started
doing "early music," to see whether they were, as it were, flunking
out of more conventional musical careers. We might check
for garden-variety evidence of "ineptness"--boring or
ill-prepared or otherwise unsatisfactory performances--and
see if there were more of them in the "period" than the
"modern" field. We might look for these "rules" you
speak of, and see whether ensembles consistently obey them
(and whether the public treats them, as you say they
do, as emblems of quality).
I would suggest that such a check would reveal: a large
number of "early musicians" who either entered early music
from strong modern-instrument careers or (increasingly commonly)
maintain those careers in tandem with their period-instrument
work; thousands of hours of dull and poorly-rehearsed "modern"
recordings of eighteenth-century and earlier music, as against
an astonishing quantity of interesting and thoughtful
performances by period-instrument groups like Romanesca,
Concerto Koeln, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Concerto
Italiano, Ensemble 415, Talens Lyriques, etc.; and "rules"
certainly no more oppressive than those of the dominant
American school of string playing (vibrate on every note,
no matter how small; make sure all your bowstrokes are
exactly the same; etc.).
A casual look at, say, the _Schwann_ catalogue over the
past twenty years or so demonstrates that the period-instrument
explosion has coincided exactly with an enormous expansion
of interest in earlier music. My ears, at least, attest
that it has also coincided with far more sensitive and
intelligent performance of earlier music. Maybe that's
coincidence, but I doubt it. I'm an instrumentalist; I
know how much we are influenced by our tools.
Michelle Dulak
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
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Simon Roberts
michel...@usa.net wrote:
: I would suggest that such a check would reveal: a large
: number of "early musicians" who either entered early music
: from strong modern-instrument careers or (increasingly commonly)
: maintain those careers in tandem with their period-instrument
: work; thousands of hours of dull and poorly-rehearsed "modern"
: recordings of eighteenth-century and earlier music, as against
: an astonishing quantity of interesting and thoughtful
: performances by period-instrument groups like Romanesca,
: Concerto Koeln, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Concerto
: Italiano, Ensemble 415, Talens Lyriques, etc.; and "rules"
: certainly no more oppressive than those of the dominant
: American school of string playing (vibrate on every note,
: no matter how small; make sure all your bowstrokes are
: exactly the same; etc.).
: A casual look at, say, the _Schwann_ catalogue over the
: past twenty years or so demonstrates that the period-instrument
: explosion has coincided exactly with an enormous expansion
: of interest in earlier music. My ears, at least, attest
: that it has also coincided with far more sensitive and
: intelligent performance of earlier music. Maybe that's
: coincidence, but I doubt it. I'm an instrumentalist; I
: know how much we are influenced by our tools.
: Michelle Dulak
Your entire post was wonderful. To a large extent the period instrument
movement was got going, not by incompetent musicians who couldn't get into
"real" orchestras, but by members of such orchestras who couldn't believe
that baroque music was as boring as performances in the 1950s and 1960s by
those orchestras made it seem. You can't get much more prominent in the
modern orchestral world than principal cellist of the Concertgebouw (Anner
Bylsma).... The dual career point is demonstrated by the personnel lists
of at least English period orchestras. I don't know if all of these
still double, but Anthony Halstead and Christian Rutherford for years were
the horn players of the ECO as well as the English Concert et al; Michael
Laird still is, I think, principal trumpet of the ASMIF; and so on,
especially wind players. The result of all this? As you rightly say,
baroque music has never sounded more interesting or just plain "better."
Can it be sheer coincidence that it has never been more popular? It may
be true that much of this has to do with playing style, which can be
reproduced on modern instruments (e.g. the wonderful Amserdam Bach
Soloists), but (1) it never sounds quite the same; and (2) the fact is
that this revolution was not perpetrated by modern instrumentalists
playing modern instruments.
Simon
Stephen Birkett
Nathan Eberhardt (eber...@pilot.msu.edu) wrote:
: .... I can do the same thing you did
: with your examples on modern and baroque violins with the piano.
: I can point to the perfomances of Beethoven piano music on a modern
: Steinway vs. Beethoven's broadwood and point to a bunch of pros
: and cons in each direction on performance, both mechancially
: and expression-wise. However, when all is said and done
: and after I have weighed everything, my _personal opinion_ would
: be that the advantages and more outwardly beautiful tone of the
: modern grand would make the performances on the modern piano more
: attractive.
:
Can't let this pass, no matter how well-concealed it is in the other
stuff. As I keep repeating it is a faulty argument to compare a
performance, played by someone who doesn't know the first thing about
playing early pianos, on Beethoven's beaten-up, anachronistically restored
Broadwood (that he didn't like anyway), compared to a performance by a
fine modern pianist on a Steinway. Get real. Look at expert early
performances on instruments that are of comparable quality to that of the
Steinway....your conclusion will be opposite. The early piano *In This
Repertoire* is a clear winner, the music fits it like a glove and
expressive power is considerably greater than the Steinway (again, in this
repertoire).
: ? someone else wrote:
: >> describe tastes and preferences. I said that modern instruments
: >> (strings in particular) offer a performer more tools for expression.
: And not just on strings. On the piano as well and other instruments.
: And perhaps there are a handful of things which have been lost, too.
: But far more has been gained in instrument development.
:
Instrument "development" in the Darwinian sense is complete
nonsense...nothing could be further from the truth. At each period the
existing instruments matched the musical requirements of the day and were
every bit as perfect as our modern instruments. Re: the comment above,
early pianos have far more "tools of expression" than the modern piano.
The modern piano is loud, powerful, stable and predictable...again
fitting the exact requirements of music making in our era. Early pianos
are not suited to the modern concert scene for many reasons...however the
paradox here is that they *are* suited to the repertoire that was written
for them, for which modern pianos *are not*.
Stephen
Stephen Birkett Fortepianos
Authentic Reproductions of 18th and 19th Century Pianos
464 Winchester Drive
Waterloo, Ontario
Canada N2T 1K5
tel: 519-885-2228
email: sbir...@uoguelph.ca
I. Neill Reid
In article <5v5bc2$c...@ccshst05.cs.uoguelph.ca>, sbir...@uoguelph.ca (Stephen Birkett) writes...
>Nathan Eberhardt (eber...@pilot.msu.edu) wrote:
[... big snip ...]
>
>: ? someone else wrote:
>: >> describe tastes and preferences. I said that modern instruments
>: >> (strings in particular) offer a performer more tools for expression.
>: And not just on strings. On the piano as well and other instruments.
>: And perhaps there are a handful of things which have been lost, too.
>: But far more has been gained in instrument development.
>:
>Instrument "development" in the Darwinian sense is complete
>nonsense...nothing could be further from the truth. At each period the
>existing instruments matched the musical requirements of the day and were
>every bit as perfect as our modern instruments. Re: the comment above,
>early pianos have far more "tools of expression" than the modern piano.
>The modern piano is loud, powerful, stable and predictable...again
>fitting the exact requirements of music making in our era. Early pianos
>are not suited to the modern concert scene for many reasons...however the
>paradox here is that they *are* suited to the repertoire that was written
>for them, for which modern pianos *are not*.
Just to point out that this is exactly development in the Darwinian sense
of evolution. "Evolution" in that context most emphatically does _not_
imply a succession of variations which lead to _better_ (in an absolute
sense) individuals. Rather, darwinian evolution implies that organisms
which are better suited to the particular prevailing environment are
likely to survive
so - eohippus for courses
Neill Reid - i...@dowland.caltech.edu
Frank Cone
Nathan Eberhardt wrote:
> Some think that the sound of modern instruments is
> simply more beautiful, and for that reason they shun the sound of
> music from period instruments. And that really might be
> all the substantiat/ion one needs to support his personal
> view entirely under certain circumstances. "It's better for me" would
> be the best way to put it.
That's true, to a certain extent, the extent being that it isn't just a
matter of personal preference. I feel that to ignore the historic
context in which the music was created and performed is to ignore a
great aspect of the music. It is true that one can enjoy a classic work
of art out of context. One does not necessarily need to know the
symbolism or hidden meanings behind the work, but it adds so much more
to be able to understand it. In that way the art works both on the
emotional and the intellectual level. Additionally, comparatively few
listeners are exposed to the sounds of period instruments, due to, in my
opinion, snobbery on the part of the musical establishment (critics,
conductors, performers) in the US.
> Speaking from a performer's view on the matter. If you feel this
> is true and give an example performance to an audience, there might
> just be listeners in the audience who would rather hear it on
> the modern instrument anyway.
This is again true, but it doesn't reflect anything other than the
audience's expectations. This should never be confused with the validity
of historical performance.
> And now you raise another concern: the use of period instruments
> in modern halls. The sound of many period instruments simply
> isn't suitable for today's concert halls. And as Alfred Brendel
> says, for instance, "if you're a critic who claims that Bach
> keyboard music
> is better left for a period instrument, you might also postulate
> that you travel to a Baroque marble hall to listen to it, or stay
> at home with a record."
This is no argument at all. I have atttended concerts at certain major
venues where the Steinway piano has been amplified. The idiocy of modern
architects has nothing to do with period performance.
The point is not whether ot not a particular modern instrument is
technically superior to its older counterpart. My feeling is that they
are separate instruments and should be treated as such. The real
question, in my mind, is which sound is right for the music?
Without going into the question of modern piano vs. fortepiano, since S.
Birkett can doubtless state it better than I can, I feel that very
little of Bach's music comes across very well on the modern piano. Even
the most sensitive player cannot avoid some "smudging" of the interior
polyphonic lines. This has the effect of bringing Bach's carefully
constructed fugues in the Romantic melody-with-accompaniment style. It
is possible, that if Bach had had a modern piano, he would have composed
somewhat differently. Unfortunately, statements like that can never be
proven.
As this thread continues, it is becoming increasingly clear that the
anti-period instrumentalists are unaware of the point of historically
informed performance practice. It is not just a matter of using the
correct instrument for the correct piece, but also using more
appropriate tempi, articulation, phrasing, fingering, breathing, etc.
Without railing against those people that have never (or rarely) heard
early music played well, I would encourage them, before posting, to gain
a basic understanding of this subject. Start with books such as Dart's
"The Interpretation of Early Music" and Munrow's "Instruments of the
Middle Ages and Renaissance," then go to recordings by the Early Music
Consort of London, the New London Consort, among others (see the FAQ on
rec.music.early).
I don't feel that modern instruments are necessarily more sophisticated
than "period" instruments, except in a general technological sense. The
real test of an instrument is its sound. Modern instruments sound
different than older instruments. Now, one of major factors in
"improving" musical instrument technology has been to make instruments
easier, not just to play, but to play in tune. Unfortunately, in the
process of "improving," something has been lost. That something is the
amazing variety of sounds possible with period instruments.
To take but one example, for brevity's sake, since a case could be made
for each old instrument, the case of the cornetto. The cornetto figured
prominently in the ceremonial and religious music of every country in
Europe from 1500 to 1650. It was usually found in consort with sackbuts
(early trombones). The cornetto was widely praised for its similarity to
the human voice. Indeed, nearly all music tutors published during the
Renaissance urged the student instrumentalist to emulate the human
voice. Its role was on an equal footing with the violin. For these
reasons the cornetto can not adequately be replaced in performances of
Monteverdi, for example. Various texts suggest, as a replacement, a
violin, a clarinet, and a soprano saxophone. In practice the cornetto is
replaced by a trumpet! The sound quality of a trumpet is totally
different from a cornetto. the trumpet tends to dominate and doesn't
blend particularly well with voices.
The point is this: due to their rarity, period instruments are replaced
by modern ones, but at the cost of historical accuracy, sound quality,
balance, etc. If you must listen to modern instrument performances of
music that should be more rightly performed on period instruments, then
at least listen to works that are advertised as being transcriptions,
such as the Liszt transcriptions of Bach. I feel that to blindly worship
modern instruments is akin to worshipping the grime on the Sistine
chapel ceiling. Just one man's opinion.
Frank
Stephen Birkett
Nathan Eberhardt (eber...@pilot.msu.edu) wrote:
: I, as a performer and listener think that performances on modern pianos
: of much of Beethoven's music on average tend to sound more attractive to
: me. You might disagree, as a promoter of period instruments. Fine. It's
: simply my personal feelings. I notice you didn't bother to include the
: relevant comments afterward, that it was a "It's better for me"
: statement.
:
I don't really give a damn which *you* prefer...that is your own business,
not important, and not relevant to my point. It would seem to me to be
sensible, though, to choose performances by people who know how to play
early pianos, on early pianos of comparable quality to the Steinway, in
order to make an intelligent comparative conclusion. The Broadwood
performances you measure are not. Perhaps you might like to enlighten us
as to which performances and early pianos you have experienced? What early
pianos have you yourself played?
: > The early piano *In This
: > Repertoire* is a clear winner, the music fits it like a glove and
: > expressive power is considerably greater than the Steinway (again, in this
: > repertoire).
: Says who, you? Somehow I don't think all pianists will agree with you
: on that.
:
This is not an opinion...read the source material from the period. It is
full of descriptions of "expressivity" as it was understood by the
contemporary musicians. It is not an opinion to say that the modern piano
is less able to match these criteria for expressivity than early
piano...it is clearly evident to anyone who has experience on both types
of piano. For example the modern piano is physically incapable of
playing a true szforzando as this was understood by Beethoven or Schubert,
precisely because of the very quality that is most prized (sustain). This
hinders dynamic expressivity, an extremely important thing to these
composers. When Schubert writes fp he means exactly the fp that a
violinist can produce, something early pianos do naturally. This is one
example...I could think of hundreds more to illustrate that my point
about expressivity in not an *opinion*, mine or anyone else's.
: I will say that it is well-noted that Beethoven and other composers
: often pushed the limits of the pianos of their day in some respects, and
: you don't have to read far into the literature of Beethoven and his piano
: music to find out about this. So, the "perfection" for music of the time
: you speak of isn't entirely accurate either.
:
Pushing the limits of the pianos has nothing to do with a desire for
something different. Do you think the modern piano is not suitable
for Prokovief or Bartok simply because they push it to the limits. Don't
be silly. It is quite natural to explore a tool like a musical
instrument to its limits...what else would you expect?
Do you think Schumann was stupid when he was so ecstatic about the sounds
Brahms got out of his 1835 Graf...these "composer would have preferred"
arguments are ridiculous. The literature is full of references to
composers and musicians adoring their contemporary instruments...find me
a reference which expresses a desire for something better.
: > Instrument "development" in the Darwinian sense is complete
: > nonsense...nothing could be further from the truth.
: Actually, you're wrong. The truth lies somewhere in-between.
: The period and modern pianos might be different instruments, but they
: are not
: mutually exclusive, either. The modern grand and mid-late nineteenth
: century pianos did not come about spontaneously
: without any influence from past instruments.
:
What you say about modern instruments evolving from earlier ones is
correct of course, but, once again, has nothing to do with what I said.
The modern piano is not superior to early pianos, it is simply more
suited to the requirements of the music of our era.
:.... Sometimes music seems to come
: alive on modern instruments, sometimes not. One simply must refrain
: from making such generalizations promoted as fact. Opinions on what
: instruments work better in certain instances is fine.
:
I have never stated anything else, in any posts. Early music, whether
Byrd, Bach, Beethoven, or Brahms, is a transcription when it is played on
the modern piano...that is a fact, not opinion. As such the result stands
or falls by its own merits. In certain instances the transcription may
work or not work. At the least the process requires a lot of effort to
make it work, and a big percent of the modern pianist's time is spent on
this aspect. Early music, played on the original instrument for which it
was composed is not a transcription and stands or falls by the merits of
the composition itself. This latter process requires an understanding of
the conventions of the period and a high quality instrument...nothing
less. And these are facts, Nathan, not opinions and not generalizations,
despite anything you might post to the contrary.
Let's hear what early pianos you have direct experience with and you used
to form your conclusions. Also which recordings you are basing your
opinions on.
Stephen Birkett
I. Neill Reid (i...@deimos.caltech.edu) wrote:
: Just to point out that this is exactly development in the Darwinian sense
: of evolution. "Evolution" in that context most emphatically does _not_
: imply a succession of variations which lead to _better_ (in an absolute
: sense) individuals. Rather, darwinian evolution implies that organisms
: which are better suited to the particular prevailing environment are
: likely to survive
:
Touche. This in fact is precisely why the modern piano thrives now,
because it is better suited to its environment. I should have said
"improvement" rather than evolution. In defense though, evolution is
colloquially used often in the "improvement" sense. Good point.
To re-iterate the modern piano is not superior to early pianos, it is
simply better matched to the musical requirements of our era...whether
compositions, musical performing scene, international travel of artists,
large halls, big modern orchestras, recording or whatever. However this
deal with the devil gives the tradeoff of lost subtlety and tonal colour,
which were prized in the 19th Century. The paradox comes because we play
music from another era on our modern piano, for which it is not naturally
suited. Mendelssohn, or Mozart, when reviving baroque masterpieces,
adapted them, not because they thought them to be badly written, but
because they did not suit the instrumental resources or their era. Modern
pianists should be much less restrained in this process of transcription
of early repertoire (pre-20th C) to the modern piano, but it requires
knowledge,
skill, experience and understanding, attributes that are not customarily
associated with the professional modern pianist.
A440A
Frank Cone writes:
>As this thread continues, it is becoming increasingly clear that >the
anti-period instrumentalists are unaware of the point of >historically
informed performance practice. It is not just a >matter of using the
correct instrument for the correct piece, >but also using more appropriate
tempi, articulation, phrasing, >fingering, breathing, etc.
Gee, since this thread is really about the use of the modern piano vs the
forte piano, I have to suggest that you add
Temperament to this list of necessities...
Regards,
Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tenn.
Donald Patterson
sct...@erols.com wrote:
>
> a4...@aol.com (A440A) wrote:
>
> >
> >Frank Cone writes:
> >>As this thread continues, it is becoming increasingly clear that >the
> >anti-period instrumentalists are unaware of the point of >historically
> >informed performance practice. It is not just a >matter of using the
> >correct instrument for the correct piece, >but also using more appropriate
> >tempi, articulation, phrasing, >fingering, breathing, etc.
>
> Copland's Third Symphony or Bernstein's Chichester Psalms.
You've heard them. Just buy Copland's recording of his own 3rd
symphony and Bernstein' recordings of Chichester.
--
Don Patterson <don...@erols.com>
"The President's Own"
United States Marine Band
Concerned about the state of the Mac?
Visit: http://www.MacMarines.com
The views expressed are my own and in no way reflect
those of the U.S. Marine Band or the Marine Corps.
David Tenner
> >anti-period instrumentalists are unaware of the point of >historically
> >informed performance practice. It is not just a >matter of using the
> >correct instrument for the correct piece, >but also using more appropriate
> >tempi, articulation, phrasing, >fingering, breathing, etc.
>
> Copland's Third Symphony or Bernstein's Chichester Psalms.
>
I understand there was a great period instrument performance of 4'33"...
--
David Tenner
ten...@m3.sprynet.com
Ramon Khalona
Stephen Birkett wrote:
>
> Nathan Eberhardt (eber...@pilot.msu.edu) wrote:
> : I think that's false. Modern concert grands did not
> : come about simply for the need of new instruments
> : for modern music. And they are not meant to be simply
> : specialized instruments for modern music.
> :
> Your knowledge of the history of piano design is obviously at fault
> here...the modern piano developed precisely in tanndem with the
> requirements of the music of the period. As music changed so did the
> piano and vice versa...it's really a chicken/egg thing. The so-called
> modern piano met the needs of late 19thC-early 20th music. But even this
> over-simplifies the whole history to the point of absurdity. In fact by
> even talking about early and modern pianos, we are talking nonsense.
> Within modern pianos ie. current models, there is a lot of variety,
> albeit not as much as even 50 years ago. Changes to the piano have
> occurred over a continuous process and these were introduced gradually
> over lengthy periods in many cases. There is no such thing as an "early"
> piano, or "fortepiano" or whatever...we use the term for convenience
> really. The modern piano sits at one end of a long
> continuous spectrum of piano designs, while the pianos known to
> Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann etc. sit close to the other end...the huge
> gap between these implies incorrectly that there is nothing in the
> middle.
>
> : The emergence of the modern grand piano is a result of both
> : innovation and invention. There is some "evolution" in a matter
> : of speaking, and instruments have evolved into forms that
> : aren't just simply here because of change in style of music,
> : but because of advances in technology and the desire for improvement.
> :
> Many inventions and innovations were not adopted immediately, sometimes
> there were many years between the development of an innovation and its
> implementation...as music and pianos changed together this is quite
> logical. Only modern arrogance allows you to say the 20th C solution is an
> "improvement" over the 19th C solution. Most of the "features" of the 20th
> C piano have been achieved by trading off many of the qualities the 19th C
> musician considered to be the most desirable (read the sources if you don't
> believe me). What you have to realize is that *all* piano makers, whether in
> 1990, 1890 or 1790 were basically tackling the same acoustical problems,
> in each case arriving at a solution that was most relevant to the period.
>
> Are we going to see your list of early pianos on which you have formed
> your comparative conclusion Nathan????
>
> Stephen
Mr. Birkett:
Would you please cite a sonically and, better yet, MUSICALLY satisfying
performance/recording of Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' sonata on a period
piano? Here's an instance, IMHO, where the period instrument is
deficient to create the sonorities and meet the demands of this
challenging work, but I await your response with interest.
Also, I might note that the fact that many keyboard artists might prefer
to play a composer like Bach on the piano, rather than on the
harpsichord, does not mean that the former is better than the latter,
but I would venture the opinion that the modern piano can make Bach
sound wonderful and that, in the final analysis, is enough of a
justification to favor the piano. It is possible to have different
tastes, you know.
--
"Un torturador no se redime suicidandose... pero algo es algo"
- Mario Benedetti
Ramon Khalona
Carlsbad, California
Stephen Birkett
Stephen
Stephen Birkett Fortepianos
Haig Utidjian
>I feel that to ignore the historic
>context in which the music was created and performed is to ignore a
>great aspect of the music.
Very often these circumstances were quite prosaic and unilluminating.
And very often the composers were quite _unahappy_ about these
circumstances! Great music stands or falls through its inherent
merits, and transcends the circumstances, or even objectives,
obtaining at the time of its first performance, or even perhaps
of its composition. (IMHO, as always!)
>It is true that one can enjoy a classic work
>of art out of context.
Not being aware of adventitious details of the _historical_
circumstances of the time is _not_ tantamount to enjoying a work out
of its context. IMHO the far more relevant context is related to what
other works of art preceded, or were contemporaneous with, the work of
art in question. These are relevant, not least because they had a
bearing on the musical experiences and expectations of a composer and
of his audience, and on the manner in which the audiences expectations
may have been contradicted by the composer.
NB. I am not saying it is not desirable to be aware of the historical
circumstances. I am, however, disagreeing, with the seemingly
_fundamental_ improtance you are apportioning to them.
>One does not necessarily need to know the
>symbolism or hidden meanings behind the work
Agreed. But in any case, these matters need not, IMHO, be necessarily
related to, for instance, the way one chooses to phrases a passage of
music, or indeed even to the instruments one chooses for a performance.
>but it adds so much more
>to be able to understand it.
I disagree in the sense that, though it may be of _inherent_ interest to
understand these extramusical things, understanding them does not
necessarily shed any light on the music itself. It is, above all, the
music itself that needs to be "understood". The "symbolism or hidden" meaning
may well prove neither to help nor to hinder.
>In that way the art works both on the
>emotional and the intellectual level.
I agree that music does work at both an emotional and intellectual
level, but I do not agree that it does so "in that way". I believe both
levels obtain in a manner that is rather more fundamentally related to the
music itself (as opposed to the "symbolism or hidden meaning behind
the work", to which you refer). Emotionally, hearing a piece of music
performed may have a certain effect upon the listener, and the
intellectual level is (IMHO) of especial relevance when, for instance, one
tries to rationalise one's emotional reactions engendered by the
music, in a retrospective manner. "Why did this piece/performance
shake me, and why this piece and not that, or this performance but not
that?" (Just one example.)
>Additionally, comparatively few
>listeners are exposed to the sounds of period instruments [...] in
>the US.
At this rate, it won't surprise me if there comes a time when
comparatively few listeners in the UK will be exposed
to the sounds of _modern_ instruments in the earlier repertoire -- and
more to the point, be exposed to the more traditional performing styles!
I've just been listening to (and enjoying greatly) Scherchen's Vienna
State Opera recording of the Bach Brandenburg Concertos, which I liked
almost as much as Adolf Busch's recording. I fear the chances of my coming
across a performance with an ensemble comparable to _either_ of those is
rather small, even at present.
>This is again true, but it doesn't reflect anything other than the
>audience's expectations. This should never be confused with the validity
>of historical performance.
Surely a performance is for the purpose of communicating the
composer's intentions _to an audience_ and in the most convincing
manner possible. To this extent, _surely_ the audience's expectations
are of considerable relevance, are they not? (As are surely those of the
performers' expectations and inclinations, to some degree.)
>As this thread continues, it is becoming increasingly clear that the
>anti-period instrumentalists are unaware of the point of historically
>informed performance practice. It is not just a matter of using the
>correct instrument for the correct piece, but also using more
>appropriate tempi, articulation, phrasing, fingering, breathing, etc.
I do not know whether the rather inelegant description "anti-period
instrumentalists" is intended to include me or not (I fall in the
category of those who were very much in love with the movement during my
childhood in the late seventies and subsequently fell _out of love_ with
it, and do not particularly consider myself "anti-" musicianly
performances regardless of their style and medium), but this statement
cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged! I think you are missing
precisely the point I strove to make in all my postings: many of us do not
really mind old instruments! It's the way they're _played_, and what
is done to the _music_ which can be so very disappointing. Claims to
the effect that most of the usual exponents of "authentic" instruments
employ tempi, articulation, phrasing, fingering and breathing _more_
appropriate than others interpreters, are _highly_ dubious, IMHO.
_Indeed, it is precisely the "tempi, articulation, phrasing" [or lack thereof],
"fingering and breathing" which render many of those performances
unsatisfactory to many pairs of ears._ I cannot stress this
point too much! So we are not "unaware of the point" -- on the contary
-- this very point is the point of contention!
And much of this seems a pity to me -- e.g. there's NO reason, if
you're performing a Haydn or Scubert or Brahms symphony with old
instruments, that you should use tempi
that make the listener think that all the musicians have taken
laxatives about to have an immediate effect, IMHO!
One or two people have drawn attention to the fact that there is a
growing (and, IMHO, welcome) plurality within the authenticity
movement
regarding those very decisions of tempo, articulation, phrasing, to
which you have referred, with some "authentic" performers in
some ways reverting to the performing styles of the more traditional
interpreters of this century. But if this is so, it naturally weakens
the (IMHO already often weak) claims that adherence to what is
"appropriate" in such matters is exclusive to, or indeed even
characteristic of, the authenticists!
Indeed, I would go so far as to say that _if only_ old-instrument
exponents _did_ use "tempi, articulation, phrasing" that _are_
_appropriate_ to the music, a far stronger case for the use of such
instruments might be made!
>To take but one example, for brevity's sake, since a case could be made
>for each old instrument, the case of the cornetto.
I don't consider this to be a good example, as most people consider
cornetti to be different instruments altogether, with no modern
equivalent in a symphony orchestra. (Cornetti are wooden, and quite
unrelated to cornets.) A more appropriate comparison IMHO
would be between a Mozart violin section of modern instruments and
old ones (or modern copies thereof).
By the way, there have recently been admissions to the effect that
some of the "authentic" recordings now available _weren't_ in fact
using the _right instruments. (See, for instance, the contents of a recent
interview with Andrew Manze, the leader of the Academy of Ancient Music, in the
"Early Music Magazine" of a couple of issues ago!)
>If you must listen to modern instrument performances of
>music that should be more rightly performed on period instruments, then
>at least listen to works that are advertised as being transcriptions,
>such as the Liszt transcriptions of Bach.
"at least"?!! You mean _ideally_ even, say, Stokowki's or Elgar's or
Respighi's Bach orchestrations ought to be played on baroque instruments?!!!
Regarding your implication that only such orchestrations ought to be
listened to in performances on modern instruments: I do feel there is
absolutely no reason for this. For one thing, the
chief differences that strike _me_ lie in performing styles rather
than in the sounds of the different instruments per se, particularly in the
symphonic repertoire. For another, surely there is no need
to relinquish the enrichment of many years of evolution, cross-fertilisation
(between different regions and different periods, and in both
directions) of the performing traditions of earlier music associated
with great performers of the past, that are part of our heritage
as the musicans and music-lovers of today. And for yet another, there
is a very fundamental difference between transcriptions or
re-orchestrations on the one hand, and performances that take
account of the listeners' (and executants') experiences of musics
more recent to those being performed, on the other. For
instance, I do suspect that the way we play
the slow movement of Beethoven 9 is _inevitably_ affected by our
knowledge of the slow movements of Bruckner's late symphonies, and
this need not be considered a bad thing. By studying the nephew we
understand facets' of the uncle's personality better, as it
were! But self-consciously trying
to play Beethoven as though we were not aware of Bruckner does not
seem to me to be am inherently positive step, and in a sense
almost belittles the music, IMHO, by the introduction of an element of
something all too similar to condescension.
>I feel that to blindly worship
>modern instruments is akin to worshipping the grime on the Sistine
>chapel ceiling. Just one man's opinion.
Surely expressing disappointment at the persistent mannerisms which
bedevil a high proportion of "authentic" performances is _not_ akin
to the blind worship of anything at all, least of all the instruments,
which of themselves are innocent tools! But some of the purist fanatics are
not, I feel, calling for "grime" to be removed. Rather, it's as if they
are asking for any parts of the building that were later
additions, decorations and furnishings that may date from more recent
times than when the main body of the building was constructed, and which
_contribute_ to our enjoyment and appreciation of the glorious and
resplendent composite whole, to be dismantled and removed! That seems to me to
be a more faithful analogy. (I must, finally, add, apologetically, that
I am not familiar with the Sistine chapel -- so forgive me if my
analogy is deficient for more than a single reason! :-) )
Best wishes,
Haig Utidjian
--
http://www-control.eng.cam.ac.uk/hu/hu.html
Fang-lin Hou
I will say, YMMV, even in things like understanding what
the current "performance practice" movement is about. Whoever
your "authenticists" are, they are not part of it.
Fang-lin
Haig Utidjian wrote:
>
(Many IMHO's)
Frank Eggleston
David Tenner wrote:
> sct...@erols.com wrote:
> >
> > a4...@aol.com (A440A) wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >Frank Cone writes:
> > >>As this thread continues, it is becoming increasingly clear that
> >the
> > >anti-period instrumentalists are unaware of the point of
> >historically
> > >informed performance practice. It is not just a >matter of using
> the
> > >correct instrument for the correct piece, >but also using more
> appropriate
> > >tempi, articulation, phrasing, >fingering, breathing, etc.
> >
> > I've always wanted to hear a period instrument performance of
> > Copland's Third Symphony or Bernstein's Chichester Psalms.
> >
> > Steve Troy
>
> I understand there was a great period instrument performance of
> 4'33"...
> --
> David Tenner
> ten...@m3.sprynet.com
There >IS< a period instrument recording of the Sonatas and Interludes
for Prepared Piano of Cage, which uses a piano which had the
specifications of Cage's original instrument (a non-standard grand),
i.e., one for which Cage's meticulous list of preparations actually
produces the effects he had in mind.
Frank Eggleston
Beth Garfinkel
Just to play devil's advocate here, I will add that sometimes newer is
"better". For example, take the case of South Indiana classical music.
It used to be that a traditional combination was voice and veena
together. Well, at some point, someine decided to try using a Western
violin instead of the veena, and noone has looked back since.
After all, which is a better balance for the human voice? A plucked
string instrument with wire strings at very low tension (so that they
are capable of being "bent") and a very small soundboard, or a rather
loud bowed instrument which is still capable of "bending" pitches?
(The instrument is held in the Indian manner: player looped
up on the floor so the violin rests on the shoulder and big toe of the
player, leaving the hands completely free to maneuver on the
instrument.)
Beth
--
"Under the green wood tree/Who loves to lie with me/And tune his merry
note/Unto the sweet bird's throat/Come hither, come hither, come hither/
Here he shall see/No enemy/But winter and rough weather."
--William Shakespeare
I. Neill Reid
In article <5v7o72$j5h$1...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, h...@eng.cam.ac.uk (Haig Utidjian) writes...
>
[... snip ..]
to just add comments on a couple of points
>
>>Additionally, comparatively few
>>listeners are exposed to the sounds of period instruments [...] in
>>the US.
>
>At this rate, it won't surprise me if there comes a time when
>comparatively few listeners in the UK will be exposed
>to the sounds of _modern_ instruments in the earlier repertoire -- and
>more to the point, be exposed to the more traditional performing styles!
>I've just been listening to (and enjoying greatly) Scherchen's Vienna
>State Opera recording of the Bach Brandenburg Concertos, which I liked
>almost as much as Adolf Busch's recording. I fear the chances of my coming
>across a performance with an ensemble comparable to _either_ of those is
>rather small, even at present.
