SCHERCHEN...

[MELMOTH]

Well...
Those who read Me here know my absolute love of a conductor that I
consider as one of the 5 or 10 greatest conductors...I named Hermann
SCHERCHEN...

I am therefore going to tell you (in several episodes) the incredible
life of this fabulous man !...

My source : the little book of more than 100 pages
(French/English...With a remarkable iconography) included in an
extraordinary Tahra box set (5 CDs - TAH 185-189), containing works of
Bach, Beethoven, Schönberg, Krenek, Berlioz Prokofiev, and
Kalinnikov...

NB: This conductor is probably, among all the conductors of the XXth
century, the one who played and recorded the widest repertoire, and was
in particular, as you will see, an ardent defender of the composers of
his time, a fact rare enough to underline...

Let's begin !

I - THE FIRST LIFE: 1891-1950

Carl Hans Hermann Scherchen was born in Berlin, from a very modest
family, on June 21, 1891, at 8 Göbenstrasse, where his parents owned a
liquor store. His father Carl Hermann Julius (1857-1912) had married
Jihana Berka Burke (1862-1950) on May 12, 1885, and from this marriage
was born another son, Alfred (1886-1951).
The grandparents, Cral Gotlob (1830-1896), a coordinator by trade, and
his wife Johanna Ranze (1830-1866), came from Striegau in Silesia, as
did the great-grandfather, the carpenter Christian Scherchen
(1756-1833), who had married Anna Rosina Langner (1797-1847).

At the age of seven, the child discovered the violin and played it in
his parents' bistro, where customers came to listen to him. A complete
self-taught man, Scherchen never attended a conservatory, but thanks to
his inner listening exercises and concert attendance, he built up an
impressive repertoire, ranging from Bach to the most contemporary
composers (Reger, Debussy, Mahler, etc.).
In 1903, the concerts of the virtuoso Franz von Vecsey, with his
prodigious technique, made him aware of his limits as a violinist and,
in a school essay, to the question "What do you want to do?", he
answered: "At twenty, I will conduct the philharmonic orchestra and be
a conductor in Berlin" (!).

In 1907, he became violist of the Blüthner Orchestra and the Berlin
Philharmonic, where he played under the direction of Arthur Nikisch,
Oskar Fried, Felix Motl, Felix Weingartner, Richard Strauss, etc. He
also played in cafés, at the Krolloper, at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches
Theater, and at the Lunapark in Berlin. In October 1910, he attended
the concert where Fried conducted Pelléas et Mélisande by Scoenberg
and, in January 1911, the 7th by Mahler. The performance of Pelléas
gave him new sensations, unknown until then, and in Mahler's symphony
he perceived for the first time a new meaning of Art, prefiguring
Expressionism, which would reveal itself to him in all its acuity with
the work of Schoenberg.

1912 is a crucial year in Scherchen's life: it is the year of the
premiere of Pierrot Lunaire, by Schoenberg, who gives the first
performance on October 16. The work was then played during a German
tour shared by the composer and Scherchen, who made his official debut
as a conductor at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof in Munich on November 5,
1917. He played the work again in Berlin on December 1.

[Continued in the next issue!]

The following year, he gave the first private performance of
Schoenberg's Kammersinfonie (May 7, 1913): thanks to this concert, he
became a friend of Carl Flesch and Arthur Schnabel and, through them,
met the Jewish banker Franz von Mendelssohn who, with 3,000 marks,
financed his first concert with a large orchestra.
Thus, on February 4, 1914, he conducted the Blüthner orchestra in a
program including Mahler's 5th and Schoenberg's symphony. The following
month (March 18), he gave his second concert (Haydn's 103rd, Mozart's
Petits Riens and Bruckner's 9th). In the spring, he was invited, as
second conductor to Paul Scheinpflug, to conduct the Riga Symphony
Orchestra in the Russian seaside town of Dubbeln. For more than two
months, he conducts four times a week a whole repertoire, mostly
Russian (Dargomyzsky, Glinka, Mussorgsky, Cui, Liadov, Rimski etc...).
The last concert takes place on August 11 and is interrupted by the
arrival of soldiers carrying flags and guns. The next day, the
announcement is made that Germany has declared war on Russia. The
German and Austrian musicians of the orchestra have only one way out:
to flee as far as possible, within the country, with all the risks that
this represents.
Scherchen became a civilian prisoner of war and, as such, remained in
Russia until April 1918.

