"Great Conductors of the 20th Century" series
aest...@hotmail.com
Thornhill
aest...@hotmail.com wrote:
> Any recommendations?:
>
>
The Ormandy discs feature his terrific CBS studio recording of Brahms'
4th Symphony that has never been issued on CD before (recorded in the
'60s). The set also contains one of the best recordings of
Rachmaninov's 2nd Symphony, though it has long been availble on CD
(also a studio recording, but for RCA in the '70s).
Jack Crawford
(like Classics Today and MusicWeb). There's also an extended review
at http://www.classicalnotes.net/columns/emiconductors.html.
The series was never completed - I assume because of lower than
required sales.
Jack
William Sommerwerck
> required sales.
This is unfortunate, because once the price dropped to $11, I started
collecting them.
If they didn't sell well, one of the reasons might have been that a high
percentage of the recordings were older and mono.
Thornhill
William Sommerwerck wrote:
>
> If they didn't sell well, one of the reasons might have been that a high
> percentage of the recordings were older and mono.
More like, like many Andante releases, the series featured crappy
sounding live recordings of repertoire the conductors recorded in the
studio. And many releases simply featured already in print commercially
released studio recordings.
jony...@earthlink.net
2 with Gilels, which makes the set worth getting just for that. Wish
his equally good (and equally OOP) Brahms 3rd Symphony were there too,
but guess you can't have everything.
jy
bzuk...@phillynews.com
aest...@hotmail.com wrote:
> Any recommendations?:
In spite of the cut in the 9th and the error in labeling the fifth as a
first-time release, the Furtwangler set is more than worth the small
price for the Eroica.
It's one of his three best on record IMO, and the sound is quite good
for a live historical release.
Barry
Matthew B. Tepper
the following letters to be typed in news:OtWdndOSafOwOMnZnZ2dnUVZ_u-
dn...@comcast.com:
Dang that Felix Weingartner for refusing to make digital stereo recordings!
--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/index.html
My main music page --- http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/berlioz.html
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made. ~ FDR (attrib.)
Heck51
the Tragic Overture is wonderful, and has long been NA....
also, a great CSO Mozart Sym #36, "Linz" - previously NA is presented
in very fine sound...
his 1950 Till Eulenspiegel with RCASO[MetOpera+NY free-lancers] is
again available. dynamite stuff all the way..
there is also an excellent "Tombeau de Couperin" with the NBCSO from
from 1/52...previously NA, TMK...
david...@aol.com
I'm not sales resistant to monaural sound, but I am sales resistant to
miscellaneous collections regardless of the conductor, especially when
I've already paid for previous CD reissues of some of the material
included.
-david gable
Matthew B. Tepper
following letters to be typed in news:1146424836.756675.116020
@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
Amen! I recall there being some grumbling here about the extent of the
reissued material, when the series was originally being issued!
david...@aol.com
"the series featured crappy sounding live recordings of repertoire the
conductors recorded in the studio."
Crappy sound may be the price you have to pay, but isn't the
opportunity to hear otherwise unavailable live material a selling
point?
"And many releases simply featured already in print commercially
released studio recordings. "
That's another story.
-david gable
jrs...@aol.com
Thornhill wrote:
> William Sommerwerck wrote:
>
> >
> > If they didn't sell well, one of the reasons might have been that a high
> > percentage of the recordings were older and mono.
>
> More like, like many Andante releases, the series featured crappy
> sounding live recordings of repertoire the conductors recorded in the
> studio.
In many cases--if one is to believe reviewers--the live recordings
sounded better than ever on the EMI series than they did in previous
incarnations. "Crappy" is in the ear of the beholder, and the reason
the series sold as well as it did is because collectors wanted those
crappy sounding live performances in the best sound available...the
Mitropoulos Mahler 6 is a case in point. Otherwise that release had
literally no value to many of Mitropoulos' admirers and would
ultimately sell or not sell based on the interest of a wider audience
in conductors for conductors' sake. I think that is a very big gamble
on the part of a record label--even bigger than banking on the general
noncollector's audience interest in pianists for pianists' sake.
I don't remember which of those live performances were of repertoire
the conductors also set down in the studio, but there were several such
cases. Certainly that is not the case with Mitropoulos's Mahler,
Karajan's Walton, or several other important examples. In many cases,
listeners prefer to hear a crappy sounding live performance to a studio
recording anyway, so even these may have been selling points. In sum,
it is hard to figure out what would sell best in a series like that.
--Jeff
Todd Schurk
yes-the Eroica in that set ia a fine one,despite the messy timpani
mistake in the coda of iv.
Matthew Silverstein
> I'm not sales resistant to monaural sound, but I am sales resistant to
> miscellaneous collections regardless of the conductor,
Why? Difficult to decide where to put them on your shelf?
Matty
david...@aol.com
"Why? Difficult to decide where to put them on your shelf? "
No. But these miscellanies virtually always include:
(a) warhorses I already have too many recordings of;
(b) standard repertory I'm indifferent to; and
(c) reissues of reissues of reissues.
They also have a tendency to exclude the one recording by Maestro X
that has never made it to CD that I desperately want. What on earth is
inviting about that? When a set does include the only recording by
Maestro X that I desperately want, I consider buying it. Even then I
have to decide if I can afford to pay for multiple CD's to obtain the
contents of, say, one half of a CD.
As for deciding where to file CD's, what makes you think that's a
problem? When a miscellany includes something I really do "need," as
the Mitropoulos set with its movements from Berlioz's Romeo did, I have
no trouble figuring out where to file it: in this case, under Berlioz.
Nevertheless, I am perverse. If I could have bought Mitropoulos's R &
J movements alone on a single CD for the same price as the Great
Conductors Mitropoulos set, a set packaged as a Berlioz set with, say,
a period painting of a production of Shakespeare's play on the cover,
that's probably what I'd have bought.
-david gable
Ed Presson
which---to my knowledge---was never released on CD. Worth the price.
Ed Presson
Thornhill
david...@aol.com wrote:
> "the series featured crappy sounding live recordings of repertoire the
> conductors recorded in the studio."
>
> Crappy sound may be the price you have to pay, but isn't the
> opportunity to hear otherwise unavailable live material a selling
> point?