Two comments to make on this point:
first, there appears to be general agreement amongst most musical writers
that the range of styles amongst _modern_ symphonic orchestras is much
reduced nowadays. No longer, they say, can one talk of the Philadelphia
sound (a la Stokowski), the Chicago brass, the Russian winds. That, it is
argued, stems from both greater access to recordings and broadcast performances
by non-local orchestras. (I'm not sure that I buy into this argument, at least
at the "national style" level, completely - Dan Leeson ran an interesting
experiment on clarinet "schools" a couple of years ago. I forget who the
guinea pig was, but the upshot was that one appeared more likely to recognise
individuals than nationalities. But I digress..)
second, the availability of those recordings also means that we are in a
position to sample a much wider range of historical styles - the Busch quartet,
Elgar conducting Elgar, Mravinsky and the Leningrad, Toscanini & the NBCSO -
as well as present-day HIP/modern performances.
So this means that we are in a situation where we are aware of a much wider
range of performance practice on recordings, but are faced with (apparently) a
restricted range of performance practice and style at modern-instrumented concerts.
But we have the added diversity of HIP performances.
Putting this together, I wonder whether we're not fooling ourselves as to the
actual diversity of performing styles that one would actually be exposed to
in the past. The argument is that those different styles in, say, orchestral
conducting were able to develop and survive because they evolved, to a large
extent, in isolation. A corollary of that argument is that, as a listener, one
would be unlikely to encounter many of those styles - unless one lived at
a cultural nodal point (London? Paris? New York?). And even in that case, I'd guess
that, say, European tours by the full Philadelphia Orchestra would have been rare
in the 1930s.
So, living in the times, one might have a very different perspective on
the range of performance styles. The paradox is that the increased ease of
communication which allows us to sample those styles is also accused of being
the source of greater homogeneity now. Any performing musician
has access to those recordings - some might argue they have too much access
and, as a result, fail to develop a personal style.
Isn't this more a matter of personal taste (in performance, not
lemon-lime vs. cherry) e.g. Toscanini's Beethoven vs Furtwangler's
Beethoven. I'll take the former every time.
This, of course, might be taken to support your argument that there's not
necessarily a more direct line to the composer in HIP performances. Of course,
Toscanini made similar statements about getting closer to the composer's
intentions (and such statements were grossly amplified and exagerrated
by the NBC PR), while at the same time modifying instrumentation where he
felt it necessary. So one could view HIP as a return of the pendulum.
>
>One or two people have drawn attention to the fact that there is a
>growing (and, IMHO, welcome) plurality within the authenticity
>movement
>regarding those very decisions of tempo, articulation, phrasing, to
>which you have referred, with some "authentic" performers in
>some ways reverting to the performing styles of the more traditional
>interpreters of this century. But if this is so, it naturally weakens
>the (IMHO already often weak) claims that adherence to what is
>"appropriate" in such matters is exclusive to, or indeed even
>characteristic of, the authenticists!
Are there really a large number of performing musicians within the
period-instrument movement who continue to refer to themselves as
"authenticists"? My impression (from well away from any centre of
activity and relying on Gramophone, BBC mag, NY Times and the occasional
Brit paper review) is that such claims are very rarely made, and their
absurdity is widely realised. Aren't you fighting a battle that was
won in the 80s?
As to the programming of the early classicists for larger, modern
orchestras - that is a matter, surely, for those orchestras. The
LA Phil continues to play Haydn and Mozart symphonies. If the conductor
chooses to slim down the orchestra to 2-3 desks of strings, then that's
his choice. He's not being forced to conform to a period instrumentation
"norm" any more than the massed strings of the 50s were being forced to
conform to a 20th-century romantic-classicists norm. One can describe it
as conforming to the fashion of the times - but when wasn't that the
case?
>
>Indeed, I would go so far as to say that _if only_ old-instrument
>exponents _did_ use "tempi, articulation, phrasing" that _are_
>_appropriate_ to the music, a far stronger case for the use of such
>instruments might be made!
>
>>To take but one example, for brevity's sake, since a case could be made
>>for each old instrument, the case of the cornetto.
>
>I don't consider this to be a good example, as most people consider
>cornetti to be different instruments altogether, with no modern
>equivalent in a symphony orchestra.
On the contrary, I think this is a good example of one of the
great advantages of the curent HIP movement. The fact that these
obsolete (formerly-obsolete?) and previously-unobtainable instruments
are being constructed and used in performance means that music which
was simply never performed before is now becoming accessible. And even
if there is now way that one can guarantee that those reconstructions are
_exactly_ what would have been used in the original performances of, say,
the Medici Intermedii, they're going to be a lot closer than throwing
a modern symphony orchestra at that music. In those cases, one must concede
that the HIP performance gives not an exact copy, but a closer line
to the original.
Another illuminating historical reconstruction is the In Sei Voci
performance of the Allegri Miserere - the added ornamentation certainly
makes the piece more spectacular and accords more with the historical
descriptions of performances. Now, since I'm not an historian, I have no
means of knowing how accurate is the historical research on that
ornamentation - but I'm willing to take their research on trust until
it might be proven false.
[... snip ...]
>
>Regarding your implication that only such orchestrations ought to be
>listened to in performances on modern instruments: I do feel there is
>absolutely no reason for this. For one thing, the
>chief differences that strike _me_ lie in performing styles rather
>than in the sounds of the different instruments per se, particularly in the
>symphonic repertoire. For another, surely there is no need
>to relinquish the enrichment of many years of evolution, cross-fertilisation
>(between different regions and different periods, and in both
>directions) of the performing traditions of earlier music associated
>with great performers of the past, that are part of our heritage
>as the musicans and music-lovers of today.
I'd argue that that heritage is not being lost, and that the cross-fertilisation
is still very much continuing. The HIP movement is clearly larger and,
perhaps, more organised than previous changes in direction in musical
performance, but that must reflect present-day communication and transport.
I don't see its effects as a destruction of a previous mode of performance,
but rather as a diversification, an addition to musical culture.
Neill Reid - i...@dowland.caltech.edu
[.. snip ..]
Beth Garfinkel
In <34178E...@adnc.com> Ramon Khalona <rkha...@adnc.com> writes:
>Also, I might note that the fact that many keyboard artists might prefer
>to play a composer like Bach on the piano, rather than on the
>harpsichord, does not mean that the former is better than the latter,
>but I would venture the opinion that the modern piano can make Bach
>sound wonderful and that, in the final analysis, is enough of a
>justification to favor the piano. It is possible to have different
>tastes, you know.
The reason that many keyboard artists might prefer to play Bach on a
piano rather than a harpsichord is that the artists in question happen
to be PIANISTS. A modern piano is about as different from a harpsichord
as it is from a tracker organ, and it takes about as much work to be
able to make the switch successfully. If Bella Davidovitch (assuming
she's still alive) were to take up harpsichord, she'd have to learn an
awful lot of stuff from scratch. So she's more likely to get good
results by playing Bach on the piano than on the harpsichord. I
personally feel that Bach, and Couperin, and William Byrd, and
Michelangelo Rossi, to name a few, are better served by the harpsichord.
This is why I am a harpsichordist and not a pianist.
Beth Garfinkel
In <3416AB...@pilot.msu.edu> Nathan Eberhardt <eber...@pilot.msu.edu> writes:
> Some of Bach's
>music for keyboard in fact seems to be more fitting for modern piano
>than for harpsichord or early piano. Sometimes music seems to come
>alive on modern instruments, sometimes not. One simply must refrain
>from making such generalizations promoted as fact. Opinions on what
>instruments work better in certain instances is fine.
Such as? I'm highly curious about this.
Stephen Birkett
Nathan Eberhardt (eber...@pilot.msu.edu) wrote:
: You seem to be stating the following as *facts*:
: ...
I won't repeat your attempt at paraphrasing my comments...what you suggest
is quite incorrect and not at all what I said. I really don't see any
point in continuing any discourse with you on this topic...the famous
Monty Python sketch about self defence when attacked by an assailant with
a banana comes to mind. Your responses are so out to lunch it would be a
waste of time to continue. I have never seen anyone as adept as you are at
utilizing specious argument.
My views are generally well-known after many posts on these subjects on
several newsgroups. On one point I will risk correcting your paraphrasing,
as succinctly as possible, so that you might be able to follow:
**************************************************************************
I fully support the view that performances on both early and modern pianos
have merits. These are entirely different endeavors with different
objectives. The former aims to re-create the original conception as
closely as possible in our time. The latter, whether or not the modern
pianist admits it, is a transferral, or re-working, of the conception, to
the context of our era.
**************************************************************************
End of discussion with you....unless of course you care to enlighten us
about the early pianos in your experience...but I doubt you can...
Stephen Birkett
Nathan Eberhardt (eber...@pilot.msu.edu) wrote:
: ... I also stand by what I said, and that
: my comments have background in information I've read and the
: experience I have playing on new and old instruments.
:
Which old instruments have you had experience with? Your reluctance to
mention anything specific puts a question on the value of your
observations (there are a lot of bad early pianos out there, and not many
high quality ones), and also on your claim to experience at all.
Beth Garfinkel
In <34171c21...@news.erols.com> sct...@erols.com writes:
>a4...@aol.com (A440A) wrote:
>>
>>Frank Cone writes:
>>>As this thread continues, it is becoming increasingly clear that >the
>>anti-period instrumentalists are unaware of the point of >historically
>>informed performance practice. It is not just a >matter of using the
>>correct instrument for the correct piece, >but also using more appropriate
>>tempi, articulation, phrasing, >fingering, breathing, etc.
>I've always wanted to hear a period instrument performance of
>Copland's Third Symphony or Bernstein's Chichester Psalms.
And I've always wanted to hear a period performance of P.D.Q. Bach's
"The Seasonings".
Stephen Birkett
Ramon Khalona (rkha...@adnc.com) wrote:
: Would you please cite a sonically and, better yet, MUSICALLY satisfying
: performance/recording of Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' sonata on a period
: piano? Here's an instance, IMHO, where the period instrument is
: deficient to create the sonorities and meet the demands of this
: challenging work, but I await your response with interest.
I enjoy a good discussion/debate/or whatever...it's nice to talk with
someone reasonable such as yourself (mentioning no other names of course).
I cannot cite such a recording, unfortunately ..as far as I know none
exists. Until very recently no adequate piano for the Hammerklavier even
existed (6.5 octaves).
On the contrary, this work demands the sonorities of the early piano to a
*huge* extent. We only think it *needs* the modern piano because we
"learned" that in our music courses...you know the nonsense, Beethoven
way ahead of his time etc. etc. These oft-repeated chestnuts stem from a
lack of understanding and modern arrogance...a bad combination. This work
absolutely fits a big Romantic piano perfectly...the lightening Viennese
action makes short work of the "difficulties". The overall sonority is
quite big enough, once we get out of our minds the pervasive aural image
of the modern piano (admittedly not easy). It is the wide palette of
tonal colours that makes the Hammerklavier, not its sheer tonal power, which
soon becomes wearing...hence the extreme difficulty associated with this
sonata by the modern pianist. (Some pianists even go so far as to say
Beethoven was senile or stupid and didn't understand the piano.)
The same is to be said of romantic works...the further we progress into
this period, the more composers *rely* on the colours and sonorities of
the piano as an integral part of their conception. The more these works
demand the right piano, or (as the early 20th C pianists fully understood)
adaptation. A work such as Kreisleriana is a parody of the original when
played on the modern piano. Without some appropriate adaptation to hint at
the missing tonal colour, Schumann's fantastic world is quite submerged.
Modern pianists (many) are particularly guilty of this type of bland
playing, with their stuck up attitudes and Urtexts that they follow like
biblical texts. Why do you think Horowitz in Scriabin sounds so
spectacular?...how many contemporary pianists sound like that?
: Also, I might note that the fact that many keyboard artists might prefer
: to play a composer like Bach on the piano, rather than on the
: harpsichord, does not mean that the former is better than the latter,
: but I would venture the opinion that the modern piano can make Bach
: sound wonderful and that, in the final analysis, is enough of a
: justification to favor the piano.
:
Bach on the modern piano...nothing wrong with that. It works if done
right. I used to play it for years. Francois Couperin too. Even Louis
Couperin. Fun stuff. In fact I specialized at one time in performing
Baroque music on the (modern) piano. This is no justification to favour
the modern piano, though, over a period instrument. Neither is better nor
worse...they are different endeavors with different objectives.
fc...@pe.net
Thank you for your lengthy, yet thoughtful reply.
You are right in that composers were frequently dissatisfied with
performances of their music. But why were they unhappy? Was it due to the
lack of a modern piano or a modern orchestra? Obviously not. To cite only
two examples, Bach was frequently unhappy with not only the number of
instrumentalists and singers availble to him, but also their quality as
well. The other example that comes to mind is Palestrina. His choirs were
frequently riddled with inept singers. He couldn't outwardly complain
because the singers were a product of the nepotism of the time. One
doesn't bite the Pope's hand while kissing his ring! These two examples
are a far cry from jumping to the conclusion that composers were unhappy
because of the inadequacy of the instruments they were using. If you had
other examples in mind when you wrote that statement, I'll be glad to
read them.
Your statement that we need to interpret Beethoven based on our
understanding of Bruckner is incredible, to say the least. Why would you
need to, in the first place? Can't Beethoven speak for himself? To answer
my own question, sadly, no. He needs interpreters, both conductors and
musicians. Those interpreters should, I feel, carry out the composer's
wishes as closely as is possible. It is a responsibility to the geniuses
of the past. If you decide that Beethoven should be played contrary to
what we know about Beethoven's own performances, then you are setting
yourself above Beethoven in the genius department. Claiming a tradition
is certainly no excuse for committing cultural barbarism. This is the
height of hubis.
It reminds me of a probably apocryphal story concerning Stokowski. When
he was reproached for a laggardly tempo while conducting a piece by
Josquin, he is alleged to have stated "This is Renaissance music. You
cannot play it too slowly." You really cannot argue with prejudice except
to state alternative views.
One of these days we really must address why the music community
considers that music history starts with Bach (or, if they are feeling
especially generous, Monteverdi). Anyone earlier gets shoved into the
early music ghetto.
There have been extremes in the early music movement. Sticking with
Beethoven for the moment, musicologists are now theorizing that Beethoven
was reading the wrong side of the weight on the metronome. Even having
said that, I do prefer the effort of rethinking the old war-horses rather
than taking inherited wisdom such as yours that states that every
generation music should get slower until it comes to a halt on its own or
dies of ennui.
I disagree with your statement that you are not anti-period instrument
(well, not you exactly). If you'll recall, this thread was started by a
gentleman who remembered a flawed (to his ears) period instrument
performance and postulated that period instrument performers were getting
paid inflated fees for performing on inferior instruments. As the thread
continued, he further stated that all modern instruments were superior to
their older counterparts. My statements about the cornetto were fine in
the context that I was trying to make: that some older instruments simply
do not have adequate modern counterparts. BTW I am very aware of what a
cornetto is and how it should be used. The instigator of this thread
gleefully ignored the chidings of others who corrected his "facts." To
this end this thread has become a debate of piano vs. fortepiano (S.
Birkett), of modern violin vs. Baroque violin (M. Dudek). I'm being a bit
more fundamental in that I think period performance and the use of
appropriate period instruments reflect, at its essence, a search for the
truth. To quote the late musicologist Thurston Dart, in his book "The
Interpretation of Music," "...until they [period instruments or
reproductions] are once more made available-modern copies in the hands of
proficient musicians-music is the poorer for their loss, and our ideas of
the music of men like Monterverdi, Gabrieli and Schutz must remain quite
imperfect."
Frank
Haig Utidjian
Fang-lin Hou wrote:
>I will say, YMMV, even in things like understanding what
>the current "performance practice" movement is about.
Surely. But you will recall I was taking issue with a _particular_
statement made by a recent fellow poster that suggested something to the
effect that exponents of old instruments were particularly preoccupied
with the use of "appropriate" tempi, phrasing, etc., in a manner which
(to my mind) implied that such exponents were (1) alone in their
desire to employ "appropriate" tempi, etc., and (2) more successful in
their quest for "appropritae" tempi, etc.; I disagree with both these
implications. I don't think those of us performing on modern
instruments (and our predecessors) are any less eager to perform
music in an appropriate manner, nor that we are less effective in
so doing. That's all!
Please refer to my next posting regarding my use of the admittedly
far from euphonious word "authenticist"!
Best wishes,
Haig.
--
http://www-control.eng.cam.ac.uk/hu/hu.html
Simon Roberts
Isn't it about time "final thoughts" was dropped from the title of this
thread....?
Simon
aperk...@hotmail.com
Nathan Eberhardt wrote:
>
> Stephen Birkett wrote:
> >
> > Nathan Eberhardt (eber...@pilot.msu.edu) wrote:
> > : You seem to be stating the following as *facts*:
> > : ...
> > I won't repeat your attempt at paraphrasing my comments...what you suggest
> > is quite incorrect and not at all what I said. I really don't see any
> > point in continuing any discourse with you on this topic...the famous
> > Monty Python sketch about self defence when attacked by an assailant with
> > a banana comes to mind.
> a "chicken/egg" hypothesis for pianos in history etc...
> > Your responses are so out to lunch it would be a
> > waste of time to continue. I have never seen anyone as adept as you are at
> > utilizing specious argument.
> Feel free to stop posting.
> >
> > My views are generally well-known after many posts on these subjects on
> > several newsgroups. On one point I will risk correcting your paraphrasing,
> > as succinctly as possible, so that you might be able to follow:
> >
> > **************************************************************************
> > I fully support the view that performances on both early and modern pianos
> > closely as possible in our time. The latter, whether or not the modern
> > pianist admits it, is a transferral, or re-working, of the conception, to
> > the context of our era.
> > **************************************************************************
> >
> > End of discussion with you....unless of course you care to enlighten us
> > about the early pianos in your experience...but I doubt you can...
> I'm not immediately impressed or intimidated by the fact that you work
> on fortepianos. Finding out who's been acquainted with more period
> instruments
> isn't going to help either. Speaking as someone of authority and stating
> controversial
> issues factually is making you look foolish. The painstaking process
> you went
> through to formulate the above *******statement****** is not at all
> representative
> of the *facts* you claimed in your earlier posts, nor does it obfuscate
> them.
> I'm not really interested in getting into a further pissing match with
> you and I hope
> no one will hold their breath waiting for you to substantiate your
> claims on
> "chicken/egg" hypotheses on the history of the piano and your ludicrous
> blanket-statement generalities below stated as fact:
>
> 1) The early piano *In This Repertoire* is a clear winner,
>
> 2) the music fits it
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
> I'd like to know how you can prove that as "fact" that
> relevant pianists can achieve more musical expression on a period
> instrument
> in the Moonlight, Waldstein, or Hammerklavier, for instance. Pointing
> out there is a little tremolo someplace in the score or fingering
> someplace in the score that would be more advantageous on a period
> instrument
> won't prove this. In fact, I think your "opinion stated as fact" is
> actually
> the minority view.
Very well put, Nathan.
--
Adam Perkins
--
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Haig Utidjian
I. Neill Reid wrote (in a most interesting posting, from which
nonetheless I have been obliged to make extensive excisions):
>first, there appears to be general agreement amongst most musical writers
> that the range of styles amongst _modern_ symphonic orchestras is much
> reduced nowadays.
Unfortunately there is already a lot of truth in this.
>Putting this together, I wonder whether we're not fooling ourselves as to the
> actual diversity of performing styles that one would actually be exposed to
> in the past. The argument is that those different styles in, say, orchestral
> conducting were able to develop and survive because they evolved, to a large
> extent, in isolation.
Actually, my own view is that all this has far more to do with styles
of orchestral playing than with conducting styles - conductors have, in
general, been very much a law unto themselves, and do not readily fall
into "schools" to the degree that orcestral playing might. Moreover,
we have to be careful as to what we mean by "conducting styles". There
have, for instance, been conductors (such as, IMHO, Toscanini) whose conducting
styles (in the sense of what they did with their arms etc.) were
actually rather at variance with their _musical_ tastes and
proclivities (a source of constant conflict and frustration, from what
I gather). Increasingly, there might be some truth in the claim that,
especially with very limited rehearsal time, many conductors to a large degree
"accept" the sound offered by an orchestra (with a sense of gratitude
or of resignation, as the case may be) -- particularly as far as
wind-playing is concerned (especially with _visiting_ conductors, which
very many conductors in effect are). But I am digressing from
your main points -- sorry!
>The paradox is that the increased ease of
> communication which allows us to sample those styles is also
> accused
>of being the source of greater homogeneity now.
Yes! "Progress" is indeed a double-edged sword!
But I would like to make the following point: I'd much prefer to be
able to go out and hear a concert of Bach played in the style of the
Adolf Busch players, than have to stay at home and play my CDs. The
fact is if I see that Brandenburg 1 is going to be played next week
somewhere I can be 90% certain _how_ it's going to be (unless it's
some sort of Eastern European ensemble). Perhaps we should be grateful
that we have access to all those valuable recordings, but they're no
substitute to the _living_ tradition, IMHO. It would be far better
to have the real thing than the preserved testimony of inanimate recordings.
> Isn't this more a matter of personal taste (in performance, not
>lemon-lime vs. cherry) e.g. Toscanini's Beethoven vs Furtwangler's
>Beethoven.
There is of course a very important element of that. But in the past
they both existed, and much else besides. Now we seem to be getting clones
of one extreme, and relatively little else. I must make another qualification,
however: I am not saying one ought to _imitate_ Furtwangler, or indeed
Toscanini for that matter. I am merely saying that the sort of
_diversity_ which existed when two such different musicians could
coexist, instead of being fostered, is largely discouraged. And, thus,
whereas in the past one heard e.g. Beethoven played at a variety of
different tempi (sometimes within the same performance! :-))) ), now
it is _extremely_ rare to hear tempi nearer the Klemperer end of the
spectrum, as it were.
A year and a half ago Ilya Musin, the distinguished Russian conducting
teacher (already in his early nineties), came and gave a concert with
the RPO in London. It started with a _very_ remarkable performance of
Mozart's G-Minor symphony (No. 40, not the "little" one). Two days
later, instead of commenting on how wonderfully fascinating it was
to hear Mozart interpreted in a manner that has become quite rare
nowadays and which shed uncommon insights upon the music, and gave a
"different" point of view, at least one national newspaper described
the performance as "an ugly phantom from the past", a "dinosaur", or
words to that effect. People have been brainwashed to _such_ an extent already,
thinking that it's got to be fast, light, with few desks of strings,
dry, glissando-less, etc., that they couldn't open their minds sufficiently
to enjoy anything different! I find that profoundly regrettable.
>So one could view HIP as a return of the pendulum.
Again, to a large degree I agree. It seems to me that man always turns
to the past in search of something new, and is fascinated by what he
believes to have been "lost" or just on the point of being lost. I must
confess myself that when performances on old instruments were
relatively unusual, I was very much more interested in them. Now that
they have entered the mainstream, much of the magic appears to have
gone, together with that sense of freshness of discovery. I think
within the next few years people will be _craving_ for performances of
Bach and Handel in the "lost" styles of the first quarter or so of the
twentieth century!
> Are there really a large number of performing musicians within the
>period-instrument movement who continue to refer to themselves as
>"authenticists"?
<LOL> I doubt it! I use it simply because "period" instruments has
quite unfortunate, unintentional connotations (!), whilst I could not
possibly call them "historically-informed", since I would not for one
moment wish to imply that I consider Weingartner or Markevich or Giulini less
historically informed than Harnoncourt, Norrington or Gardiner! So I
hope you will forgive my continued use of the term "authenticists".
Perhaps I ought to use "exponents of old instruments" instead, but then
it's not so much the old instruments themselves (and indeed they are more
often modern copies anyway) but what appears to be a set of
_stylistic_ traits one tends to associate with those people who
_usually_ work with "period" instruments.
>One can describe it
>as conforming to the fashion of the times - but when wasn't that the
>case?
This is a very fair point. But it seems to me that these days there's
a strong (and not always correct) underlying assumption that certain
ways of doing things are not merely "unfashionable" but in fact in some
sense plainly _wrong_, and at _variance_ with the musical intentions
of the composer. One gentleman a couple of postings ago was even
saying something like "if you've got to hear Bach on modern
instruments then at least you should confine yourself to modern
reorchestrations and transcriptions", or words to that effect! Another
was claiming there is a "correct" instrument for each period.
Choosing what one prefers personally, opting for or against the
fashion is one thing, but blatantly doing something that is generally
thought to be "incorrect" and "unfaithful" to the composer quite
another. So it seems to me we must either question the truth of
statements to the effect that one way of doing things is "right" and
another is "wrong", or, if we do agree that a certain way of doing
things is indeed wrong, accept the implications. Now it seems to
me personally that, with a few exceptions -- such as in the case of a
particularly outlandish (though quite refreshing) claim that e.g. the
Bach B-Minor Mass ought to be sung wit one singer per part -- many such
assumptions have been allowed to pass unchallenged.
(Incidentally, I rather fancy the idea of Bach with solo voices, and
am hoping to perform the Mass in that way in the not too distant future! But
not with "early-music"-type singers, but rather with more soloistic
(but young) voices. We shall see!)
> On the contrary, I think this is a good example of one of the
>great advantages of the curent HIP movement. The fact that these
>obsolete (formerly-obsolete?) and previously-unobtainable instruments
>are being constructed and used in performance
(Which agree that this is an extremely good thing -- BTW Neill is
referring to cornetti here.)
>The fact that these
>obsolete (formerly-obsolete?) and previously-unobtainable instruments
>are being constructed and used in performance means that music which
>was simply never performed before is now becoming accessible.
I don't quite agree here. Monteverdi's Vespers and Orfeo were
performed _and_ recorded (at least in the UK) even
when cornetti were not readily available. All sorts of alternatives
have been used -- trumpets (wide off the mark, I agree), oboes (not really
satisfactory either), or clarinets in E flat (not all that bad, but
with unfortunately modern associations for most listeners, with
Schoenberg, Suk etc.!). Still, the music was great enough to take it!
Of course, the sound of the cornetti is quite magical, and it's _so_
much better with the real thing! (But I do not feel the same when it
comes to the string section of a Mozart symphony; and I do think we
need to distinguish between instruments that are simply different and
those with modern counterparts in the orchestra.)
> Another illuminating historical reconstruction is the In Sei Voci
>performance of the Allegri Miserere - the added ornamentation certainly
>makes the piece more spectacular and accords more with the historical
>descriptions of performances.
I don't know the particular reconstruction to which you refer,
unfortunately. But I have already pointed out that I consider insight
into ornamentation to be one of the benefits from the authenticity
movement. (In at least two previous postings, I referred to the
advantages of starting trills on a long apoggiature
on the upper auxiliary note, which, esp. if also done a third or sixth
apart, as frequently required in, for instance, M.-A. Charpentier, adds an
additional, _harmonic_ dimension of expression to what would have
otherwise been a purely horizontal little embellishment. So I am
surprised you are preaching to the converted, as it
were. There are several good things we have learnt from the
authenticity movement, IMHO, some of which I had acknoweldged in my
posting a little over a month ago... so please do not think that I am
somehow indiscriminately opposed to the movement or to all its exponents!
>Now, since I'm not an historian, I have no
>means of knowing how accurate is the historical research on that
>ornamentation - but I'm willing to take their research on trust until
>it might be proven false.
Again I do not know your example. But there's a very interesting book,
part of which I read over ten years ago, on ornamentation in Bach's
time. It was written by a chap called Frederick Neuman or Newman or
something like that... very detailed and (seemingly) quite rigorous.
Rather more reliable than Donington etc., I think. And I am under the
impression that he's written another one since... But one of his main
conclusions was that in many ways there was no such thing as standard
practice, with a _lot_ of local variations (if you will forgive the
pun!).
>I'd argue that that heritage is not being lost
You will, however, agree that it would be a pity if we
confined mdern-instrument performances of Bach to Stokowski
transcriptions, and that modern-instrument performances of Bach (in
the styles and traditions associated with modern instruments) are part
of our heritage -- which is precisely what I was claiming -- will you not?!
>I don't see its effects as a destruction of a previous mode of performance,
>but rather as a diversification, an addition to musical culture.
I hope that you are right.
Best wishes,
Haig Utidjian.
--
http://www-control.eng.cam.ac.uk/hu/hu.html
Haig Utidjian
Frank Cone wrote:
>Was it due to the
>lack of a modern piano or a modern orchestra? Obviously not.
I do not find that obvious... but nor am I claiming the opposite...
All too often one gets the feeling that
what people like Bach or Beethoven were writing was straining the
media at their disposal to the ultimate point and beyond, in _several_
senses. Now I _would_ agree that this sense of strain is an essential
ingredient, and must not be removed. No -- what I was rather thinking
of was that, very often the masterpieces of certain composers were
simply not understood by their own contemporaries, and it doesn't
_necessarily_ seem appropriate to emulate (what are _held_ to be) the
performing styles and the aesthetics of their contemporaries.
>These two examples
>are a far cry from jumping to the conclusion that composers were unhappy
>because of the inadequacy of the instruments they were using.
I have never criticised old instruments for their "inadequacy" -- indeed,
I have never criticised _instruments_, old or new, for inadequacy or
any other evil! I may indeed have been critical
of the proclivities of some of the people _playing_ old instruments.
Do please ascertain this point if you wish, by dint of referring to
all my previous postings on this thread and its predecessor (from July
onwards)!
>Your statement that we need to interpret Beethoven based on our
>understanding of Bruckner is incredible, to say the least.
It is incredible for the simple and very good reason that I did not
_make_ such a statement! What I did say is that there is no need to _erase_ our
knowledge of e.g. slow movements by Bruckner which may have been inspired and
influenced by a particular movement by Beethoven when we are
interpreting the latter! For one thing, this shows us, amongst other
things, how Bruckner heard it... just as, for better or worse, it
could be said that hearing Respighi's orchestration of Bach tells us
how Resphighi heard Bach. These things may be interesting and relevant,
because although Respighi was living in a different time than Bach,
and when arguably different tastes, fashions, even aesthetics,
obtained, nonetheless whatever it is that Respighi latched on to is in fact
a facet _inherent_ to Bach's music -- and it won't do any harm to look
at a masterpiece from several different angles. Different angles need
not necessarily be mutually exclusive. Now I do not think there is
anything "incredible" or unreasonable in that at all. But the
Bruckner-Beethoven link is a more important example to me than the
Respighi-Bach one, quite simply because (1) Bruckner's work is so much
more haunting to me than Respighi's, and (2) the links are in a sense
built into the music -- I am referring to Beethoven's music. I would
therefore find it difficult and even painful to try and somehow disown
the experience of having heard Bruckner when I'm
listening to Beethoven, or (especially) playing Beethoven. Why should
I impose a sort of musical naivete' upon myself? This
association was of course not _intended_ by Beethoven (how could it?), nor
was it _relied upon_ by Beethoven, but Beethoven is _enriched_
thereby, IMHO! It doesn't detract from late Beethoven's genius if we are
reminded how very forward-looking and indeed prophetic his musical
idiom was, and this is something that comes out of his own music,
without any self-conscious effort on our part. When I perform _any_
music, I like to draw on my knowledge and love of _all_ music,
whole-heartedly and whole-mindedly, rather than somehow try to reduce
myself into a narrower frame of mind, which, in contrast, woudl indeed
necessitate the exertion of great and self-conscious effort.
>Why would you
>need to, in the first place?
I am not saying I _need_ to, but if I _have_ had the good fortune of
having heard music more recent than Beethoven's but in many ways _related_ to
it, why should I prevent this experience from illuminating the way in which
I look at Beethoven's own music? Indeed, _could_ I do otherwise even
if I wished? Why should I not allow myself to be equally
informed by music earlier _and_ later than Beethoven's? Why shut my eyes
and ears, why erase things from my mind, when in fact they can (IMHO)
only _enrich_ my understanding and that of the listener?
>Can't Beethoven speak for himself?
Of course he can!
>To answer
>my own question, sadly, no. He needs interpreters, both conductors and
>musicians.
Perhaps yes, perhaps no... Nobody is stopping you from taking a score
and deriving pleasure by reading it quietly whilst seated in a
comfortable armchair... that way you are using only yourself as an
interpreter (although _how_ you hear things in your head is bound
to be affected to some degree by your previous experiences
of others' interpretations even so)! But of course, it is even
better to hear the sounds physically, especially
when interpreted by like-minded musicians of sensitivity, maturity and
insight.
>Those interpreters should, I feel, carry out the composer's
>wishes as closely as is possible.
I don't think anybody would willingly do otherwise... but, of course,
there are instances when the composer's own instructions may seem
in some ways self-contradictory, etc.. Naturally discretion has to be
exercised, but our whole raison d'e^tre is to serve the music.
>If you decide that Beethoven should be played contrary to
>what we know about Beethoven's own performances, then you are setting
>yourself above Beethoven in the genius department.
