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The amazing thing to me is, once the authenticist [my word] recordings came out in the 60's (examples: Harnoncourt's Concentus musicus, Wien, or Pinnock's English Consort), with their sackcloth and ashes approach to vibrato, all the lemming academicians instantly fell lock step in with the party line, with their "vibrato is just an ornament" mantra, and we've been paying the price (in the loss of resources for decent performances of 18th century music in favor of vibratoless authenticist HIP performances) ever since. What a waste!
Follow Ups:
There is something about the sound that grates on my nerves -- don't know if it's lack of vibrato or whatever. The Lindsays and Emerson String Quartet are two that come to mind.
I (and others) find the Lindsays to be frequently out of tune however. Other listeners don't seem to be bothered by it as much.
Just listened to his Vol. 1 of Bach-Busoni transcriptions and he uses, wait for it,
NO VIBRATO.
Be still my heart.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
That may be true, but if you go back far enough in the history of recorded sound, some pianos on those old recordings sound as if they might have vibrato! ;-)
True dat. Funny, before I (wisely) decided not to delve deeper into this debate, I read an online review of one of my favorite baroque flutists, Stephen Preston, who has performed and recorded extensively with Christopher Hogwood, Nicholas McGegan, Trevor Pinnock, etc.
This reviewer slammed Preston -- for using too much "modern vibrato" in violation of proper historic performance practice! Wow. Just the kind of dufus Chris from Lafayette is complaining about. So I'm not pursuing this discussion any further. ;)
I feel sorry for pianists.
They can't have it and they can't do it.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
. . . as in some of those Glen Gould videos where he rolls his finger back and forth on the key during sustained notes. Not as good as the real thing, but I applaud the gesture! ;-)EDIT: I seem to remember that there are some piano pieces by Balakirev where he specifically marks "vibrato" in certain spots! ;-)
Edits: 02/24/15
I think its interesting how we come at performance styles from two extremes.On the one hand you have the early 20th-Century practice of playing Baroque Music with giant Romantic-Era sized orchestras resulting in a heavy, thick, ponderous style of playing Baroque Music that I am sure would sound very unfamiliar to Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann, Handel, Tartini and their ilk.
Similarly, you now have the opposite practice (of the last thiry years) of playing Romantic Era music using Baroque sized orchestras and ensembles. This to my ear sounds just as ridiculous as the Early 20th Century practice.
I don't think HIP-sters have it all wrong.
I like the attention that they have paid to tempo markings. Prior to this, every thing was being played slower and slower and slower, as if this (slowing down) gave the music some extra gravitas and nobility that it was lacking. How do you turn "Allegro Energico e Passionato" into a Funeral March? It all sounded heavy, ponderous and absurd.
The HIP-sters have restored correct tempo to playing performance in many cases.
Where they go overboard, is playing Romantic Era and 20th-Century music in the same style as Baroque performance, consisting of greatly reduced forces and absolutely no vibrato. This inappropriate application of (misinformed) dogma gives Historically Informed Performance a bad name.
Edits: 02/23/15 02/23/15
They like to flatter themselves that they cleaned out the cobwebs (the byproduct of stodgy tempos) from much of the repertoire. They conveniently ignore the fact that while Furtwängler and Klemperer were galumphing through, say, the Beethoven symphonies, there were other conductors, such as Toscanini, Dorati (listen to his LSO Fifth), and, even further back, Richard Strauss (!), who were near to Beethoven's actual metronome marks. In the case of the Dorati Fifth, he's spot on in the second movement and very close in the other movements. HIPsters didn't all-of-a-sudden discover/restore fast tempos, even though they like to think they did.
Chris, I am going to have to agree with rbolaw and C.B. here. I think you are the one with the dogmatic mis-interpreting here. I do not know of any early music player (professional, anyway) who ever plays totally without vibrato, nor do I know of a conductor (again professional) who would ask them to. I have worked with McGegan myself; I have many friends who have worked with Gardiner and Harnoncourt. On every one of their recordings, the string players are indeed using some vibrato. It is much lighter, and sounds quite different from vibrato on modern instruments, also because of the differences in the strings themselves, and the bodies of the instruments. Your phrase "vibratoless authenticist" doesn't even make any sense, since a true "authenticist" does know that they did indeed use some vibrato back then, and they do too.