If the conductor never recorded the music, then sure. But in many cases
with this series, the conductors did make studio recordings of the
repertoire in the sets.
kerrison1...@yahoo.co.uk
Nielsen 2nd which some critics thought was pretty good, considering he
was well over 80 at the time. It also had his 1960 Philadelphia
"Tristan" Synthesis (CBS) which was I think new to CD, and a terrific
French Radio Orchestra Ibert "Escales" which was not new to CD.
david...@aol.com
"But in many cases with this series, the conductors did make studio
recordings of the repertoire in the sets."
You know of no performance where a conductor is much better live
outside the studio?
-david gable
Vaneyes
aest...@hotmail.com wrote:
> Any recommendations?:
>
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/103-7817650-1367046?%5Fencoding=UTF8&dym=0&search-type=ss&index=classical&field-keywords=%22Great%20conductors%20of%20the%2020th%20century%22
Warhorse bombardment. Lotsa mono.
Tried Kletzki, Ancerl, Barbirolli, Schuricht. Only Barbirolli remains,
for the 1956 "Enigma".
http://www.classicalnotes.net/columns/emiconductors.html
Regards
Paul Goldstein
kerrison1...@yahoo.co.uk says...
Yes, that was one of the more valuable issues in the series. I also strongly
recommend the Mitropoulos, Reiner, Fricsay, Klemperer, and Giulini sets. In
fact, the only disappointing one I bought was the Beecham, which included some
pretty awful operatic selections as well as more Delius than I want.
--
NewsGuy.Com 30Gb $9.95 Carry Forward and On Demand Bandwidth
Thornhill
In my listening experience, the interpretations are rarely that
different from their studio counterparts.
I won't dispute that live performances can be better, but I think it's
rare that a live recording totally outstrips a studio performance. An
equalizer with a lot of these live recordings is that they come from
summer music festivals where the playing can be sloppy at times,
especially compared to the quality during the subscription season.
Vaneyes
>From the last decade or so, I've heard broadcasts of Haitink and Rattle
concerts that defy most of what I've heard in their studio exploits.
Of conductors that've been mentioned in this light at rmcr, and
there've been many, these two stand out for me.
Regards
Sol L. Siegel
wrote:
>
>aest...@hotmail.com wrote:
>> Any recommendations?:
Monteux, for its Sleeping Beauty excerpts (but why that live Beethoven
2 when he did it twice in the studio?); Mitropoulos for its Mahler 6;
Stokowski for the Tristan synthesis, Sibelius 1 and Nielsen 2 (the
last in not-great sound, but it's nice to hear him with this
composer).
>>
>The Ormandy discs feature his terrific CBS studio recording of Brahms'
>4th Symphony that has never been issued on CD before (recorded in the
>'60s). The set also contains one of the best recordings of
>Rachmaninov's 2nd Symphony, though it has long been availble on CD
>(also a studio recording, but for RCA in the '70s).
I was really ticked that they reissued the Rach (for the third time at
least) instead of the Gliere Ilya Muromets (cuts or not cuts),
Prokofiev 6 or Shostakovich 13, to mention only three recordings that
have been awaiting Western reissue and would have fit on the disc.
- Sol L. Siegel, Philadelphia, PA
"My reputation has nothing to do with me." - Terry Gilliam
*** Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com ***
Eric Grunin
It is indeed one of his best, but I can't bring myself to recommend it
because of that cut. Also: the Eroica in the Fricsay set is not nearly
as good as his studio recording.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
david...@aol.com
"Also: the Eroica in the Fricsay set is not nearly as good as his
studio recording."
I haven't heard the live one, but I found the studio recording
extremely disappointing. Do you find it impressive or just better than
the live one?
-david gable
Eric Grunin
It is the fate of great works to be interpreted through their
descendents. Thus we hear Beethoven as Mahler's great-grandfather
(Mengelberg), or Bruckner's (Furtwangler), or Brahms's (Klemperer), or
Puccini's (Toscanini), or Schoenberg's (Scherchen).
None of us can hear the work without these refractions, because we
cannot unhear two hundred years of history; so it seems to me that
conductors who are being truest to themselves often produce the most
vital performances regardless of the 'wrongness' of their perspective.
One turns to Fricsay hoping that he will show us what Bartok heard in
Beethoven -- something to look forward to, given the searing
Bartok/Szigeti 'Kreutzer' -- but instead it's like Brahms, only by
someone not a natural Brahmsian, thus sluggish rather than weighty,
Klemperer on a bad day. And the live performance is worse; I have
always assumed it was issued mostly for extramusical reasons.
Not one I'd recommend in any case.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
jrs...@aol.com
I guess the natural follow up to this vivid explanation is obvious:
What do you really think of Fricsay's Brahms? Is it really all that
unnatural? I like his 2nd symphony recording, and the accompaniment to
Anda in the 2nd Piano Concerto also seems quite good.
--Jeff
William Sommerwerck
> cannot unhear two hundred years of history; so it seems to me that
> conductors who are being truest to themselves often produce the most
> vital performances regardless of the 'wrongness' of their perspective.
I strongly disagree. Sometimes a performance comes along that blows away all
our previous conceptions of how a work should be performed -- and we
suddenly "unhear" 200 years of tradition.
These performances (in my opinion) are usually not the result of the
performer being "true to themself", but in a careful and insightful
rethinking of the work, performance practices, etc.
Brendan R. Wehrung
>> The series was never completed - I assume because of lower than
>> required sales.
>
> This is unfortunate, because once the price dropped to $11, I started
> collecting them.
>
> percentage of the recordings were older and mono.
>
>
Somebody mentioned that these were going for about $4 now. Where?
I bought all I wanted in batches as they came out, but at that price I
might acquire the rest.
Brendan
Matthew B. Tepper
the following letters to be typed in
>> None of us can hear the work without these refractions, because we
>> cannot unhear two hundred years of history; so it seems to me that
>> conductors who are being truest to themselves often produce the most
>> vital performances regardless of the 'wrongness' of their perspective.
>
> I strongly disagree. Sometimes a performance comes along that blows away
> all our previous conceptions of how a work should be performed -- and we
> suddenly "unhear" 200 years of tradition.
Could you give some examples, please?
> These performances (in my opinion) are usually not the result of the
> performer being "true to themself", but in a careful and insightful
> rethinking of the work, performance practices, etc.
--
Eric Grunin
Norrington's Beethoven performances of the late 1980s (which might
think fit your case) would be unlistenable to ears that had heard
nothing but Klemperer all their lives -- the mid-60s Bach performances
of Harnoncourt and Leonhardt began the assimilation of that "new"
stident sound through the culture. And how were we prepared for *their*
astringency? By Stravinsky and the other Moderns.