Ah -- that I disagree with. Do you really think Beethoven would have
wished future interpreters to imitate his own performances? Or
Stravinsky would have wished us to play his works in the way in which
he conducted them himself? Besides, we don't really know all that much about
Beethoven's own performances. We do now that he couldn't hear what was
going on during some of his own performances, and indeed that at the
premie`re of the Ninth he didn't realise the piece finished... it was
the contralto soloist that gently drew his attention to the fact that the
orchestra had stopped playing, and that the audience had started
applause. A very moving story, but one which hardly commends Beethoven
as the ideal interpreter of his own music in such
circumstances. Indeed, it is comparatively rare for composers to be
ideal exponents of their own music. Besides, when it comes to _tempi_,
these depend on the acoustics, the size of the orchestra, and many
other factors which cannot be foreseen a priori and once-and-for-all.
>Claiming a tradition
>is certainly no excuse for committing cultural barbarism.
I disapporve most strongly of cultural barbarism, no matter who its
perpetrator!
>This is the
>height of hubis.
Hubris? Hubris and barbarism are of course different misdemeanours, but I
disapprove of both of them! :-)
>It reminds me of a probably apocryphal story concerning Stokowski. When
>he was reproached for a laggardly tempo while conducting a piece by
>Josquin, he is alleged to have stated "This is Renaissance music. You
>cannot play it too slowly."
How refreshing that a major symphonic conductor was performing
Josquin... how many do you know _nowadays_ who do so?
>You really cannot argue with prejudice except
>to state alternative views.
But Stokowski's prejudice to my mind is no worse than being told "you
ought to conduct the B-Minor Mass ritornelli much faster, old chap -- all
this was supposed to sound like a dance"!
>One of these days we really must address why the music community
>considers that music history starts with Bach (or, if they are feeling
>especially generous, Monteverdi).
I don't know of anyone who does that, and I for one don't! I have always
enjoyed conducting, and singing, Fairfax, Ludford, Browne, Sheppard, Taverner,
Byrd, Tallis, as well as much earlier and much later music!
>Anyone earlier gets shoved into the
>early music ghetto.
On the contrary -- there's the increasing feeling that unless you're
prepared to spend weeks and weeks reading Quantz etc., you really ought to keep
your hands off Bach and leave it to the specialists who know what
they're doing! The leader of a certain German baroque-music
group who suggested, in an interview not long ago, that an English
colleague of his who doesn't speak German ought not to play Bach --
_how_ could read all the original sources without fluency in German?!
>Even having
>said that, I do prefer the effort of rethinking the old war-horses rather
>than taking inherited wisdom such as yours
<ROFL> When you refer to "inherited wisdom such as yours", are you
referring to wisdom I may have inherited from others, or wisdom which
I may already have succeeded in bequeathing to others?!!!! <LOL>
>inherited wisdom such as yours that states that every
>generation music should get slower until it comes to a halt on its own or
>dies of ennui.
<still ROFL> Is that what you felt at the end of one of my
performances, then?!!!
>I disagree with your statement that you are not anti-period instrument
>(well, not you exactly).
I'm confused! What do you mean by "not you exactly"? :-)
>If you'll recall, this thread was started by a
>gentleman who remembered a flawed (to his ears) period instrument
>performance and postulated that period instrument performers were getting
>paid inflated fees for performing on inferior instruments.
I have never commented on that gentleman's views! I have confined my
comments to the views of _other_ gentlemen, and have always striven to
make it clear _which_ gentleman's views I have been commenting on in
each instance!
>My statements about the cornetto were fine in
>the context that I was trying to make: that some older instruments simply
>do not have adequate modern counterparts.
I agree that the cornetto does not have modern counterparts (adequate
or otherwise). But I don't think this really sheds light in discussing
the relative merits of a Mozart symphony played by, say, the Orchestra
of the Age of Enlightenement as opposed to the Vienna Philharmonic
Orchestra.
>BTW I am very aware of what a
>cornetto is and how it should be used.
:-) I merely added the explanatory comment in my recent posting in case
not all readers were similarly aware! And I for one cannot claim to know how
it should be played -- I've never touched one! So you needn't have
felt slighted in any way, and I am sorry if you did!
Best wishes,
Haig
--
http://www-control.eng.cam.ac.uk/hu/hu.html
A de Muynck / Joyce Maier
Stephen Birkett <sbir...@uoguelph.ca> wrote in article
<5v9i2c$9...@ccshst05.cs.uoguelph.ca>...
> I cannot cite such a recording, unfortunately ..as far as I know
none
> exists. Until very recently no adequate piano for the
Hammerklavier even
> existed (6.5 octaves).
>
> On the contrary, this work demands the sonorities of the early
piano to a
> *huge* extent. We only think it *needs* the modern piano because
we
> "learned" that in our music courses...you know the nonsense,
Beethoven
> way ahead of his time etc. etc.
Yet Beethoven himself once said that the Hammerklavier sonata was
something that would be too hard a nut to crack for the pianists
of his time. He expected that it would take 25 years or so into
the future to play it. Furthermore, he was always unsatisfied with
his pianos, not only because they sounded too soft to his bad
ears, also because he wanted another sound, not the sound of a
harp (his words). He once called the fortepiano a "clavecimbalo
miserabile".
Regards,
Joyce Maier (ad...@pi.net).
fc...@pe.net
Since when was truth of any nature determined by a majority vote?
Frank
P.S. Please don't encourage the name-calling, encourage civilized
behavior!
F
Den Ciul & Dawn Lyons
Hi,
I have been following this thread fitfully and I have not noticed
mention of the one most important aspects of playing "historical"
instruments (for me, anyway).
Playing a copy of a Stein (1785) Fortepiano (with a Viennese action,
Zuckermann Harpsichords design by Philip Belt and David Way, built in
my brother Tom's shop) has made significant changes in my
interpretation of Mozart. I feel that the fortepiano has "informed"
me regarding the interpretation of Mozart and others of his time. The
Viennese pianos of M's day feel and sound drasticaly different, of
course, than a modern piano. However, when I play M on a modern
piano, I can use the experience from the fortepiano to bring a
different approach to the music. Other composers, such as Kuhlau,
Dussek, Clementi, have a new meaning to me altogether. Their music
always seemed lightweight and trivial (compared to Mozart and
Beethoven), but their works have a new significance and much greater
interest on a "historical" instrument. Their music really comes alive
on the fortepiano.
As an example, I now use almost no sustain (loud) pedal on 18th
century misic on a modern piano. The name of the third pedall on the
piano - loud - is clearly a holdover from fortepianos. FP have a
faster attack and sharper decay envelope than any modern piano. The
loud pedal on a FP undamps all the strings in the same manner as the
modern one but the effect is different. There is a great deal more
sympathetic resonance and a clear increase in volume in the FP with
none of the muddiness of a heavy right foot on a modern instrument.
This effect cannot be duplicated on a modern piano, but clever use of
the middle pedal can mimic the effect on some passages with many
repeated notes. Another trick is to hold down the "una corda/soft"
pedal all the time. This has the effect of shortening the dynamic
range of the piano but makes me work much harder to get the dynamic
shadings that I like. The overall effect is to lighten and clean up
textures. Fortepianos are bright and clear instruments. They don't
record very well though, which is why they sometimes sound like bad
uprights.
I still occasionally play Bach, Mozart, etc. on the modern piano even
though I have access to many historical instruments - but I play very
differently than I used to, before my experience with the original
instruments.
Good fortune,
Den Ciul
--
Claviers Baroques - Upper Canada Historical Keyboards
Dawn Lyons and Den Ciul-- hps...@interlog.com
109 Fuller Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6R 2C4
(416) 538-3062 FAX (416) 538-3376
Canadian Agents for Zuckermann Harpsichords Int'l
Web Page at: http://www.interlog.com/~hpschd
"Harpsichord Wranglers to the Stars"
I. Neill Reid
In article <5va2dp$1cj$1...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, h...@eng.cam.ac.uk (Haig Utidjian) writes...
>I. Neill Reid wrote
to just clarify one point
>
>> Another illuminating historical reconstruction is the In Sei Voci
>>performance of the Allegri Miserere - the added ornamentation certainly
>>makes the piece more spectacular and accords more with the historical
>>descriptions of performances.
>
>I don't know the particular reconstruction to which you refer,
>unfortunately. But I have already pointed out that I consider insight
>into ornamentation to be one of the benefits from the authenticity
>movement. (In at least two previous postings, I referred to the
>advantages of starting trills on a long apoggiature
>on the upper auxiliary note, which, esp. if also done a third or sixth
>apart, as frequently required in, for instance, M.-A. Charpentier, adds an
>additional, _harmonic_ dimension of expression to what would have
>otherwise been a purely horizontal little embellishment. So I am
>surprised you are preaching to the converted, as it
>were. There are several good things we have learnt from the
>authenticity movement, IMHO, some of which I had acknoweldged in my
>posting a little over a month ago... so please do not think that I am
>somehow indiscriminately opposed to the movement or to all its exponents!
It's 'A Sei Voci' - on Astree Auvidis. To continue preaching to the
converted, their ornamentation is taken from examples listed by
the castrato Francesco Severi in his "Salmi passaggiati". And thr
final paragraph of their notes state
"It is quite obvious, therefore, that there is no authentic (!)
version of Allegri's Miserere; the one presented here by the
members of A Sei Voci is an approach to what the work must have
been like in the 17th century, giving us an approximate idea of
the version that was to be heard in the papal chapel a few years after
the death of Gregorio Allegri."
(J. Lionnet, trans. M. Pardoe)
That is as good a summary as any of my views on the benefits of the
current HIP movement.
Neill Reid - i...@dowland.caltech.edu
Stephen Birkett
A de Muynck / Joyce Maier (ad...@pi.net) wrote:
: Yet Beethoven himself once said that the Hammerklavier sonata was
: something that would be too hard a nut to crack for the pianists
: of his time.
:
Agreed. But B was not referring to the pianos, rather the pianists...this
is quite different. Musically (and technically) the work is profoundly
ahead of its time.
: .... Furthermore, he was always unsatisfied with
: his pianos, not only because they sounded too soft to his bad
: ears, also because he wanted another sound, not the sound of a
: harp (his words). He once called the fortepiano a "clavecimbalo
: miserabile".
:
Two different things here. Dissatisfaction...yes, and he disposed of
servants at a fantastic rate, complained about everything he could, moved
dozens of times per year...this was his personality. He also
begged Nanette Streicher to let him have the "wonderful little piano
behind the door" and promised "to be more careful with that one if he could
have a second chance". Apart from his general misery, there is no
evidence that he was truly dissatisfied with the pianos of his time
(Broadwood yes, but that's a different issue).
(There is also the deafness/softness issue to complicate things, but that
has nothing to do with the quality of the pianos at that time).
Second point you make: the harp quote. You have to understand this in the
context of when he said it. It is quite a subtle dig really. At the time
he had been given the 1803 Erard. Erard was a harp maker, recently turned
piano maker, and there were a number of *serious* design problems with the
Erard piano (a very early Erard...he learned fast). Beethoven's remark is
quite understandable in that context!
Simon Roberts
c$100f7740$14746cc3@1>Distribution:
A de Muynck / Joyce Maier (ad...@pi.net) wrote:
: Yet Beethoven himself once said that the Hammerklavier sonata was
: something that would be too hard a nut to crack for the pianists
: of his time. He expected that it would take 25 years or so into
: the future to play it. Furthermore, he was always unsatisfied with
: his pianos, not only because they sounded too soft to his bad
: ears, also because he wanted another sound, not the sound of a
: harp (his words). He once called the fortepiano a "clavecimbalo
: miserabile".
All of that may be true, but it hardly follows that he would have
preferred modern pianos, with their homogenized tone and inability to
reproduce many of the effects called for by him in his scores. He may,
for instance, merely have wanted a stronger, louder, version of what he
was used to -- and a modern Steinway certainly isn't that (which isn't, of
course, to say that you shouldn't prefer listening to Beethoven played on
one).
Simon
Bill Baldwin
Simon Roberts wrote:
> All of that may be true, but it hardly follows that he would have
> preferred modern pianos, with their homogenized tone and inability to
> reproduce many of the effects called for by him in his scores. He may,
> for instance, merely have wanted a stronger, louder, version of what he
> was used to -- and a modern Steinway certainly isn't that (which isn't,
of
> course, to say that you shouldn't prefer listening to Beethoven played on
> one).
IOW, we want to avoid the following fallacy of equivocation:
MP: Beethoven wrote for instruments he didn't have at the time.
mp: Today, we have instruments Beethoven didn't have at the time.
Conclusion: Beethoven was writing for the instruments we have today.
Simon Roberts
A440A
Greetings all,
I have to step into this seemingly immortal thread here and ask a
question.
Posted earlier:
>but it hardly follows that he would have
> preferred modern pianos, with their homogenized tone and inability to
> reproduce many of the effects called for by him in his scores.
What is this "homogenized tone"? A properly voiced modern piano has a
very large range of tone, from mellow pp to brilliant FF.
I am beginning to wonder about the experiences some of the posters have.
Perhaps they are basing their opinion of the modern piano on bad pianos. (
I have customers that played for years, , unaware of what the piano could be!!)
A modern grand piano with rock-hard hammers has very little tonal range,
yes, I would say it's homogenized. A set of hammers that is poorly
prepared also has very little tonal range to offer, requiring all dynamics
to be produced by volume alone.
BUT! when you have hammers that are just right, the modern piano offers a
huge range, i.e., a large tonal palette, dependant of the force of play.
Also, the argument went through earlier that the fortepiano could
play more softly than a modern piano. This is incorrect. The fortepiano
can play more softly than a poorly regulated and voiced modern, but I have
a grand piano right here that can be played so softly that you cannot even
hear it!
Modern pianos cannot sound like the early pianos, thus, the music
played on them cannot either. The debate over whether they SHOULD is not
the same as the debate over superiority, as different people have different
criteria for what sounds good.
We are very near to releasing the "Beethoven in the Temperaments" CD.
It will be interesting to hear what people say about the combination of the
modern concert grand and 18th century temperament. The fortepiano, ( and
harpsichord) crowd has always known that the use of age-appropriate key
character is a profound necessity for this music, but the modern pianist
with experience with only one tuning system is a very limited musician.
From the liner notes, " The discussion of Temperament has been
relegated to the tall weeds for the last 100 years". This is changing, as
more technicians learn alternatives, and more electronic instruments are
sold with a variety of temperaments built in.
I will tell anybody this, if you have not heard the Classical
keyboard works performed on anything but equal temperament, you have not
yet heard the music. You have only heard the notes.
Regards to all,
Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tenn.
michel...@usa.net
Haig Utidjian writes:
> I. Neill Reid wrote (in a most interesting posting, from which
> nonetheless I have been obliged to make extensive excisions):
I will say the same, gratefully, about Mr. Utidjian's post.
> [H. U.:] But I would like to make the following point: I'd much
> prefer to be able to go out and hear a concert of Bach played in
> the style of the Adolf Busch players, than have to stay at home and
> play my CDs. The fact is if I see that Brandenburg 1 is going to be
> played next week somewhere I can be 90% certain _how_ it's going to
> be (unless it's some sort of Eastern European ensemble). Perhaps
> we should be grateful that we have access to all those valuable
> recordings, but they're no substitute to the _living_ tradition,
> IMHO. It would be far better to have the real thing than the
> preserved testimony of inanimate recordings.
That last is certainly true. But I wonder if you aren't exaggerating
the extent to which the range of performing styles has shrunk.
"Normative" performance styles are always changing, and as they
do, previously "normative" styles gradually disappear. The kind
of orchestral portamento you can hear in, say, Elgar's
recordings of his own music (and in most other orchestral
recordings from the twenties and earlier) is just about stone
dead thirty years later. For violin-lovers there is a magical
point about mid-century where "old-school" players like Huberman
and "modern" ones like Oistrakh were around at the same time,
but how typical is this? Certainly people stopped playing Bach
like Huberman long, long before anyone was doing Bach on
"period" instruments. I would love a world in which I could
hear live Bach in Huberman's style just as easily as in
Marriner's or Pinnock's, but it ain't gonna happen.
If anything, it seems to me, the range of approaches to
Bach out there is greater now than it was in the 60s and
70s when "modern" performance was the norm. The ASMF
is closer to the Busch Chamber Players than Musica Antiqua
Koeln's Bach is to [Savall's] Concert des Nations'. If you
don't believe me, check 'em out (starting with the first
movement of Concerto 6, where the tempos differ by a factor
of two or more!).
> > Isn't this more a matter of personal taste (in performance, not
> >lemon-lime vs. cherry) e.g. Toscanini's Beethoven vs Furtwangler's
> >Beethoven.
> There is of course a very important element of that. But in the
> past they both existed, and much else besides. Now we seem to be
> getting clones of one extreme, and relatively little else.
Again, I think you are exaggerating the uniformity of the
"early-music" scene. (That might be because you're in the UK--much
of the diversity there is falls out along the British/Continental
divide! Were your remarks limited to British performances they
would be all too accurate, although even that is changing.)
> And, thus,
> whereas in the past one heard e.g. Beethoven played at a variety of
> different tempi (sometimes within the same performance! :-))) ), now
> it is _extremely_ rare to hear tempi nearer the Klemperer end of the
> spectrum, as it were.
Check out Christian Thielemann's Beethoven 5 & 7 with the Philharmonia
Orchestra on DG for a *very* Klempererish first movement of the 5th,
and a lot of tempo manipulation all round. It was mostly panned by the
critics (though not, oddly, by _Gramophone_). I kind of liked it
myself, mainly for the fun of hearing someone in the late 1990s
attempting to "do stuff with tempo" _a la_ Mengelberg.
> A year and a half ago Ilya Musin, the distinguished Russian conducting
> teacher (already in his early nineties), came and gave a concert with
> the RPO in London. It started with a _very_ remarkable performance of
> Mozart's G-Minor symphony (No. 40, not the "little" one). Two days
> later, instead of commenting on how wonderfully fascinating it was
> to hear Mozart interpreted in a manner that has become quite rare
> nowadays and which shed uncommon insights upon the music, and gave a
> "different" point of view, at least one national newspaper described
> the performance as "an ugly phantom from the past", a "dinosaur", or
> words to that effect. People have been brainwashed to _such_ an extent
> already, thinking that it's got to be fast, light, with few desks
> of strings, dry, glissando-less, etc., that they couldn't open their
> minds sufficiently to enjoy anything different! I find that profoundly
> regrettable.
Agreed! At minimum it would be nice to see a reviewer, even an
unsympathetic one, feeling a duty to discuss the *tradeoffs* involved
in the loss of such a style, rather than painting a picture of
unsullied progress. (Where other than in discussions of performing
style do respected commentators still portray the passage of
time as a steady march toward better and better things?) OTOH,I think
your reference to "brainwashing" is misplaced. People tend to
prefer the manner of performance they are used to, whatever
that may be. I think this sort of reviewer is more likely simply
to be uncomfortable with an unfamiliar style than ideologically
predisposed against it via "period" propaganda (though of
course both factors might be in play).
> It seems to me that man always turns
> to the past in search of something new, and is fascinated by what he
> believes to have been "lost" or just on the point of being lost. I must
> confess myself that when performances on old instruments were
> relatively unusual, I was very much more interested in them. Now that
> they have entered the mainstream, much of the magic appears to have
> gone, together with that sense of freshness of discovery.
I wonder how much Continental EM playing you've heard. All the
really fun music-making seems to be happening there. Try Concerto
Koeln, the Freiburg Barockorchester, the Concert des Nations, the
Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca, Giardino Armonico, Concerto Italiano,
L'Archibudelli. (And especially the Quatuor Mosaiques!) There are a
lot of different approaches here, but they have in common a high
degree of inflection and expressiveness; they are far less
"minimalist" in their interpretive mien than most British groups.
(Though, as I wrote earlier, there are British players today
that seem to be having the same kind of fun--I particularly
admire Romanesca's Andrew Manze and the Palladian Ensemble's
Rachel Podger, two extremely imaginative and exuberant violinists.)
> I think
> within the next few years people will be _craving_ for performances of
> Bach and Handel in the "lost" styles of the first quarter or so of the
> twentieth century!
It's happening already--look at the boom in new recordings of
Stokowski's and others' Bach transcriptions. That's not what
you meant, of course, but it shows that the desire is there.
> [I]t seems to me that these days
> there's a strong (and not always correct) underlying assumption
> that certain ways of doing things are not merely "unfashionable"
> but in fact in some sense plainly _wrong_, and at _variance_ with
> the musical intentions of the composer. One gentleman a couple of
> postings ago was even saying something like "if you've got to hear
> Bach on modern instruments then at least you should confine yourself
> to modern reorchestrations and transcriptions", or words to that
> effect! Another was claiming there is a "correct" instrument for
> each period.
Yes, this is silly.
> Choosing what one prefers personally, opting for or
> against the fashion is one thing, but blatantly doing something that
> is generally thought to be "incorrect" and "unfaithful" to the
> composer quite another. So it seems to me we must either question
> the truth of statements to the effect that one way of doing things
> is "right" and another is "wrong", or, if we do agree that a certain
> way of doing things is indeed wrong, accept the implications. Now
> it seems to me personally that, with a few exceptions -- such as in
> the case of a particularly outlandish (though quite refreshing)
> claim that e.g. the Bach B-Minor Mass ought to be sung wit one singer
> per part -- many such assumptions have been allowed to pass
> unchallenged.
The trouble is that even long before the historical-performance
movement got off the ground, we distinguished (usually invidiously)
between "transcriptions" or "arrangements" and the "original work."
The question was never so much whether Bach on the piano, say,
was "wrong" so much as whether it wasn't an "arrangement" of
music written for something else, and so not to count as "real"
Bach. (Never mind that Bach himself arranged everything he
could get his hands on...) Where is the border between performance
and "transcription"? Historical-performance advocates argued,
essentially, that earlier music was a lot more closely tied
to the timbres of its instruments (and to contemporaneous
attitudes about tempo, ornamentation, etc.) than we had thought.
All this stuff that was "outside the score" (what exactly is
a "violin"? How fast is "Allegro"? Should I embellish this?)
got shoved back in, so that getting it right was obligatory in the
same way as playing the right notes in the right order.
Now, I don't think anyone believes this anymore, if anyone
ever did. If there is an "authenticist" who does not *knowingly*
break the rules I have not encountered him or her. (We can
begin with the existence of "early music conductors" who
wave batons, since there were no such animals until well
into the 19th c.) But what we *do* believe is not obvious.
Is a performance of a Bach violin sonata on a modern
violin a "transcription"? If not, what about one of the
gamba sonatas with cello and harpsichord? Cello and piano?
How about a "continuo" sonata with a "realized" piano part?
How about a violin concerto with piano accompaniment (concerti
like Mendelssohn's were frequently played like this earlier
in this century)? How about Brahms' Horn Trio reworked,
as I recently heard it on a recording, for viola, clarinet,
and piano? At what point do we say "Well, it's very good, but
it's not what ________ (insert composer's name here) wrote?"
Or should we ever say this?
At any rate, more and more musicians are constantly crossing
the lines between "period" and "modern" performance, even in
the same repertoire, so it becomes harder and harder to say that
they believe "modern" performance to be "wrong." Examples, off the
top of my head: Erich Hoebarth (of the Quatuor Mosaiques, which
has recorded the most wonderful "period" Mozart quartets
I have ever heard) playing Mozart quintets with the ("modern")
Wiener Streichsextett; Patrick Cohen simultaneously recording
Mozart piano sonatas on fortepiano and Haydn sonatas on a
Steinway; Monica Huggett recording Bach trio sonatas with
James Galway (!); Steven Isserlis playing the Brahms Double
Concerto with the OAE, but recording the Brahms cello sonatas
on "modern" cello. Around here in the San Francisco Bay Area,
at least half of the "period" string players have "modern"
gigs too. Elizabeth Wallfisch is concertmaster of the Carmel
Bach Festival, just a little south of here; that's a "modern"
gig, but Libby is best known as a "period" violinist (as the
Carmel Festival's conductor, Bruno Weil, is best known as a
"period" conductor). Conductors, in fact, cross over
everywhere. Look at Harnoncourt, or Mackerras, or even
Gardiner (I remember a pretty good Schubert 9 with the Lyon
Opera Orchestra some years ago).
> Of course, the sound of the cornetti is quite magical, and it's _so_
> much better with the real thing! (But I do not feel the same when it
> comes to the string section of a Mozart symphony; and I do think we
> need to distinguish between instruments that are simply different and
> those with modern counterparts in the orchestra.)
It all depends what counts as a "counterpart," doesn't it? The
flute is not a "counterpart" to the recorder or the cello to the
viol in any historical sense, since they were in use at the same
time and do different things; but that didn't stop performners
from substituting flutes for recorders (cf. the Second and
Fourth Brandenburgs) or cellos for viols (cf. the Sixth). OTOH,
the modern piano is a sort of "counterpart" to the harpsichord,
but the two are so different that substitution can be
musically grotesque. There's a reason why pianists don't
improvise continuo, or (with a few tiny exceptions) venture
into the French Baroque.
Michelle Dulak
A de Muynck / Joyce Maier
Simon Roberts <si...@dept.english.upenn.edu> wrote in article
<5vcm02$ej7$4...@netnews.upenn.edu>...
> c$100f7740$14746cc3@1>Distribution:
>
> A de Muynck / Joyce Maier (ad...@pi.net) wrote:
>
> : Yet Beethoven himself once said that the Hammerklavier sonata
was
> : something that would be too hard a nut to crack for the
pianists
> : of his time. He expected that it would take 25 years or so
into
> : the future to play it. Furthermore, he was always unsatisfied
with
> : his pianos, not only because they sounded too soft to his bad
> : ears, also because he wanted another sound, not the sound of a
> : harp (his words). He once called the fortepiano a
"clavecimbalo
> : miserabile".
>
have
> preferred modern pianos, with their homogenized tone and
inability to
> reproduce many of the effects called for by him in his scores.
What do you want to suggest with the word "follows"? I only quoted
Beethoven himself and I never wrote that he "would have preferred
modern pianos". I wrote my message to give you and the other
contributors to this discussion some extra information. Why? To
think it over, BEFORE jumping to conclusions...
> He may,
> for instance, merely have wanted a stronger, louder, version of
what he
> was used to -- and a modern Steinway certainly isn't that
We don't know and we never will.
> (which isn't, of
> course, to say that you shouldn't prefer listening to Beethoven
played on
> one).
Well, actually I prefer Beethoven on a fortepiano, if possible
played by Ronald Brautigam. But some "normal" pianists are better
and more suited to play Beethoven, Emil Gilels for instance (IMHO,
of course). Anyway, I think there is no reason to be dogmatic
about the "correct" instrument, at least not concerning
Beethoven's piano music (I'll keep my mouth shut nothing about
other composers). Maybe Beethoven would have loved a Steinway and
as I may believe some experts the crux is not the correct
instrument, but the correct tuning. But I'll leave this discussion
to those experts.
Regards,
Joyce Maier (ad...@pi.net).
Simon Roberts
: have
: > preferred modern pianos, with their homogenized tone and
: inability to
: > reproduce many of the effects called for by him in his scores.
: What do you want to suggest with the word "follows"? I only quoted
: Beethoven himself and I never wrote that he "would have preferred
: modern pianos". I wrote my message to give you and the other
: contributors to this discussion some extra information. Why? To
: think it over, BEFORE jumping to conclusions...
I was probably improperly attributing to you the motive that most people
who refer to Beethoven's criticisms of his pianos usually have, which is
to justify playing his music on modern pianos. An awful lot of people --
apparently not you -- do think it follows. For my part, I don't really
care whether Beethoven liked his pianos or not (since he was to varying
degrees deaf after a certain point makes the issue moot anyway); the
reason I like his music played on period pianos is that, when it's done
well, the results can be musically satisfying in ways that modern pianos
can't achieve; and the only reason I like Beethoven played on modern
pianos (I like them both about equally, I think) is because when it's done
well the results can be musically satisfying in ways that period pianos
can't achieve....
Simon
Simon Roberts
michel...@usa.net wrote:
: I wonder how much Continental EM playing you've heard. All the
: really fun music-making seems to be happening there. Try Concerto
: Koeln, the Freiburg Barockorchester, the Concert des Nations, the
: Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca, Giardino Armonico, Concerto Italiano,
: L'Archibudelli. (And especially the Quatuor Mosaiques!) There are a
: lot of different approaches here, but they have in common a high
: degree of inflection and expressiveness; they are far less
: "minimalist" in their interpretive mien than most British groups.
: (Though, as I wrote earlier, there are British players today
: that seem to be having the same kind of fun--I particularly
: admire Romanesca's Andrew Manze and the Palladian Ensemble's
: Rachel Podger, two extremely imaginative and exuberant violinists.)
I quite agree about the groups you mentioned (and would add La
Stravaganza; their recent Brandenburgs are an amazing wild ride which
makes most of MAK's seem almost sedate). I wonder if one reason they
aren't better known is the extraordinary influence, at least in English
speaking countries, of British review publications like Gramophone and its
off-shoot the Penguin Guide which are dominated by a British outlook
according to which the interpretative ideal seems to be slight variants
one way or the other from a sort of elegant perkiness as exemplified by
Neville Marriner and which frowns upon anything more daring (I remember an
older Penguin edition complaining that in parts of MAK's Brandenburgs it
was difficult not to laugh, as though such a response to anything written
by Bach would be immoral).
: At any rate, more and more musicians are constantly crossing
: the lines between "period" and "modern" performance, even in
: the same repertoire, so it becomes harder and harder to say that
: they believe "modern" performance to be "wrong." Examples, off the
: top of my head: Erich Hoebarth (of the Quatuor Mosaiques, which
: has recorded the most wonderful "period" Mozart quartets
: I have ever heard) playing Mozart quintets with the ("modern")
: Wiener Streichsextett; Patrick Cohen simultaneously recording
: Mozart piano sonatas on fortepiano and Haydn sonatas on a
: Steinway; Monica Huggett recording Bach trio sonatas with
: James Galway (!); Steven Isserlis playing the Brahms Double
: Concerto with the OAE, but recording the Brahms cello sonatas
: on "modern" cello. Around here in the San Francisco Bay Area,
: at least half of the "period" string players have "modern"
: gigs too. Elizabeth Wallfisch is concertmaster of the Carmel
: Bach Festival, just a little south of here; that's a "modern"
: gig, but Libby is best known as a "period" violinist (as the
: Carmel Festival's conductor, Bruno Weil, is best known as a
: "period" conductor). Conductors, in fact, cross over
: everywhere. Look at Harnoncourt, or Mackerras, or even
: Gardiner (I remember a pretty good Schubert 9 with the Lyon
: Opera Orchestra some years ago).
This has actually been going on pretty steadily for years: the leading
brass players among British HIP orchestras doubled with the ECO and ASMIF
(and still do to an extent). The same is true of many pianists too:
Lambert Orkis was (is?) the pianist for the National Symphony Orchestra
and has a newish record accompanying Mutter; Robert Levin plays
contemporary music on the piano; Melvyn Tan (who I'm not sure should ever
play any sort of piano) has recently started playing modern pianos. And
as for Gardiner, it's not really a case of "even": for a few years he was
the conductor of the Lyon Opera, and was (still is?) principal conductor
of one of the better German radio orchestras, in addition to his guest
spots with the VPO....
Simon
fc...@pe.net
I wrote: "Was it due to the lack of a modern piano or a modern orchestra?
Obviously not." To clarify my point: one cannot wish for what one lacks
without knowing what it is. In other words the modern behemoth piano did
not exist for another one hundred years, so clearly Bach could not have
been pining for one. I suspect that this is not exactly what you had in
mind.
When you write about Bach and Beethoven writing works that strained the
media at their disposal, I get the distinct feeling that in some unnamed
way, you are setting these musical geniuses apart from their time, as
being some mythic titans towering above the rest of the rabble. They were
geniuses, that's true. However, they were also men of and from their
time. They certainly didn't exist apart from their contemporary culture.
In this context, yes, in their own socio-musical context, in makes
perfect sense to "emulate (what are held to be) the performing styles and
the aesthetics of their contemporaries."
For a non-musical example, we could take Shakespeare's plays. Without a
knowledge of Elizabethan England, either through education or through
extensive annotation, Shakespeare's blank verse becomes turgid and
impenetrable to the average play (or film) goer. But...place Shakespeare
as a man of his time, and not only does he become more accessible, but
people can appreciate the levels of his art. This is much more difficult
when "Shakespeare the Bard" replaces "Shakespeare the Elizabethan poet
and playwright."