Faced with this forced captivity, he did not remain inactive but
learned Russian vocabulary and grammar, managing to read Russian
literature in its original language, above all Dostoyevsky. He also
became a clock repairman, composed a quartet and lieder, but also
experienced hunger and cold, insomnia and deprivation of all kinds. One
day, he was ordered to go to the town of Wjatka, where he arrived in
the winter of 1916. They wanted to create an orchestra with a real
conductor and the name Scherchen was mentioned. The following year he
became a teacher in a makeshift school, teaching German, history of
religions and music. The classes included children as young as 4 years
old as well as illiterate 23 year olds!

1917 was above all the year of the Russian Revolution. On March 6, St.
Petersburg fell, the Tsar fled, it was the liberation from all that was
unbearable. The Bolshevik revolution occurred in October, the first one
having destroyed only the unbearable predominance of a caste. The
events of October changed everything because, for the first time, the
possibility of a return of German prisoners to their country was
possible. During the exodus, Scherchen met the editor of the Russian
magazine Melos, Piotr Suvchin, and the electro-acoustician Auraamov in
Moscow. In his memoirs, he summed up this very long period of 44 months
in Russia as follows: "Melos and acoustics are the last two gifts I
received during my captivity, in addition to my string quartet, my
teaching experience and my conducting practice.

[Continued when I have the courage, My good ones...]
Filled with new horizons, Scherchen returned to Germany and Berlin in
April 1918. He creates the Scherchen Quartet with which he gives the
first performance of his string quartet composed in Russia (December
3). He takes over the direction of the Berlin workers' choirs (Schubert
Choir and Mixed Choir of Greater Berlin), conducts for the first time
the Berlin Philharmonic (September 12). The following year, he founded
the Society for New Music (Neue Musikgesellschaft) which gave six
concerts a year in the Philharmonic Hall and continued his concerts
with the Berliner Philharmoniker (Mahler's 3rd on November 23). In
1920, he was hired at the State College for Music to give courses on
the problems of the New Music, courses in which Schrecker, Haba,
Horenstein, Krenek etc. participated. On February 1, the first issue of
the journal MELOS is published. In September, he toured Silesia with
the Schubert Choir and on October 10, he conducted the
Grotrian-Steinweg Orchestra for the first time in Leipzig and met
Nikisch personally. On June 17, 1921, he married Auguste Maria Jansen,
who gave him a son, Wulf.

1922 was an important year in his artistic development and the
advancement of his career: on March 17, during a concert with the
Berlin Phikharmonic, he conducted the premiere of Krenek's first
symphony; from October on, he succeeded Furtwängler as conductor of the
concerts of the Museumgesellschaft of Frankfurt but above all, he
became the permanent guest conductor of the Musikolllegium of
Winterthur with which he remained linked until 1950 (first concert on
October 25). At the same time, he continued his concerts in Leipzig.

In 1924 (September 13), he gave his first radio concert at the
Frankfurt transmitter, which immediately made him aware of the problems
associated with acoustics. This discovery was the beginning of the
research that he continued until the end of his life (i.e., in his
studio in Gravesano in 1954): "the acoustic existence of music".
(Scherchen was an undeniable pioneer of music on the radio, as a recent
thesis by a young German musicologist, M.Kreikle, proves).

In 1927, he travelled four times to Romania where he conducted a
complete cycle of Beethoven's symphonies. 1928 marked a new stage in
his career: he was invited by the city of Königsberg as Director of
Music. Indeed, the Reich Radio wanted to create a symphony orchestra
with him and base it in Königsberg, as representative of the Ostmark.
This proposal appealed to Scherchen, who was able to create an
orchestra from scratch (he conducted it until October 1931). From 1928
on, Scherchen's radio activity continued to develop, conducting
numerous operas on the Berlin transmitter, where he was able to carry
out experiments with spatialization and sound waves. This same year
marks another important event in his life: he conducts for the first
time Bach's Art of the Fugue, which had been "recreated" the previous
year in Leipzig by the cantor Karl Straube. This work never ceased to
accompany Scherchen, who played it for 38 years, even going so far as
to write his own instrumentation, which he premiered in Lugano the year
before his death.

On October 24, 1929, he conducted for the first time the famous Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra, then went on tour with the Radio-Königsberg
Orchestra and gave his first concerts with the Paris Symphony Orchestra
(December NB: created by Mon Maître Pierrot Monteux!). That same year,
his first and most famous work, the Manual of Conducting, was published
in Leipzig by Weber. It was translated into many languages and is still
an authority. In June 1930, he gave his first conducting course in
Königsberg, an activity that he continued in many other cities (Paris,
Vienna, Brussels, Budapest, etc.), and, from 1954, in his own studio in
Gravesano, in the form of congresses that have remained famous.