That 2001 New Grove article (which I won't quote yet again) is a reflection of the true state of HIP performances with regard to vibrato.
It's disingenuous to say that you don't know any early music player who plays totally without vibrato - sure, they may use a tiny amount of vibrato on a note here and there, but they never use the amount which would occur naturally in singing. In fact, as I've argued before, you often have these absurd HIP performances (I've seen some by McGegan himself) where the vocal soloists are singing with their natural vibrato, while the strings' vibrato is rationed in a quasi-totalitarian way. As I say, the contrast is absurd! I can't believe that even knowledgeable listeners like you, rbolaw, and C.B take this style of performance seriously.
"the strings' vibrato is rationed in a quasi-totalitarian way." Who is being absurd here, Chris? Again, I have worked with McGegan multiple times. Your comments in no way bear any resemblance to how he works (one of the nicest, least controlling conductors I have ever worked with), or what his performances sound like. Everyone here can judge for themselves. And I cannot resist asking if you also find it absurd that modern string players also do not match a singers vibrato when accompanying them? Who is really being disingenuous here?
If you argue otherwise (McGegan or otherwise), you ARE being absurd. As you say, people can judge for themselves. I just wish they were free to judge without musicologists and misinformed critics telling them HOW to judge.
Hmm. I think perhaps I should clarify that I am referring to the amount of vibrato a modern string section will use either in the opera pit, or when accompanying a singer onstage. In this instance, they will use nowhere near the amount of vibrato the soloist does, or that they would use if they were the soloists themselves, or even if playing a symphonic work where a wider vibrato was called for, say Russian romantic symphony of Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov, for instance. They would certainly never copy the width of the singer's vibrato while accompanying, in any case. That would indeed sound absurd....
I don't care whether it's in the opera pit, accompanying a soloist, or playing a symphonic work - there's a level of vibrato that they (the strings in a modern orchestra) use that's instantly recognizable as qualitatively and quantitatively different from that of a HIP orchestra. And, yes, the amount the modern orchestra uses is more like the amount that singers with modest vibratos use (Elly Ameling, Edith Mathis, Ruth Ziesak, Margaret Marshall (short career), Barbara Bonney (early and mid career), Barbara Hendricks (early and mid career), et al). You can't seriously be arguing that just because the modern orchestra doesn't use as wide a vibrato as SOME singers that modern orchestras and HIP orchestras are equivalent in their use of vibrato, can you? I'm not getting your point otherwise.
I was merely responding to your comment that original instrument groups do not imitate a singer's vibrato when accompanying them - neither do modern orchestral string sections en masse. Yes, they are using some, and sometimes more than an early music group would; but they are NOT using the same amount a vocal soloist would - when they are accompanying them - , nor are they using it in an imitative way. In other words, your particular comparison is not really valid.
A much better comparison for your argument would be the wind section, whose vibrato is produced in a much more similar fashion (almost exactly the same, in some cases) to a singer. Interestingly, there is much LESS vibrato used by wind players in most parts of the world now than there was back in the 18th century, even among the woodwind instruments, which generally use much more than the brass do, particularly the flute, mostly because it is easier to do on that instrument, which does not have the resistance all the other wind instruments do.
Of course you're right that it would be impossible (or almost impossible) to match a given singer's vibrato precisely - an individual singer's vibrato is one of the things that personalizes the voice and makes an individual singer's voice unique, and it would be absurd (there's that word again!) for the orchestra to try to match, say, each of the four soloists in Beethoven's Ninth. BUT IN GENERAL, the string sound of a modern orchestra is, IMHO, FAR more of a match for the singing voice than the string sound of a HIP orchestra is.