To address another point: the Beethoven-Bruckner connection of yours
remains elusive and opaque for me. But interpreting Beethoven through an
extramusical connection clearly has meaning for you and you are certainly
free to enjoy it. My point is that Beethoven doesn't need it. His music
really can stand on its own. In fact, I feel Beethoven's music is
diminished by such extramusical associations. My objection to your
philosophy in this regard is that it leads to a deification of the artist
and more and more extramusical relations are imposed on it (piled on it)
that don't serve the music. They serve the egos of the conductors and
musical critics. Critics are especially sensitive, since it is a well
known fact that nearly all the great composers (artists in general) were
critically excoriated in their day (Beethoven and Berlioz, to name but
two). To the end of credibility, critics and music journalists bend over
backward to show the cosmic significance of their now favorite
(posthumously speaking) composer. In short, if you feel Bruckner was
influenced by Beethoven, then play Bruckner that way, emphasizing the
similarities. That would uplift Beethoven and show the thought behind
Bruckner's music. But playing Beethoven as though he were some sort of
proto-Bruckner does a grave disservice to Beethoven the man and Beethoven
the composer by reducing Beethoven to an anachronism or, worse yet, a
footnote as one of "Bruckner's influences." I don't understand how you,
as a presumably honest musician, could condone that. It's true that we
are also children of our time and we can't just ignore our collective
heritage and influences. But, as the aforementioned honest musicians, we
have an obligation to artistic truth, as best we can, without adding our
or someone else's agenda.
An example of this phenomenon carried to an extreme: a teacher of mine
was a follower of Dr. Albert Schweitzer and had studied with him in the
fifties when he was giving organ recitals to raise money of his African
hospital. She insisted on using the Bach edition that he had co-edited
with Widor in conjunction with his biography of Bach. I don't know if you
are familiar with it, but a good deal of the text concerns numerological
and other symbolic "connections" with Bach's music intended to impress us
with Bach's genius in creating these architectural masterpieces with all
of these "hidden meanings." Schweitzer was trying to deify Bach, in so
many words. But the genius of Bach shines through all the additional
"Stuff." It stands on its own, and rightly so. If the music had really
needed it, then Bach would be a lesser man.
Your Bach-Respighi connection is like apples and oranges to me.
Respighi's orchestrations do not pretend to any degree of "rightness."
Like his Ancient Airs and Dances, I can enjoy them on their own, like
Liszt's piano arrangements of Bach's organ music. Arrangements, not
replacements.
My point about Stokowski conducting Josquin was this (and I really should
have been clearer to minimize the humor aspect and maximize the
communication aspect): the inherited wisdom had reached Stokowski that
the older the music, the slower it should go. This probably derives from
plainchant and ignores the fact that if our forebears had not been as
passionate and lusty as we are, we wouldn't be debating this, now would
we? Another example of inherited wisdom, or not seeing beyond the notes
to the music.
I notice that you quote extensively. This is not a bad thing, but I
really do know what I have written. I do get the feeling that you jump in
to debate a point that may have been raised in a phrase without seeing
the sentence to its end and thereby missing the point. I apologize for
lumping you in with the period instrument bashers, but I'm a bit
sensitive on the subject. BTW, can you provide some examples of
historically informed perforance that you found objectionable because of
real or perceived "mannerisms?" I notice that you brought up the topic a
couple of times. I'm sure, then, that the "traditionalists" never indulge
in "mannerisms."
In closing, let me quote myself. It was to this passage I had hoped you
would respond: "...I think period performance and the use of appropriate
period instruments reflect, at its essence, a search for the truth. To
quote the late musicologist Thurston Dart, in his book "The
Interpretation of Music," '...until they [period instruments or
reproductions] are once more made available-modern copies in the hands of
proficient musicians-music is the poorer for their loss, and our ideas of
the music of men like Monteverdi, Gabrieli and Schutz must remain quite
imperfect.'"
Frank
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
I. Neill Reid
In article <5vf4of$tpf$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>, si...@dept.english.upenn.edu (Simon Roberts) writes...
I see - it's Gramophone's fault (again). I suggest that this arguement
fails to hold any water, and that a cursory inspection of a few
recent editions will reveal that substantial attention is paid to
European ensembles in that publication. And that many of those
ensembles (Concerto Italiano, Herve Niquet's ensembles, Herreweghe's
groups, Ensemble Clement Jannequin, Hesperion XX, Koopman's Amsterdam
ensemble and so forth) receive extremely favourable reviews. The days
of ASMIF-are-everything are long past.
I suggest that there is, in contrast, very little attention paid to
those ensembles amongst _US_ publications - and that this is by no means
surprising, given the substantially larger distance between the US and
Europe, and the consequent comparative isolation of the former.
Neill Reid - i...@dowland.caltech.edu
Simon Roberts
I. Neill Reid (i...@deimos.caltech.edu) wrote:
: >
: >I quite agree about the groups you mentioned (and would add La
: >Stravaganza; their recent Brandenburgs are an amazing wild ride which
: >makes most of MAK's seem almost sedate). I wonder if one reason they
: >aren't better known is the extraordinary influence, at least in English
: >speaking countries, of British review publications like Gramophone and its
: >off-shoot the Penguin Guide which are dominated by a British outlook
: >according to which the interpretative ideal seems to be slight variants
: >one way or the other from a sort of elegant perkiness as exemplified by
: >Neville Marriner and which frowns upon anything more daring (I remember an
: >older Penguin edition complaining that in parts of MAK's Brandenburgs it
: >was difficult not to laugh, as though such a response to anything written
: >by Bach would be immoral).
: I see - it's Gramophone's fault (again). I suggest that this arguement
: fails to hold any water, and that a cursory inspection of a few
: recent editions will reveal that substantial attention is paid to
: European ensembles in that publication. And that many of those
: ensembles (Concerto Italiano, Herve Niquet's ensembles, Herreweghe's
: groups, Ensemble Clement Jannequin, Hesperion XX, Koopman's Amsterdam
: ensemble and so forth) receive extremely favourable reviews. The days
: of ASMIF-are-everything are long past.
Gramophone may have been improving of late, but try the Penguin Guide;
they mention very few HIP recordings on small European labels.
: I suggest that there is, in contrast, very little attention paid to
: those ensembles amongst _US_ publications - and that this is by no means
: surprising, given the substantially larger distance between the US and
: Europe, and the consequent comparative isolation of the former.
Not true of Fanfare and ARG, the only ones I read.
Simon
Haig Utidjian
Simon Roberts wrote:
> [...] I wonder if one reason they
> aren't better known is the extraordinary influence, at least in English
>speaking countries, of British review publications like Gramophone and its
>off-shoot the Penguin Guide which are dominated by a British outlook
>according to which the interpretative ideal seems to be slight variants
>one way or the other from a sort of elegant perkiness as exemplified by
>Neville Marriner and which frowns upon anything more daring [...]
I am _very_ surprised. If anything, I have always felt that
The Gramophone is over-inclined _towards_ the authenticists!
This must have been _well_ before my time! :-)
Haig Utidjian
Michelle Dulak wrote:
>I will say the same, gratefully, about Mr. Utidjian's post.
:-) And may I say, Miss Dulak, how welcome it is finally to find a
contribution from you on this thread?! I recall with pleasure our
discussions on much the same area a year or so ago; you might like to
know, by the way, that I did purchase the Bach B-Minor Mass recording
you recommended, and found it quite interesting and in some ways most
enjoyable. (I shan't go into details just now, to avoid diversions from the
present thread.)
>For violin-lovers there is a magical
>point about mid-century where "old-school" players like Huberman
>and "modern" ones like Oistrakh were around at the same time,
>but how typical is this?
I do not know!
>Certainly people stopped playing Bach
>like Huberman long, long before anyone was doing Bach on
>"period" instruments.
I am, of course aware of this; but I am convinced there are certain
tendencies that have insidiously influenced modern symphonic string
sections in very recent years, and these do seem to me to be partly the
result of, and certainly entirely consistent with, certain
misconceptions one tends to associate with practices that are prevalent
within the "authenticity" movement. For instance -- all too many
"modern"-instrument string players will now play a phrase -- or
rather, the constituent notes of what some of us might be tempted to consider
a phrase (!) -- in a manner which makes it sound a mere succession of
mutually unrelated individual notes each of which
starts "straight" and quiet and then grows louder to the accompaniment of
increasing vibrato, such that the phrase ends up sounding more like a
succession of the individual notes rather than a single, meaningful
entity of tightly connected notes analogous how a good _singer_ might
have sung it. (There was even a glaring example last night, in the
second half of the Last Night of the Proms.)
This seems to be an increasingly common form of carelessness, or even
(IMHO) a form of musical mindlessness, even (as last night amongst
some otherwise very estimable young players; perhaps in the
past it might have been regarded as mere slopiness: but now almost
seems to have been made into a sort of
_virtue_ amongst "historically informed" players, with their penchant for heavy
articulation and accentuation, and where not infrequently performing
style is largely established (or so it seems to me) on the basis of what comes
most "naturally" or easily with the instruments and bows at one's
disposal... I do strongly suspect there's a correlation here, although
it's difficult to _prove_, and you may well disagree with me.
>I would love a world in which I could
>hear live Bach in Huberman's style just as easily as in
>Marriner's or Pinnock's,
So would I!
>Again, I think you are exaggerating the uniformity of the
>"early-music" scene. (That might be because you're in the UK--much
>of the diversity there is falls out along the British/Continental
>divide! Were your remarks limited to British performances they
>would be all too accurate, although even that is changing.)
I am _very_ surprised! One constantly hears that British "early music"
exponents are very much sought after and esteemed all over Europe, etc.!
>Check out Christian Thielemann's Beethoven 5 & 7 with the Philharmonia
>Orchestra on DG for a *very* Klempererish first movement of the 5th,
>and a lot of tempo manipulation all round. It was mostly panned by the
>critics (though not, oddly, by _Gramophone_).
It is interesting that you mention this recording. I have never heard
it, but had discussed it with someone who had, and who felt that _most_ of the
CD was quite middle-of-the-road in its tempi (at least according to
his expectations); Beethoven 7, for instance, though (mercifully!) less
hasty than many, was certainly a good deal faster than Klemperer or Giulini.
Even so, this recording does seem to be a bit of an isolated exception. Also,
my recollection is that the Gramophone was _quite_ scathing about it -- I
remember the reviewer alleging that there were sudden
changes in tempi not due to intentional agogic variation but (I stress the
"alleging" here!) a lack of experience on the part of the conductor of
working in the recording studio which resulted in his failure to
repeat his tempi exactly during successive "takes", so that there were
odd discontinuities in the tempo subsequent to editing!
>I kind of liked it
>myself, mainly for the fun of hearing someone in the late 1990s
>attempting to "do stuff with tempo" _a la_ Mengelberg.
I had the pleasure of attending one of his performances of (Pfitzner's)
"Palestrina" in Convent Garden earlier in the season, and am very
pleased to say that he did it _extremely_ well, and handled the ROH
orchestra _very_ well indeed. They sounded quite splendid -- which
can't always be taken for granted! He seems quite a promising chap.
>> (H.U.) [...] thinking that it's got to be fast, light, with few desks
>> of strings, dry, glissando-less, etc., that they couldn't open their
>> minds sufficiently to enjoy anything different! I find that profoundly
>> regrettable.
>
>Agreed! [...]
Thank you!
>I wonder how much Continental EM playing you've heard. All the
>really fun music-making seems to be happening there.
!!!!!! :-) I shall try not to take this _too_ personally!
I hope you will understand that, alas, this once I find myself quite
unable to endorse your position! <LOL>
>Try Concerto
>Koeln, the Freiburg Barockorchester, the Concert des Nations, the
>Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca, Giardino Armonico, Concerto Italiano,
>L'Archibudelli.
I was, admittedly, not even so much as aware of the very fact of the
existence of the first five of those groups! Are they well established?
>I particularly
>admire Romanesca's Andrew Manze and the Palladian Ensemble's
>Rachel Podger, two extremely imaginative and exuberant violinists.
I agree with you. BTW Andrew Manze is now the leader of the Academy of
Ancient Music. (And of course Rachel is a very fine musician -- as is
her brother Julian -- an excellent tenor and fine Evangelist).
Brian Newhouse
In article <5vh4br$pr8$1...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>, h...@eng.cam.ac.uk (Haig
Utidjian) wrote:
That's not necessarily a contradiction, given that in this thread you
have used the term "authenticists" to refer pretty consistently to the
British school of early-music players. There's a direct line, sonically
at least, between the "elegant perkiness" (lovely phrase, Simon!) of
Neville Marriner and the equally perky elegance of Hogwood and
Pinnock--think of the latter as St. Martin's in the Fields with gut
strings.
--
Brian Newhouse
newh...@mail.crisp.net
Simon Roberts
: > [...] I wonder if one reason they
: > aren't better known is the extraordinary influence, at least in English
: >speaking countries, of British review publications like Gramophone and its
: >off-shoot the Penguin Guide which are dominated by a British outlook
: >according to which the interpretative ideal seems to be slight variants
: >one way or the other from a sort of elegant perkiness as exemplified by
: >Neville Marriner and which frowns upon anything more daring [...]
: I am _very_ surprised. If anything, I have always felt that
: The Gramophone is over-inclined _towards_ the authenticists!
: This must have been _well_ before my time! :-)
Yes, but inclined towards authenticists who play within what I think of as
a Marriner-esque approach (Hogwood did a lot of work with him as a
harpsichord player and I think a lot of his approach to music rubbed off
on him): clean, lively, tasteful, crisp (certainly a vast improvement over
much of what came before in baroque performance, I would say). While it
may be changing, Gramophone (Penguin still seems to be) used to be very
much a stronghold of the "let the music speak for itself" school of
interpretation and still has many reviewers (especially piano reviewers
and Robert Layton) who frown on interpreters who "let their personalities
intrude". (I happen to think it's a false dichotomy, but I won't get into
that now.) To oversimplify (I suppose) most of the (to my mind exciting)
European groups mentioned fall into the latter rather than the former camp
(the thrilling Stravaganza Brandenburgs to which I referred even offer
some manic ornamentation in the 4th movement of Brandenburg 1) and are
often chastized accordingly; the British (from what I remember from
growing up in England) on the whole don't approve of people who call
attention to themselves....
Simon
P.S. as for Christian Thielemann, his Beethoven 5/7 may be the worst I've
ever heard on discs, whether judged from an HIP perspective (which would
be inappropriate) or any other: unstable rhythms and incoherent tempo
changes from one bar to the next that completely undercut the tension of
the music -- fatal in 7, which is all about rhythm -- perhaps the slowest
second movement to 5 on records (largo rather than andante con moto),
sloppy playing, poorly balanced timpani, and so on and so on. If he's
trying to emulate Furtwaengler, he hasn't listened carefully enough (no
comment on his other recording, which I have not heard).
: Best wishes,
: Haig.
: --
: http://www-control.eng.cam.ac.uk/hu/hu.html
Haig Utidjian
>When you write about Bach and Beethoven writing works that strained the
>media at their disposal, I get the distinct feeling that in some unnamed
>way, you are setting these musical geniuses apart from their time, as
>being some mythic titans towering above the rest of the rabble.
<LOL> I wouldn't use the word "rabble", of course, and nor
are those two the _only_ titans. But yes: I do regard them as towering
figures; I don't know about "mythic" -- they are _very_ real to me, and
I have derived incalculable pleasure and satiety through my endeavours
to learn, memorise and perform some of their works to the very best of
my modest powers! And in my view there is a very important sense in
which they do _transcend_ their time and the circumstances of their
composition -- yes. (Why else would we wish to listen to what they
have to say to us today?) But of course those who venerate the great masters
need do not undervalue their humanity in the slightest!
You draw a literary analogy. Many great creative artists -- not all, but many
-- have, in fact, been _acutely_ aware that their works were addressed
not just to their immediate contemporaries, but to future generations also!
Just read the opening page of Thucydides History, for example! Or
some of Mahler's comments! (Just two examples that immediately spring
to mind!)
>In this context, yes, in their own socio-musical context, in makes
>perfect sense to "emulate (what are held to be) the performing styles and
>the aesthetics of their contemporaries."
I think there may be an element of truth in what you say... but in any
case, if (as we must) we are giving performances for the behoof of
_present-day_ listeners, present-day aesthetics are also
of great importance, are they not?! And might the latter not have been
partly governed by our appreciation of extant good music from all ages?
I disagree -- I do not think what I say belittles them in any way. On
the contrary. And I think saying that they need to be _confined_ to the
socio-musical context of their own time (which perhaps you haven't
_quite_ done) is dangerously close to doing just that.
>For a non-musical example, we could take Shakespeare's plays. Without a
>knowledge of Elizabethan England, either through education or through
>extensive annotation, Shakespeare's blank verse becomes turgid and
>impenetrable to the average play (or film) goer. But...place Shakespeare
>as a man of his time, and not only does he become more accessible, but
>people can appreciate the levels of his art. This is much more difficult
>when "Shakespeare the Bard" replaces "Shakespeare the Elizabethan poet
>and playwright."
I don't find that to be the case, personally -- to my mind, the main
difficulty with Shakespeare is purely linguistic. But of course, "YMMV"
(I'm learning! <LOL>)!
>To address another point: the Beethoven-Bruckner connection of yours
>remains elusive and opaque for me. But interpreting Beethoven through an
>extramusical connection clearly has meaning for you and you are certainly
>free to enjoy it.
To me this connection is _not_ "extramusical" at all! (And thank you! :-) )
>My objection to your
>philosophy in this regard is that it leads to a deification of the artist
>and more and more extramusical relations are imposed on it (piled on it)
>that don't serve the music.
>
>They serve the egos of the conductors and
>musical critics.
I have certainly never striven to serve the _latter_, and will leave it
to others to judge about the former! <LOL>
As for "deification", I disagree. I don't think my "philosophy" need
inevitably lead to that, or indeed to anything of an _extramusical_
nature at all!
>To the end of credibility, critics and music journalists bend over
>backward to show the cosmic significance of their now favorite
>(posthumously speaking) composer.
But perhaps some of us are genuinely convinced of the "cosmic
significance" (whatever that means!) of great music! And not all my
favourite composers are dead, happily, so it needn't be posthumous! <LOL>
>In short, if you feel Bruckner was
>influenced by Beethoven, then play Bruckner that way, emphasizing the
>similarities.
No! One never plays anything to "emphasise similarities". One does whatever
is "best" for the music that one is playing at the time, according to one's
judgement. (Of course one would not dream of claiming for one moment
that one's judgement is infallible.) Nor would one suggest one would play A
differently _because_ he influenced B, or was influenced by, C. But the
way one plays A would be likely to be _affected_ in some by one's love and
understanding of the music of B and of C, partly because one's musical
sensbilities have been enriched by the music of B and C, and partly
because there may be inherent characteristics in the music of A itself which
lend themselves to this sort of mutual fructification. Indeed,
conceivably, one might perhaps even play the music of A this
way even if one never had the good fortune of hearing a _note_ of the
music of B and of C. What I think _would_ be rather artificial would
be to attempt to play the music of A as though we had never heard that
of B and C, and in a fashion that would try self-consciously to
compensate for the fact of our awareness of the musics of B and C.
>But playing Beethoven as though he were some sort of
>proto-Bruckner [...]
Isn't he? Of course he is far more than that. But he is that as well.
As well as a proto-Brahms, a proto-Schubert, a proto-Smetana,
a proto-Berlioz, a proto-Stravinsky, a proto-Schoenberg, _as well as
very much else besides_! I mean very much else besides being
"proto"-_anything_! (Or "meta"-Palestrina, etc.!) :-)
>But playing Beethoven as though he were some sort of
>proto-Bruckner does a grave disservice to Beethoven the man and Beethoven
>the composer by reducing Beethoven to an anachronism or, worse yet, a
>footnote as one of "Bruckner's influences."
One would never play Beethoven as though he were anyone other than
Beethoven; the "proto-Bruckner" aspect is just one small element!
Beethoven is sufficiently great not to incur the risk of being a
"footnote" to anyone, IMHO!
>I don't understand how you,
>as a presumably honest musician, could condone that.
Thank you kindly for the generous presumption! :-)
>It's true that we
>are also children of our time and we can't just ignore our collective
>heritage and influences.
Precisely!
>But, as the aforementioned honest musicians, we
>have an obligation to artistic truth, as best we can, without adding our
>or someone else's agenda.
I agree, and do not consider that I subscribe to extramusical
"agendas" in my musical interpretations! But I do not
see how in allowing our interpretations to be informed by
our _whole_ awareness of _all_ great music we risk
compromising our obligation to "artistic truth". Indeed,
in my view _not_ doing the former would be impossible, and _trying_ not to do
it is a bit of a self-conscious exercise _unless_ you really happen
_not_ to know _any_ music written after (in the case of our main
example) Beethoven. And, even if through some (anti-miracle) one has
never seen or heard any Brahms, late Schubert, Smetana, Berlioz or Stravinsky
scores, or indeed any scores written subsequent to Beethoven's time,
all the aspects of Beethoven's music which may have influenced those
more recent composers _are there in Beethoven's music_! There is
_nothing_ extramusical!
_All_ the music I know and love affects my musical personality
and there is no need to try to mask that -- indeed, it is _that_
rather than the opposite which would involve an element of dissimulation,
IMHO!
>I don't know if you
>are familiar with it, but a good deal of the text concerns numerological
>and other symbolic "connections" with Bach's music intended to impress us
>with Bach's genius in creating these architectural masterpieces with all
>of these "hidden meanings." Schweitzer was trying to deify Bach, in so
>many words. But the genius of Bach shines through all the additional
>"Stuff." It stands on its own, and rightly so. If the music had really
>needed it, then Bach would be a lesser man.
I am not familiar with it, but in contrast to those in your example,
the "connections" to which _I_ alluded have nothing to do with
symbolism or anything fancy like that: they are not extramusical!
>Your Bach-Respighi connection is like apples and oranges to me.
>Respighi's orchestrations do not pretend to any degree of "rightness."
>Like his Ancient Airs and Dances, I can enjoy them on their own, like
>Liszt's piano arrangements of Bach's organ music. Arrangements, not
>replacements.
But you will recall I was not discussing the inherent merits or
otherwise of the "apple" relative to the "orange" anyway. I was, rather,
saying that hearing a Respighi orchestration is relevant (_inter alia_)
in that it says something about how Respighi _heard_ Bach, and
thus ultimately tells us something about at least one facet of Bach's
music. And if you are an organist, having heard his orchestration
you may _well_ end up choosing to play the original version a little
differently -- without so much as being consciously aware of the
fact; what Respighi saw in Bach might well possibly lead you to see something
in Bach's music which you had previously not seen to the same
extent. (Note I say "in Bach's music" -- nothing extraneous to Bach's
music, and certainly nothing extramusical!) And in my view there's nothing
wrong with that if it does. On the contrary.
>This probably derives from
>plainchant and ignores the fact that if our forebears had not been as
>passionate and lusty as we are, we wouldn't be debating this, now would
>we?
(I for one find singing plainchant extremely exciting
and enjoyable! BTW do you mean lustful or lusty? Usually feeling
_lustful_ whilst performing plainchant in its "socio-musical context"
(!!!) would be considered a little bit inappropriate (impious?!)
by most people! :-) And does singing plainchant slowly make it any
less _passionate_?)
But this argument can be used the other way round as well! See my earlier
comment about George Hurst, who, when dealing with an "authentically-inclined"
pupil, reminded him that musicians in the past too had "lungs and testicles"
(implying that early music too ought to be phrased and passionate)!
Actually, there is still a lack consensus as to the speed of plainchant,
or of polyphony composed around plainchant (as a Canti
Firmi). Certainly the two are not even consistent: unless one sings the C.F.
very slowly, the polyphony is unsingably fast; and if all plainchant is as
slow as the C.F. needs to be, twenty-four hours wouldn't have sufficied for the
monks to get through all their daily services! (You might like to refer to
some of the work of e.g. Mary Berry, David Wulstan etc. if you're
interested). I suspect old Stokey was just doing whatever he wanted
to on musical grounds -- which one may or may not like -- and then trying to
justify it retrospectively. Nor was he alone in so doing! :-)
>I notice that you quote extensively. This is not a bad thing, but I
>really do know what I have written.
I do not quote so much for your benefit as for that of other
readers, and it is only fair that it should be clear
precisely which of your remarks I happen to agree or disagree with.
We must also consider people who may have just joined
a thread and do not have access to earlier postings. It is not always
possible to make every posting self-contained and self-sufficient, but I try to
strike a balance. From time to time we get complaints on this
newsgroup that people don't quote _enough_!
>I do get the feeling that you jump in
>to debate a point that may have been raised in a phrase without seeing
>the sentence to its end and thereby missing the point.
Terribly sorry, old chap! If you would care to raise again any such points
that I may have misunderstood, of course I shall try my best to reread
them with a view to gaining a fuller comprehension!
(BTW if I did quoted you less fully, isn't there a danger that other
readers following the thread might similarly risk misunderstanding
your points?)
>BTW, can you provide some examples of
>historically informed perforance that you found objectionable because of
>real or perceived "mannerisms?"
I certainly do not wish to name particular performers, but hardly need
to do so, since the traits in question seem
rather endemic amongst authenticists' recordings, and indeed some
listeners may like them. Instead, I have
been quite precise in my recent descriptions of one or two of the
mannerisms which I have found a little vexatious. Why do you ask
me to quote specific instances? Can you not recognise them from my
verbal desciptions? Surely you must know what I mean!
> It was to this passage I had hoped you
>would respond: "...I think period performance and the use of appropriate
>period instruments reflect, at its essence, a search for the truth. To
>quote the late musicologist Thurston Dart, in his book "The
>Interpretation of Music," '...until they [period instruments or
>reproductions] are once more made available-modern copies in the hands of
>proficient musicians-music is the poorer for their loss, and our ideas of
>the music of men like Monteverdi, Gabrieli and Schutz must remain quite
>imperfect.'"
I did not disagree with the late Dart (BTW himself a fine harpsichordist
and viol player -- by no means just a musicologist!), and I quite enjoy _some_
performances with cornets etc. of the music of the above three composers.
However, I do not think Dart would have had in mind "authentic" Mozart,
Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner; and I have already mentioned that I am
less concerned about instruments than about how they are used. The reason I
did not "react" to your citation in this instance was not that I
missed it in my haste! I simply felt that it did not in any way shed
light _or_ cast aspersions on the points _I_ had made, and I did not
have anything of interest to add thereanent! I did enjoy reading it --
thanks! Please do not think that in such instances I have ignored
or overlooked what you wrote!
Haig Utidjian
Brian Newhouse wrote:
> That's not necessarily a contradiction, given that in this thread you
>have used the term "authenticists" to refer pretty consistently to the
>British school of early-music players. There's a direct line, sonically
>at least, between the "elegant perkiness" (lovely phrase, Simon!) of
>Neville Marriner and the equally perky elegance of Hogwood and
>Pinnock--think of the latter as St. Martin's in the Fields with gut
>strings.
<LOL>
I see nothing wrong with "elegant perkiness", in moderation! :-)
michel...@usa.net
Haig Utidjian writes:
> Simon Roberts wrote:
> >[...] I wonder if one reason they
[NB: "they" are Continental HIP ensembles with particularly exciting
and heavily-nuanced approaches like Concerto Italiano, Giardino
Armonico, Le Concert des Nations etc.]
> >aren't better known is the extraordinary influence, at least in
> >English speaking countries, of British review publications like
> >Gramophone and its off-shoot the Penguin Guide which are dominated
> >by a British outlook according to which the interpretative ideal
> >seems to be slight variants one way or the other from a sort of
> >elegant perkiness as exemplified by Neville Marriner and which
> >frowns upon anything more daring [...]
> I am _very_ surprised. If anything, I have always felt that
> The Gramophone is over-inclined _towards_ the authenticists!
> This must have been _well_ before my time! :-)
But Simon wasn't talking about "authentic" vs. "modern" performance!
He was talking about "safe" vs. "daring" performance. His point
(and mine) was that British "period" performance has generally
tended towards the safe and sane--"elegantly perky" desribes it
as well as it describes Marriner.
Just compare the Cosort of Musicke with the Concerto Italiano
in Monteverdi, or the Salomon Qt. and the Quatuor Mosaiques in
Haydn, or the Concert des Nations and the English Concert in
Bach, to get an idea of what I'm talking about.
I don't think Simon is quite right about _Gramophone_, though;
at least in the last ten years or so they've lauded a lot
of fine Continental EM recordings (the Quatuor Mosaiques
has two Gramophone Awards so far, for example). Penguin is
another matter--they seem reluctant to acknowledge the
existence of a number of small French and Italian labels,
on which a lot of the best work is being done.
Haig Utidjian
Michelle Dulak wrote:
>But Simon wasn't talking about "authentic" vs. "modern" performance!
>He was talking about "safe" vs. "daring" performance.
Oh I am well aware of that. And that's a completely different issue
altogether, I think. I am not overfond of excessively "safe"
performances, but the reasons why I may dislike an "authentic" "safe"
performance would probably not necessarily be the reasons why I may dislike a
"safe" performance in general. I suspect that "safeness" isn't the
main issue here. In particular:
(1) Some of the characteristics of "authentic"
performance must surely be unrelated to this criterion of "safeness".
For instance, a performance may avoid vibrato, be heavily articulated
and non-legato, with very short-range phrasing
and balanced heavily in favour of the brass (all features which
I tend to associate with most "authentic" performances and all features
which rarely have the effect of enamouring me to a performance, I fear!),
but be otherwise "adventurous" in many other ways (such as outlandish
tempi, provocative ornamentation, etc!). And:
(2) Would I be wrong in suspecting that
_some_ aspects of the "unadventurousness" in an "authentic"
performance may well partly stem
from the very desire for "authenticity" itself (even if this may be
misplaced)? Isn't, for instance, this the reason why many
"authenticists" (admittedly Harnoncourt to a lesser extent than many
others) eschew what I think you recently referred to as
"_a la_ Mengelberg" agogic variations (after all, it used
to be said until very recently indeed that such variations were
"romantic", "anachronistic" and thus inappropriate!)?
>Just compare the Cosort of Musicke with the Concerto Italiano
>in Monteverdi
Several people have asked me to do so. I've heard most of their CD
that includes "Ego Dormio" -- sorry if I told you before that I didn't know
of them -- this is Alessandrini's group, isn't it? That CD, which, for
instance, Iain Fenlon (further down the street!) recommended so very
warmly (in, I think, the Gramophone!), was a great disappointment to me.
I didn't like the singing on it at all! The diction sounded more
Italian but the actual singing didn't sound all _that_ different from the
Consort of Musicke's, to me! Perhaps it was a bit closer to, say, that
of Les Arts Florissant than the Consort in vocal terms, but it was
still a little nasal, a little quasi-parlando, rather non-legato, and
rather too disembodied. "Ego Dormio", which can
sound so _lyrical_, with its delightful, insistent imitative
repetitions tending to a climax and then fading, etc. -- _wonderful_
little duet (I had the privilege of singing it with a very
fine soprano as an undergraduate, and am writing this from what I
remember of it without the score in front of me at the moment,
and have of course since heard very much better performances than
ours) I fear I did not like it at all! So, to my mind, in this
instance any differences in national temperament etc., were overweighed by
what they had in common by way of "historically-inclined"
proclivities; nor was the Gramophone-related argument relevant here!
>or the Salomon Qt. and the Quatuor Mosaiques in
>Haydn
I'm afraid I haven't heard the latter. The former have disappointed me
-- not least as I have had the pleasure of hearing the various
members of the quartet in different formations to (IMHO) much
greater advantage.
>Penguin is
>another matter--they seem reluctant to acknowledge the
>existence of a number of small French and Italian labels,
>on which a lot of the best work is being done.
I suspect that Penguin is considerably less influential in steering
the course of tastes in the UK than the Gramophone (and have my doubts
even about that). The idea that somehow the Penguin guide has had the
effect of circumscribing the musical development of "authentic"
ensembles in the UK, causing them to be less expressive and
adventurous than they would otherwise be, is one of the plausibility
of which I fear I am yet to be convinced!
And now, on a slightly different note, and at the possible price of
unwittingly supplying our anti-Gramophone friends with further
ammunition (!), may I once again mention a most unusual conductor
who _is_ an "authenticist", _is_ Continental, _is_
underrated in the UK, _and_ whom I admire enormously?