In 1932 he gave concerts in Moscow and Leningrad, and conducted a
concert of the Deutscher Arbeiter Sängerbund in Braunschweig, the final
piece of which was a grandiose orchestration of the Internationale.
From September to November, he worked in Vienna on the formation of a
youth orchestra, the Studio Orchester. After a last concert in Berlin
in mid-December (Kaminski's opera Jürg Jenatsch), he left Germany
because, with the rise of Nazism, his vision of life would not allow
him to exist. He spends a large part of 1933 in Strasburg, at the
invitation of Fritz Munch, especially in August, where he organizes a
big event that he calls "15 years of music", and in October-November,
where he conducts Tristan and Othello at the Opera. In January-February
1935, he conducted Lohengrin and Don Giovanni in Trieste and in June he
met a young Chinese woman of 30, Xiao Shusien, in Brussels. He fell in
love with her and left for China in early 1936 to marry her.
Chronologically, she will be Scherchen's fourth wife, after Paula
Schramm (Pauline Retting, the mother of the conductor Karl Ristenpart),
Gustel Jansen, and the theater actress Gerda Müller (1884-1951). Other
women more or less shared his life: the actress Carola Neher
(1900-1942), who died of typhus in a Russian concentration camp near
Kazakstan, a Swiss harpist, etc...

Back in Europe, he left for Barcelona where, on April 19, he premiered
Berg's Violin Concerto, with Louis Krasner as soloist. In 1937, he went
to Bucharest, but also to Budapest (conducting courses) and above all
to Vienna, where he created the famous Musica Viva orchestra, thanks to
private funds and the support of Alma Mahler-Werfel, with the aim of
performing all of Mahler's works. At the end of the year, the orchestra
toured Italy, but on March 10, 1938, the adventure came to an abrupt
end due to political events (Anschluss). This ensemble, which was
called Musica Telaviva, was composed mostly of Jewish musicians who had
fled fascist Germany.

In 1939, he was invited to Palestine to conduct the orchestra whose
first concerts Toscanini had just given. He stayed there from May to
July, alternating concerts and conferences that were incredibly
successful. He spent the war period (1940-45) in Switzerland,
continuing his concerts in Winterthur and assiduously visiting
libraries with the double aim of unearthing forgotten scores and
researching ancient texts to write his books (Vom Wesesn der Musik,
Muzik für Jedermann). He left Switzerland only twice: in January and
July 1940 for concerts and conferences in Greece. Every summer, from
1941 to 1944, he gave concerts in Gstaad and recorded for His master's
Voice in Switzerland his first 78 rpm records (46 sides recorded in
1941/42, which we will probably reissue).

[Continued when I have the time]...
From 1945 on, he was in charge of the musical direction of the
Studio-Orchester Beromüster - that is to say the BBC in Zurich - where
he had the Swiss Rolf Liebermann as his assistant. In 1946, he began
touring and giving concerts abroad: Amsterdam (February), Venice
(July). In 1947, he was called to Ankara to reorganize the Turkish
musical life (Beethoven festival in May). In June, he left for South
America for the first time (Chile) and, on his return, made his first
appearance at the Darmstadt Festival, devoted to contemporary music
(premiere of Furioso by Liebermann).

In 1948, new concerts in Chile, as well as in Uruguay and Argentina.
During the summer, he gave a course in orchestral conducting in Venice.
On November 13, the mayor of Leipzig sends him the following telegram:
"/We call you to the direction of the Gewadhaus. Saxon and Radio
authorities are ready to grant you the Conservatory and the artistic
direction of the symphonic concerts of Radio-Leipzig". The German
authorities had also offered him the direction of the Berlin
Philharmonic and the Staatsoper. For various reasons, mainly personal,
Scherchen gave up all these positions.

In 1949, he conducted again in Germany (Bonn, Munich, Berlin Drede,
Leipzig), and returned to Uruguay (July). On October 5, he premiered
Liebermann's first symphony in Winterthur.
The year 1950 is the year of all disasters: he gives his last concert
in Winterthur, his mother dies on May 12 at the age of 88, his Chinese
wife returns to Peking with their three children, and above all, after
a conference in Prague with the Czech Philharmonic (June 4), he holds a
conference in Switzerland where he praises the merits of the culture of
the Eastern countries. An unbelievable hysterical campaign develops in
the Swiss press, a true model of opinion offence and he is obliged to
give up all his posts. This is the darkest period of his life, which
will lead him to the brink of suicide. It was also the period when Rolf
Liebermann introduced him to a young Swiss mathematician of Romanian
origin, Pia Andronescu.

END OF THE FIRST LIFE of this extraordinary man...