And think of what Sulzer's treatise suggests: that the singing voice should be the ideal to which the instrumentalists should aspire. You just can't be serious if you think HIP strings match the singing voice better than modern (i.e., non-HIP-influenced) strings do. (Do you really think that?) And BTW, it's not a question of modern vs. period instruments. Conductors such as Snorrington and Gardiner have shown that they can suck the life out of a piece of music through rationed vibrato with a modern orchestra just as effectively as they can with a HIP orchestra. That's one area where I have to credit Harnoncourt (despite all the HIP damage HE'S done!): when he conducts Dvorak with the Concertgebouw, Bruckner with the VPO, or Johann Strauss with the BPO, he at least leaves the strings alone!
Hi Chris - we are actually in agreement then on the accompanying question, as I suspected, and that's what I thought your post was referring to before.
Again, I don't think in general that string vibrato works much like vocal vibrato, nor does it sound like it. They are two different animals. Wind instrument vibrato is the much closer comparison. Wind players can, even though most don't, use a vibrato as wide as an Italian opera singers in some cases and still sound fine. String sections really cannot do this, as it doesn't sound the same. Orchestral string sections today in the 21st century for this reason do not in general use as much vibrato as orchestras of the mid-20th century did (one major reason why I think audiophiles who grew up listening to those recordings do not like modern orchestras as much). Soloists and chamber musicians are a different story. If a string section uses a vibrato too wide, it just doesn't sound in tune - too many people having to match - much easier to keep the width of it smaller, resulting in a better overall tone and blend throughout the whole string section.
And by the way, I did not suggest that HIP strings match singers vibrato - my point was in fact the opposite, that the modern string players do not match vocal vibrato either. String vibrato vs. vocal vibrato is an apple/orange comparison - two different animals.
I agree with you, by the way, on Snorrington, but not on Gardiner, who IMO is one of the best interpreters of baroque and classical era music out there, HIP or not, from a purely musical standpoint. Impeccable phrasing, with a great sense of line and drama - he is much more about pure music-making, as opposed to just creating showy but ultimately shallow effects. Listening to his Beethoven cycle vs. Snorrington's are two extremely different animals, indeed - for me Snorrington has no real soul.
Many music lovers who like HIP do not read musicologists and critics.
They just like the sound and style.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
These days, I listen to only a very little music from the era before Beethoven. The Bach music for solo instruments, a Mozart opera or three. That's about it.So, I have no real emotional investment in this issue and view the entire controversy with detachment and no small amount of boredom. The two sides have reached stalemate.
The fact is, even up into the Romantic era, composers expected that their music would be adapted, edited, revised, embellished and manipulated in various ways for performance. I doubt that Vivaldi, Haydn or Mozart would give a diddly-squat about the argument over string vibrato.
There are different ways to play *any* music. To argue that one interpretation is more "authentic" than another is pretty silly. Music is a performance art -- an entertainment for listeners.
A piece is birthed by a composer, but nurtured by its performers, who give it new life with each personal interpretation. That is as true of music from the pre-Romantic era as it is of Romantic and post-Romantic era music. From the hyperdrive of Toscanini to the tortured soporifics of Celibidache, and every variation in between.
Of course, as listeners, we prefer our own favorite styles and interpretations and performers. Luckily, in this day, we have a wealth of options and can pick and choose.
"Life without music is a mistake" (Nietzsche)
Edits: 02/22/15
This is the best response I have ever seen in any thread on this topic.
Happy listening,
Jim
"The passage of my life is measured out in shirts."
- Brian Eno
I was going to refer to, ahem, my discussion here with David Hurwitz in December 2009, but Mr. Bailey does a very good job making a similar point, quoting Leopold Auer where I quoted Paul Taffanel. What is "Head of Historical Recordings" at Yale University? Sounds like a great job.
the HIP-haters discount this statement. Some even make the preposterous claim (I'm thinking here of David Hurwitz) that continuous vibrato, which really only began to be wide-spread in the '20s and '30s thanks to the influence of Fritz Kreisler, is the way the violin was always played, even as far back as the 1700s.