I can give an example that supports your case somewhat. It was a shock
to me when I realized that the 'odd' proportions of a Bach Cantata are
only odd in concert, that in church use the movements are interspersed
with liturgy. Simply knowing that a sermon would precede the final
chorale made me hear the overall work differently. (Hm, this has
something to support for *both* sides of this discussion.)
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
Eric Grunin
> Eric Grunin wrote:
> > One turns to Fricsay hoping that he will show us what Bartok heard in
> > Beethoven -- something to look forward to, given the searing
> > Bartok/Szigeti 'Kreutzer' -- but instead it's like Brahms, only by
> > someone not a natural Brahmsian, thus sluggish rather than weighty,
> > Klemperer on a bad day. And the live performance is worse; I have
> > always assumed it was issued mostly for extramusical reasons.
> I guess the natural follow up to this vivid explanation is obvious:
> What do you really think of Fricsay's Brahms? Is it really all that
> unnatural? I like his 2nd symphony recording, and the accompaniment to
> Anda in the 2nd Piano Concerto also seems quite good.
That is an excellent question, and (since it's been years) I hope I
haven't judged Fricsay's Brahms too harshly. I'll have to dig it out
and check.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
david...@aol.com
Eric,
I'm as disappointed by the Fricsay Eroica (studio) as you are: it
couldn't be more unlike his Fidelio. Fricsay was a very interesting
figure, passionately interested in repertory that was not the daily
bread of every conductor from Mittel Europa of his generation: Bartok,
Stravinsky, Verdi, and Verdi seen through Stravinskyan eyes as the
un-Wagnerian "classical" 19th-century opera composer. Already in the
late 40's Fricsay was mounting a five-act Don Carlo--the production in
which Fischer-Dieskau made his operatic debut (you can hear it on
Walhall)--and he immediately took on Stravinsky's thorny Movements for
piano and orchestra after its premiere in 1959, recording it with the
pianist who commissioned it. Bartok, of course, was close to home.
-david gable
-david gable
Steven de Mena
"Brendan R. Wehrung" <ck...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote in message
news:e34aqb$38t$1...@theodyn.ncf.ca...
At BRO they have a bunch, but for $9.99. Not much of a bargain. I think I
saw them at Tower for $9.99.
Steve
david...@aol.com
Eric writes:
"And how were we prepared for *their* astringency? By Stravinsky and
the other Moderns."
Absolutely. Most so-called HIP performances make Bach, Haydn, and
Mozart sound like the neoclassical Stravinsky. The same idealization
of the 18th century motivates Stravinsky and the HIPster, and both are
revisionists of classical tonality: in the hands of Bach, Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven it was a dynamic system. Stravinsky uses
something like the language but neutralizes the dynamism, creating
something more elegant, pointed, precise, and weightless.
Most fans of HIP, of course, are completely ignorant of Stravinsky's
neoclassical music and of the anti-Romantic rhetoric he resorted to
during the period when he composed his neoclassical music. But those
of us who grew up on Stravinsky's performances of Stravinsky's music
can't help but think of them when we hear most HIP performances.
-david gable
Frank Berger
"Brendan R. Wehrung" <ck...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote in message
news:e34aqb$38t$1...@theodyn.ncf.ca...
Consider $4 to be a eupemism for $8.
Frank Berger
"Frank Berger" <frank.d...@dal.frb.org> wrote in message
news:125cist...@news.supernews.com...
Or maybe a euphemism.
david...@aol.com
"Romanticism," writes:
"Sometimes a performance comes along that blows away all our previous
conceptions of how a work should be performed - and we suddenly
'unhear' 200 years of tradition."
You're an optimist. You can't possibly prove that what you're hearing
is the result of a stripping down to what music sounded like 200 years
ago.
Actually, many HIP performances are stripped down to the score: you
can't strip down to an older way of performing, you can only strip away
a current way of performing. And, once you've done that, what aural
documentation from the 18th century do you have on which to base the
ongoing subtle inflections characteristic of phrasing? None. You can
find out about many material aspects of the performance of music in the
18th century with your modern and indeed Romantic attitude toward this
subject, an attitude foreign to the period. (The attitude is Romantic
in that the Romantics were the first to insist--or to insist as
vehemently as they did--on the particularity, on the irreducibility to
some universal norm, of artistic styles.) You can find out about
tuning, ornamentation, the sound of instruments, etc., but that aspect
of a living performance tradition that was handed down exclusively
through listening, the vast unspoken part of a performance tradition,
that is lost forever in the sands of time.
Take any recording you have and post your description of the phrasing
in a single period from that performance here: you will not be able to
describe it sufficiently adequately that another performer could
reproduce accurately what you have attempted to describe with words.
He could only reproduce it if he heard the recording.
It is perfectly true, as Matty and Simon keep insisting, that many
HIPsters have moved beyond this tabula rasa phase of the most
doctrinaire HIPsters, but what do they base their phrasing on in any
case? Matty and Simon also claim that nobody like you exists, that no
HIPster would ever make the sort of radical and ingenous claims that
you have made in the citation above. But you do exist. And you
believe in implicit sweeping claims of historical authenticity. "I
prefer this performance because it is a recreation of what actually
was."
Of course, you may back pedal now and say, "That's not what I meant."
Well, what do you mean when you talk about "unhearing 200 years of
tradition"? Aren't you getting at the opposite of unhearing? Aren't
you claiming to hear something 200 years old? How do you know you are?
How can we ever arrive at the situation that existed in the 18th
century, when 18th-century performers sounded like 18th-century
performers because they did what seemed natural to them: however much
thought performers gave to many aspects of performance, they arrived at
the unspoken without giving it a thought simply by listening. In large
part, they relied on their ears to hear how music goes, not on words or
verbal description. They didn't arrive at what seemed natural to them
by stripping away perceived accretions. They arrived at what seemed
natural to them through an inextricable mix of conscious and
unconscious interaction with a living performing tradition. The 21st
century attempts to arrive at what the 18th-century performer did
without the benefit of being surrounded by the living aural tradition
that existed in the 18th century, to do so instead, not only by
studying the material evidence that exists, which only goes so far, but
also by consciously stripping away perceived accretions: not by
hearing the past but by "unhearing" the present, to use the
Sommerwerckian term. I am deeply skeptical that the results of
unhearing are the same as the results of hearing, although there is no
way that you or I can ever know.