Continued when I had time...
(supersedes <_mn.8ae17da5b...@free.fr_>)

II - THE SECOND LIFE of HERMANN SCHERCHEN (1950 - 1966)

"/What can I say better than this truth: it is with you, thanks to you
that my true second life began? My sweet Pia, on May 1, ten years ago,
you came into my life, when I thought I had to follow my mother.

Scherchen wrote this on June 12, 1958 and February 3, 1960 to the woman
who became his fifth and last wife and who bore him five children. She
was his youngest by thirty years and a mathematician, and this was very
important to him, for he always considered the importance of
mathematics in their relationship to music. By her side, a new life
took shape: after the catastrophe of the previous months, happiness
smiled again. In July, they leave together for Rome where Scherchen is
to give five concerts. In September, he conducted the St. John Passion
in L'Aquila (September 3) and Israel in Egypt in Perugia (September
23). In mid-October, he made his first recordings for the American firm
Westminster (London Symphonies and Mass in B) and in November, he was
in London for three radio concerts with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

In 1951, after two months in Brazil, he premiered Brecht-Dessau's
Lukullus in East Berlin. On June 5, he conducted the Czech Philharmonic
in Prague, and then, in July-August, premiered in Darmstadt the Dance
around the Golden Calf, taken from Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron. After
a month in Mexico, the year ended with concerts in Rome (the complete
Christmas Oratorio on December 21). At the same time, he develops an
important activity at the San Carlo in Naples and in June 1953,
organizes a seminar in Bayreuth. In December, he buys a huge property
in Gravesano, in the Swiss Ticino, where he builds his electro-acoustic
research studio which will become famous and will become the point of
convergence for many scientists, musicians and artists. The first
congress is held from August 9 to 14, 1954, on the theme Music and
Electroacoustics. He married Pia Andronescu in London (September 17)
and on December 2 he conducted the first performance of Varèse's
Déserts in Paris, which caused a memorable scandal. In July 1955, the
first issue of Gravesaner Blätter is published (by the time of
Scherchen's death, 29 issues will have been published) and the second
congress ("What is light music?") takes place. After selling his Ars
Viva Verlag to Schott Söhne, he goes on a very long tour of Scandinavia
in October-November.

Scherchen continues his career as a guest conductor and his recording
activity (he will make 100 records for Westminster). In January 1956,
he conducted three times the Mass in B in Budapest and in October 1957
recorded the soundtrack of the film Don Jiovanni in Munich, produced by
the Bavaria company. In 1959, he began his activity with the Herford
orchestra (Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie). In August, a conference was
held in Gravesano on the theme "/5 years in Gravesano; synthesis of
studio experience/", with a presentation of the stereophoner and a
performance in the gardens of Schoenberg's Erwartung with Helga
Polarzyk. The most important event of the year was the (very
controversial) German stage premiere of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron in
Berlin. These six concerts caused a scandal and Scherchen was even
threatened by phone with vitriol! (He conducted the work in Vienna,
Paris, Milan, Rome and Munich).
In 1960 he began his activity at La Scala in Milan, which lasted until
1964 (Doctor Faust, by Busoni...Ariadne auf Naxos, Don Giovanni,
Macbeth, The Marriage of Figaro, Rienzi). In April he conducted three
stage performances of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Palermo, one of
which was filmed and broadcast on Eurovision.
At the end of 1961, he conducted three performances of Berg's Wozzeck
at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. A new conference is held in
Gravesano (/Music and TV, Music and Medicine, Music and Mathematics),
with the participation of Xénakis.

[@ +]
By popular demand....

In 1962, Scerchen conducted in Spain (the Creation in Barcelona), gave
a course in conducting at the Mozarteum in Salzburg (August) and
conducted an entire concert in Paris dedicated to his student Igor
Markevitch (December 4). In 1963, he conducted in Sicily (Verdi's
Requiem in Palermo), toured Uruguay and Chile and began his annual
activity at the Sagra Umbra in Perugia. In 1964, a project to perform
Handel's Theodora in the ruins of Pompeii was not realized. On October
30, he gave his first concert in North America, in Philadelphia
(Mahler's 5th), then left for New York to give five concerts, including
two performances of Mozart's Requiem, in honor of President Kennedy.
From January to May 1965, he gave the complete Beethoven symphonies in
Lugano, conducted Mahler's 7th in Toronto (April 22), gave concerts in
Madrid, Granada, Palermo and then left for Chile. In June, he made his
last recordings for Westminster (Danzi), which went bankrupt and forced
him to increase the number of concerts. In December, a second American
tour took him to Toronto, Minneapolis and New York.