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"You weren't afraid of being born--why would you be afraid of dying?" Alan Watts
. . . is another part you and Roy would do well to re-read. I'll save you the trouble - here's Auer's text:But the other class of violinists who habitually make use of the device—those who are convinced that an eternal vibrato is the secret of soulful playing, of piquancy in performance—are pitifully misguided in their belief...this curious habit of oscillating and vibrating on each and every tone amounts to an actual physical defect, whose existence those who are cursed with it do not in most cases even suspect...[a]s a rule I forbid my students using the vibrato at all on notes which are not sustained, and I earnestly advise them not to abuse it even in the case of sustained notes which succeed each other in a phrase.
So. . . what part of "on notes which are not sustained" do you not understand? I've made that point repeatedly, both below and years ago when this subject came up. It's impossible to apply vibrato to rapidly moving notes. Duh!
And then there's Baily's own narcissistic summation: "And our young musicians aren't buying the decisive and anachronistic contentions of this article. Many of them embrace both period and modern instrument technique and practice, and they're becoming really good at it. Rather, it seems like this article is intended to start a fight that was resolved a long time ago. What a shame."
Not at all! The true shame is that the the spread of this "vibrato as an ornament" thinking is ensnaring even some good present-day players, and we have people like Bailey, safely ensconced in their academic playpens, spreading this kind of musical Ebola with abandon. (And I'm serious about the disease comparison, because playing like this sucks the life out the music.) I promise you that I and others will never rest until this kind of irresponsible nonsense has a wooden stake pounded through its heart!
Edits: 02/22/15
You seem to assume the main point of the HIP movement is to use as little vibrato as possible. However, as CB correctly points out, vibrato technique is not the main focus of the HIP movement, and the idea of using but not abusing vibrato can be found in treatises from the 18th century to today, so that is hardly a unique HIP principle.
Certainly there are other aspects of HIP that I loathe - messa di voce bowing, anyone? - but I was just confining discussion to the quality mentioned in the Strad article, the quality which listeners will notice most easily when they listen to HIP groups, and the quality which I would call a horrible mannerism generated by 20th century academicians. As I mentioned below to C.B., I've still got my wooden stake and mallet at the ready - but alas, the pandemic has spread significantly!
Nevertheless, thanks for the inroads, Chris!
Jeremy
not the kind of heavy vibrato used nowadays as a crutch or substitute for beautiful tone.
To me, the most interesting players, whether modern or period, are the ones who vary their vibrato according to the expressive needs of the music. Vibrato that is applied continuously and unvaryingly like some kind of heavy varnish on a Rembrandt is as uninteresting as no vibrato at all.
Listen again to those period recordings you are so eager to condemn--I think you'll find that many of the string players do use vibrato, just not as much, and not continuously.
And as for "authenticity", although the record labels still use the term to characterize period instrument performances, it's one that the performers themselves, almost to a man, do not endorse. The late Christopher Hogwood wrote a very cogent essay distancing himself from the idea, saying the goal of period instruments is not to be "authentic", but to make music.
And, I might add, period instrumentalists are a lot more ecumenical about their approach to music vis-a-vis the 'modern' world than vice-versa. Seldom if ever will you see them hurling the kind of vitriol against modern performers the way you just have. In fact, in recent years Hogwood and his collegues have 'made the rounds' conducting modern orchestras in the U.S., and quite successfully at that. One particularly welcome guest here in Detroit has been Nicholas McGegan, whose yearly performances of Vivaldi and Handel are sold-out events.
It's interesting to watch McGegan in rehearsal. He doesn't lecture the players about using less vibrato, but instead tries to encourage the DSO to find the natural expression in the music through attention to the kind of phrasing and articulation that works best in baroque music. It's a style of playing that many of them have not experienced before. But when I talk to my friends in the orchestra after one of these concerts, they're unanimously enthusiastic about McGegan's approach, and about how they can't wait for him to come back.