Jean-Claude Malgoire. Now I don't think he is a perfectionist, and
some of his recordings are not very polished, and often the (in
particular) choral forces at his disposal have been poor, and
certainly far poorer than, say, the Monteverdi Choir (of which I am a
great admirer). Is he known in the US at all? I attended
a Monteverdi Orfeo concert performance under
his direction in France over ten years ago, memories of which
have still not left me... I wish I had smuggled a little
recording gadget or something, legal considerations
nothwithstanding... His Fireworks Music recording is
_deliciously_ and _excitingly_ slightly out of tune (the
horns are agreeably sharp!) and _utterly_ glorious! It has to be heard
to be believed! (He recorded it twice I think -- I'm not sure
which one the one I know and love is.) I turn to his Art of Fugue again and
again with the greatest pleasure. There's a fine (oldish) Handel
Concerti Grossi recording, where he also plays the oboe -- with such
sensitivity that it is reminiscent of the Adolf Busch/Evelyn Rothwell
duet (in the second movement of Brand. 1). I don't know whether he
himself is using an old instrument or not, but it is very fine
and delicate (and quite unlike the well-nigh baroque-trumpet-like-sounding
fat instruments one can hardly avoid...). And as for his Monteverdi Vespers
recording (on what was CBS -- it must be Sony now), it is at once most
delectable _and_ most disappointing... _deplorably_ out-of-tune French
choirboys and one dodgy soloist wreak havoc, but the most _wonderful_
harp and organ continuo, tempi that are such that at the time you can hardly
imagine any other tempi ever being willingly chosen, wonderfully
eloquent and musicianly phrasing... try the six-part Magnificat. BTW
in this Vespers recording the late Henri Ledroit and Nigel Rogers sing
admirably (BTW, the latter far, far better, IMHO, here than in
the Parrott set, which was a bitter disappointment to me for several
reasons). At one point towards the end the Magnificat's
Gloria nearly collapses (but fortunately not quite!), and the treble soloists
are really not up to it... but it _doesn't matter_! One could forgive
almost anything!
Likewise with Michel Corboz, whether or not he is
working with old instruments (he has tended to do so in
the more recent of his Monteverdi
recordings); another interpreter whose sheer warmth of musicality
suffices to allow one to forgive almost anything (although Corboz
_has_ usually been more consistently fortunate with the technical
accomplishment of the forces at his disposal). Corboz's _first_ Mozart
C-Minor Mass (on Erato -- not the more recent Cascavelle), his _second_
B-Minor Mass, _both_ his Monteverdi Vespers recordings (though the
six-part magnificat -- included only with the first recording -- isn't
to my liking at all!), not to mention his Martin "In Terra Pax".
With those two conductors at their best, one gets
the most wonderful feeling of "beat-lessness" redounding to a sense that
the music just _flows_ forwards, in a manner reminiscent of some earthenwear
vessel replete of honey, that has accidentally been overturned... the
sweet and viscous fluid issues forth quite unknowingly of beats, bars and
barlines (And of ugly accents, gaps, systematic note-by-note
swellings and other semi-voluntary nuances)!
At least you see I am not wholly ignorant of or indifferent to,
Continental exponents of "early" music! But beware -- I believe
the gentleman who (according to one of his own singers)
insists "dot equals a rest" ("Yikes"!), or at least used to do
so until quite recently, is also Continental! :-)
Simon Roberts
Haig Utidjian (h...@eng.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
[snip]
: (2) Would I be wrong in suspecting that
: _some_ aspects of the "unadventurousness" in an "authentic"
: performance may well partly stem
: from the very desire for "authenticity" itself (even if this may be
: misplaced)? Isn't, for instance, this the reason why many
: "authenticists" (admittedly Harnoncourt to a lesser extent than many
: others) eschew what I think you recently referred to as
: "_a la_ Mengelberg" agogic variations (after all, it used
: to be said until very recently indeed that such variations were
: "romantic", "anachronistic" and thus inappropriate!)?
You're exactly right: Hogwood often justifies what he does by explaining
that the lack of conductors and rehearsal time in the 18th century ruled
out the possibility such "exaggerations." His mistake is to suppose that
how that music was actually played (assuming he's right factually; he may
not be) is part of the music itself, so that to play the music properly is
to reproduce a performance that might have happened. I think that's
absurd, for reasons I hope don't need spelling out. As far as I can tell
the groups I prefer don't try to duplicate what might actually have
happened; rather they make use of the instruments and techniques they
think were available to make a musically exciting performance. (At any
rate, that's why I listen to them: I like the results, not because they
are historically accurate in some sense, but because they bring the music
to life for me in a way that others don't. If someone could prove to me
that Bach would have preferred Pinnock's Brandenburgs to La
Stravaganza's, I would continue to listen to the latter. (In the
context of baroque music it so happens that the performances I like most
are almost invariably HIP or influenced thereby; thereafter, it needn't be
at all.)
: I suspect that Penguin is considerably less influential in steering
: the course of tastes in the UK than the Gramophone (and have my doubts
: even about that). The idea that somehow the Penguin guide has had the
: effect of circumscribing the musical development of "authentic"
: ensembles in the UK, causing them to be less expressive and
: adventurous than they would otherwise be, is one of the plausibility
: of which I fear I am yet to be convinced!
I wasn't claiming the latter, only that the influence of those
publications, especially Penguin, may explain why wilder European groups'
recordings aren't better known, that's all. I certainly don't think they
influence British music making; rather both reflect British reserve,
mistrust of those who draw attention to themselves, etc.
: And now, on a slightly different note, and at the possible price of
: unwittingly supplying our anti-Gramophone friends with further
: ammunition (!), may I once again mention a most unusual conductor
: who _is_ an "authenticist", _is_ Continental, _is_
: underrated in the UK, _and_ whom I admire enormously?
: Jean-Claude Malgoire. Now I don't think he is a perfectionist, and
: some of his recordings are not very polished, and often the (in
: particular) choral forces at his disposal have been poor, and
: certainly far poorer than, say, the Monteverdi Choir (of which I am a
: great admirer). Is he known in the US at all?
Somewhat, though I'm afraid probably mainly for a hilariously inept early
HIP Handel Water Music disc.... I'm not sure what the critical consensus
is, if there is one, though I seem to remember his Mozart Requiem getting
at least one favorable review. I think he's done some wonderful work: the
Astree box of the Mozart da Ponte operas is superb, as is his Astree
recording of Giulio Cesare.
: Likewise with Michel Corboz, whether or not he is
: working with old instruments (he has tended to do so in
: the more recent of his Monteverdi
: recordings); another interpreter whose sheer warmth of musicality
: suffices to allow one to forgive almost anything (although Corboz
: _has_ usually been more consistently fortunate with the technical
: accomplishment of the forces at his disposal). Corboz's _first_ Mozart
: C-Minor Mass (on Erato -- not the more recent Cascavelle), his _second_
: B-Minor Mass, _both_ his Monteverdi Vespers recordings (though the
: six-part magnificat -- included only with the first recording -- isn't
: to my liking at all!), not to mention his Martin "In Terra Pax".
: With those two conductors at their best, one gets
: the most wonderful feeling of "beat-lessness" redounding to a sense that
: the music just _flows_ forwards, in a manner reminiscent of some earthenwear
: vessel replete of honey, that has accidentally been overturned... the
: sweet and viscous fluid issues forth quite unknowingly of beats, bars and
: barlines (And of ugly accents, gaps, systematic note-by-note
: swellings and other semi-voluntary nuances)!
Corboz's St Matthew Passion is one of my favorites -- though partly
because he has the finest soprano of any, the wonderful (Scottish!)
Margaret Marshall. (Anyone know what's happened to her career, by the
way?)
Simon
Simon Roberts
Haig Utidjian (h...@eng.cam.ac.uk) wrote:
: Brian Newhouse wrote:
: > That's not necessarily a contradiction, given that in this thread you
: >have used the term "authenticists" to refer pretty consistently to the
: >British school of early-music players. There's a direct line, sonically
: >at least, between the "elegant perkiness" (lovely phrase, Simon!) of
: >Neville Marriner and the equally perky elegance of Hogwood and
: >Pinnock--think of the latter as St. Martin's in the Fields with gut
: >strings.
: <LOL>
: I see nothing wrong with "elegant perkiness", in moderation! :-)
: Best wishes,
: Haig
I'm reminded of the joke Brahms tempo marking (or is it a real one?)
"moderato ma non troppo."
Simon
I. Neill Reid
In article <5vgruh$dok$2...@netnews.upenn.edu>, si...@dept.english.upenn.edu (Simon Roberts) writes...
>I. Neill Reid (i...@deimos.caltech.edu) wrote:
>: >
>: >I quite agree about the groups you mentioned (and would add La
>: >Stravaganza; their recent Brandenburgs are an amazing wild ride which
>: >aren't better known is the extraordinary influence, at least in English
>: >speaking countries, of British review publications like Gramophone and its
>: >off-shoot the Penguin Guide which are dominated by a British outlook
>: >according to which the interpretative ideal seems to be slight variants
>: >one way or the other from a sort of elegant perkiness as exemplified by
>: >older Penguin edition complaining that in parts of MAK's Brandenburgs it
>: >was difficult not to laugh, as though such a response to anything written
>: >by Bach would be immoral).
>
>: I see - it's Gramophone's fault (again). I suggest that this arguement
>: fails to hold any water, and that a cursory inspection of a few
>: recent editions will reveal that substantial attention is paid to
>: European ensembles in that publication. And that many of those
>: ensembles (Concerto Italiano, Herve Niquet's ensembles, Herreweghe's
>: groups, Ensemble Clement Jannequin, Hesperion XX, Koopman's Amsterdam
>: ensemble and so forth) receive extremely favourable reviews. The days
>: of ASMIF-are-everything are long past.
>
>Gramophone may have been improving of late, but try the Penguin Guide;
>they mention very few HIP recordings on small European labels.
The Penguin Guide is produced by 3 critics who happen to be amongst
the old guard of Gramophone reviewers. It is not a production of
Gramophone and it is misleading to lump the two of them together.
Echoing Haig Utidijan, I'd be hard-pressed to believe that the
Penguins really exert powerful sway over the buying habits (and
performance habits) of the Brit pubic (and performers).
As one might expect for a magazine which employs over a dozen reviewers,
the "Gramophone-viewpoint" is much more flexible in outlook and, for the last
decade at least, has paid considerable attention to European
music-making. Those who accuse it of British bias would do well to
check through the last few years of Gramophone awards and compile
statistics on the relative number of British, continental and
US-based performers amongst the winners.
If anything, there is a tendency against US performances, rather than
pro-Brit. And that is not at all surprising, given that there _are_
significant differences in the historical heritage, if you like, in
the two geographical areas. I heard very little of Reiner, Szell and
Bernstein while growing up in Scotland; one hears relatively
little (I'm writing of radio performances here) of Boult, Wood, Curzon
et al here. That does tend to frame one's outlook - and this is
something that one can only appreciate fully by living in both
areas. What may appear as a conscious bias from the outside may well simply
be a sincere preference for a particular style (or composer or
whatever). And just because it happens to disagree with your own
viewpoint should not be construed as an argument for malicious
manipulation.
It's atually all very similar to the great clarinet vibrato wars
which spring up every couple of years or so
Neill Reid - i...@dowland.caltech.edu
David Tenner
Simon Roberts wrote:
> I wasn't claiming the latter, only that the influence of those
> publications, especially Penguin, may explain why wilder European groups'
> recordings aren't better known, that's all. I certainly don't think they
> influence British music making; rather both reflect British reserve,
> mistrust of those who draw attention to themselves, etc.
>
British reserve?! What planet have you been on these last two weeks?
--
David Tenner
ten...@m3.sprynet.com
Simon Roberts
David Tenner (ten...@m3.sprynet.com) wrote:
: Simon Roberts wrote:
: > I wasn't claiming the latter, only that the influence of those
: > publications, especially Penguin, may explain why wilder European groups'
: > recordings aren't better known, that's all. I certainly don't think they
: > influence British music making; rather both reflect British reserve,
: > mistrust of those who draw attention to themselves, etc.
: >
: British reserve?! What planet have you been on these last two weeks?
As far as I can tell (though I've been trying to avoid the media carryings
on) the response of the British public (I assume you're referring to
The Funeral) has been appropriately subdued; much typical standing in
lines rather patiently and quietly. If not, then I would say that this
was an exceptional event provoking exceptional responses which are hardly
typical. (Of course, the British national character -- to the extent that
there is such a thing -- may have changed dramatically since I left 17
years ago, but when I was last there in March it seemed much the same.)
Simon
Simon Roberts
I. Neill Reid (i...@deimos.caltech.edu) wrote:
: The Penguin Guide is produced by 3 critics who happen to be amongst
: the old guard of Gramophone reviewers. It is not a production of
: Gramophone and it is misleading to lump the two of them together.
I'm not sure how misleading it is unless the problem to be avoided is the
trivial one of conveying the impression that one is a subsidiary (etc.) of
the other; they were, and remain, three prominent Gramophone reviewers,
and reflect an outlook which still dominates Gramophone, if not in terms
of national bias, but in terms of preferred performing style, i.e., what
is misleadingly referred to as "letting the music speak for itself" and
not letting the performer's personality intrude (one constantly sees such
language in the chamber music and piano reviews).
: Echoing Haig Utidijan, I'd be hard-pressed to believe that the
: Penguins really exert powerful sway over the buying habits (and
: performance habits) of the Brit pubic (and performers).
I'm sure they have no effect at all on British performers; rather, both
are a reflection of a shared outlook that prefers moderation in most
things. As for its influence on the British "pubic" [!] I haven't a clue,
though I assume that the many people who buy it do so for reasons
different from mine, i.e., for guidance concerning what to buy; that's
certainly true in the U.S.
: As one might expect for a magazine which employs over a dozen reviewers,
: the "Gramophone-viewpoint" is much more flexible in outlook and, for the last
: decade at least, has paid considerable attention to European
: music-making. Those who accuse it of British bias would do well to
: check through the last few years of Gramophone awards and compile
: statistics on the relative number of British, continental and
: US-based performers amongst the winners.
My point had nothing to do with national bias but with bias towards a
certain style of interpretation. None of the truly radical performances
of Vivaldi by Italians or of Bach by Germans has ever won an award, has
it? (It just so happens that the moderate interpretative position that
tends to be favored tends also to dominate British HIP performances;
fortunately (for me, anyway) this seems to be changing a little, at least
in the person of Andrew Manze, if his wonderful Bach violin concerto
recording is anything to go on.)
: If anything, there is a tendency against US performances, rather than
: pro-Brit. And that is not at all surprising, given that there _are_
: significant differences in the historical heritage, if you like, in
: the two geographical areas. I heard very little of Reiner, Szell and
: Bernstein while growing up in Scotland; one hears relatively
: little (I'm writing of radio performances here) of Boult, Wood, Curzon
: et al here.
Have you ever tried avoiding Neville Marriner on the radio in the U.S.?
That does tend to frame one's outlook - and this is
: something that one can only appreciate fully by living in both
: areas. What may appear as a conscious bias from the outside may well simply
: be a sincere preference for a particular style (or composer or
: whatever). And just because it happens to disagree with your own
: viewpoint should not be construed as an argument for malicious
: manipulation.
I lived in Australia, then England, until I was 22.... I don't know if
these comments are aimed at me, but nothing I've said suggests that I
think that this bias is conscious, let alone "malicious manipulation"; I
don't think either of those things. It needs to be said, of course, that
not everyone who lives in England shares the general bias in musical
performance style: I didn't when I lived there (though I shared the
anti-US bias until I first visited here); and there used to be two
wonderful magazines, Records and Recordings and the EMG Monthly
Newsletter, which on the whole did not either. Sadly, both died
around when I left, in 1980.
Simon
fc...@pe.net
In article <5vhchc$gt$1...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
h...@eng.cam.ac.uk (Haig Utidjian) wrote:
>And in my view there is a very important sense in which they do _transcend_
>their time and the circumstances of their composition -- yes. (Why else would
>we wish to listen to what they have to say to us today?) But of course those
>who venerate the great masters need do not undervalue their humanity in the
>slightest!
I absolutely disagree with you, in that people that venerate the great
masters, such as yourself, deny the great masters their humanity. You
seem to feel that these men created in a vaccuum outside time and space.
I see that they lived, worked, breathed, and created in their time. They
were products of the culture of their time. It is through their genius
that their art transcends time. It is the art, not the man, that is
timeless.
>You draw a literary analogy. Many great creative artists -- not all, but many
>-- have, in fact, been _acutely_ aware that their works were addressed
>not just to their immediate contemporaries, but to future generations also!
>Just read the opening page of Thucydides History, for example! Or
>some of Mahler's comments! (Just two examples that immediately spring
>to mind!)
More often than not, however, it appears that composers, and artists in
general didn't expect any kind of immortality. One could even go so far
as to say that they saw themselves as "working stiffs" who were trying to
stay employed so they could feed their families. The concept of the
starving artist is, after all, a relatively recent one. To cite the
example of Bach. When he began a new position as Kappellmeister, he was
expected to throw out his predecessor's music and start anew by providing
fresh music. The only real assurance that a composer's work would be
preserved was to publish it. Bach did this at his own expense. There are
always exceptions, of course. One could look at Josquin, whose music was
played and studied all over Europe 150 years after his death. The
question begs: did Josquin expect this? Clearly there is no answer to
this, but most likely, he hoped for this, as a father hopes his son will
carry on the family name, but didn't expect this immortality , since it
wasn't the practice of the day. Renaissance folk had this in common with
modern audiences: a short attention span!
>I think there may be an element of truth in what you say... but in any
>case, if (as we must) we are giving performances for the behoof of
> _present-day_ listeners, present-day aesthetics are also
>of great importance, are they not?! And might the latter not have been
>partly governed by our appreciation of extant good music from all ages?
Not at all. A musician's primary obligation is to the composer, since it
is only through the score that the composer may speak; the musician has
to give life to the score. The secondary responsiblity is to the
musician's own sense of aesthetics. The role of the audience, in my
opinion, should never color the performance. Such a performance is
culturally dishonest. When a performer begins tailoring his or her
performances to specific audiences, then artistic integrity is lost and
so is the composer's work. I feel that the mere presence of the audience
is affirmation enough of a willingness to hear and appreciate a
performance on its own terms. Besides that, do you know what you get when
an artist tailors art for an audience? Television.
>...to my mind, the main difficulty with Shakespeare is purely linguistic. But
>of course, "YMMV" (I'm learning! <LOL>)!
The point of the comparison with Shakespeare is this: for surface
appearances, the problem is the language. In reality, there are four
hundred years of separation between the Elizabethan-Jacobean culture and
the current age. There is even a cultural chasm between our two
countries! How can you, with no research, no preparation, expect to pick
up the cultural nuances that littered the plays? Now, I grant you, you
can pick up a great deal of the plays (or at least the main storyline)
just through reading the text and attending a performance. But a
knowledge of the cultural context of the plays makes everything (or most
everything) clear. It is then that one has a firsthand appreciation of
Shakespeare's genius, instead of just inherited wisdom. This is true
because Shakespeare was a man of his time. His genius enables his art to
transcend time, not just through his language, but also through his
univeral themes.
>But the way one plays A would be likely to be _affected_ in some by one's love
>and understanding of the music of B and of C, partly because one's musical
>sensbilities have been enriched by the music of B and C, and partly
>because there may be inherent characteristics in the music of A itself which
>lend themselves to this sort of mutual fructification. Indeed, conceivably, one
>might perhaps even play the music of A this way even if one never had the good
>fortune of hearing a _note_ of the music of B and of C. What I think _would_ be
>rather artificial would be to attempt to play the music of A as though we had
>never heard that of B and C, and in a fashion that would try self-consciously
>to compensate for the fact of our awareness of the musics of B and C.
I still find this reasoning artificial and convoluted to justify your own
musical prejudices. I find absolutely no artistic justification in
playing music this way. It is as though we can no longer look at the Mona
Lisa without appreciating Duchamp's pastiche on it. Or perhaps attending
a performance of "Romeo and Juliet" without thinking of "West Side
Story?" I reiterate, historically informed performance practice cleans
the cultural "crud" off the works of the past and, in doing so, enables
us to see them anew without the weight of history upon them. In short to
see them as living, breathing, vital works instead of museum pieces.
>...And if you are an organist, having heard his orchestration
>you may _well_ end up choosing to play the original version a little
>differently -- without so much as being consciously aware of the
>fact; what Respighi saw in Bach might well possibly lead you to see something
>in Bach's music which you had previously not seen to the same
>extent. (Note I say "in Bach's music" -- nothing extraneous to Bach's
>music, and certainly nothing extramusical!) And in my view there's nothing
>wrong with that if it does. On the contrary.
Once more, this really is apples vs. oranges since Respighi's music is
nothing more than an arrangement and does not purport to be anything
greater, and is certainly not "authentic." I have no objection to
Bach-Respighi, Bach-Liszt, or even Bach-Stokowski, so long as there is
truth in advertising, that is to say, people should know that this is not
Bach, but an arrangement.
Concerning the organ reference, the prefaces to the Schweitzer-Widor
editions contained voluminous notes: everything from fingering and
phrasing to resitration and keyboard changes. I, the ever dutiful
student, learned all this. At times it seemed more like a circus act
(juggling) than playing music. I did some research and found that the
technical notes had been prepared with the "modern" organ in mind;
"modern" meaning the large Cavaille-Coll organs of the mid-nineteenth
century and not the more modest organs at Bach's disposal. What's the
difference, I hear you say? An organ's an organ, right? Well, not
exactly. Withour going into excruciating detail, the French organs with
which Charles-Marie Widor was familiar are very reed heavy, and, like the
modern piano, tend to blur Bach's polyphony. The Widor-inspired finger
convolutions "orchestrated" Bach's fugues in order to bring out "the
theme." This is a very orchestral concept, but a very un-Bach like sound.
Bach's statement that if one plays the right notes at the right time then
the instrument plays itself is no self-effacement. An organist, or any
musician, for that matter, need not go through all this agony in order to
play his music. Bach was aiming for weaving a tapestry of sound through
polyphony and not creating theme and accompaniment, which is a very
Romantic concept.
>I certainly do not wish to name particular performers, but hardly need
>to do so, since the traits in question seem rather endemic amongst
>authenticists' recordings, and indeed some listeners may like them. Instead, I
>have been quite precise in my recent descriptions of one or two of the
>mannerisms which I have found a little vexatious. Why do you ask me to quote
>specific instances? Can you not recognise them from my verbal desciptions?
>Surely you must know what I mean!
Without you being more specific about mannerisms I can't get a clue to
the source of your displeasure about period performances. Naming names
and citing examples would certainly help the communication factor. If you
are hesitant to offend some of your countrymen, respond by private
e-mail. I promise to keep your secret and will respond only in the
vaguest of generalities. The only mannerism you have been clear about is
the tempo issue.
>I did not disagree with the late Dart (BTW himself a fine harpsichordist
>and viol player -- by no means just a musicologist!), and I quite enjoy _some_
>performances with cornets etc. of the music of the above three composers.
>However, I do not think Dart would have had in mind "authentic" Mozart,
>Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner; and I have already mentioned that I am
>less concerned about instruments than about how they are used.
The point of historically informed performance practice is that the
instruments and the performance practice are intertwined. One cannot
reasonably have one without the other. To quote Thurston Dart again, "Few
concert goers probably realize that of all the instruments they hear in
Beethoven's ninth symphony, for instance, the only ones whose sounds have
not changed since the symphony was first performed in 1824 are the
kettledrum, the triangle, and the trombone. All the others have been
transformed, some more and some less, and even if the symphony is played
with the same number of instruments and voices that were used in 1824,
the resultant sound will be quite different in quality."
Incidentally, Dart's two clavichord recordings in the early sixties, one
of Froberger and the other of Bach's French suites set my feet on the
path of historically correct performance practice.
Haig Utidjian
Frank Cone wrote:
>I absolutely disagree with you, in that people that venerate the great
>masters, such as yourself, deny the great masters their humanity.
I think you're generalising... speaking for myself, I can assure you
that I certainly don't. But to _some_ extent one can, and perhaps sometimes
needs to, keep the man and his work apart. Some composers were quite
ordinary chaps in almost every respect except for their extraordinary
creative gifts. Some were decidedly disagreeable characters. The case
of Wagner has been often discussed in this group.
(Note that I said to _some_ extent -- I _am_ aware that some of
the composer's extramusical ideas may have been reflected in his
libretti, characterisations, etc..)
>You
>seem to feel that these men created in a vaccuum outside time and space.
Not at all! But I do not feel that it is necessary for us to feel
constrained by the particular circumstances of their time. For
instance, Shostakovich may or may not have had hidden political,
anti-Stalinist ideas underlying some of his music. (The issue is
debatable -- but he may well have done.) Nontheless, it seems to me
that the very considerable corpus of his better works is _entirely_
undiminished by the recent change in political re'gime in Russia. Even if,
say, the second movement of his tenth symphony was intended as some
sort of "portrait" of Stalin, or protest against tyranny, it speaks to
us with unreduced eloquence even now that memories of Stalin are
getting dimmer... And is it necessary for one to be a Protestant to
conduct Bach's St. Matthew Passion?
>They
>were products of the culture of their time.
They were that _and more_!
>It is the art, not the man, that is
>timeless.
I agree. But the art _is_ timeless -- not tied down to the
circumstances of the time and milieu in which the _man_ lived!
>More often than not, however, it appears that composers, and artists in
>general didn't expect any kind of immortality.
What is the relevance of more often than not? Are you implying that we
must use old instruments for those master who were not interested in
"immortablity", and would you tolerate modern instruments for those
who consciously sought it? What is the relevance of this? Perhaps
sometimes they expected or wanted their music to last, sometimes they
didn't weren't bothered. Either way, the fact
is that in many cases their music warrants, deserves, and _has_ (so far)
achieved, "immortality"!
>Renaissance folk had this in common with
>modern audiences: a short attention span!
I think this is no less dangerous than saying "it's renaissance music
-- it ought to be slow!".
I really do not think you can generalise and claim that before a certain time
all artists were uninterested in immortality, and they became
interested only in "relatively recent" times. Thucydides was around in
the fourth century B.C., after all -- he said something like (I don't
have the text here, not even its English translation, so am perhaps
inexact) "I have written my work not for the tastes of my contemporaries but
for all eternity"! You could also argue and say that although many
composers may have written music for their livelihood, which is
perhaps a mundane enough preoccupation, many of them deep down (or less so!)
had a sense of the real value and significance of what they
were doing, and of the fact that their work transcended their time as
well as their local environment. And might it perhaps not have been partly
such a conviction that might have kept some composers going who were not
appreciated in their own lifetime?
But I don't find this issue all that relevant one way or the other,
because it seems to me that even if the composer didn't
particularly care whether his music survived or not, so long as _we_
think it is of interest and worth to us now, then it _has_ survived!
>A musician's primary obligation is to the composer
I agree. But most composers composed as they wished to communicate to
their fellow man. The musician's obligation to the composer lies in
the musician's duty to make the music come alive to an audience, does
it not?
(I would say, BTW, that in some special cases there may be a sense in which
the "audience" consists of the musicians themselves, as in
some chamber music, where the musicans are playing _to_ each other and
where perhaps the listening public ought to be regarded as (to use the
late Hans Keller's expression) "more or less excusable
eavesdroppers"!)
>The secondary responsiblity is to the
>musician's own sense of aesthetics.
I see no ineluctable dichotomy. I don't think one has a responsiblity _to_
anyone's "own sense of aesthetics". Rather, I think of aesthetics as
_informing_ in some sense the way one plays, or reacts to others who
play... I can't see how a musican can make sense of a
score without some sort of implicit reference to his own aesthetics. Should a
musican confine himself to the mere mechanical realisation of individual
notes? How else could we bypass the musician's "own sense of
aesthetics"?
If there is some sort of incompatibility then don't play that piece!
>The role of the audience, in my
>opinion, should never color the performance.
I agree with you there.
>When a performer begins tailoring his or her
>performances to specific audiences, then artistic integrity is lost and
>so is the composer's work.
I agree here too. I don't like the idea of a performance being
"tailored" in _any_ way. But this, I'm afraid, includes attempts to
"tailor" it by trying, in a self-conscious manner, to erase the
experience of music more recent to that being performed from the minds
and hearts of the audience or of the performers themselves.
I had said:
>>But the way one plays A would be likely to be _affected_ in some by one's love
>>and understanding of the music of B and of C, partly because one's musical
>>sensbilities have been enriched by the music of B and C, and partly
>>because there may be inherent characteristics in the music of A itself which
>>lend themselves to this sort of mutual fructification. Indeed, conceivably, one
>>might perhaps even play the music of A this way even if one never had the good
>>fortune of hearing a _note_ of the music of B and of C. What I think _would_ be
>>rather artificial would be to attempt to play the music of A as though we had
>>never heard that of B and C, and in a fashion that would try self-consciously
>>to compensate for the fact of our awareness of the musics of B and C.
and you responded by saying:
>I still find this reasoning artificial and convoluted to justify your own
>musical prejudices.
It is artificial only in the sense that I don't ever go through these
thought processes when I am studying or performing. I have gone into this sort
of explanation simply because this discussion called for a sort of
analytical explanation as to why I think it cannot but be that
our love of recent music affects the way we play and listen to older
music. Reading it again now I don't find it convoluted at all. Nor do
I think it justifies any specific musical prejudices. Please can you
tell me which specific parts of the above argument you disagree with,
precisely? I have quoted it in full so that you can indicate your
objections point by point, as it were. Perhaps you would be so kind as
to elaborate, noting which _particular_ parts in my paragraph
above you find objectionable. Otherwise I remain quite unconvinced
with your verdict! Thanks!
And my last point especially (about the artificiality of trying to
ignore later music) is most decidedly not just a piece of sophistry --
I do mean it rather earnestly!
>It is as though we can no longer look at the Mona
>Lisa without appreciating Duchamp's pastiche on it.
I object on two counts:
(1) Are you saying (to return to our long-standing example) you reckon
Bruckner 7 to be analogous to such a pastiche, relative to the Mona Lisa of
Beethoven 9 ? I find that hard to believe! (2) I never said we can't
appreciate one without the other, merely that our appreciation of one
is enriched by our appreciation of the other. And I note that you were
willing to allow this enrichment, but only in one direction -- from
the past to the future, whereas I see no reason it should not go in
the other direction as well, so to speak.
I would certainly think that the way we look at an older painting and
the way we perceive it and appreciate it, is to some degree affected
by associations with what else we have seen, including
more recent paintings, and scenes from present day life which
could not have been beheld by the old masters in question.
But the painting analogy fails in the sense that once a painting has
been executed it is static and thus less prone to variation in the
sense in which performances of the same musical composition differ
from each other even within the composer's lifetime. The
score, after all, is a blueprint; to come alive to an audience in
1997 as _music_ it needs to be performed by musicans who are there in
1997 (unless we're not talking about live performance but rather
playing back old recordings, or unless we're talking about reading the score
silently, a case which I already discussed in a previous posting); thus a
particular piece of music (as opposed to the score) may be considered
to be part of an evolving performing tradition, with a life of its own
that is almost independent of its composer. Once you've written a piece
and published it your work acquires its own existence -- like a
child. Even within your own lifetime, different performers may
legitimately play it in ways that differ from each other, but all of
which faithfully correspond to the same score. Great scores (indeed,
some might even include not-so-great-scores also) "underdetermine"
the musical performance, so to speak. (Which is part of the reason
why one need never be bored by performing great music.)
>Or perhaps attending
>a performance of "Romeo and Juliet" without thinking of "West Side
>Story?"
Again I find this an unfortunate example, as I am not overfond of "West Side
Story", don't know it particularly well, it has not entered into my
bloodstream, and it doesn't particularly affect how I listen or play.
I think this is what they call a "straw man". I don't think this
example is comparable to my Beethoven and Bruckner one, or even to my
Bach and Respighi one. Do people consider Bernstein in this guise
as the heir of Tchaikovsky or Prokiev or Berlioz? Do they even belong
to the same tradition the way you could conceivably argue that Lehar
and Bruckner do?
>I reiterate, historically informed performance practice cleans
>the cultural "crud" off the works of the past and, in doing so, enables
>us to see them anew without the weight of history upon them
You do indeed reiterate this, but I find it no more convincing on each
iteration than on the previous one! I don't see what the "cultural `crud'" _is_
exactly, musically speaking. Nor do I see history as a sort of
burden. I see it as something affording additional dimensions,
bestowing greater wealth still and yet further avenues of potential
delectation!
>In short to
>see them as living, breathing, vital works instead of museum pieces.
This is precisely what I argued above. Anything that breathes also evolves!
As I see it, if anything, your inclination to confine a work of art to
the cultural context of its time, as a lifeless exhibit without a subsequent
life of performances, evolution, development of performing traditions,
could be argued to be precisely tantamount to reducing them to museum pieces!
And of course museum pieces certainly do not have the
weight of more recent history on them. They are dead the moment their
creation was completed, and remain trapped crystallised in the way in
which their creator left them in their own time, which,
from our point of view is now "the past". For me great music does not
belong to that category!
>Once more, this really is apples vs. oranges since Respighi's music is
>nothing more than an arrangement and does not purport to be anything
>greater, and is certainly not "authentic." I have no objection to
>Bach-Respighi, Bach-Liszt, or even Bach-Stokowski, so long as there is
>truth in advertising, that is to say, people should know that this is not
>Bach, but an arrangement.
You seem to have misunderstood once again. This has nothing to do with
"apples and oranges" since I did not invite you to consider the
_relative merits_ of Bach Vs. Bach/Respighi. Rather, I cited the
existence of Bach Respighi as a sort of record of how Bach was
perceived and heard by Respighi; and then I proceeded to argue that
Respighi's perception of Bach, as expressed in his arrangement,
is interesting, quite apart from any value it may inherently possess,
as a reflection of at the very least one facet of Bach's music "as
seen by Respighi". To put it crudely, that's what Respighi saw and
imagined when he looked at Bach from his
own angle. It's not the whole truth, but it's an interesting
view. Bach's piece is like a diamond with a multiplicity of surfaces.