After three performances of Moses and Aaron in Rome (January 1966), he
returned to the USA for a third tour (Washington, St. Louis, Pittsburg,
Baltimore). In March, a rehearsal of Bach's Art of the Fugue, in the
Church of Saint Roch in Paris, was filmed by French television. We see
a tired man, but in full possession of his intellectual faculties.
After concerts in Bologna, Palermo, Bremen, Catania and at the Royan
Festival (premiere of Terretektorh by Xenakis on April 3), he leaves
for Florence where he is to give three performances of Malipiero's
Orfeide, thus attempting to give a second life to this work created in
1925. On June 7, after the first act, he fell ill, but managed to
finish the concert. Five days later, he died in his hotel, overcome by
a heart attack. June 12 was also the birthday of his wife who had
joined him in Florence. He would have been 75 years old nine days
later.

The prediction of the American telepath who had told him in 1914 that
he would die at the age of 84 - and which Scherchen had always
believed! - did not come true. He is buried in the small cemetery of
Gravesano, in the setting of the Ticino mountains that he loved so much
and about which he had spoken in an interview with RTSI on his 70th
birthday: /"The most important thing is this marvelous nature, this
beauty that I feel every time I go up the mountain of my little
property and where, when I was 63 years old, I had the sensation for
the first time in my life, that it is possible to be happy in this
existence"/.

Thus ended abruptly a life entirely dedicated to Music. What this man
was able to achieve was unique and overwhelming: writer, teacher,
lecturer, philosopher, editor, researcher, composer, conductor, etc. A
conference was planned in Gravesano, on the theme of Art and the
Computer, he was to give concerts in Japan in October-November, conduct
Wozzeck in Bologna, and was among the guest conductors of the Chicago
Symphony for the 1966-67 season.

In May 1966, Ermanno Briner, the sound engineer of the Swiss Italian
Radio and Television, visited Scherchen at his home in Gravesano. At
the end of the conversation, Scherchen spoke of his tireless dedication
to contemporary music. Quite unexpectedly, he said slowly and
thoughtfully: /"You know, I don't know if everything I've done in my
life makes sense. In modern music, I always expect something to happen,
but only the outer conditioning changes and the inner remains
constantly the same. For example, I try to get something out of this
score, but it is very difficult..."/.

To E. Briner, Scherchen - who was averse to intimate confidences - had
already made this admission: "When I am dead, very soon people will not
talk about me anymore. This judgment highlights the goal that Scherchen
has always pursued: to serve a noble cause, for the sole sake of an art
that is above the fate of everyone. This modesty has no justification,
for the imprint left by Scherchen is of such importance that his name
is now indelibly inscribed in the history of musical interpretation.

HERE IS THE END OF THE LIFE OF THIS UNIQUE AND EXTRAORDINARY MAN...

I acquired my first disc of Scherchen at the age of 15 (1960): it was
the 2nd and 8th of the GS...Which are still currently essential
references...Especially the 8th!

Jaiparlé©

FU2 en.rec.arts.classical.music

HERMANN SCHERCHEN and the PRECLASSIQUE SYMPHONY

[From the excellent booklet written by René Trémine, in the double CD
Tahra 152/153)

The fact that Scherchen has been systematically catalogued as an ardent
defender of contemporary music - which he certainly was! - has often
overshadowed his other activities, especially his dedication to baroque
and pre-classical music! Indeed, he always affirmed that his mission
was to make known ALL MUSIC, without exclusion, and he illustrated this
by conducting mixed programs, alternating works of the 17th century,
classical and modern!

During the war, Scherchen lived in Switzerland. A study of his diaries
from this period shows that he assiduously frequented Swiss libraries
with the dual purpose of researching ancient texts as material for his
books [Vom Wesen der Musik (1946) - Musik für Jedermann (1950)], and of
unearthing forgotten scores to play them in concert (and publish them
in his own Ars Viva Verlag, which he sold to Schott Söhne in 1954). On
the other hand, from 1945 to 1950, he was Director of Programs at
Radio-Zürich (I have already mentioned this in my previous opus on this
great conductor) and, in this capacity, conducted the concerts at the
Radio-Beromünster transmitter.
A search in the archives of the Swiss radio allowed us to discover that
300 works had been recorded (!) and that, unfortunately, only a tiny
quantity survived the systematic campaigns of erasure of the tapes,
realized by the Swiss Radio! (and afterwards, one will be surprised
that I never liked this country!)...