(One big piece of the puzzle that we do not discuss in our rmcr HIP
debates is the impact of 18th century tonality on the performance of
18th-century tonal music. The performer of 18th century music both now
and then is responding to a tonal language that has been assimilated,
and both the most anti-Sommerwerckian-ly excessive "Romantic" performer
of the E major prelude from Bach's violin sonata and the most HIP
violinist hear--and feel--the impact of the marvelous chain of
dissonant suspensions on the first page of that Preludio. It's the
language that keeps everybody in the same, admittedly very elastic,
ball park.)
-david gable
Matthew Silverstein
> Most fans of HIP, of course, are completely ignorant [snip]
Surely you could have stopped right there, right David?
I suppose you think the HIPsters themselves are completely ignorant of
Stravinsky's neoclassical music . . .
Matty
Matthew Silverstein
> Matty and Simon also claim that nobody like you exists, that no
> HIPster would ever make the sort of radical and ingenous claims that
> you have made in the citation above.
Where, precisely, have Matty and Simon made this claim? We have objected to
your repeated attempts to squeeze the entire HIP "movement" (as if there
were a cohesive movement at work) into this particular "radical" mold, but
I highly doubt that we have ever denied that there are fringe HIPsters
(fans and musicians alike) who really believe all of the garbage. Heck,
when I was interviewing HIPsters in the UK, I met several of them myself!
Matty
david...@aol.com
> Most fans of HIP, of course, are completely ignorant [of Stravinsky's performances of Stravinsky's neoclassical music]
I meant here at rmcr, and I based my remark on what I've observed.
I've yet to see you or Simon Roberts enter into a discussion of Oedipus
Rex performances, Oedipus being one of the two most famous and most
often performed of Stravinsky's neoclassical pieces, the other (more
famous and more often performed) being the Symphony of Psalms. Nor am
I suggesting you should. Simon doesn't jump into discussions of La
mer, either. It's not his cup of tea.
There seems to be a very low incidence of interest in the neoclassical
Stravinsky on this newsgroup either among the "standard performances
of standard repertory" contingent or among the HIPsters. The
exceptions are those Stravinsky nuts interested in music beyond the
Russian-period ballets (e.g., Matthew Tepper, Larry Rinkel). Some
opera fans otherwise uninterested in the neoclassical Stravinsky
contribute to threads on The Rake's Progress, but fans of opera are
comparatively scarce here, and the operas that get discussed tend to be
the ones that otherwise non-opera people don't look down on with
disdain: Mozart, Wagner, and Falstaff. (Simon is one of the
exceptions: he's interested in Verdi other than the last operas and
even in L'elisir d'amore.)
I meant no slam. My point was that many fans of HIP are completely
unaware of how very much like a Stravinsky performance of a
neoclassical Stravinsky piece so many HIP performances actually are.
I'm not remotely the only person to have noticed this either: others
who have include Richard Taruskin and Pierre Boulez (once the world's
number one enemy of Stravinsky's neoclassicism). Moreover, I noticed
it completely independently of them, and they most certainly noticed it
independently of one another.
"I suppose you think the HIPsters themselves are completely ignorant of
Stravinsky's neoclassical music . . ."
On the contrary. The implicit thesis of many of my remarks is that HIP
is a 20th-century style of performance deeply rooted in 20th-century
attitudes and in one strain of 20th-century performance practice.
Indeed, the better of the two productions of The Rake's Progress I've
managed to attend - the other was a rather good Chicago Lyric Opera
performance - was mounted by the best early music group in Chicago. I
can't for the life of me remember the conductor's name, but the
particular "late 20th-century HIP approach to 18th-century music"
used by this conductor and her musicians was ideal for the opera.
Another HIPster fan of The Rake is John Eliot Gardiner, although I
found his recording underwhelming.
-david gable
William Sommerwerck
>> blows away all our previous conceptions of how a work should be
>> performed -- and we suddenly "unhear" 200 years of tradition.
> Could you give some examples, please?
I'm not being sarcastic when I ask "Haven't you ever experienced this?" You
must have, at some time.
How about the Pinnock "Messiah"?
How about the Pinnock or Marriner "Four Seasons"?
How about the recent Jacobs "Nozze"?
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1146505580.8...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
>
> Eric writes:
>
> "And how were we prepared for *their* astringency? By Stravinsky and
> the other Moderns."
>
> Absolutely. Most so-called HIP performances make Bach, Haydn, and
> Mozart sound like the neoclassical Stravinsky.
If you think (as is suggested by your many posts on the subject) that we
can't know how 18th century music sounded like in its time, how do you know
that it might not have sounded in some ways like neoclassical Stravinsky
(not harmonically, but in other senses)?
(by the way, this is coming from someone who knows most Stravinsky's
neo-classical works, is not especially fond of many of them, and thinks they
are quite different from most of the HIP performances I like - try those of
Harnoncourt or Goebel, for example)
> The same idealization
> of the 18th century motivates Stravinsky and the HIPster, and both are
> revisionists of classical tonality: in the hands of Bach, Haydn,
> Mozart, and Beethoven it was a dynamic system. Stravinsky uses
> something like the language but neutralizes the dynamism, creating
> something more elegant, pointed, precise, and weightless.
Indeed he does (neutralise the dynamism). But many HIP performances I like
are very dynamic.
>
> Most fans of HIP, of course, are completely ignorant of Stravinsky's
> neoclassical music
Not me, and not most of the HIP fans I know.
> and of the anti-Romantic rhetoric he resorted to
> during the period when he composed his neoclassical music.
You should try some of Richard Taruskin's anti-Romantic rhetoric of recent
(it permeates his Oxford History).
> But those
> of us who grew up on Stravinsky's performances of Stravinsky's music
> can't help but think of them when we hear most HIP performances.
>
Your loss.
Ian
William Sommerwerck
> "Romanticism," writes:
> "Sometimes a performance comes along that blows away all our
> previous conceptions of how a work should be performed -- and we
> suddenly 'unhear' 200 years of tradition."
> You're an optimist. You can't possibly prove that what you're hearing
> is the result of a stripping down to what music sounded like 200 years
> ago.
You utterly misinterpreted what I wrote (which I think was pretty clear). I
NEVER said or even implied that what were heard was what was heard 200 years
ago. I said we are no longer hearing the "tradition". Removal of the
tradition does not mean an automatic reversion to the original, which, as
you say, we have no way of confirming.