Respighi saw one or two of them, Elgar yet another. All these views
tell us something about Bach's music and how it was perceived by
Respighi, Elgar, etc.. Of course these are not objetive views.
But only the silent score can be that (and I argued recently that
perhaps even when you are reading it silently you can't be entirely
"purified" of other influences). I thus argued that even these
orchestral arrangements shed some light on
aspects of Bach's music. They are not _necessary_ to our appreciation
or understanding of Bach's music, but they do _add_ something -- even
if something negligible if you will -- to our view.
>This is a very orchestral concept, but a very un-Bach like sound.
Still, it gives us another view, even if one through distorted
spectacles, in this case Widor's, of Bach's music. In this instance I'd suspect
there's rather a lot of Widor and rather less of Bach perhaps. Even so
-- he latched on to _something_ that he saw in Bach's score, did he not?
Something that was _in_ the score!
>technical notes had been prepared with the "modern" organ in mind;
>"modern" meaning the large Cavaille-Coll organs of the mid-nineteenth
>century and not the more modest organs at Bach's disposal. What's the
>difference, I hear you say?
I wouldn't dream of such a thing. I don't know _whose_ voice you
heard, old chap! :-)
>An organ's an organ, right? Well, not
>exactly. Withour going into excruciating detail
Please give me the benfit of the doubt before assuming that I've never
seen or heard an organ. We do have one or two here, you know! :-)
>An organist, or any
>musician, for that matter,
<LOL> I hope you don't necessarily consider the two catogories to be mutually
exclusive as did Beecham... When Sir Thomas was shown
a tomb that said "here resteth a great organist and a fine musican",
he exclaimed "gosh, how they managed to fit in _two_ bodies in such a small
space"! :-)
>An organist, or any
>musician, for that matter, need not go through all this agony in order to
>play his music.
But if _that_ is how the music works for them...?! If that's how they
hear it, feel it, imagine it?
>Bach was aiming for weaving a tapestry of sound through
>polyphony and not creating theme and accompaniment, which is a very
>Romantic concept.
Bach has been extraordinarily adaptable... The same score by Bach --
take The Art of Fugue -- was heard and imagined
differently by Tovey, Gould, Scherchen, Nikolaeva,
Malgoire, and, very recently, Donatoni (whose quite
extraordinary work inspired by it awaits its first UK performance... quite a
remarkable score...). There is not a unique "true" way... there are inherent
multiplicities residing within the music which lend themselves to such
a wealth of diversity, IMHO. Who are we to say what Bach was "aiming
for"? What each of us can say is "as I see it, this is how it works"
or "this is how it _has_ to go for the music really to _work_; it
doesn't make sense to me otherwise!", etc..
>Without you being more specific about mannerisms I can't get a clue to
>the source of your displeasure about period performances. [...]
>The only mannerism you have been clear about is
>the tempo issue.
I beg to differ! Let me quote one example, from one of my recent
postings. This is an instance of a "historically informed" practice
which has actually infected playing on a modern instrument:
I said (on 13 September):
:For instance -- all too many
:"modern"-instrument string players will now play a phrase -- or
:rather, the constituent notes of what some of us might be tempted to consider
:a phrase (!) -- in a manner which makes it sound a mere succession of
:mutually unrelated individual notes each of which
:starts "straight" and quiet and then grows louder to the accompaniment of
:increasing vibrato, such that the phrase ends up sounding more like a
:succession of the individual notes rather than a single, meaningful
:entity of tightly connected notes analogous [to] how a good _singer_ might
:have sung it.
Was this not specific enough?
I have also repeatedly referred to the bizarre "historically informed" practice
of playing e.g. Brahms and Wagner as also earlier music without any
glissandi, without agogic variations, with heavy articulation,
accentuation, and very short-range phrasing. These too are all very
specific characteristics, IMHO. You may or may not like such
practices, but you won't find a shortage of examples of their perpetration!
>Naming names
>and citing examples would certainly help the communication factor. If you
>are hesitant to offend some of your countrymen,
I am not convinced that this will be helpful.
(BTW may I assure you that I would not wish to offend any honest
musician irrespective of whether he is my "contryman" or woman or not!
But that is not to say that I have to like everything everybody does!)
>The point of historically informed performance practice is that the
>instruments and the performance practice are intertwined.
They have never been quite clear about this aspect. As I see it,
there is an obsessive concern about the instruments used, who made
them, after what original specimen made by whom when and where, but
this is not matched by a comparable care in how they're played.
A certain fairly standardised fashion of playing those instruments seems
to have formed. This has been partly by adopting in a selective manner
bits and pieces of advice from treatises, many of which may have been
reactions against rather than reflections of the practice of the day.
And of course how can words describe adequately the practices of even
the turn of the century?! Just consider this: if we gave a violinist a
_perfectly_ preserved and untouched fiddle from even 1927, wrote ten
pages of a verbal description of a Thibaud recording to try to capture
his playing (let alone e.g. the older Joachim
et al) and asked him to reconstruct from these writings the older
performer's style in, say, the Franck sonata, _without_ letting him
hearing any of the old recordings, and then compare his endeavours
with the recording how likely is he to get _remotely_ close?
A more significant influence seems to have as its origin the (IMHO)
dubious, heavy reliance on the idea that whatever comes most _easily_
under the fingers whilst employing old instruments, is necessarily
appropriate from a musical and stylistic point of view; that the instruments
should be allowed virtually to "play themselves"; that the composer designed
his music in such a way that it would somehow comfortably "fit" the instrument
technically as well as musically. I don't swallow this at all -- either
for Bach or for Beethoven. Thus, for example, you've got a curved bow.
Then every longish note grows and decays? You've got a long upbow and
a short upbow. Righty-ho, then let's allow the short note to get a
brutal accent? No -- I am not convinced!
>One cannot
>reasonably have one without the other.
Can one not play on old instruments in a "romantic"
manner? And hasn't Harnoncourt made the Concertgebouw/COE made play
Mozart with at least _some_ instances of sudden accents, dots changed
to rests, reduced vibrato etc.? Thus, it seems to me that one has been
done without the other, and the other without the one! What do you
mean by "reasonably" here?
>the only ones whose sounds have
>not changed since the symphony was first performed in 1824 are the
>kettledrum, the triangle, and the trombone.
<LOL> And I think he was wrong about the kettledrum too!
I agree that the resultant sound might be different in quality.
Whether the difference is all that great, and whether one is genuinely
to be preferred to the other, one way or the other, is open to
argument. Personally, I enjoy both sets of sounds. (BTW nor am I
necessarily convinced that even the _sound_ of the authenticists is exactly
"right" -- for one thing some of them sound very different from _each
other_! But I dislike many performances employing old instruments for
reasons quite unrelated to the sound of the instruments
themselves. But this I have already made clear on a number of occasions.
>Incidentally, Dart's two clavichord recordings in the early sixties, one
>of Froberger and the other of Bach's French suites set my feet on the
>path of historically correct performance practice.
I haven't heard them, unfortunately. I've got some Bach sonata
recordings ( can't remember who the flautist was now) where he's
playing the harpsichord, and (if I remember
rightly) harpsichord and organ continue in Boyd Neel's second (1950)
recording of Handel's Concerti Grossi (the first, in 1936, has Mr
Goldsborough playing a horrible-sounding battleship!). And you can
hear him playing the viol in that wonderful recording from 1959 I
think, of Gibbons' This is the record of John, with Sir David
Wilcocks, which to my mind hasn't been bettered. But all this might be
insufficiently "historically informed" for you! If so, that's a pity,
as all these are performances of a rare freshness and sense of discovery.
Thanks for your interesting points.
Haig.
--
http://www-control.eng.cam.ac.uk/hu/hu.html
Simon Roberts
fc...@pe.net wrote:
: Not at all. A musician's primary obligation is to the composer, since it
: is only through the score that the composer may speak; the musician has
: to give life to the score.
There's an important point to be made here concerning HIP, I think.
Assuming one agrees with your premise, we are faced with the obvious
problem that most music written before Mahler has remarkably few
indications in the score concerning phrasing, tempo, dynamics, etc., a
"problem" which increases as one moves further into the past. The fewer
the indicia in the score the more important it is to learn the language of
the time that wasn't laid down in the scores because there was no need to.
One of the merits of the HIP movement is their recognition of this need
and their attempts to satisfy it (which isn't to say they succeed, but
that's a different problem).
: I still find this reasoning artificial and convoluted to justify your own
: musical prejudices. I find absolutely no artistic justification in
: playing music this way. It is as though we can no longer look at the Mona
: Lisa without appreciating Duchamp's pastiche on it. Or perhaps attending
: a performance of "Romeo and Juliet" without thinking of "West Side
: Story?" I reiterate, historically informed performance practice cleans
: the cultural "crud" off the works of the past and, in doing so, enables
: us to see them anew without the weight of history upon them. In short to
: see them as living, breathing, vital works instead of museum pieces.
Yes, but there are two interesting paradoxes here. First, this interest
in "getting back to the original" is itself a product of a relatively
recent bit of history; there's no reason to suppose that baroque composers
expected or wanted (or even thought about the question) their music to be
played in the manner to which they were accustomed in some unknown future.
There's a similar paradox in legal history for original intent
interpreters of the Constitution: those of the framers who thought about
the question did not want their specific understanding of the constitution
to govern its future interpretation, only basic principles, which they
expected to be fleshed out by the interpreters according to their
interpretative criteria.
Second, the interpretative style of many in the HIP movement -- dominant
until recently, and still prevalent among English and American groups --
according to which scores should be played "straight," as it were, with
little rubato and other tempo modifications, etc., is, as Taruskin has
perceptively noted, basically an aesthetic developed by Stravinsky and has
little or no support in older texts.
: The point of historically informed performance practice is that the
: instruments and the performance practice are intertwined. One cannot
: reasonably have one without the other. To quote Thurston Dart again, "Few
: concert goers probably realize that of all the instruments they hear in
: Beethoven's ninth symphony, for instance, the only ones whose sounds have
: not changed since the symphony was first performed in 1824 are the
: kettledrum, the triangle, and the trombone.
Even that's understating it, isn't it? Timpani have changed quite a lot;
they were skin covered and hit, unless the score requested otherwise, with
hard-headed sticks (and aren't they bigger now?).
Simon
fc...@pe.net
Someone has written that one should never meet their heroes. Inevitably
one is disappointed with the "man" and that disappointment colors how one
feels about the source of the hero-worship. I don't feel that this is the
situation here, because we are not actually meeting the composer or even
getting inside his head, just acquainting ourselves with his cultural
idiom in order to better appreciate his works, if you will, a new way of
seeing old works. I am probably at fault for carrying this side issue so
far afield.
You used the example of Mahler. I find him to be an unfortunate choice,
because he seems to me to be all too self-consciously aware of not only
the weight of the past but impending future generations as well. As an
aside, our example, Beethoven, was undeniably a musical genius, but he
cast a very long shadow over nineteenth century European musical culture
and even had an enervating effect. I think he, more than any other
composer, made composers in general conscious of the weight of history,
musical judgment, and criticism.
You also wrote: "And is it necessary for one to be a Protestant to
conduct Bach's St. Matthew Passion?" Clearly not. In our country one
needs a license to drive a motor vehicle. A conductor needs only his
half-baked ideas in order to proceed to butcher the classics. However, I
feel that an understanding of Bach's faith can only help a conductor
understand not only Bach, but Bach's music-especially Bach's sacred
music. This a bit of a sticking point with me, this topic of sacred
music. In our secular age, many people are uncomfortable with the idea of
sacred music. In fact many of the great composers of the past were nearly
exclusively church composers. So what happens is that their secular music
(usually not the bulk of their output) is played to the near-exclusion of
their sacred music. When the sacred music is played, it is played as
abstract art music. Naturally, I have to be speaking in generalities
here, since for every example I could give, you could give two to counter
me; I'm merely noticing an uncomfortable trend. Removing the faith from
the performance is to deny the music its soul. Bach, Palestrina,
Gabrieli, etc. were all deeply religious men. Their "bread-and-butter"
was their sacred music. You perhaps disagree or have had different
experiences.
I don't think that we can ever know what a particular composer's mind-set
regarding "immortality." Such a discussion is moot, at best. But maybe we
can see what society's attitude was. Joseph Kerman, in his book,
"Contemplating Music," "Continuity in the Western tradition of art music
can be traced cack to around 1800: to a time when,a s we have seen, the
works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were perceived as masterpieces in a
new way, and as masterpieces that had to be preserved in the permanent
repertory. This repertory was added to, generation by generation; whole
generations of works were not taken out. Presumably there has been some
kind of corresponding continuity in the performing tradition of all this
music, though we will be well advised not to overestimate its extent.
Nineteenth century musicians also reached back to the Baroque period and
appropriated the music of Bach and Handel. They did not make the attempt
to reconstruct its performing traditions."
You wrote: (I am paraphrasing) "...the 'audience' consists of the
musicians themselves, as in some chamber music, where the musicians are
playing to each other and where perhaps the listening public ought to be
regarded as more or less excusable eavesdroppers." It's interesting-I had
a recent experience very much like your example. I had rehearsed for a
week with an ensemble, where we were playing some sacred music by Tomas
Luis de Victoria. We had decided that, since we had not had the time to
do justice to all the nuances of Victoria's music, we would call our
performance a "presentation" instead. Just prior to the "presentation"
the leader of the ensemble introduced us and the music, then proceeded to
admonish the audience that what they were about to hear was Renaissance
chamber music, to be played on Sunday afternoons. It was never intended
to have an audience as such. We intended to play for and to ourselves. If
they wanted to share our experience, that was fine; if not, they should
be quiet and respect us! Needless to say, everyone listened attentively.
You did agree with me when I wrote that "The role of the audience, in my
opinion, should never color the performance." But earlier (09/14/97) you
had written "...in any case, if (as we must) we are giving performances
for the behoof of present-day listeners, present-day aesthetics are of
great importance, are they not?!" I infer from that statement that
performances need to be tailored to the idiom of the audience, not the
idiom of the composer. I see a contradiction here. Since you obviously do
not, could you please explain your statement? It seems that the audience
is more important than the composer. It is not unreasonable to expect a
certain amount of cultural background for a late twentieth-century
audience.
You also said that "But this, I'm afraid, includes attemps to 'tailor' it
by trying, in a self-conscious manner, to erase the experience of music
more recent to that being performed from the minds and hearts of the
audience or the perfromers themselves." I must take exception to that
blanket dismissal of historic performance. In the first place, who ever
said all more recent musical experience must be erased from the hearts
and minds of the audience and the performers? I never said that, nor did
Thurston Dart, nor did Denis Stevens. Such an assertion is, at its core,
ludicrous. We can never recreate the musical innocence necessary for such
a phenomenon to happen. We can never listen to Beethoven and exult in the
"unexpected harmonies" in the ninth. How can we ever expect an audience,
upon hearing Berlioz or Stravinsky, to riot when they are shocked by the
music? Or women to swoon when hearing Liszt or seeing the Devil over the
shoulder of a violinist while performing Paganini? We have just heard too
much, having been bombarded with music both good and bad, over the course
of our lifetimes to be able to "unlearn" it. The historic performance
movement has never suggested this.
Secondly, I take issue with the "self-conscious" assertion. It was
perhaps true that early music performance practice was "self-conscious"
in the fifties and sixties. Lawrence Dreyfus wrote, "This [the fifties]
was a period of the 'sewing machine' style, sometimes called the 'Vivaldi
revival,' when German chamber orchestras enthusiastically took up
'terraced dynamics,' when historically-minded conductors urged players to
stop 'phrasing' and when repeat signs in the music occasioned a blase of
preposterous embellishments. 'Motoric rhythms,' it seemed, revealed a new
species of musical gratification-the freedom from feeling." Having quoted
that, I think that, in this day and age, you would be hard-pressed to
find a modern period-instrument ensemble that played in such a
"self-conscious" manner. The latest issue of Early Music America notes "a
maturing in the early music aesthetic itself." Kerman notes, "There were
many fine players of the 1950s (including Dart) on whose surviving
records one can hear ample evidence of rhythmic flexibility, dynamic
variety, unobtrusive ornamentation, freedom, and feeling," and later,
"One would scarcely call Alfred Deller a less emotional artist than
Kirsten Flagstad."
Since you have no sympathy (perhaps empathy would be a better word here)
for historic performance, you probably don't realize how monumental the
task is to recreate a playing tradition. Someone has written that, while
modern musicians work within a living tradition, early musicians are
exhuming a corpse and attempting to resuscitate it. It is therefore
inevitable that missteps will happen. As I have pointed out earlier,
historic perfomance is a process, and an on-going one at that.
As to your recurring theme of A, B, and C: it is unsurprising that you
fail to find your reasoning circular. Your statements are conjectures, so
much so that no one could ever prove or disprove them. You are right, in
that I probably did misunderstand what you were getting at. When I
re-read your hypothesis, I realized that you had said "...would likely to
be affected..." I thought that you meant that this was a desirable thing,
instead of something that you were conjecturing might happen in the
context of musical tradition. You went further, "What I think would be
rather artificial would be to attempt to play the music of A as though we
had never heard that of B and C..." This statement, in my opinion,
contradicts an earlier statement you made: "One never plays anything to
'emphasize similarities'"... If you are playing A In The Context of B,
then your interpretation has been altered in some way, presumably due to
either differences or similarites. If the music and the composers are so
dissimilar that you are emphasizing neither similarities nor differences,
then what, exactly, is the point? It seems so abstract as to approach the
metaphysical and so circular that it is self-proving. I do not doubt for
a moment your sincerity. I do question whether you have thought this
through, though.
The major objection I have to your hypothesis is that it reduces musical
experience to a series of "meta-musical" influences. In other words,
one's enjoyment of great music or cultural enrichment would be largely
based on one's previous experiences and not on one's current experience.
This does seem to me to cheapen the musical experience. I still believe
that the works of the great composers can and should stand or fall on
their own merits. If influences matter that much, then Reger should hold
an equal place beside Bach
The painting analogy does not fail, because it shows the difference
between the various arts. The painter paints; his work stands immutable
through the ages (actually the reality is somewhat different). The
composer composes; his work, the score, stands, as you said, as a
blueprint. But it cannnot stand alone. A silent reading of the score is
certainly not what the composer intended. The intention is for music to
be made, sounds to be heard. The painting stands alone-even the score is
open to interpretation and various editions and amendations. The composer
cannot speak for himself-musicians and musicologists working together
must carry out the composer's wishes. If the intent is not to honor the
silent composer, then you care nothing at all for artistic truth as best
we can find it. In fact it is our obligation to find the artistic truth.
You stated you find my "cultural crud" unconvincing with each successive
iteration. Nicely put. If one were to treat paintings the same as "we"
treat musical scores, then each succeeding generation would repaint the
clothes in the portraits to reflect current fashions, and if large
paintings go out of style, then we slice the pictures to fit our new
frames. What's the difference, so long as our cultural aesthetic is
maintained? Now if a generation came along and wondered what the artist
originally painted, and began cleaning off the cultural droppings of past
generations, there would be an outcry that they are vandalizing the works
of the past. Even as layers of obscuring varnish and paint placed there
by our well-meaning forefathers dissolved under the restorer's brush,
there would always be those who would mourn its passing. The end result
is artistic truth--truth for the artist, not for the art historian, not
for the art restorer, and certainly not for the "rabble" (forgive the
term) that haunt art galleries and museums. We are the ones that must
meet the artist or composer on his terms, not ours.
I continue to find our discussion stimulating, but a bit frustrating.
Your objections to historical performance baffle me. Perhaps it is my own
limited intellect that prevents me from understanding you better, so
please bear with me. You have only stated an objection to tempi that
reminded you of successful laxative ingestions (I believe I already
addressed this) and this period violin ornament played on a modern violin
that seemed to have affected you in much the same way as a visit to a
dentist. Those objections seem very limited to offhandedly dismiss the
entire historical performance movement. I would actually prefer to
discuss specifics, rather than vague generalities, if you wouldn't mind.
In closing, I note a subtle change in your demeanor, from polite to
slightly irascible. As an example, you no longer wished me "best wishes."
If I have offended you in some way, please accept my apologies. In turn,
I would appreciate neither being misquoted nor taken out of context when
you hold me up to ridicule to fellow readers of this newsgroup. Thanks in
advance and to show my good faith, I sign off,
cordially yours,
fc...@pe.net
In article <5vsjoq$30l$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
si...@dept.english.upenn.edu (Simon Roberts) wrote:
> ...as one moves further into the past. The fewer
> the indicia in the score the more important it is to learn the language of
> the time that wasn't laid down in the scores because there was no need to.
> One of the merits of the HIP movement is their recognition of this need
> and their attempts to satisfy it (which isn't to say they succeed, but
> that's a different problem).
This is a true statement. In the latest issue of Early Music America,
Paul O'Dette, the American lutanist states, "Unlike players of the time,
we have a lot of different traditions--too many traditions--in our ear
all at the same time. You have to learn the language of a particular
style, by starting from what the written music in that style can teach
you. We'll never know what they didn't write down." It should also be
noted that there was not just one early music style, but that style (to
use Dart's meaning of the word) varied from country to country and even
from city to city.
> Yes, but there are two interesting paradoxes here. First, this interest
> in "getting back to the original" is itself a product of a relatively
> recent bit of history; there's no reason to suppose that baroque composers
> expected or wanted (or even thought about the question) their music to be
> played in the manner to which they were accustomed in some unknown future.
> There's a similar paradox in legal history for original intent
> interpreters of the Constitution: those of the framers who thought about
> the question did not want their specific understanding of the constitution
> to govern its future interpretation, only basic principles, which they
> expected to be fleshed out by the interpreters according to their
> interpretative criteria.
In a way, this argument is sophistry, since I pointed out elsewhere that
the concept of a permanent repertory is a relatively recent concept, as
well. We can never be certain of the attitude of Baroque composers. It
could be hypothesized that since the composers who held official postions
in churches or for royalty were expected to provide new music and to
discard the remnants of the past, and that the only guarantee of any
degree of "immortality" was to be published, it is entirely possible that
the Baroque composer was more interested in the immediate future and not
necessarily future generations. So the point is that, in this light, your
average Baroque composer would not have thought of the question, much
less the answer.
> Second, the interpretative style of many in the HIP movement -- dominant
> until recently, and still prevalent among English and American groups --
> according to which scores should be played "straight," as it were, with
> little rubato and other tempo modifications, etc., is, as Taruskin has
> perceptively noted, basically an aesthetic developed by Stravinsky and has
> little or no support in older texts.
This is true to a point, but as Joseph Kerman pointed out in his book
Contemplating Music, "There were many fine players of the 1950s
(including Dart) on whose surviving records one can hear ample evidence
of rhythmic flexibility, dynamic variety, unobtrusive ornamentation,
freedom, and feeling," and later, "One would scarcely call Alfred Deller
a less emotional artist than Kirsten Flagstad." Kerman traces the
"straight" style to the avant-garde aethetic prevalent at the time the
early music movement was getting off the ground. Fortunately, the
"straight" style seems to have become passe.
> : The point of historically informed performance practice is that the
> : instruments and the performance practice are intertwined. One cannot
> : reasonably have one without the other. To quote Thurston Dart again, "Few
> : concert goers probably realize that of all the instruments they hear in
> : Beethoven's ninth symphony, for instance, the only ones whose sounds have
> : not changed since the symphony was first performed in 1824 are the
> : kettledrum, the triangle, and the trombone.
>
> Even that's understating it, isn't it? Timpani have changed quite a lot;
> they were skin covered and hit, unless the score requested otherwise, with
> hard-headed sticks (and aren't they bigger now?).
>
> Simon
Remember that Dart's book was originally written in 1954, and he didn't
have the last 43 years of research. The point was that he wasn't thinking
only in terms of early music only. Thanks for your perceptive comments,
Cordially,
Haig Utidjian
Frank Cone wrote:
>You also wrote: "And is it necessary for one to be a Protestant to
>conduct Bach's St. Matthew Passion?" Clearly not. In our country one
>needs a license to drive a motor vehicle. A conductor needs only his
>half-baked ideas in order to proceed to butcher the classics.
I do not understand what you are implying here. Which conductor are
you referring to? Is it meant to be me again?! :-)
>In our secular age, many people are uncomfortable with the idea of
>sacred music.
That is true. But I do think great sacred music can be appreciated by
those belonging to a different faith from that of the composer, or
indeed of the interpreter. Equally, many of us can perhaps find a deep
spirituality in works that appear to be secular. And some listeners
find that great music _inspires_ faith. (As for performers lacking in
religious conviction, may they not treat a religious setting as they
would treat settings of other texts?)
>So what happens is that their secular music
>(usually not the bulk of their output) is played to the near-exclusion of
>their sacred music.
Again I do not know to whom you refer. At least in the UK I do think
that much of Bach's and Monteverdi's sacred music does get heard, but
of course there is rather a lot of it, and of a uniformly high quality
too. In general, many visitors here seem to find that we appear to have the
benefit of a reasonable number of good concerts of church music in a
ddition to a decent standard of music performed in worship at many
collegiate chapels, cathedrals and parish churches. Unfortunately I am
insufficiently familiar with the situation in the US to be able to
comment one way or the other.
>Removing the faith from
>the performance is to deny the music its soul.
I think I know what you mean, but these are very dangerous
arguments... how far would you go with this?
Would you argue, for example, that a Protestant ought not to conduct
Palestrina, or a Catholic Bach? What about gifted musicians from
completely different religious traditions, or who subscribe to none of
the major religions? I am not sure that I would be happy with the
implications of such arguments at all...
>You wrote: (I am paraphrasing) "...the 'audience' consists of the
>musicians themselves, as in some chamber music, where the musicians are
>playing to each other and where perhaps the listening public ought to be
>regarded as more or less excusable eavesdroppers." It's interesting-I had
>a recent experience very much like your example. [...]
Yes -- I can sympathise very much with that.
>You did agree with me when I wrote that "The role of the audience, in my
>opinion, should never color the performance." But earlier (09/14/97) you
>had written "...in any case, if (as we must) we are giving performances
>for the behoof of present-day listeners, present-day aesthetics are of
>great importance, are they not?!" I infer from that statement that
performances need to be tailored to the idiom of the audience, not the
idiom of the composer. I see a contradiction here. Since you obviously do
not, could you please explain your statement?
Yes, I'll try. You are right in that I think I was being slightly
careless in my wording there, and thus it is understandable
that you should have inferred from my far more than I would have
intended. In any case, the aesthetics of the audience and those of the
performers coincide to no small degree, it seems to me, so long
as we are talking about live performers rather than
recordings. The aesthetics of performers are,
after all, shaped to a large degree by those performances which they
themselves have experienced as listeners; whilst, as the
above example demonstrates, in many
situations there's certainly a sense in which the performers
themselves are also their own audience (in addition to anyone else who
may be present). In either case, the prevalent aesthetics within the
lifetime of those those in the Hall at the time the music is being
played, are, I think, relevant. I certainly do not feel that the
audience should _influence_ the performance, and would certainly
disapprove of the slightest suggestion that the performers should in any way
play _down_ to an audience. Rather, I agree with
Nadia Boulanger who, I think, said something to the effect that a fine
interpretation of a great piece of music leaves one's ideal listener
feeling _intelligent_. (Can somebody remind me of the exact quote?)
(One crude example of this is one's duty to do one's best to ensure as far
as possible that the balances and tempi are conducive to crucial details
in the score being audible from a good seat in a given Hall. Sometimes
it is not sufficient for certain details to be audible merely at the podium!)
I should also add that I do not see any contradition between the
aesthetics of the people in the Hall at the time of a performance
on the one hand and the "idiom" of the composer on the other. An
audience cannot have an "idiom", but the musical language of a composer can.
>It seems that the audience
>is more important than the composer.
Certainly not; at least _I_ certainly don't think so. But then nor do
I see any conflict or element of competition between their
relative importances. Most composers wish their music to be communicated to an
audience, within their lifetime and/or thereafter.
>It is not unreasonable to expect a
>certain amount of cultural background for a late twentieth-century
>audience.
Surely! But I don't know what you mean by cultural background.
Arguably "background" is not necessary. Just open ears and
a receptive attitude. Indeed, personally I am not even convinced of
the necessity of having programme-notes, etc.. These _may_ help in
some cases, but are not necessary. Often I hear people say "I've often
wondered about going to a concert, but you see I don't _know_ much
about music". In my view _knoweldge_ has nothing to do with it. It's
the combination of notes -- sounds, pitches, phrases, rhythms, horizontal and
vertical combinations, periods of longer or shorter length, the
resultant tensions and their resolutions, etc.. These can be
sensed, and can engender a very strong emotional response irrespective
of the degree of pure _knoweldge_. All you need is a pair of ears.
(That is not to say knowledge is a _bad_ thing!)
>You also said that "But this, I'm afraid, includes attemps to 'tailor' it
>by trying, in a self-conscious manner, to erase the experience of music
>more recent to that being performed from the minds and hearts of the
>audience or the perfromers themselves." I must take exception to that
>blanket dismissal of historic performance.
It is not a dismissal of anything other than the precise, particular
tendency to which it refers!
>I must take exception to that
>blanket dismissal of historic performance. In the first place, who ever
>said all more recent musical experience must be erased from the hearts
>and minds of the audience and the performers? I never said that, nor did
>Thurston Dart, nor did Denis Stevens.
I am very fond of the work of the late Dart and esp. that of Prof. Stevens. But
if anything, my impression is that many of the current "authenticists" look
down upon, and dissociate themselves from, their endeavours! Certainly
(just to cite a single example) Prof. Stevens' _resplendent_ recording
with the Ambrosian Singers of
the Monteverdi Vespers (minus the concerti) or the big Gloria, has
given me great pleasure, and is in many ways quite at variance with
many of the objectionable (to me) tendencies to which I specifically
referred in my recent email, and to which I
shall have cause to refer, below, once again. Most people, however, do
not consider the style of those performances with the Ambrosian
Singers (really an opera chorus -- and how splendidly fresh, gutsy and
vibrant they sounded too!) to be "historically-informed". _And_
they use modern oboes rather than cornetti -- but I still find it
very effective!
>Secondly, I take issue with the "self-conscious" assertion. It was
>perhaps true that early music performance practice was "self-conscious"
>in the fifties and sixties.
May I remind you: I did _not_ say all early music performances are
self-conscious. I said trying to deny the influence of our knoweldge
of later music whilst performing earlier music, which you seemed to be
advocating, would make for a rather self-conscious style of
performance -- which indeed I believe it does.
>Kerman notes, "There were
>many fine players of the 1950s (including Dart) on whose surviving
>records one can hear ample evidence of rhythmic flexibility, dynamic
>variety, unobtrusive ornamentation, freedom, and feeling," and later,
>"One would scarcely call Alfred Deller a less emotional artist than
>Kirsten Flagstad."
I find nothing to disagree with this. But nor do I think it weakens any of
my earlier points.
>Since you have no sympathy (perhaps empathy would be a better word here)
>for historic performance
This is not true at all. I have very considerable sympathy with "historic
performance" indeed. (I believe I was _quite_ specific in my last email in
enumerating _particular_ tendencies that are very common with some of the
exponents of the present "authenticity" movement.
>you probably don't realize how monumental the
>task is to recreate a playing tradition.
I do. To be precise, I think it is _impossible_ to know exactly how
things were done several centuries ago. Without recordings from the
early years of our own century, we wouldn't even have had a clue as to
how they played even _then_. Do please refer to my example in my last
email -- the one with the Franck sonata. If (as I suspect) you have
missed the whole of that article -- since you don't seem to have
addressed the arguments I raised therein -- perhaps I can email you a
copy if necessary, and no doubt you will be good enough to let me know
if wou wish me to do this.
>Someone has written that, while
>modern musicians work within a living tradition, early musicians are
>exhuming a corpse and attempting to resuscitate it. It is therefore
>inevitable that missteps will happen.
It is all _too_ inevitable, you are right, if a "museum" approach, or
a pseudo-scientific approach, is adopted. "Missteps" do happen when
people cease to listen to their musical instincts and try to apply
dogmatic rules in a mindless fashion; the last thing we need is
for people to describe such mis-steps as being "historically informed"
and the inspired interpretations of
Furtwangler, Klemperer and Giulini to be implied as being _less_
"informed". This would be quite unfair, IMHO.
>As I have pointed out earlier,
>historic perfomance is a process, and an on-going one at that.
And as _I_ suggested, IMHO _all_ performance is an on-going process,
in the sense that one might justifiably claim that a
piece continues a life of its own even long after its composer is dead. Whole
interpretative traditions develop as time passes. This is why I don't
like the idea of performing great music today being considered
analogous to exhuming a corpse. I don't like it at all, in fact!
>As to your recurring theme of A, B, and C: it is unsurprising that you
>fail to find your reasoning circular.