The study of these programs is also very revealing: he programmed the
first French opéra bouffe, Platée by Rameau, gave concerts devoted to
Chinese music, to French pre-classics (Le
Duc...Barrière...Saint-Georges), Czech (Beck...Stamitz... Richter),
English (Abel...J.Chr. Bach...Haendel), Italian
(Sammartini...Nardini...Tartini), South American music
(Gnattali...Catunda... Vianna...Villa-Lobos), Norwegian (Sparre
Olsen...Fongsedt...Farstein...Valen), Argentinian etc...WHO SAYS
BETTER?!!!...I don't even ask the question©...
He also devoted two programs to the Birth of the Symphony
(Peurl...Monteverdi...Purcell...Rameau...Lully...Leonardo
Leo...J.Rousseau...Piccini etc.).

In Winterthur, early music occupied a large part of his programs: thus,
on February 24, 1940, he devoted an entire concert to Swiss composers
of the past (Fritz...Fröhlich...Schnyder von Wartensee... Lefèvre); on
August 12, 1941, to the Masters of the pre-classical period
(Lully...Corelli...Peurl...Monteverdi...Purcell...Rameau); on May 22,
1943, to the unknown Masters of the pre-classical period
(Wagenseil...Tartini...Gossec...Keller...Beck etc...). On November 21,
1943, he celebrated the 300th anniversary of Monteverdi with a
performance of the Vespers of 1610.

Historically, the symphonic form was born from the opening of the
Italian opera. As early as 1632, Stefano Landi began his theatrical
work, Il Sant'Alessio, with an important overture in three parts. It
was Alessandro Scarlatti who first gave the Overture the name Sinfonia
and established its structure: three distinct parts, including an
energetic and brilliantly illustrated allegro, a short andante of
lyrical character for the strings, and a spirited presto. This type of
overture was used throughout the 17th century.
At the same time, another type of overture was developed in France,
with J.B. Lully, in three linked parts. The symphony resulting from the
Italian overture will be born when one of these overtures, or sinfonia,
will be detached from the work of which it constitutes the introduction
and when it will be carried out like piece of concert. G.Sammartini was
one of the first to publish overtures, or concert symphonies.

The so-called pre-classical symphony developed in the middle of the
18th century, thanks in particular to the two schools of Vienna and
Mannheim. Their respective contributions were in two different areas:
the form for Vienna, the style for Mannheim.
The Viennese (Monn...Wagenseil) fixed the plan of the symphony in three
movements (allegro, andante, presto), or even four (with a minuet). The
allegro and presto adopt the sonata form; the tonalities, generally
major, are varied; the rhythms are jolting, based on syncopations; the
most common instrumentation groups the string quartet, two flutes, two
oboes and two horns.
These innovations were also adopted in Mannheim by Stamitz, Richter,
Beck, etc. Stamitz introduced a new instrumental style to the symphony,
characterized by the use of great dynamics (powerful crescendi, sudden
oppositions of nuances), and a new orchestration (abandonment of the
continuo, introduction of the clarinet, use of the winds as soloists).
This school will influence the French symphony of the 18th century,
mainly represented by Fr.Martin and Fr.Gossec, and whose golden age
will be between 1778 and 1789.

The Encyclopedia of Music, published by Johann Gottfried Walther in
1732 in Leipzig, is the first to give a definition of the word
symphony: /It means everything that resonates in harmony and
characterizes a work played only by instruments. In this musical form,
the composer has total freedom and does not need to adhere to
particular numbers and proportions, he can use as many as he wants,
while avoiding creating chaos.
This definition symbolizes a great diversity, but only in appearance,
because in those early days of the symphony we did not find any of the
rules we know today. The term symphony encompassed a variety of musical
forms, such as instrumental sonatas played as introductions or
intermissions to vocal works, introductory movements to German
partitas, and even overtures played in the Italian style
(fast-slow-fast).
The decisive event in the development of the classical form of the
symphony occurred shortly before 1750, when the sonata was adopted as
an obligatory introductory movement form.
FU2 en.rec.arts.classical.music

*Is there a particular style of performing pre-classical music?

[Text written by SCHERCHEN, necessarily]...

Laugier, a very appreciated author of the 18th century, sums up what a
good performance of an orchestral work should be like this: "To give a
good performance of a work, one must first transpose oneself in the
thoughts of the composer and in the spirit of the work. Then one must
reproduce the exact value of each note, scrupulously following the
composer's indications and not making any changes or embellishments on
one's own initiative. One should be content to add only the soul and
the fire to the work performed, without which the notes cannot express
anything. All voices must be played with the same care, in order to
achieve the maximum effect. On the other hand, the most important
parts, i.e. the melody and the bass, must govern the whole".