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1146509113.0...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Mr. Sommerwerck, our card-carrying enemy of what he labels
> "Romanticism," writes:
>
> "Sometimes a performance comes along that blows away all our previous
> conceptions of how a work should be performed - and we suddenly
> 'unhear' 200 years of tradition."
>
> You're an optimist. You can't possibly prove that what you're hearing
> is the result of a stripping down to what music sounded like 200 years
> ago.
That's not what's being said.
>
> Actually, many HIP performances are stripped down to the score: you
> can't strip down to an older way of performing, you can only strip away
> a current way of performing.
And use a different way in its place.
> And, once you've done that, what aural
> documentation from the 18th century do you have on which to base the
> ongoing subtle inflections characteristic of phrasing? None.
No, but there's plenty of other evidence about phrasing from the treatises -
try C.P.E. Bach, Leopold Mozart, Quantz and Turk for example. And one can
gain some insight into changing conventions of phrasing by looking how the
markings for 18th century scores were altered by late-19th century editors.
> You can
> find out about many material aspects of the performance of music in the
> 18th century with your modern and indeed Romantic attitude toward this
> subject, an attitude foreign to the period.
The period is foreign to us, too.
> (The attitude is Romantic
> in that the Romantics were the first to insist--or to insist as
> vehemently as they did--on the particularity, on the irreducibility to
> some universal norm, of artistic styles.)
By no means to all HIPsters do that. Incidentally, you are at one with
Adorno here, who said 'They say Bach, mean Telemann' (rather unfair to
Telemann, I think).
> You can find out about
> tuning, ornamentation, the sound of instruments, etc., but that aspect
> of a living performance tradition that was handed down exclusively
> through listening, the vast unspoken part of a performance tradition,
> that is lost forever in the sands of time.
You don't think HIPsters are acutely aware of these problems?
>
> Take any recording you have and post your description of the phrasing
> in a single period from that performance here: you will not be able to
> describe it sufficiently adequately that another performer could
> reproduce accurately what you have attempted to describe with words.
> He could only reproduce it if he heard the recording.
One could probably describe the phrasing of that performance, and then
compare it to other performances and discern some common factors. Try Robert
Philip's 'Early Recordings and Musical Style'.
>
> It is perfectly true, as Matty and Simon keep insisting, that many
> HIPsters have moved beyond this tabula rasa phase of the most
> doctrinaire HIPsters,
Who were these people exactly?
> but what do they base their phrasing on in any
> case?
A wide variety of factors, including scholarly study of treatises and other
sources, analytical considerations, intuition and, yes, acculturated habit.
> Matty and Simon also claim that nobody like you exists, that no
> HIPster would ever make the sort of radical and ingenous claims that
> you have made in the citation above. But you do exist. And you
> believe in implicit sweeping claims of historical authenticity. "I
> prefer this performance because it is a recreation of what actually
> was."
Well, count me in as well, as I do believe it is possible to learn a certain
amount about period style through scholarship.
>
> Of course, you may back pedal now and say, "That's not what I meant."
> Well, what do you mean when you talk about "unhearing 200 years of
> tradition"? Aren't you getting at the opposite of unhearing? Aren't
> you claiming to hear something 200 years old? How do you know you are?
There's plenty of source material upon which to gain some idea of how
traditions developed over 200 years. Not infallible, of course, but enough
to arrive at some educated decisions.
> How can we ever arrive at the situation that existed in the 18th
> century, when 18th-century performers sounded like 18th-century
> performers because they did what seemed natural to them: however much
> thought performers gave to many aspects of performance, they arrived at
> the unspoken without giving it a thought simply by listening.
And they played predominantly music of their own time. That is the real
thing that has changed. When concert repertories consist in large measure of
music from past eras, it is natural that musicians will start to consider
how their performing traditions might have been different from our own.
> In large
> part, they relied on their ears to hear how music goes, not on words or
> verbal description.
So why did people write these treatises, then? Someone must have read them.
It's woolly anti-intellectualism just to talk of people 'relying on their
ears' alone. What does that mean? Your ears can tell you what something
sounds like, but not necessarily what it ought to sound like.
> They didn't arrive at what seemed natural to them
> by stripping away perceived accretions. They arrived at what seemed
> natural to them through an inextricable mix of conscious and
> unconscious interaction with a living performing tradition.
Because they were engaging with living COMPOSITIONAL traditions as well.
> The 21st
> century attempts to arrive at what the 18th-century performer did
> without the benefit of being surrounded by the living aural tradition
> that existed in the 18th century,
Some of them do, because they wish to attempt to contextualise the music of
the period.
> to do so instead, not only by
> studying the material evidence that exists, which only goes so far, but
> also by consciously stripping away perceived accretions: not by
> hearing the past but by "unhearing" the present, to use the
> Sommerwerckian term.
Not all people think that all aspects of current performing traditions are
the most appropriate for all music. I would have thought that you, with your
insistence on the value of 'old-fashioned' phrasing, would have agreed that.
Do you want musicians to 'unhear' all that's crept in since the
'old-fashioned' phrasing went out?
> I am deeply skeptical that the results of
> unhearing are the same as the results of hearing, although there is no
> way that you or I can ever know.
No, but looking historically at performance can still be illuminating.
>
> (One big piece of the puzzle that we do not discuss in our rmcr HIP
> debates is the impact of 18th century tonality on the performance of
> 18th-century tonal music. The performer of 18th century music both now
> and then is responding to a tonal language that has been assimilated,
> and both the most anti-Sommerwerckian-ly excessive "Romantic" performer
> of the E major prelude from Bach's violin sonata and the most HIP
> violinist hear--and feel--the impact of the marvelous chain of
> dissonant suspensions on the first page of that Preludio.
Those things had a different impact when they were new.
> It's the
> language that keeps everybody in the same, admittedly very elastic,
> ball park.)
>
So where does that leave atonal/pan-tonal music?
Ian
Matthew B. Tepper
following letters to be typed in
> There seems to be a very low incidence of interest in the neoclassical
> Stravinsky on this newsgroup either among the "standard performances of
> standard repertory" contingent or among the HIPsters. The exceptions are
> those Stravinsky nuts interested in music beyond the Russian-period
> ballets (e.g., Matthew Tepper, Larry Rinkel). Some opera fans otherwise
> uninterested in the neoclassical Stravinsky contribute to threads on The
> Rake's Progress, but fans of opera are comparatively scarce here, and the
> operas that get discussed tend to be the ones that otherwise non-opera
> people don't look down on with disdain: Mozart, Wagner, and Falstaff.