Might that perhaps be because it _isn't_ circular? Why _is_ it circular?
>Your statements are conjectures, so
>much so that no one could ever prove or disprove them.
Even if this were true, it does not prove the alleged circularity of
my argument, IMHO!
>You are right, in
>that I probably did misunderstand what you were getting at.
Thank you!
>I thought that you meant that this was a desirable thing,
>instead of something that you were conjecturing might happen in the
>context of musical tradition.
Sorry -- I simply don't understand...!
>You went further, "What I think would be
>rather artificial would be to attempt to play the music of A as though we
>had never heard that of B and C..." This statement, in my opinion,
>contradicts an earlier statement you made: "One never plays anything to
>'emphasize similarities'"... If you are playing A In The Context of B,
>then your interpretation has been altered in some way, presumably due to
>either differences or similarites. If the music and the composers are so
>dissimilar that you are emphasizing neither similarities nor differences,
>then what, exactly, is the point?
Oh I see. This I _can_ explain. I think you need to distinguish
between performing a piece of music in a way that deliberately tries
to make a specific point, by exaggerating certain characteristics to
show similarities with other scores, from earlier or later, as the
case may be, which is something one can do as an experiment, or when
trying to drive a point home with students, essentially as a sort of
scholastic demonstration, and which I would _never_ dream of doing in
a public performance; and simply allowing one's sensibilities to be
informed by _all_ the music one loves, from all periods that is, in a
natural and uninhibited way, without trying to _subtract_ anything from one's
interpretation out of any fear that e.g. supposedly in Bach's days
musicians' sensibilities were less "romantic"/ lyrical/expressive than
now, or that the "melos" came only with Wagner and hence (allegedly)
phrases ought never to be allowed to become long as it would be
"anachronisitic" etc.).
>It seems so abstract as to approach the
>metaphysical and so circular that it is self-proving.
I cannot agree. BTW, if anything your "faith" and "soul" argument above is
"metaphysical" -- but I don't mind that at all.
>The major objection I have to your hypothesis is that it reduces musical
>experience to a series of "meta-musical" influences. In other words,
>one's enjoyment of great music or cultural enrichment would be largely
>based on one's previous experiences and not on one's current experience.
OIC. No, happen to think I one's present experience is influenced by the music
one is hearing at the moment as well as by the music one has heard in
the past. Both.
>This does seem to me to cheapen the musical experience.
How come?
>I still believe
>that the works of the great composers can and should stand or fall on
>their own merits.
Here we agree.
>If influences matter that much, then Reger should hold
>an equal place beside Bach
I don't understand the logic here, I'm afraid. Could you please explain? What
"influence" exactly are you referring to, and why would such
"influence" mattering lead us to such a strange assessment?
>The composer
>cannot speak for himself-musicians and musicologists working together
>must carry out the composer's wishes.
Oh I think I disagree with the importance you seem to give to the
musicologists if you are referring to the preparation for a specific
performance. Textual criticism is important; and historical research
is interesting in that it gives clues as to how many players and what
instruments etc. were used on a given occasion, for what that's worth.
I don't think it's up to the historians to tell us _how_ we ought to
_interpret_ music, though, so I can't agree that
one needs a team of musicologists advising one on how to play, sing or
conduct a Beethoven symphony. (It is, of course, important to work
from a decent score.) When it comes to staging an opera production,
things are perhaps more complicated; but as far as symphonic
music is concerned, my view is that (as Monteux said) "it's all in the music".
>If the intent is not to honor the
>silent composer, then you care nothing at all for artistic truth as best
>we can find it. In fact it is our obligation to find the artistic truth.
Why should I intend anything less than to honour the silent composer?
What gave you such an impression?!
>The painting analogy does not fail, because it shows the difference
>between the various arts.>
I think it fails precisely _because_ of this difference!
>If one were to treat paintings the same as "we"
>treat musical scores, then each succeeding generation would repaint the
>clothes in the portraits to reflect current fashions, and if large
>paintings go out of style, then we slice the pictures to fit our new
>frames.
I don't agree that the evolution of performing styles over the years
is tantamount to the sort of distortion exemplified in your re-painting
analogy above.
>Now if a generation came along and wondered what the artist
>originally painted, and began cleaning off the cultural droppings of past
>generations, there would be an outcry that they are vandalizing the works
>of the past. Even as layers of obscuring varnish and paint placed there
>by our well-meaning forefathers dissolved under the restorer's brush,
>there would always be those who would mourn its passing.
The sort of "obscuring varnish" to which you refer could be considered
analogous to, say, D'Indy's reorchestrations of Monteverdi
operas. _Not_, IMHO, to (for example) Furtwangler's performances of
Bach or Beethoven.
>We are the ones that must
>meet the artist or composer on his terms, not ours.
Yes, I agree, but I think this is a much more profound thing than just
using old instruments, refraining from using vibrato, etc.. Indeed, as
I see it, somebody like Maestro Giulini is _far_ better able to meet Beethoven
on the latter's own terms than somebody like Gardiner. I don't think
the instruments being used are all that relevant at such a profound
level.
>You have only stated an objection to tempi that
>reminded you of successful laxative ingestions (I believe I already
>addressed this) and this period violin ornament played on a modern violin
>that seemed to have affected you in much the same way as a visit to a
>dentist.
Pardon? I don't recognise anything about violin ornaments or visits to
dentists! I think you're confusing me with some other poster again.
And your addressing of the tempo issue was, I think, confined to
suggesting that my own tempi were so slow that my performances came to
a grinding halt! I wasn't aware you had been to any of my concerts --
if so, which particular performance of mine seemed like that to you?
>Those objections seem very limited to offhandedly dismiss the
>entire historical performance movement. I would actually prefer to
>discuss specifics, rather than vague generalities, if you wouldn't mind.
Certainly. I suspect you may have missed the whole of my last
posting. In particular, I hope other readers will forgive me if I take
the liberty of reproducing a small section from it -- namely, the one
where I referred to _specific_ tendencies which I disliked.
This is what I said in my last posting:
:
:I said (on 13 September):
:
::For instance -- all too many
::"modern"-instrument string players will now play a phrase -- or
::rather, the constituent notes of what some of us might be tempted to consider
::a phrase (!) -- in a manner which makes it sound a mere succession of
::mutually unrelated individual notes each of which
::starts "straight" and quiet and then grows louder to the accompaniment of
::increasing vibrato, such that the phrase ends up sounding more like a
:succession of the individual notes rather than a single, meaningful
::entity of tightly connected notes analogous [to] how a good _singer_ might
::have sung it.
:
:Was this not specific enough?
:
:I have also repeatedly referred to the bizarre "historically
:informed" practice
:of playing e.g. Brahms and Wagner as also earlier music without any
:glissandi, without agogic variations, with heavy articulation,
:accentuation, and very short-range phrasing. These too are all very
:specific characteristics, IMHO. You may or may not like such
:practices, but you won't find a shortage of examples of their perpetration!
:
Hope you don't miss it this time round!
>In closing, I note a subtle change in your demeanor, from polite to
>slightly irascible.
I endeavour to be courteous at all times. If I failed, I must
apologise; but when did I do so?
>As an example, you no longer wished me "best wishes."
Ah! What I put at the end of a posting isn't really calculated to have a
precise effect, and if I variously say "best wishes" or "all the best" or just
"thanks for your interesting points", that does not mean that I
withhold or ration my good wishes in some proportionately measured
manner! I like to think that members of the community of friends that
constitutes the readership of this newsgroup, have no reason to assume
anything other than that if I choose to engage in a discussion with a fellow
contributor (or even if I do not!), I naturally hope that he or
she enjoys the best of health and good fortune at all times,
irrespective of whether or not I may feel able to endorse their views!
I do not believe I have ever given anybody cause to doubt that, and
I certainly hope that I have not.
>In turn,
>I would appreciate neither being misquoted nor taken out of context when
>you hold me up to ridicule to fellow readers of this newsgroup.
I have not misquoted you or taken you out of context, nor do I propose
to do so in the future; I trust that I may consequently
rely on your _continued_ appreciation in this regard!
>Thanks in
>advance and to show my good faith, I sign off,
>
>cordially yours,
>
>
>Frank
With my beneficent wishes and very cordial and whole-hearted
salutations!
Haig.
--
http://www-control.eng.cam.ac.uk/hu/hu.html
Fred Goldrich
In article <60erqj$4ek$1...@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
Haig Utidjian <h...@eng.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>Frank Cone wrote:
>
>>you probably don't realize how monumental the
>>task is to recreate a playing tradition.
>
>I do. To be precise, I think it is _impossible_ to know exactly how
>things were done several centuries ago.
I once asked my conducting teacher, "If I put the
score to a Broadway show in front of you, do you think that
you could play it on the piano in an authentic Broadway
style?", and he replied that he probably could not.
So I said, "But you grew up in New York during the
heyday of the Broadway musical, surrounded by 'authentic'
performances -- you probably attended many of them. If you
can't reproduce the style, what are the chances that we can
reproduce a style from which we are hundreds of years removed?"
I use this example because the question of the value
of being able to reproduce a historical musical tradition is
clouded by the question of the *possibility* of reproducing
it; with the Broadway style, this is not an issue.
I started out as a theater conductor, and I believe
that I can play a show in an 'authentic' style, and I'm very
sensitive to it. When I hear a performance of a Broadway
score by people who are not familiar with the traditions, I
find it terribly jarring and unappealing. To me, it lacks
the very essence of Broadway music -- there's no question
in my mind that I'm listening to an inferior performance,
and I think it's safe to say that most musicians with a simi-
lar background would agree.
But am I right in any objective sense? To be sure,
those who find the 'inauthentic' performance equally appro-
priate may well have a less discriminating ear for the style
than I have. So what? How is that relevant? Might it some-
times be to my *dis*advantage, in that I will reject a more
'musical' performance because I know (correctly, now!) that
it is less authentic?
I'm asking these questions to stimulate responses --
I certainly don't claim to have the answers.
-- Fred Goldrich
--
Fred Goldrich
gold...@panix.com
Edward Lipman
I for one -- to carry on the Broadway metaphor -- find it a travesty
when opera singers record Broadway shows. Musicians (I grew up around
them) have a saying; either a person knows how the piece goes, or they
don't. These people don't know how the piece goes.
Simon Roberts
Fred Goldrich (gold...@panix.com) wrote:
: I once asked my conducting teacher, "If I put the
Someone who finds them equally appropriate may merely reject your
suggestion that music must be interpreted "authentically" in the sense
that your observations suggest. He may say that what matters is whether
it "works", and that whether a performance "works" is not defined merely
by the extent to which it is "authentic" in that sense. Pre-HIP
performances of, say, Beethoven, fail by certain HIP criteria, but that
doesn't mean that one cannot enjoy them as much as (or more than) HIP
performances -- as I do, for instance.
Simon
po...@hotmail.com
In article <60hoqm$ea2$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>,
si...@dept.english.upenn.edu (Simon Roberts) wrote:
>
> Fred Goldrich (gold...@panix.com) wrote:
>
> : I once asked my conducting teacher, "If I put the
> : score to a Broadway show in front of you, do you think that
> : you could play it on the piano in an authentic Broadway
> : style?", and he replied that he probably could not.
>
> : So I said, "But you grew up in New York during the
> : heyday of the Broadway musical, surrounded by 'authentic'
> : performances -- you probably attended many of them. If you
> : can't reproduce the style, what are the chances that we can
> : reproduce a style from which we are hundreds of years removed?"
This is a brilliant argument, and exactly to the point. It further
begs the question why anyone should bother to attempt an "authentic"
style at all.
> : I started out as a theater conductor, and I believe
> : that I can play a show in an 'authentic' style, and I'm very
> : sensitive to it. When I hear a performance of a Broadway
> : score by people who are not familiar with the traditions, I
> : find it terribly jarring and unappealing.
Funny, but most new musical experiences are jarring and unappealing. If
you gave the non-Broadway authentic performances a chance you might find
that they had their own appeal. I have a similar reaction to hearing an
unfamiliar interpretation of a favorite work well known in another
performance.
> : But am I right in any objective sense?
I honestly don't think you are. In fact, if anything were "true" in
aestetics, _objectively_ true, then aesthetics would be provable, like
mathematics. And nothing will prove to me that, e.g., Furtwangler's
Matthew Passion is inferior to Gardiner's merely because it is
inauthentic. (which is not intended as a slight against Gardiner, BTW).
ciao,
John
---
John Harrington (po...@hotmail.com)
-- visit my Stravinsky page at --
http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/1807/strav.html
"The worst of all deceptions is self-deception." -Plato
Steve Forrest
In article <8754193...@dejanews.com>, <po...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>[snip] In fact, if anything were "true" in
>aestetics, _objectively_ true, then aesthetics would be provable, like
>mathematics.
Well, maybe not. The mathematician/logician Kurt Godel, in the proof
of his famous 'Incompleteness Theorem', showed that that there are true
propositions in mathematics that cannot be proven. The same could
be true of aesthetics.
-Steve
Fred Goldrich
>>
>> I once asked my conducting teacher, "If I put the
>> score to a Broadway show in front of you, do you think that
>> you could play it on the piano in an authentic Broadway
>> style?", and he replied that he probably could not.
>>
>> So I said, "But you grew up in New York during the
>> heyday of the Broadway musical, surrounded by 'authentic'
>> performances -- you probably attended many of them. If you
>> can't reproduce the style, what are the chances that we can
>> reproduce a style from which we are hundreds of years removed?"
>
>This is a brilliant argument, and exactly to the point. It further
>begs the question why anyone should bother to attempt an "authentic"
>style at all.
>
>> I started out as a theater conductor, and I believe
>> that I can play a show in an 'authentic' style, and I'm very
>> sensitive to it. When I hear a performance of a Broadway
>> score by people who are not familiar with the traditions, I
>> find it terribly jarring and unappealing.
>
>Funny, but most new musical experiences are jarring and unappealing. If
>you gave the non-Broadway authentic performances a chance you might find
>>
>> But am I right in any objective sense?
>
>I honestly don't think you are.
But how far does one take this point of view? If we say
that someone who's unfamiliar with the style need not bother to try
to recreate it, do we then say that those who *do* know it should
not bother to utilize it? After all, if I'm not right about the
authentic performance being "better," then there's really no rea-
son for anyone, knowledgeable or not, to play it authentically.
But we know that, in many cases, composers do not notate
certain features precisely because they assume that performance
practice makes their notation unnecessary. (This is certainly the
case in Broadway music, where all kinds of shorthand notations are
used with the assumption that seasoned pit players will interpret
them correctly.)
And just as I would not feel free to disregard a composer's
notated preferences, I would feel the same way about disregarding
features that we know the composer would have notated if s/he
thought there would be any question about them.
So I'm with you on the point that it's probably impossible
to recreate a lost tradition -- but I am not sure that your argu-
ment supports the conclusion that an authentic performance has no
intrinsic value that an inauthentic one does not have.
Haig Utidjian
John Harrington wrote:
:
:In article <60hoqm$ea2$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>,:>
:> : [Fred:] I once asked my conducting teacher, "If I put the
:> : score to a Broadway show in front of you, do you think that
:> : you could play it on the piano in an authentic Broadway
:> : style?", and he replied that he probably could not.
:>
:> : So I said, "But you grew up in New York during the
:> : heyday of the Broadway musical, surrounded by 'authentic'
:> : performances -- you probably attended many of them. If you
:> : can't reproduce the style, what are the chances that we can
:> : reproduce a style from which we are hundreds of years removed?"
: [John:] This is a brilliant argument, and exactly to the point. [...]
I certainly agree.
:
:> : I started out as a theater conductor, and I believe
:> : that I can play a show in an 'authentic' style, and I'm very
:> : sensitive to it. When I hear a performance of a Broadway
:> : score by people who are not familiar with the traditions, I
:> : find it terribly jarring and unappealing.
:
:Funny, but most new musical experiences are jarring and unappealing. If
:you gave the non-Broadway authentic performances a chance you might find
:that they had their own appeal. I have a similar reaction to hearing an
:unfamiliar interpretation of a favorite work well known in another
:performance.
Yes, but I think we need to be careful here. I strongly suspect that
Fred's instinctive and musicianly objections may, in fact, be occasioned
by _unidiomatic_ and hence unconvincing interpretations, a lack of
sympathy and sensitivity to the spirit of the score and to the
musical language it employs (admittedly, a sympathy which someone
who did grow up in New York during a certain period might,
_other things being equal_, be more likely to possess than
someone who did not) rather than by any ideological
objections to a lack of historical accuracy
or "authenticity" per se. (I hope Fred will forgive me if I
seem to be putting words in his mouth -- this is, of course,
merely my own personal interpretation; I may be off-the-mark, and
I would be glad of his response to my suggestion.) Thus, rather than use
the term "inauthentic", one might
describe them as interpretations that do not properly accord with the
_inherent_ idiom of the music. And if that is
the case, would it not be true to say that they are jarring and
unappealing to sensitive ears for reasons far more fundamental
than mere novelty?
I do not of course know the particular stylistic features which
Fred has in mind, and nor do I have expertise
in the repertoire in question, unfortunately. But in my
limited experience even as an occasional listener, I have found
that "non-Broadway" performances, and especially performances by
singers and players unfamiliar with the _idiom_ of the music, tend to have a
rather inhibited, half-hearted quality about them, a certain rigidity,
reticence (not least regarding glissandi and portamenti), a certain dryness
and a lack of abandon. The absence of these qualities doesn't _help_
the music. I don't think it's _simply_ a matter of authenticity per se
or the lack of it. Indeed, the irony is that I suspect that many of the same
criticisms that one might make about non-Broadway or
inauthentic-Broadway -- and especially "unidiomatic" Broadway --
may be made equally against "historically-informed"
Brahms or Wagner! Similarly, if one listens to the soundtrack of a 1930s film,
the deliciously vibrant, glowing, legato, fluid "hollywood"
style (for want of a better term -- what I'm thinking of is I think just
as likely to have come out from the Pinewood Studios at that time as from
Hollywood) of the performers is precisely that which is
lacking when rather more strait-laced
present-day symphonic players attempt such repertoire. And these very same
delicious features are _so_ reminiscent of recordings of the music of
Wagner, Strauss as well as earlier composers that were made in that
same period, it seems to me.
:> : But am I right in any objective sense?
:
:I honestly don't think you are. In fact, if anything were "true" in
:aestetics, _objectively_ true, then aesthetics would be provable, like
:mathematics. And nothing will prove to me that, e.g., Furtwangler's
:Matthew Passion is inferior to Gardiner's merely because it is
:inauthentic. (which is not intended as a slight against Gardiner, BTW).
:
John I do agree with you entirely regarding your example. But I don't really
feel able to agree with the first part of your paragraph
to the same extent. There may be
no objective "right" or "wrong" beyond a certain point, but there are
certain practices which are apt somehow to render the logic of a score
clearer to a listener and which are more likely to create
circumstances which are more conducive to a
comprehension of a score on the part of a listener. Whatever the
prevalent stylistic tendencies of the day and location, such practices
may perhaps be _inherently_ more _appropriate_ to the realisation
of a given score in a live performance than others. That is at least partly
why Richard Strauss' interpretation of Wagner feels so much
more "right" than that of any of the "authenticists". That is _partly_ why
Furtwangler's Beethoven, and Giulini's Brahms, authentic or not, feel
more "right" to me than any of the "authenticist"s'.
I also think that there are a lot of dangers involved in completely
relinquishing the wealth and multiplicity of interpretative traditions
which constitute part of our musical heritage and opting for
the approach that tries to start from scratch, or as a recent
contributor put it, to resuscitate a corpse. (And I think this is consistent
with Fred's implication that the acquisition of the appropriate
musical background and absorption of the performing traditions in
question is so important for a really satisfying performance
of a Broadway score. Indeed, one could argue that it is helpful with
reference to _any_ score.) By all means let's have
novelty; and freshness and spontaneity are vitally important;
but I think serious problems arise when people stop
_listening_ to what they are doing or using that elusive
combination of intuition, instinct
and sensibility (partly acquired from one's musical experiences of a
lifetime accruing from music of all periods and styles), and instead
try using, in a mindlessly and mercilessly dogmatic way,
what scholastic half-knowledge can be gleaned from mere historical study.
Cheers,
Haig.
--
http://www-control.eng.cam.ac.uk/hu/hu.html
Paul Goldstein
Opus47 wrote:
>
> Pardon me, but it's so much easier stepping on an existing thread than to
> make a new one.
>
> I see the conversation has gone well beyond what I'm going to say. But
> what the hell.
>
> What are people's thoughts about Malcolm Bilson using a forte-piano in
> Mozart's Piano Concerti.
>
> Thoughts, comments, praise, insults, and speculation welcome. As well as
> alternative set recommendations of course.
>
My thought is that Bilson and Gardiner perform the Mozart concertos
extremely well. I have lived with these for years and still enjoy them
tremendously.
Opus47
Pardon me, but it's so much easier stepping on an existing thread than to
make a new one.
I see the conversation has gone well beyond what I'm going to say. But
what the hell.
What are people's thoughts about Malcolm Bilson using a forte-piano in
Mozart's Piano Concerti.
Thoughts, comments, praise, insults, and speculation welcome. As well as
alternative set recommendations of course.
Fred
Simon Roberts
Opus47 (opu...@aol.com) wrote:
: Pardon me, but it's so much easier stepping on an existing thread than to
: make a new one.
: Fred
I shall assume that you know about the HIP aspects of it and don't need
comments on the sounds of the instruments, including the fortepiano. The
performances are, on the whole, taut, crisp, straightforward, free from
romanticisms such as flexible tempi. The earlier concerti have probably
never been conducted as well over all, and the conducting throughout is
impressively dramatic but tasteful. Bilson is rather restrained in his
ornamentation, of which he does none in fast movements, but otherwise
tasteful and stylish. If this all sounds a little tentative on my part,
it's because I think it could have been done a little better. The rival
series underway on L'Oiseau Lyre features a rather more imaginative
pianist (Robert Levin), slightly better sound, and comparable orchestral
support; when it's complete it will probably get my vote (but being me I
will have both so it hardly matters). There's a rival set already
complete on Channel Classics featuring Jos van Immerseel and Musica
Aeterna. It is superbly recorded and offers rather more relaxed
performances than either Bilson or Levin offer, with orchestral support
that sounds rather mellower. Not much ornamentation compared with the
other two. I don't know of any other HIP cycles, but there are some
individual discs floating around with some distinction, by far the most
interesting being Andreas Staier and Concerto Koeln on Teldec, who plays
these concerti (only 9/17; I've no idea if he's going to do more) with far
more drama than anyone I've ever heard on any sort of instruments, backed
up by an orchestra that supports him every step of the way; to some it may
seem idiosyncratic -- reviews have gone both ways -- but everyone
favorably disposed to HIP performance really ought to hear this
magnificently played and recorded disc, I think.
Simon
Andrew Stedman
Simon Roberts (si...@dept.english.upenn.edu) wrote:
: Opus47 (opu...@aol.com) wrote:
: : What are people's thoughts about Malcolm Bilson using a forte-piano in
: : Mozart's Piano Concerti.
: I shall assume that you know about the HIP aspects of it and don't need
: comments on the sounds of the instruments, including the fortepiano. The
: performances are, on the whole, taut, crisp, straightforward, free from
: romanticisms such as flexible tempi. The earlier concerti have probably
: never been conducted as well over all, and the conducting throughout is
: impressively dramatic but tasteful. Bilson is rather restrained in his
: ornamentation, of which he does none in fast movements, but otherwise
: tasteful and stylish. If this all sounds a little tentative on my part,
: it's because I think it could have been done a little better.
I agree with your comments about the orchestra; however, I seem to like
Bilson's playing less than you do. The problem is that he seems to me to
have neither a great technique nor much of a musical personality (or
perhaps the problem is that I find him inconsistent). There are several
times throughout the cycle where his playing makes me cringe because a
note seems awkwardly placed or a run is lumpy and irregular. He plays the
cadenzas generally too slowly and almost always too tentatively; at times
it seems that he is trying to find deep expressive meaning in the
individual notes of a run where there is no such meaning to be found (at
least not that I can find). I also find his approach to ornamentation
exasperating because it is inconsistent: in some movements he ornaments
quite a lot (e.g. the slow movement of K. 466) while in others that could
bear a comparable amount (e.g. the slow movement of K. 488) he solemnly
plunks away at a skeletal line. I also wish his playing were more
rhythmically alive and aggressive; I feel Mozart deserves more than the
(seemingly) ambivalent play-through that I sometimes hear in this cycle.
I hope I haven't been too harsh in my criticim of Bilson's playing. I
still greatly enjoy this cycle and listen to it frequently. Although I
find Bilson's playing substandard at times, the quality of the orchestral
playing often compensates.
The rival
: series underway on L'Oiseau Lyre features a rather more imaginative
: pianist (Robert Levin), slightly better sound, and comparable orchestral
: support; when it's complete it will probably get my vote (but being me I
: will have both so it hardly matters).
I find the sound of the Levin/Hogwood cycle slightly less good. I suppose
it is the balance of the piano, which I think is too forward. The
Bilson/Gardiner set has a more orchestral balance, which I feel suits the
music very well; the orchestra is able to overpower the soloist at moments
of climax. I find Levin a more interesting pianist than Bilson. He seems
to have a surer technique and is certainly more consistent in matters of
ornamentation. Sometimes I find his playing a bit too aggressive and
driven, though.
I haven't heard the Immerseel cycle, so I can't comment on that. The
Staier recording sounds interesting; I will have to search it out.
Andrew Stedman <aste...@uoguelph.ca>
po...@hotmail.com
In article <60n3l5$j...@panix.com>,
gold...@panix.com (Fred Goldrich) wrote:
>
> In article <8754193...@dejanews.com>, <po...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Fred Goldrich (gold...@panix.com) wrote:
> >>
> >> But am I right in any objective sense?
> >
> >I honestly don't think you are.
>
> that someone who's unfamiliar with the style need not bother to try
> to recreate it, do we then say that those who *do* know it should
> not bother to utilize it? After all, if I'm not right about the
> authentic performance being "better," then there's really no rea-
> son for anyone, knowledgeable or not, to play it authentically.
I think you go too far there.
At the very least, the periodists have forced musicians to completely
rethink (and constantly re-rethink) Baroque performance
practice. In fact the periodist ethic has even reached composers as
recent as Brahms and Mahler. So, it certainly livened things up,
and gave us, I won't deny, a slew of great recordings and performances,
not to mention inspiring a renaissance of Baroque music. (Now there's
a mixed metaphor).
I was too quick to say they shouldn't have bothered. As a mere consumer
of music, I don't understand the necessary superiority of "authentic"
performance, however.
> But we know that, in many cases, composers do not notate
> certain features precisely because they assume that performance
> practice makes their notation unnecessary. (This is certainly the
> case in Broadway music, where all kinds of shorthand notations are
> used with the assumption that seasoned pit players will interpret
> them correctly.)
>
> And just as I would not feel free to disregard a composer's
> notated preferences, I would feel the same way about disregarding
> features that we know the composer would have notated if s/he
> thought there would be any question about them.
That's great reasoning. How could I possibly disagree?
Nevertheless, isn't it strange that I am not any more or less likely to
enjoy Bach on the piano than I am on the harpsichord? I am not any more
or less likely to enjoy Norrington's or Harnoncourt's
historically-informed Beethoven symphonies than I am to enjoy Klemperer's
or Karajan's historically-incorrect ones.
> So I'm with you on the point that it's probably impossible
> to recreate a lost tradition -- but I am not sure that your argu-
> ment supports the conclusion that an authentic performance has no
> intrinsic value that an inauthentic one does not have.
De gustibus. I just don't understand "intrinsic value" if, at the end of
a long day, I pull off the shelf my *favorite* recording rather than
my most *historically informed* one simply because I enjoy the former
better than the latter.
If you mean to say that, all other things being equal, a periodist
recording is better than a non-periodist one, I'll have to remain an
agnostic on that one. I stand by my conclusion that no objective opinion
is possible.
ciao,
John
Fred Goldrich
In article <8756405...@dejanews.com>, <po...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>... As a mere consumer
>of music, I don't understand the necessary superiority of "authentic"
>performance, however.
I think "necessary superiority" overstates the posi-
tion -- it certainly overstates mine.
>...
>Nevertheless, isn't it strange that I am not any more or less likely to
>enjoy Bach on the piano than I am on the harpsichord?
No, I don't think it's at all strange. (And when
I want to hear the WTC, I'm as likely to play Ed Aldwell's
as any other.)
But that's why I brought up the Broadway example.
People who are not steeped in the Broadway tradition might
enjoy an unidiomatic performance every bit as much as an
idiomatic one -- and to me, that simply shows what they're
missing by not having the tradition in their blood.
And, sadly, I am prepared to accept the fact that
I'm missing a great deal by not having Bach's and Mozart's
traditions in mine.
fc...@pe.net
As a prelude, let me say that my ISP has been having some glitches. I
haven't seen one of your posts directly in quite some time. A
subscription I have to a mailing list happens only sporadically. For
whatever obscure reason, I see your posts when someone else quotes you
quoting me. I recently began checking Deja News, so if you tell me the
date, I will look it up there. Barring that, you could send me the
section on the Franck sonata via private e-mail, to avoid any unnecessary
agony on the part of the readers of this newsgroup. Although, in all
honesty, I don't think many readers are following this thread, to judge
by the incredible apathy we have collectively generated. This is in
extreme contrast to the reaction to a post I placed on rec.music.early
requesting source materials for a hand-to-hand discussion on this topic
with another gentleman. The thread continues (the thread that wouldn't
die!!).
You wrote: > I do not understand what you are implying here. Which
conductor are
> you referring to? Is it meant to be me again?! :-)
To clarify my statement: I apologize for my curmudgeonly attitude. It was
certainly not directed at you. I have never had the pleasure of hearing
you conduct or perform. My total experience with you has been here, on
this newsgroup.
Although, hypothetically speaking, this is true, it would be difficult to
prove, one way or the other. I think, though, in your zeal to disagree
with me (the sentence you omitted was the key one), you missed my point
(I tried to be as non-cryptic as possible). The point was this: "...I
feel that an understanding of Bach's faith can only help a conductor
understand not only Bach, but Bach's music-especially Bach's sacred
music." This does not mean that one need convert to Lutheranism to
conduct Bach, nor convert to Roman Catholicism in order to conduct
Gabrieli, Palestrina, or Monteverdi. Much of their music was conceived
within the framework of a deeply religious background. To avoid
unnecessary metaphysics, one cannot build a structure without the
foundation or the framework. An understanding of the psychosocial aspects
of contemporary religious culture adds to the interpretation of the
music, by placing it within the context for which it was conceived. I
don't believe sacred music can be as successively performed as abstract
art music; it has been, it's true, but overall I think it's much more
difficult to achieve a successful interpretation if one ignores the
religious aspect.
You don't need to know the state of classical concerts in the US in order
to see my point-just look at a CD catalog to see what is being recorded
and what is not. To take for an example, Bach: there are an astounding
eighty-one (81) recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos, while his
cantatas, both secular and sacred have at most two or three per cantata
(a bit of a generality). It is interesting to note that the more secular
cantatas seem to receive more attention and recordings. To cross
composers, is it really necessary to have 88+ versions of Beethoven's
ninth symphony while much of Byrd, Tallis, Tye, and Taverner (to only
name fellow countrymen of yours) languishes in obscurity? But I digress.
> I think I know what you mean, but these are very dangerous
> arguments... how far would you go with this?
> Would you argue, for example, that a Protestant ought not to conduct
> Palestrina, or a Catholic Bach? What about gifted musicians from
> completely different religious traditions, or who subscribe to none of
> the major religions? I am not sure that I would be happy with the
> implications of such arguments at all...
I believe I addressed this point (to my satisfaction at least) earlier.
> ...the prevalent aesthetics within the
> lifetime of those those in the Hall at the time the music is being
> played, are, I think, relevant. I certainly do not feel that the
> audience should _influence_ the performance, and would certainly
> disapprove of the slightest suggestion that the performers should in any way
> play _down_ to an audience.
I believe that these two statements are mutually incompatible. If the
first statement is correct, then exactly how is it relevant? Would
knowledge of the audience's aethetic (cultural idiom) change any or all
of your interpretation? If so, how, in what way? And wouldn't that
influence negate your second statement? Moreover, how would you even know
without polling the audience (an interesting image)? If the audience's
prevelent aesthetics are relevant, then you would have to account for the
unfortunate fact that nearly everyone has been exposed to contemporary
popular music, a.k.a. rock, and its reliance on the use of the "rhythm
section." These phenomena have infiltrated all popular culture, to its
detriment, in my opinion. Since we agreed earlier that we are all
children of our own time, it follows that the logical extension of this
line of reasoning is "Hooked on Classics!" I still think that my earlier
observation is the more correct one: "I feel that the mere presence of
the audience is affirmation enough of a willingness to hear and
appreciate a performance on its own terms." In other words, the audience,
to a certain extent, willingly leaves its collective aesthetic at the
door in order to better hear and appreciate the collective aesthetic of
the composer and musicians. Were this not the case, one would hear
audiences complaining about the lack of electric guitar, bass, and drums
when leaving an orchestral concert.