What we call here fire and soul, Rameau already called it expression,
this expression which must be the only goal of the musician. Further
on, one can read: "The violin, the oboe and the harpsichord should be
played with soul; this "playing with soul" will only become audible
thanks to the opposition between low and high notes, to the increase or
decrease of the sounds and to a certain modification of the values of
the notes, a transformation which must absolutely not concern the
measure. In other words, thanks to a number of procedures that are
easier to use than to define.

As early as 1552, Josquin des Près said: "To write, the composer must
be pushed by a force more powerful than himself, so strong that he
forgets hunger and thirst, and that he will forget all the necessities
of daily life before having completed his work.
We know that Handel composed several of his works in the midst of tears
and sobs. The great flutist Quantz, contemporary of Bach, summarized
all this in 1752 in a very simple phrase, which Beethoven later used:
only what comes from the heart goes back to the heart.

There is a widespread opinion that pre-classical music is a learned
music, which must be played in a special way, which is understood only
by the initiated, and which is included in concert programs only to
bore the audience. It has even been said that in interpreting the
pre-classical authors, one wanted to eliminate - under the pretext of
science - a large part of what belongs to the sensual experience of
music. Thus, there would be no place here for crescendo or decrescendo.
Vibrato was, it seems, unknown to these ancient masters, and their
tempi must have been much slower than those used today. But, since a
good and sensitive musician is not so easily influenced by such
caprices, it was often preferred to entrust such interpretations of
older works to semi-amateurs, within specific associations, and thus
effectively managed to make the public believe that, in order to
understand this music, one had to be organized in a particular way.

Let's take stock of this situation and now try to determine what really
corresponds to these pretentious claims to "know more".

I'm getting tired now...
The rest later, oh music lovers and other idiophiles...
FU2 en.rec.arts.classical.music

It is proven that the ancient masters knew about tempo changes, so much
so that one author wrote: "I believe that in instrumental music, too
many riatardandi are used. In my opinion, the rigor of tempo should
only rarely be broken, for too much freedom becomes a flaw if it is
repeated too frequently. The hypothesis of the use of the ritardendo
will be to employ it only tastefully and expressively".
J.J.Rousseau attacks the article Métronome published by the
Encyclopédie, in the following way: "Our misique has the ambition to
tyrannize the measure according to the taste of the interpreter, i.e.
to accelerate it or to slow it down".

The vibrato - an alleged invention of the new violin technique - is
already mentioned in 1648 by Mersenne (a French theorist who has dealt
with almost all the fields that are nowadays part of MUSICOLOGY. His
work remains an inexhaustible source for the knowledge of the music of
the 16th and 17th centuries: "It is necessary to use vibrato to make
the sound more pleasant. The composers of the 18th century demanded it
and often recommended it, to give more life to the notes held in time.
Lully's contemporaries tell us that he accelerated all the tempi: all
those who heard Lully himself conduct his operas, when the great master
could still tell his musicians and singers what cannot be written in
notes alone, regret today this way of playing which, at the time, had
enchanted them so much. At the same time, they say that today these
operas last much longer than in Lully's time, despite the fact that
nowadays all the violin arias that were played a second time are no
longer repeated.

A slower tempo for playing pre-classical works could be justified if
the musicians of the time had not been able to master the technical
difficulties, as we can today. But we also know that the technical
handling of the harpsichord was not much worse than that of today, that
one could not play fast on the organ, in the forte, and that in the
piano it was as handy as the harpsichord.
The string technique taught in the violin schools of the 18th century
was so advanced that the practice of seven positions was the basis
(until the end of the 18th century, the orchestral writing of the
violin used only 5 positions; this number increased to 9 with
Beethoven, then 11 with Wagner. The viola has 7 positions, the cello
4). Moreover, mastery of all types of scales and arpeggios was the
normal condition for virtuoso playing. Double strings were already used
and even difficulties such as the double trill on two tones of a third
and the sounds of the flageolet were encountered. It has also been
shown that the string technique was particularly developed. Because of
the predominance of dance forms in instrumental music, precise patterns
for each bow stroke were established for each of these dances, and it
was not uncommon for dancers to be confused by the orchestra's failure
to follow these bow strokes, and to lose their ability to follow the
rhythm. All of this applies to the violins and the entire string
family. There is also a whole series of very precise instructions for
the different types of bow strokes, from the very brief staccato to the
martellato. It was said that the violin bow was the instrument's soul
and that it allowed it to express all emotions.

Obviously, besides these technical concordances, the musical execution
of the pre-classics is very different from ours: for example, the
totally different proportion of the instruments of the orchestra
between them. In 1719, we find: 14 violins, 6 violas, facing 8 basses
and 4 bassoons; in 1747, 10 violins and 2 violas facing 7 cellos and 3
bassoons. The famous orchestra of Popelinière counted only 5 violins, 1
bassoon, 1 cello and 1 double bass. All these examples show that the
basses of the time had a much greater importance than today.