> (Simon is one of the exceptions: he's interested in Verdi other than the
> last operas and even in L'elisir d'amore.)
1. If you base your assumption about my tastes in Stravinsky on my stated
interest in such works as "L'Histoire du Soldat," the Octet, etc., then you
have assumed correctly. My interest extends pretty much through the
various symphonies. Where he loses me is with "Agon" and other serial-like
works, and much of Stravinsky's puzzling last works.
2. I also like middle-period Verdi, and some of the early stuff too.
david...@aol.com
I said:
"But those of us who grew up on Stravinsky's performances of
Stravinsky's music can't help but think of them when we hear most HIP
performances."
Ian said: "Your loss."
I have no intention of discussing HIP performance with Ian. I simply
want to point out what a strange non sequitur his response is in the
context of a statement taking the form my statement takes. Normally
one uses the expression "your loss" in response to statements taking a
certain form of which my quotation is not remotely an example. (If it
weren't for Ian, I'd assume that any reader could supply an example
without the least effort. This is all the more remarkable in that Ian
isn't actually stupid.)
The point is that (a) if a HIP performance resembles a Stravinsky-lead
performance of a neoclassical Stravinsky piece and (b) you are deeply
familiar with Stravinsky-lead performances of Stravinsky's neoclassical
music, then (c) you can't help but notice the resemblance. "Your loss"
makes zero sense in response to this observation, which, given its
logical form, can't possibly be controversial.
There are other complete non sequiturs in Ian's post and other oblique
rejoinders to points not made, but I'm limiting my responses to one of
Ian's classic non-sequitur's per week.
-david gable
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1146521891.9...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Matty writes:
>
>> Most fans of HIP, of course, are completely ignorant [of Stravinsky's
>> performances of Stravinsky's neoclassical music]
>
> I meant here at rmcr, and I based my remark on what I've observed.
> I've yet to see you or Simon Roberts enter into a discussion of Oedipus
> Rex performances, Oedipus being one of the two most famous and most
> often performed of Stravinsky's neoclassical pieces, the other (more
> famous and more often performed) being the Symphony of Psalms. Nor am
> I suggesting you should. Simon doesn't jump into discussions of La
> mer, either. It's not his cup of tea.
>
> There seems to be a very low incidence of interest in the neoclassical
> Stravinsky on this newsgroup either among the "standard performances
> of standard repertory" contingent or among the HIPsters. The
> exceptions are those Stravinsky nuts interested in music beyond the
> Russian-period ballets (e.g., Matthew Tepper, Larry Rinkel). Some
> opera fans otherwise uninterested in the neoclassical Stravinsky
> contribute to threads on The Rake's Progress, but fans of opera are
> comparatively scarce here, and the operas that get discussed tend to be
> the ones that otherwise non-opera people don't look down on with
> disdain: Mozart, Wagner, and Falstaff. (Simon is one of the
> exceptions: he's interested in Verdi other than the last operas and
> even in L'elisir d'amore.)
Well, I am interested in Stravinsky beyond the Russian-period ballets,
though find the neo-classical works extremely patchy. Some, including
L'Histoire du Soldat, the Symphony of Psalms, the Sonata for Two Pianos, the
Violin Concerto and parts of The Rake's Progress, are wonderful; others
including Pulcinella, Dumbarton Oakes, Oedipus Rex, Ragtime, the Symphony in
C, or the Duo Concertante have their moments; others including Jeu de cartes
or the Concerto for Two Pianos, I find totally dull. The Stravinsky from
Agon onwards is another matter - much of it extremely interesting. And I
don't know what an 'opera person' is meant to be, but my own operatic
interests include Monteverdi, Purcell, Charpentier, Rameau, Scarlatti,
Handel gradually, Gluck, Mozart, Weber, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti,
Meyerbeer, Gounod, Schumann (only one opera, but it's fascinating), Wagner,
Verdi, Bizet, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, some Puccini, Debussy, Ravel,
Janacek, Bartok, Strauss, Schoenberg, Berg, Britten, Feldman, Birtwistle,
Lachenmann and others. And other areas including Cavalli, Mehul, Gretry,
Spontini, Cherubini, Auber, Dargomiski and others are of potential interest.
>
> I meant no slam. My point was that many fans of HIP are completely
> unaware of how very much like a Stravinsky performance of a
> neoclassical Stravinsky piece so many HIP performances actually are.
> I'm not remotely the only person to have noticed this either:
Some of us know many HIP performances and Stravinsky's performances of his
neo-classical works and don't find the parallel holds except in a certain
number of instances. You could say that a certain types of British
performances (not necessarily HIP) of whatever resemble such Stravinsky, but
that says more about their being British than being HIP.
> others
> who have include Richard Taruskin and Pierre Boulez (once the world's
> number one enemy of Stravinsky's neoclassicism).
When I have more time, I will post here at length about the changing
dualisms in Taruskin's work, from Text and Act, through his work on Russian
music, up to the new Oxford History. In a nutshell, he starts by holding up
'tradition' against 'modernism', but gradually discovers that a lot of what
he calls 'modernism' is an awful lot more 'traditional' than he initially
wished to admit, so he turns against 'tradition' as well in large measure.
> Moreover, I noticed
> it completely independently of them, and they most certainly noticed it
> independently of one another.
So?
>
> "I suppose you think the HIPsters themselves are completely ignorant of
> Stravinsky's neoclassical music . . ."
>
> On the contrary. The implicit thesis of many of my remarks is that HIP
> is a 20th-century style of performance deeply rooted in 20th-century
> attitudes and in one strain of 20th-century performance practice.
And many 20th-century attitudes (including those of Stravinsky - see
Taruskin on this, actually) are deeply rooted in various older traditions as
well. What is different in the 20th-century is the much-increased focus upon
performing music of the past rather than present.
> Indeed, the better of the two productions of The Rake's Progress I've
> managed to attend - the other was a rather good Chicago Lyric Opera
> performance - was mounted by the best early music group in Chicago. I
> can't for the life of me remember the conductor's name, but the
> particular "late 20th-century HIP approach to 18th-century music"
> used by this conductor and her musicians was ideal for the opera.
> Another HIPster fan of The Rake is John Eliot Gardiner, although I
> found his recording underwhelming.
>
I'm not very fond of that recording either, in comparison with Stravinsky's
own! They are very different.