> ...But I don't know what you mean by cultural background.
> Arguably "background" is not necessary. Just open ears and
> a receptive attitude. Indeed, personally I am not even convinced of
> the necessity of having programme-notes, etc..
I don't agree with this assertion. "Open ears" are required, to be sure,
but knowledge is necessary to truly appreciate the art behind the music.
Art, by its very nature, appeals to the emotions as well as the
intellect. In my nowhere-near-as-humble-as-your opinion, there has never
been great art created without a strong emotional connection. Conversely,
one can appreciate great art on a purely emotional level, but I feel
that, at best, this is incomplete and, at worst, it is superficial.
Situations like this have created a saying in my country, "I don't know
art, but I know what I like." Program notes may not be necessary, but in
many cases illumination of more obscure points will heighten the musical
experience. Please note that I am not arguing in favor of knowledge alone
causing enjoyment. All great art, no matter what the medium, remains, at
its heart, a visceral experience. I can tell you, until I am blue in the
face, why I connect with a certain piece of music played in a certain way
(or why It Speaks To Me), but unless you Feel that same connection, it
will never Speak To You. However, my explanation of my reasons for
preferring it may at least cause some degree of curiosity or may
stimulate a spark of respect that may have not been there previously. but
again I digress.
> I am very fond of the work of the late Dart and esp. that of Prof. Stevens.
> But
> if anything, my impression is that many of the current "authenticists" look
> down upon, and dissociate themselves from, their endeavours! Certainly
> (just to cite a single example) Prof. Stevens' _resplendent_ recording
> with the Ambrosian Singers of
> the Monteverdi Vespers (minus the concerti) or the big Gloria, has
> given me great pleasure, and is in many ways quite at variance with
> many of the objectionable (to me) tendencies to which I specifically
> referred in my recent email, and to which I
> shall have cause to refer, below, once again. Most people, however, do
> not consider the style of those performances with the Ambrosian
> Singers (really an opera chorus -- and how splendidly fresh, gutsy and
> vibrant they sounded too!) to be "historically-informed". _And_
> they use modern oboes rather than cornetti -- but I still find it
> very effective!
>
Oddly enough, Kerman's book relates an "anti-Dart" and "anti-Stevens"
viewpoint because of their perceived dogmatism. Nearly in the same
breath, Kerman points out the "rhythmic flexibility," etc. of Dart's
playing, seeming to contradict himself. It is true that the cited
performance is fresh and vibrant, even with the amazingly annoying
omnipresent wide vibrato of the chorus. Personally, I find the
performance of Gardiner's at San Marco to be every bit as thrilling. The
singing, by the soloists, is emotional, yet not overwrought. The handling
of the adult and children's choruses is masterful. Most thrilling, to me,
is the instrumental playing. I simply cannot listen to it without a chill
running down my back. This performance may, some day, be surpassed, but
not I think, soon.
> May I remind you: I did _not_ say all early music performances are
> self-conscious. I said trying to deny the influence of our knoweldge
> of later music whilst performing earlier music, which you seemed to be
> advocating, would make for a rather self-conscious style of
> performance -- which indeed I believe it does.
I did address this point earlier in this post and extensively in the last
post. While I have allowed that early in the historic performance
movement excesses were made (see the Kerman quotes from the last post),
this approach has not been used by major performers in twenty+ years.
Some commentators saw its existence as being reactionary to the excesses
of the "standard" late Romantic orchestra, but Kerman sees it as being an
outgrowth of the austerity inherent in the avant-garde movement of the
late forties and fifties.
I wrote,
> >Kerman notes, "There were
> >many fine players of the 1950s (including Dart) on whose surviving
> >records one can hear ample evidence of rhythmic flexibility, dynamic
> >variety, unobtrusive ornamentation, freedom, and feeling," and later,
> >"One would scarcely call Alfred Deller a less emotional artist than
> >Kirsten Flagstad."
And you responded with,
> I find nothing to disagree with this. But nor do I think it weakens any of
> my earlier points.
The quote indeed weakens one of the tenets of your argument: that of the
mannerisms that you see in some historic performances. Allow me to remind
you of a basic fact: there will always be good and bad performances, no
matter what the approach to the music might be.
> It is all _too_ inevitable, you are right, if a "museum" approach, or
> a pseudo-scientific approach, is adopted. "Missteps" do happen when
> people cease to listen to their musical instincts and try to apply
> dogmatic rules in a mindless fashion; the last thing we need is
> for people to describe such mis-steps as being "historically informed"
> and the inspired interpretations of
> Furtwangler, Klemperer and Giulini to be implied as being _less_
> "informed". This would be quite unfair, IMHO.
I absolutely agree with this, and so does everyone else. But having said
that, I see nothing wrong with people rethinking their approaches to the
classics, by returning to the sources rather than meekly accepting the
aforementioned "inherited wisdom."
> Might that perhaps be because it _isn't_ circular? Why _is_ it circular?
Perhaps "circular" was a poor choice of words on my part. In retrospect I
should have said "self-realizing." This is borne out by your statement
that one could play A without realizing that one had been influenced by B
and C, presumably in some occult fashion.
To discard your alphabet soup for a moment, you heard Beehoven's ninth
and it Spoke To You. Later, you heard Bruckner's seventh and it likewise
Spoke To You. Fine. I understand this. but here's where you lose me: Did
you connect with Bruckner because of the similarities to Beethoven or did
this similarity just add to your enjoyment of Bruckner? And here's where
my brain really hurts: in what way does your knowledge of Bruckner
influence how you hear Beethoven? This concept really bothers me. I very
much allow for a cultural continuum, and within that continuum, there
might be a tradition that says since Bruckner wrung every drop of
metaphysical blood out of Beethoven's slow movement, we need to do the
same, by conducting Beethoven a la Bruckner. The presence of this
hypothetical tradition does not mean that it serves Beethoven or is even
musically appropriate. What I think it does mean, is that the tradition
gives Bruckner some undeserved historic weight. Thus my patently
ridiculous comparision between Reger and Bach was intended to show,
through irony, the end result of this type of thinking. Reger would have
loved to have been Bach, I think, but his music, like Bruckner's, should
stand or fall on its own merits and not have to rely on extramusical,
even supernatural, influences.
> ...and simply allowing one's sensibilities to be
> informed by _all_ the music one loves, from all periods that is, in a
> natural and uninhibited way, without trying to _subtract_ anything from one's
> interpretation out of any fear that e.g. supposedly in Bach's days
> musicians' sensibilities were less "romantic"/ lyrical/expressive than
> now, or that the "melos" came only with Wagner and hence (allegedly)
> phrases ought never to be allowed to become long as it would be
> "anachronisitic" etc.).
This point has been addressed earlier. The concept of historic
performance being emotionally barren was always an exaggeration, but it
hasn't been reality in quite some time. I know other contributors have
pointed you to some better recorded performances, but it seems that your
prejudices were conceived in the infancy of historic performance, and you
will not allow for musicians and musicologists alike to say, "We were
wrong, we have better information, here is what we think now." This seems
to offend, in some way I can't quite fathom, your intellectual
sensibilities.
>... my view is that (as Monteux said) "it's all in the music".
At the risk of offending both you and the late maestro, it is not All in
the music any more than all of Shakespeare is contained in the words.
> Why should I intend anything less than to honour the silent composer?
> What gave you such an impression?!
By your own admission it is more important to honor your musical
tradition.
> I think it fails precisely _because_ of this difference!
Here we disagree. And I am sorry you can't see my point.
> Yes, I agree, but I think this is a much more profound thing than just
> using old instruments, refraining from using vibrato, etc.. Indeed, as
> I see it, somebody like Maestro Giulini is _far_ better able to meet Beethoven
> on the latter's own terms than somebody like Gardiner. I don't think
> the instruments being used are all that relevant at such a profound
> level.
Your citations are only part of a whole and a means to an end, the end
being a clearer perception of the composer than we currently have. That
is to say, I am less interested in what Furtwangler said about Beethoven
than what Beethoven said about Beethoven. That is not to say that
Furtwangler is unimportant, just Not As Important as Beethoven.
Incidentally, I am more than slightly curious over your comment of
Guilini vs. Gardiner. I suspect that many concert-goers is Los Angeles
would take issue with your assessment. But be that as it may, in your
estimation, what is there about Guilini that makes him a superior
musician with respect to Gardiner? Is it intellect? emotion?
"musicianship?" or merely your own prejudices? Consider what Furtwangler
would have done with a stripped-down, period instrument orchestra when
interpreting Beethoven. It is entirely possible that his interpretations
would have differed from the ones he did with the late-Romantic orchestra
in vogue then (and now). Perhaps your feelings are colored by a
"celebrity" consciousness, perhaps you prefer the sound of the late
Romantic orchestra, or perhaps you have a vested interest in the
continuation of the late Romantic tradition.
If you truly think that the essence of the historic performance movement
is merely the use of "old instruments, refraining from using vibrato,
etc.," then it is no wonder that you have the opinion of historical
performance that you do. The use of old instruments is a factor, and a
critical factor, but it is what one does with those instruments that is
the telling factor. You have stated that you dislike the "mannerisms"
found in historic performance, without citing a specific instance. (I
found your examples quite vague in that I was unable to connect them to a
specific performance that I have heard. Your example of late Romantic
music played a la fifties style Baroque is interesting, to say the least,
since it is totally unlike the performance practice of the time. String
players in particular were quite notorious about using portamento to
shift positions, among other schmaltz factors.)
It is my feeling, not anything you have said directy, that you are
blaming all bad musicianship on historical performance practice. If true,
this is, in my non-humble opinion, a mistake. My very first music teacher
demanded that I master one measure before proceeding to the next measure.
This, clearly, is ridiculous. It would be like an actor learning each
word befor trying to connect them into phrases and sentences.
Your first autoquote is interesting, but unconnected to period
performance. If you are interested in historical performance, as you say,
then you know that all instrumental tutors, from Ganassi onward,
encourage the neophyte instrumentalist to emulate the human voice and
various singing styles. It is not until the mid-Baroque that we find
instrumental traditions beginning to take shape. My gut reaction to your
examples is that, in citing string examples excusively, you are
responding to the individual technical inadequacies apparent when the
heavy frosting of thick vibrato is removed from the string sound. I have
not heard sounds such as you describe on recordings. If you could give me
specific examples that I could hear, it would help my understanding of
your point greatly.
In closing I would like to share a conversation I recently had with a
friend of mine who is a professional trumpeter. I told him of our
cyberconversation and his reaction was that if everyone follwed my
precepts that a lot of music would never be played due to the lack of
interest in this country in historic performance and the lack of players
of historic instruments (or period instruments). As an aside, he
regularly performs Gabrieli on modern brass instruments. I allowed that
to be true, but I think that without demand that there wouldn't be any
instrumental players either. But I think that good music is pretty much
indestructible; just look at all the mutations that modern Bach
performance has seen--from saxophones and synthesizers to marimbas and
maracas. But I feel his genius more acutely when all the "modernisms" are
removed. So, although my first preference is period performance, I am
enough of a realist to know that it is difficult to mount an authentic or
quasi-authentic performance. For example, there is going to be a
performance this Sunday of Gabrieli and Monteverdi double choir music in
Los Angeles. There will be a fairly large choir and trumpeters playing
cornetti, trombonists playing cut-down trombones passing as sackbuts, and
not a string to be seen. Not ideal, but better than modern brass and
better than nothing. The point is that I am not dogmatic about period
performance. I do prefer it for reasons I have explained to you. Just to
have the music performed, I will tolerate a lot. There should be some
sort of "truth in packaging," though.
Haig Utidjian
Mr Cone said:
>Barring that, you could send me the
>section on the Franck sonata via private e-mail
I shall do my best. I'm sure I've kept copies somewhere.
>Although, in all
>honesty, I don't think many readers are following this thread, to judge
>by the incredible apathy we have collectively generated.
Oh I don't know. Often for every response there may be several
interested readers. I for one follow up a very small proportion indeed
of the postings that I read! Besides, we've had quite a few very
noteworthy postings from people like Michelle, Beth, Fred, Simon, Neil etc.!
But I do agree that we must not prolong this exchange of "final"
thoughts unduly, particularly as I think at least I for one have said
what my own thoughts were and do not think I have much more to offer.
And time presses, alas!
>An understanding of the psychosocial aspects
>of contemporary religious culture adds to the interpretation of the
>music, by placing it within the context for which it was conceived.
Psychosocial aspects of contemporary religious culture?! What a
mouthful! I wonder what Bach would have made of it! (What's that got to
do with _faith_?) And how does this help me phrase
something from the B Minor Mass, or shed light on what
might be an appropriate tempo? How exactly does an understanding of the
"pscychosocial aspects" shed light on interpretation? I find this
slightly dubious -- but then perhaps a precise explanation may
convince me!
>don't believe sacred music can be as successively performed as abstract
>art music;
I didn't say it should be treated as abstract art music; merely that
for a performer who does not share Bach's faith, the verbal text could
be treated as any other verbal underlay.
>but overall I think it's much more
>difficult to achieve a successful interpretation if one ignores the
>religious aspect.
I certainly think it would be foolish to ignore the words -- but that
is true with _any_ musical setting of words.
>To take for an example, Bach: there are an astounding
>eighty-one (81) recordings of the Brandenburg Concertos, while his
>cantatas, both secular and sacred have at most two or three per cantata
>(a bit of a generality).
But that's because there are an awful lot of cantatas, but only half a
dozen Brandenburg Concertos! And some of the more popular cantatas
have numerous recordings, as do the St. Matthew Passion and the
B-Minor Mass!
>It is interesting to note that the more secular
>cantatas seem to receive more attention and recordings.
But there are far fewer of them! To have equal numbers of recordings
of all the sacred Cantatas and all the secular cantatas, you would
need to have a relatively small number of CDs of each the former and a much
larger number of each of the latter, surely!
As regards your example concerning the sacred music of Byrd, etc. Vs.
Beethoven 9, there are relatively few recordings of Byrd's
secular works -- not just of his sacred works. Quite simply some
composers seem to be more popular amongst the public than others!
>I believe I addressed this point (to my satisfaction at least) earlier.
I'm delighted _someone_ is satisfied! :-)
>I believe that these two statements are mutually incompatible. If the
>first statement is correct, then exactly how is it relevant?
The aesthetics of the audience are I think relevant to the way in which the
audience hears something that's being performed to them.
>Would
>knowledge of the audience's aethetic (cultural idiom) change any or all
>of your interpretation?
No, except insofar as the chances are that if they and I are alive at
the same time, which is necessary if they are hearing me in the flesh,
there is a lot their aesthetics are likely to have in common with mine
and those of my fellow performers.
>it follows that the logical extension of this
>line of reasoning is "Hooked on Classics!"
Certainly not! That would coincide neither with my aesthetics, nor in
all probability with that of an audience which, say, came to hear
programmes consisting of, for instance (this is an almost random
selection of half a dozen of the programmes I have designed and conducted):
WEBERN: Passacaglia, Op. 1; STRAVINSKY: Le Baiser de la F'ee suite;
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 3 in E flat.
STRAVINSKY: Pulcinella suite; SCHOENBERG: ``Song of the Wood-Dove''
from the Gurrelieder; DUPARC: Aux Etoiles; SCHOENBERG: Chamber Symphony No. 2.
WEBER: ``Oberon'' Overture; WAGNER: Liebestod und Verkl"arung from
Tristan und Isolde; BERLIOZ: Harold en Italie.
LUTOSLAWSKI: Chain 1 for fourteen instruments; WEBERN: Konzert, Op. 24;
SCHOENBERG: Three pieces for Chamber Orchestra (1910); ROUSSEL: Le
Marchand de Sable qui passe...; SCHREKER: Valse lente; MADERNA: Serenata II.
HANDEL: Alexander's Feast.
STRAVINSKY: Double Canon Raoul Dufy in memoriam (1959); POULENC: Le Bestiaire;
SATIE: Marche: Le Piccadilly; BACH: Suite No. 2 in B Minor, BWV 1067;
BATTEN: Fourth Evening Service: Magnificat and Nunc Dimmittis;
MONTEVERDI: Confitebor terzo alla francese; MONTEVERDI: Lasciate mi morire;
MONTEVERDI: Tirsi e Clori; MONTEVERDI: Christe Redemptor.
Now I wouldn't like to say how likely it is that the aesthtics of the
sort of person who came to any of the above programmes might be the
"Hooked on the Classics" aesthetic to which you refer; but I don't
think that choosing interesting and well-balanced programmes (which,
with due modesty, I consider the above to be, at least in my
judgement) in any way panders to the "hooked on the Classics"
mentality or the "reliance on the rhythm section" to which you refer.
>I still think that my earlier
>observation is the more correct one: "I feel that the mere presence of
>the audience is affirmation enough of a willingness to hear and
>appreciate a performance on its own terms."
I think this observation is equally valid, but different in its
scope. My comment on the aesthetics of the audience and on
well-trained and broadly-educated performers is relevant to the way in
which the audience, once they're there in their seats, will _hear_ the
music. For instance -- will they be likely to sustain their
concentration over a long symphonic argument? will they be likely to
hear the Kyrie eleison from the B-minor mass in a long-range,
cumulative way? (Are they the product of a mere "soundbites" culture,
or do they love of Wagner and Bruckner?) I don't really think that the
above sorts of programmes are a soundbites-culture choice
particularly, although of course I may be wrong. But in general, my
view is that one ought not to under-estimate the musicality of one's audience.
When I referred to contemporary aesthetics, I was referring to the
fact that today audiences at their best are likely to enjoy
familiarity with good music from all sorts of periods and traditions; I don't
think the "Hooked on the classics"-type audience (if there is such a
thing) is all that relevant to our considerations here.
>These phenomena have infiltrated all popular culture, to its
>detriment, in my opinion.
But what has "popular culture" got to do with it?! I really was referring
to the sort of audience that was likely to attend the above sort of
programmes. Sadly, serious music is not necessarily the same thing as
"popular culture" at present these days, and I certainly
don't accept (if indeed you are implying that) that we need to play in a
"historically-informed" manner by way of eschewing any alleged evils
that may have influenced orchestral playing through the ubiquitousness
of the "reliance on the rhythm section" in pop music!
>In other words, the audience,
>to a certain extent, willingly leaves its collective aesthetic at the
>door in order to better hear and appreciate the collective aesthetic of
>the composer and musicians.
I disagree that an audience should, or does, leave its aesthetic at
the door. Nor need there be a disparity between the respective
aesthetics of the composer, musicians, and audience -- especially if
the musicans chose the play the music of the composer and the audience
chose to come and hear those musicans playing this music.
>I don't agree with this assertion. "Open ears" are required, to be sure,
>but knowledge is necessary to truly appreciate the art behind the music.
Aha! "The art behind the music"... you mean the skill and
craftsmanship? I am not talking about the underlying skill -- I am
talking about the music itself! In my view the _music_ _can_ be
appreciated in an "innocent" manner, that is in the absence of
"knowledge". And the greatest composers tend to wear their skill
lightly -- didn't someone say that the greatest art conceals art?
>Conversely,
>one can appreciate great art on a purely emotional level, but I feel
>that, at best, this is incomplete [...]
I disagree. I think that one's emotional reaction to music has a
certain geneuineness about it which gives it a certain primacy over
reactions at other levels. I usually tend to use analysis in a
retrospective manner, when I am curious to know _why_ a piece of music
shook me in the way in which it did. But analysis in itself won't
redeem a piece of music that does not otherwise appeal to me.
>Situations like this have created a saying in my country, "I don't know
>art, but I know what I like."
I do not know the exact implications of this saying of course, but
suspect that I would broadly sympathise with its exponents. The other side of
the coin is that _so_ many people are put off concerts of good music
as they are _misled_ into thinking that some specialist knowledge is
required. This IMHO is pure balderdash -- there is _no_ reason good
music should be the exclusive province of those initiated in some
cerebral way!
>Program notes may not be necessary, but in
>many cases illumination of more obscure points will heighten the musical
>experience.
On the other hand, urging the listener to "listen out" for this or
that felicity in bar such-and-such in the development can largely
destroy the experience. Personally, when I go to concerts of
orchestral music I make a point of reading the programme notes _after_
the performance, on the train on my way back. Never before. (Unless
the concert starts very late and I am in boring company! :-) )
>Please note that I am not arguing in favor of knowledge alone
>causing enjoyment. All great art, no matter what the medium, remains, at
>its heart, a visceral experience.
I think _you're_ contradicting yourself now! I thought you said that
an appreciation of music at an emotional level was incomplete at best!
>It is true that the cited
>performance is fresh and vibrant, even with the amazingly annoying
>omnipresent wide vibrato of the chorus.
The fact remains: you cited Prof. Stevens to me as a representative of the
so-called "historically-informed" chaps, and he is _not_ one of them!
He is not accepted by the press as one of them, and he doesn't (I
think) much like them! I certainly know that (see, e.g., his little
booklet "Musicology", with a foreword by Lord Menuhin) he describes
the sort of vibrato-less, sexless singing which presumably you prefer
to the "omnipresent wide vibrato" of his chorus, as the singing of
"castrated ship-sirens"! No, I don't think you should seek Stevens as
an advocate of your "historicall-informed" thesis! And, incidentally,
I like his work a lot! (Coincidence, I'm sure! <LOL>)
[I said:]
>> May I remind you: I did _not_ say all early music performances are
>> self-conscious. I said trying to deny the influence of our knoweldge
>> of later music whilst performing earlier music, which you seemed to be
>> advocating, would make for a rather self-conscious style of
>> performance -- which indeed I believe it does.
>
>I did address this point earlier in this post and extensively in the last
>post. While I have allowed that early in the historic performance
>movement excesses were made (see the Kerman quotes from the last post),
>this approach has not been used by major performers in twenty+ years.
Yes but _you_ were arguing in favour of it, in effect, by dint
of arguing _against_ my view that our love of all music should be
allowed to inform our approach to all music -- in both forward and
retrospective directions!
>but Kerman sees it as being an
>outgrowth of the austerity inherent in the avant-garde movement of the
>late forties and fifties.
Still, you keep citing this Kerman chap quite extensively nonetheless!
(So much so, I'm getting interested enough to find this book of his!)
:-)
>The quote indeed weakens one of the tenets of your argument: that of the
>mannerisms that you see in some historic performances.
Not at all! I dislike those mannerisms. That's my point. These
mannerisms seem still to be very common to me -- you may disagree
_there_.
>Allow me to remind
>you of a basic fact: there will always be good and bad performances, no
>matter what the approach to the music might be.
Surely! But there are certain specific tendencies which one has come
to associate with the authenticists -- tendencies that I am not very
fond of, and which IMHO are inherently unconducive to what I regard
as, e.g., really satisfying pacing/breathing/phrasing. That's all!
>I absolutely agree with this, and so does everyone else.
I am glad you agree, but fear that you are wrong in assuming everybody
else does too.
>But having said
>that, I see nothing wrong with people rethinking their approaches to the
>classics,
I'm all for it. But I am not in favour of certain specific current fashions
being declared as being in some sense "right" and closer to the
"artistic truth" than the endeavours of the great interpreters of the
past or indeed of the present.
>by returning to the sources
All this business about returning to the sources is grossly
overstated, IMHO; not least when it comes to Beethoven, when we are
asked to believe that certain people have discovered earth-shattering
things for the first time when in fact it seems to me you can read 95%
of it in the treatises/editions of people like
Weingartner, Markevitch, and _Norman_ del Mar (the father of the
musicologist), and an eminent pedagogue and performer in his own
right. He died about four years ago, unfortunately.
>Perhaps "circular" was a poor choice of words on my part.
Perhaps! :-)
>In retrospect I
>should have said "self-realizing." This is borne out by your statement
>that one could play A without realizing that one had been influenced by B
>and C, presumably in some occult fashion.
How's that?
I said that I believe in allowing, in a not necessarily conscious way,
oneself to perform music that one loves, in a whole-hearted fashion, without
trying to filter out one's experience of more recent music when
interpreting earlier music. Are you suggesting that this
fructification cannot be achieved in a natural, instinctive, almost
unthinking, way? If so, I disagree. If anything, I think that,
on the contrary, the attempt to "purify" one's sensibilities
when playing earlier music of
one's knowledge and love of later music, is one which can only be
attempted in a self-conscious and rather contrived manner.
>To discard your alphabet soup for a moment,
<LOL> -- A, B and C! Did I mention anything more than just the first
three?!
>Did
>you connect with Bruckner because of the similarities to Beethoven or did
>this similarity just add to your enjoyment of Bruckner?
It's rather that I found it very exciting how much _like_ Bruckner
Beethoven already sounded! The connection enriched my enjoyment of
_both_ composers!
>The presence of this
>hypothetical tradition does not mean that it serves Beethoven or is even
>musically appropriate.
I agree! But _I_ find that a really effective performance of the slow
movement of Beethoven 9 usually has the effect, even if only
fortuitously, of making the listener marvel at how
Bruckner-like Beethoven already sounded! I assure you it's not a
slight on either composer at all!
>What I think it does mean, is that the tradition
>gives Bruckner some undeserved historic weight.
Not at all! I don't think it gives Bruckner any extra weight, nor do I
think Bruckner is in need of historic weight -- he is already a
colossal figure in Western music, IMHO -- and nor indeed would the weight
have been underserved anyway! :-)
>Thus my patently
>ridiculous comparision between Reger and Bach was intended to show,
>through irony, the end result of this type of thinking.
But to my ears Bach doesn't sound like Reger. I know Reger _was_ inspired
by Bach, of course, but I don't think the same thing that I mentioned
in the very specific case of the slow movements in Beethoven and
Bruckner applies here. Actually, my favourite Reger (such as his _ravishing_
"Romantic Suite") sounds amazingly Ravel-like or Debussy-like -- a
fact that need not be all that surprising -- just listen to the
Schreker Chamber Symphony, for example!
>his music, like Bruckner's, should
>stand or fall on its own merits and not have to rely on extramusical,
>even supernatural, influences.
I agree. There's no reason why any connections, inspirations,
fructifications, should be used as a way of re-assessing the
composers' respective _statures_!
>I know other contributors have
>pointed you to some better recorded performances, but it seems that your
>prejudices were conceived in the infancy of historic performance,
I wasn't even _alive_ then, dear chap! <LOL>
>and you
>will not allow for musicians and musicologists alike to say, "We were
>wrong, we have better information, here is what we think now."
I am not interested in their "information" and in what they "think"
all _that_ much! I am more interested in their _musical_ results. The proof
of the pudding is in the eating, and so far I have derived little
satisfaction from listening to "authentic" Beethoven cycles, or
"authentic" Brahms or Mozart Requiems, etc.. These recordings don't
hail from the time of the "infancy" of the movement either -- they originate
from the last decade or so!
>>... my view is that (as Monteux said) "it's all in the music".
>
>At the risk of offending both you and the late maestro, it is not All in
>the music any more than all of Shakespeare is contained in the words.
I think we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
Can't speak for the late Monteux -- but _I'm_ certainly not offended! :-)
BTW do you know he said "music must be very sick to need so many
doctors"?! <LOL>
>By your own admission it is more important to honor your musical
>tradition.
Again -- I see no conflicting or competing claims towards "honouring"
the composer on the one hand, and following my instincts in
interpreting the music in a whole-hearted and uninhibited way, with
all the inner and outer resources upon which I can draw, on the
other.
>I am less interested in what Furtwangler said about Beethoven
>than what Beethoven said about Beethoven.
But you agreed that the only way of finding out what Beethoven said
without the intermediary of an interpreter is to sit down and read the
score silently in an armchair, which I think you said you did not find
as satisfying an experience. If so, the only way you can hear what
Beethoven said about Beethoven is to have been present at one of his
_own_ performances, such as they were.
>That is not to say that
>Furtwangler is unimportant, just Not As Important as Beethoven.
Certainly! Beethoven was a much more important composer than
Furtwangler was. Undoubtedly. But as interpreters,
Furtwangler, Klemperer and Monteux
understood Beethoven much better, it seems to me, than any of the
"historically-informed" chaps that I've heard so far.
>I am more than slightly curious over your comment of
>Guilini vs. Gardiner.
Golly! I wish to withdraw this well-nigh obscene comparison! I must have had a
pint too many when I wrote that! There _can_ be no comparison! Sorry
-- I withdraw the remark, whatever it was, and _beg_ you to erase it
from your memory!
>I suspect that many concert-goers is Los Angeles
>would take issue with your assessment.
And _I_ suspect they would find the mention of those two names
within the same sentence well-nigh sacrilegious!
>what is there about Guilini that makes him a superior
>musician with respect to Gardiner?
OIC! Sorry -- I don't know the work of "Guilini". I was referring to
another conductor -- by far the greatest, in every respect, that I
have had the good fortune ever to have heard in the flesh to
this day -- and with a very similar name! :-)
>or merely your own prejudices?
Just my own prejudices, no doubt! Exactly analogous to yours, in
rating Bach higher than Reger! (BTW I agree with this "prejudice"!) <LOL>
>Consider what Furtwangler
>would have done with a stripped-down, period instrument orchestra when
>interpreting Beethoven. It is entirely possible that his interpretations
>would have differed from the ones he did with the late-Romantic orchestra
>in vogue then (and now).
I am sure they would have been very different to those of the
"authenticists", though, don't you think?
>Perhaps your feelings are colored by a
>"celebrity" consciousness,
No. But I for one shall remain grateful to Giulini all my life, as it is only
when I heard him interpret Brahms at the Royal Festival Hall and at
the Dome in Brighton, that I finally understood the symphonies. It
really made one feel grateful to be alive and truly
blessed and fortunate to be in the right place and
the right time. Not to mention that unforgettable Eroica with the La
Scala Philharmonic at the Barbican, his Haydn, Ravel, Mussorgsky,
Dvorak, Britten, Mendelssohn, Weber, Verdi, Stravinsky I have been
lucky enough to have heard him perform with the Philharmonia
at the RFH over the last eight years. And those wonderful recordings
of Mozart, Schubert, Debussy, Bruckner, Mahler, Franck, Schumann,
Tchaikovsky... we have so much cause for gratitude.
>perhaps you prefer the sound of the late
>Romantic orchestra,
There may be a small element of that.
>or perhaps you have a vested interest in the
>continuation of the late Romantic tradition.
Doesn't all humanity do?
>If you truly think that the essence of the historic performance movement
>is merely the use of "old instruments, refraining from using vibrato,
>etc.," then it is no wonder that you have the opinion of historical
>performance that you do.
I am glad that at last you have come sympathise with my sentiments! :-)
>but it is what one does with those instruments that is
>the telling factor.
I've always argued this very point myself!
>You have stated that you dislike the "mannerisms"
>found in historic performance, without citing a specific instance. (I
>found your examples quite vague in that I was unable to connect them to a
>specific performance that I have heard.
I am very surprised! I can't _avoid_ these ubiquitous mannerisms, and you can't
even seem to find an instance of them!
>Your example of late Romantic
>music played a la fifties style Baroque is interesting
Please remind me -- I can't remember any fifties style Baroque
example!
>String
>players in particular were quite notorious about using portamento to
>shift positions, among other schmaltz factors.
What's a "schmaltz" factor? I hope it's a good thing -- I am _very_
fond of nice, sensual glissandi (oooh! aaaah!).
:-)
>It is my feeling, not anything you have said directy, that you are
>blaming all bad musicianship on historical performance practice. If true,
>this is, in my non-humble opinion, a mistake.
It isn't true!
>then you know that all instrumental tutors, from Ganassi onward,
>encourage the neophyte instrumentalist to emulate the human voice and
>various singing styles.
I'm all for it -- but that's quite contary to the non-legato, heavily
articulated and accented, "dot-equals-a-rest" approach which is so
typical of the authentic chaps (and lasses)!
>My gut reaction to your
>examples is that, in citing string examples excusively, you are
>responding to the individual technical inadequacies apparent when the
>heavy frosting of thick vibrato is removed from the string sound.
Bingo! :-) But the authenticists seem to make a _virtue_ of
those very inadequacies! Can you "fathom" _now_ what "seems to offend"
[my] "intellectual" [and musical] "sensibilities"?!!! And I've cited
vocal examples, and even at least one wind example also.
>But I think that good music is pretty much
>indestructible
Not _all_ good music, IMHO. Personally, I find that Monteverdi, Bach and
Mozart are more "indestructible" in that sense than Handel, Haydn and
Beethoven, who are much more sensitive to how they are interpreted to
have an effective performance, even though I regard them as being
no less great.
>The point is that I am not dogmatic about period
>performance.
I am _so_ pleased to hear that...!
:-)
>For example, there is going to be a
>performance this Sunday of Gabrieli and Monteverdi double choir music in
>Los Angeles.
All the best, and enjoy Sunday's concert!
Haig.
--
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