It would therefore be a mistake to neglect this proportion of the bass
to the melody in the performance of pre-classical music. Just as
important as the strength of the basses in terms of clarity was the
participation of entire groups of flutes, oboes and possibly trumpets
in the sound color of the pre-classical orchestra. To see this, one
need only compare the melancholy sound of the orchestra in Bach's Suite
in B (with its groups of flutes) with the bright and luminous Suite in
D major, with its oboes, trumpets and timpani. Nothing can better
express this difference than a knowledge of the key in 1745: here, the
Mass in B is said to be melancholic, while the Suite in D is indicated
as more joyful and very belligerent.

The importance of correct tempo is documented in almost all the
writings on music of the 17th and 18th centuries: an incorrect tempo
can render the musical effect artificial and completely change its
expression. As a result, the French Academy of Sciences presented a
metronome as early as 1701, which was widely used throughout the 18th
century, long before Mälzel! Annotations based on this first metronome
allow us to reconstruct the authentic tempi for the most important
dances of pre-classical music. Here is a brief overview:

Minuet: 72-80
Chacone : 120 - 156
Rigaudon : 116 - 152
Gavotte : 96 - 152
Passepied : 84 - 136
Bourrée : 112 - 120
Gigue : 112 - 120
Sarabande : 63 - 84

Uniquely, it should be mentioned that Lully has always played the
reprise of his Armida Overture faster and faster, right from the
beginning. Unlike today's orchestral sound, the instruments were tuned
a semitone or a tone lower than contemporary instruments; on the other
hand, the sound power of pre-classical instruments was lower than
today's. The harpsichord and the organ of that time did not have the
same power as ours, and this is also true for the strings. Suffice it
to say that to maintain historical fidelity for the sake of fidelity
alone in our great concert halls with their ever-growing audiences
would be a real nonsense; the modern concert hall demands the piano as
much as our much more powerful sounding string instruments of today.
The same cannot be said for flutes, oboes and bassoons, which have
undergone only slight modifications since Bach. Only today's trumpets
are in contrast to the even lighter character of the instruments of
pre-classical music.

There are no imperative rules for performing the latter: it is music,
not geometry. Pre-classical music requires more than any other harmonic
balance, that is to say a harmonious and happy correspondence between
all the relationships that only good taste can govern, this taste of
which one of our old authors speaks: "Good taste often determines all
alone those realities and relationships in music, which cannot be
explained otherwise than by good taste itself".

Let us specify that this fascinating text was written by Scherchen
in...1938!...Well before the delusions of the Harnoncourian doxa!...

What do they say?...
I ask the question©...

[Dan Koren]

Too long to read ......

[MELMOTH]

Dan Koren a utilisé son clavier pour écrire :

> Too long to read ......

If I had replaced Scherchen by Celibidache, I doubt that you would have
answered the same thing...

[Dan Koren]

On Sunday, May 15, 2022 at 2:24:36 PM UTC-7, MELMOTH wrote:
> Dan Koren a utilisé son clavier pour écrire :
> > Too long to read .....
>

> If I had replaced Scherchen by
> Celibidache, I doubt that you
> would have answered the
> same thing...

I would have replied EXACTLY
the same way. As my friend
Clara liked to say "talking
about music is like dancing
about architecture".

dk

[Dan Koren]

BTW I do like Scherchen.

dk

[Dan Koren]

On Sunday, May 15, 2022 at 2:27:53 PM UTC-7, Dan Koren wrote:

In case you didn't notice, my
reaply was about your article,
not about Scherchen.

dk

[Chris J.]

MELMOTH wrote on 15 May:

> SCHERCHEN...

Now read what Elias Canetti had to say about him in Jeux de Regard (The
Play of the Eyes; original title: Das Augenspiel) and report back,
provided you can keep it succinct.

Chris

[Mandryka]

I actually found myself really enjoying something by Scherchen a couple of weeks ago, Berlioz's Troyens. It's a very good antidote to Colin Davis.

I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Scherchen because one of my favourite composers -- Luc Ferrari -- talks about how supportive he was (financially supportive, I think he helped Ferrari and others buy equipment, rent studios etc. It's in Jacqueline Caux's book Presque Rien, which I'll dig out later maybe. )

[Juan I. Cahis]

I saw conducting Mahler here in Santiago, Chile, around 1960. An
outstanding Conductor

--
Enviado desde mi iPad usando NewsTap, Juan I. Cahis, Santiago de Chile.