Ian
david...@aol.com
"Removal of the tradition does not mean an automatic reversion to the
original, which, as you say, we have no way of confirming."
On this point, then, we are in complete agreement. But it still begs
the question what the "unhearing" you so admire actually gets you: why
would anybody want it?
-david gable
William Sommerwerck
> original, which, as you say, we have no way of confirming."
> On this point, then, we are in complete agreement. But it still begs
> the question what the "unhearing" you so admire actually gets you:
> why would anybody want it?
There would be no point to the "unhearing" if the new approach weren't
musically revelatory in some way.
Anybody can do it "differently". I'm referring to the times that "different"
is "epiphanal". (Sorry.)
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1146528501....@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
>
> I said:
>
> "But those of us who grew up on Stravinsky's performances of
> Stravinsky's music can't help but think of them when we hear most HIP
> performances."
>
> Ian said: "Your loss."
>
> I have no intention of discussing HIP performance with Ian. I simply
> want to point out what a strange non sequitur his response is in the
> context of a statement taking the form my statement takes. Normally
> one uses the expression "your loss" in response to statements taking a
> certain form of which my quotation is not remotely an example. (If it
> weren't for Ian, I'd assume that any reader could supply an example
> without the least effort. This is all the more remarkable in that Ian
> isn't actually stupid.)
>
> The point is that (a) if a HIP performance resembles a Stravinsky-lead
> performance of a neoclassical Stravinsky piece and (b) you are deeply
> familiar with Stravinsky-lead performances of Stravinsky's neoclassical
> music, then (c) you can't help but notice the resemblance. "Your loss"
> makes zero sense in response to this observation, which, given its
> logical form, can't possibly be controversial.
There seems an implication on your remarks that if such HIP performances
resemble Stravinsky's performances of his neo-classical works (and I'm not
necessarily accepting they do, and I've known the latter for longer than the
former) then this is hardly a good thing (unless I'm wrong and you actually
like those which remind you of such Stravinsky performances?). Hence why I
think it's 'your loss' that you find them the less satisfying for that
reason.
>
> There are other complete non sequiturs in Ian's post and other oblique
> rejoinders to points not made, but I'm limiting my responses to one of
> Ian's classic non-sequitur's per week.
>
Such as pointing out that there is information about phrasing in treatises
(I would give more detail, but I don't have the primary texts here at home
with me at the moment), or pointing out that if people didn't rely on verbal
description, then what are all the many treatises (of all periods) written
for?
Also, how about the question of 'unhearing' that which has come since the
age of 'old-fashioned phrasing'?
But I am particularly interested in this Taruskin-like formulation of yours:
> You can
find out about many material aspects of the performance of music in the
18th century with your modern and indeed Romantic attitude toward this
subject, an attitude foreign to the period. (The attitude is Romantic
in that the Romantics were the first to insist--or to insist as
vehemently as they did--on the particularity, on the irreducibility to
some universal norm, of artistic styles.)
First of all, with all the divergence in national styles in the 18th century
and earlier (think about Jean-Jacques Rousseau's impassioned advocacy of
Italian over French styles, for example), can one really speak of
reducibility to universal norms in pre-'Romantic' eras?
The conflation of aspects of the 'modern' and the 'Romantic' is a road that
Taruskin finds himself unable to avoid as well. First 'modernism' starts
around the beginning of WW1, then it comes from the aesthetics of Hanslick
(seen then as a 'modern' against the prevailing 'Romantic' tendencies), then
gradually the demarcation point gets shifted further and further back,
coming back to Beethoven, and even beyond to Bach as well. Against this he
contrasts (using a Dahlhaus formation, despite all his antipathy to that
figure) a 'realist' tradition of music (to get away from Germanic
Romanticism as far as possible, in line with his pathological anti-German
prejudices, precisely what he used to accuse HIPsters of).
Anyhow, that's a big subject which I'll save for another time. The
'irreducibility to some universal norm' is part of what makes people find
some works from pre-19th century eras more worth listening to than others.
One big criticism I would make of certain HIPsters is their reluctance to be
discerning about music of certain periods, and just perform and record
everything they find (Daniel Leech-Wilkinson has a good article on this in
Tess Knighton and David Fallows' Companion to Medieval and Renaissance
Music), as if they are merely articulations of norms which are, if not
universal, certainly believed to be true of regions and periods in history.
But you go on to say:
> Take any recording you have and post your description of the phrasing
in a single period from that performance here: you will not be able to
describe it sufficiently adequately that another performer could
reproduce accurately what you have attempted to describe with words.
He could only reproduce it if he heard the recording.
You are therefore using a modern example (because recordings are a product
of the modern era, just in a purely chronological sense) and extrapolating
back to suggest parallel problems with ascertaining 18th-century style.
Isn't that very much like what you are accusing the previous poster of
doing? Just because it may not be possible to discern generalised aspects of
phrasing from the heterogeneous (or at least seemingly so) range of
recordings and performances that exist in the modern era, why does it
necessarily follow that performing styles would be comparably individualised
in pre-19th century times?
Ian
Eric Grunin
david...@aol.com wrote:
> I have no intention of discussing HIP performance with Ian.
Ian's torrent of verbiage has got you to forget your own point as well
as mine. (He often has that effect.)
1) I said "Stravinsky and the other Moderns" because it's not only
about Stravinsky, but also Hindemith and the Neue Sachlichkeit
movement, as well as the drastic change in sonority consequent on the
Second Viennese group's banishing of the octave.
2) The performances we call HIP *now* are very different than those I
was referring to, specifically those lead by Harnoncourt and Leonhardt
in the 60s, although one could look further back to the
'sewing-machine' Bach of the 50s as well. (And was that mechanismus so
different from that of Structures I?) In any case, by the mid-70s a
rounding-off of the harshness was well underway, which is probably in
part why Norrington et al felt it was time to move on.
Regards,
Eric Grunin
www.grunin.com/eroica
david...@aol.com
"How about the Pinnock Messiah?
How about the Pinnock or Marriner Four Seasons?"
Pinnock is the most neoclassical-Stravinskyan-sounding of them all.
-david gable
Matthew B. Tepper
following letters to be typed in news:1146853711.752373.144870
@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
> "How about the Pinnock Messiah?
>
> How about the Pinnock or Marriner Four Seasons?"
>
> Pinnock is the most neoclassical-Stravinskyan-sounding of them all.
If your opinion, is that a good thing, or a bad thing?
david...@aol.com
"Pinnock is the most neoclassical-Stravinskyan-sounding of them all."
Matthew asked:
"In your opinion, is that a good thing, or a bad thing?"
In the case of those Pinnock recordings of Haydn symphonies and the
keyboard music of Bach that have come my way, it's been a bad thing.
Pinnock is more Catholic than the Pope. There is a kind of elegant
precision about his performances, a light-weightness of sound, an
unstoppable "motor" approach to rhythm, an "objective" projection of
the score and eschewal of traditional phrasing, that is very much like
the neoclassical Stravinsky. It's very difficult to verbalize the
senses in which the totality of Pinnock's approach is actually counter
to the facture and dynamic of music that depends on 18th-century
tonality, and at the moment I don't have the energy even to try.
-david gable
david...@aol.com
Eric writes:
"the mid-60s Bach performances of Harnoncourt and Leonhardt began the
assimilation of that 'new' stident sound through the culture."
And let us not forget that Harnoncourt never went far enough for the
doctrinaire HIPsters, that he was cut loose by the doctrinaire HIPsters
of the late 70's and early 80's at which point the prestigious journal
of the HIP movement, Early Music, stopped reviewing any of his
recordings: they were no longer considered truly HIP.
-david gable
Matthew Silverstein
> And let us not forget that Harnoncourt never went far enough for the
> doctrinaire HIPsters, that he was cut loose by the doctrinaire HIPsters
> of the late 70's and early 80's at which point the prestigious journal
> of the HIP movement, Early Music, stopped reviewing any of his
> recordings: they were no longer considered truly HIP.
Where did you come up with that idea? Are you just making this stuff up? A
quick skim through various issues of *Early Music* turned up reviews and
discussions of Harnoncourt recordings in 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1992,
1993, 1995, and 1997. (I stopped at 1998.) If they discuss him less
frequently now, perhaps it's because he spends so much of his time
recording Verdi, Dvorak, Brahms, and Bruckner, to name a few composers not
really covered by *Early Music*.
Time for a reality check, David.
Matty
david...@aol.com
"Where did you come up with that idea? Are you just making this stuff
up?"
No, I am not. I am reporting what I heard Richard Taruskin say in a
public lecture that he later published. You've obviously never heard
any of the countless snide remarks directed at Harnoncourt by the
HIPper than thou that I've heard.
-david gable
Matthew Silverstein
> No, I am not. I am reporting what I heard Richard Taruskin say in a
> public lecture that he later published. You've obviously never heard
> any of the countless snide remarks directed at Harnoncourt by the
> HIPper than thou that I've heard.
I've heard plenty of them. (I just read an article in which the author
mentioned Harnoncourt as the conductor who "has nothing but disdain for the
notion of authenticity." It was not an approving comment.)
My point was merely that your facts are not even close to right. You
asserted that *Early Music* stopped reviewing Harnoncourt's recordings in
the early 80s. That is demonstrably false.
Matty
david...@aol.com
"My point was merely that your facts are not even close to right. You
asserted that *Early Music* stopped reviewing Harnoncourt's recordings
in the early 80s. That is demonstrably false."
I probably am wrong, given what you report. On the other hand, there
could have been a reversal of editorial policy, in which case I
wouldn't be wrong at all. You also leapt to the conclusion that I was
inventing out of whole cloth: I was not. I was repeating what
Taruskin said. I don't own any of Taruskin's books, but if you happen
to have any anthologies of his writings, look up Harnoncourt in the
index and we may be able to see what he said. (One of these days, I'll
look in the library.)
-david gable
makropulos
as we have seen, he was being a bit economical with the truth so as not
to spoil a good story or take the shine off his soapbox...
david...@aol.com
"I'm sure I've heard Taruskin making claims of this kind as well - and
as we have seen, he was being a bit economical with the truth so as not
to spoil a good story or take the shine off his soapbox... "
Probably so, but, in all fairness to Taruskin, we should see exactly
what he said rather than relying on my memory.
-david gable
Matthew Silverstein
> I don't own any of Taruskin's books, but if you happen to have any
> anthologies of his writings, look up Harnoncourt in the index and we may
> be able to see what he said.
I gave away my two Taruskin books, unfortunately.
Matty
makropulos
graduate student in England (and there's also a very useful
bibliography at the end). He summarizes some of the arguments well, I
think. I'm less convinced by some other aspects of the paper, but it's
well worth a look.
aest...@hotmail.com
ornamentation, the sound of instruments, etc., but that aspect of a
living performance tradition that was handed down exclusively through
listening, the vast unspoken part of a performance tradition,
However, I would say, "...You can find out about tuning, ornamentation,
the sound of instruments, etc., but that aspect of a living performance
tradition that was handed down exclusively through listening AND
PERFORMING, the vast unspoken part of a performance tradition, that is
lost forever in the sands of time."
And concerning the sound of instruments, I think that there are cases
where it is impossible to know what that was like once the last
performer has died without teaching his technique:
- Can a Stradivarius
In the hands of a beginner
Ever sound as good as
A pawn shop violin
In the hands of a Paganini?
Ian Pace
<david...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1146955434.7...@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
against the sources first, and you'll often get a very different picture
(mind you, Taruskin's claims are nothing compared to the distortion and
misrepresentation of sources committed by many of the 'New Musicologists').
But could we have some sources for these remarks directed at Harnoncourt by
the 'HIPper than thou', as well?
Ian
Ian Pace
"makropulos" <makro...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1146966946.8...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
Taruskin's thoughts on period performance, if you follow the trajectory of
his thought through 'Text and Act' and associated musical valorisations in
his work on Russian music and in the new Oxford History, are so riddled with
massive internal contradictions as to be ultimately incoherent. His
arguments fall apart as one sees how much he is trying hard to hold up
'tradition' against 'modernism', but then discovering on further research
that the 'modern' in the way he conceives it has a much longer history
before the 20th century. I would say he's essentially arguing for
'post-modernism' against 'tradition'. I'm writing at length about this at
the moment, and will post something more substantial on this matter in due
course. In the meantime, the best critiques I've yet come across of Taruskin
on performance can be found from John Butt (in the review-article 'Acting up
a text: the scholarship of performance and the performance of scholarship',
in Early Music 1996 XXIV, pp. 323-332 - if anyone wants to see this, e-mail
me privately, and in his book 'Playing with History' which continues on from
the points in the earlier article but in a clearer manner) and Peter Walls
(in his book 'History, Imagination and the Performance of Music').
Ian