You see, the whole 'vibrato' thing is a kind of red herring thrown out by people who have little understanding of the nuts and bolts of baroque music. There's so much more to it than whether uses vibrato or not. Issues such as strong and weak beats, articulation, the concept of 'rhetoric', of the gesture behind baroque music and how performance should mimic speech--these are all important elements in the successful performance of 17th and 18th C. music.
But if you don't play baroque music, or have some axe to grind because you think the period instrumentalists have 'taken away' your Bach and Handel, well then--of course it's all a 'waste' and audiences have been 'paying a price'.
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"You weren't afraid of being born--why would you be afraid of dying?" Alan Watts
Hi, C.B. - Well here we are butting heads over this issue again! ;-)
[The article] talks about "light vibrato"...not the kind of heavy vibrato used nowadays as a crutch or substitute for beautiful tone.
I'm sorry, but that is a wholesale misrepresentation of what the article is saying. The author is very clear about the meaning of "light vibrato", even quoting Sulzer's 1771 treatise: "[the microtones of light vibrato] alternate so rapidly that the alternation itself is not clear; this makes the tone gentle and undulating. . . Because of the gentle vibrato it gives all sustained notes, the human voice has an obvious advantage over all other instruments. A fundamental part of good singing and playing requires holding out EVERY NOTE [my caps] with such vibrato. It is easiest in singing, because Nature herself ensures that the vocal instrument does not remain on any sustained tone with the same rigid tension. But on instruments, vibrato requires more effort. On the violin, it is most easily obtained by rolling the finger rapidly back and forth on the string."
So that's the crux of it! The gentle vibrato (i.e., the vibrato which Geminiani said was "indispensable" in violin playing!) is like the singing of an Elly Ameling type singer - and there are zillions of voices of her type - in its moderation and restraint. IOW, it's probably not the vibrato of some provincial Eastern European or Russian opera singers (the kind which, as we used to joke, was a minor third wide!). Nor is it the type of blanched, androgynous sound of the likes of Emma Kirkby and her ilk. It's the happy (light!) medium.
Assuming we agree on this, I challenge you to find even ONE HIP performance where the string players play with the type of vibrato characteristic of an Elly Ameling, an Edith Mathis, a Ruth Ziesak, et al. You can't do it because it doesn't exist! The existing HIP performances are accurately described in the quoted New Grove article from 2001: "[Vibrato] seems always to have been accepted as an ornament until the first quarter of the 20th century, when its continuous use gradually became the norm… During the Baroque era, vibrato was used sparingly, for emphasis on long, accentuated notes in pieces with an affect or character to which it was suited. Being regarded as an ornament, in principle it was used on single notes like any other… Less common ornaments such as vibrato or glissando were in theory used only by soloists… Continuous vibrato is a 20th-century phenomenon." That's the party-line orthodoxy of the HIP crowd, but is that the way Elly Ameling sings? In your heart, you know the answer is a resounding NO!
BTW, this "singing quality" in the vibrato was one of the key points in David Hurwitz's well reasoned Classic Today articles about vibrato. The Strad article simply and elegantly confirms the rightness of his argument.
For the time being, I'll leave the other red herrings in your post for later discussion. Well. . . except for your anecdotes about Nicolas McGegan: yes, he has a winning personality and his enthusiasm is infectious - I even have a couple of his Rameau CD's. But he's still wrong, wrong, wrong about vibrato!
And as I've argued before, no one can use vibrato continuously (talk about a red herring!), if only because many notes are simply moving too fast to apply vibrato. And BTW, who today uses vibrato as a "crutch" or as a "substitute for beautiful tone"? Let's name some names and not hide behind generalities.
You see, the whole 'vibrato' thing is a kind of red herring thrown out by people who have little understanding of the nuts and bolts of baroque music.
Yes - that statement is staring YOU in the face, because you've been sold a bill of goods on the subject by lemming academicians falling in line with each other in a lame attempt to justify their jobs. And don't presume to lecture me about the concept of rhetoric - I had this stuff crammed down my throat when I was getting my DMA and I'd be happy to trade quotes from treatises with you any day of the week! ;-)
My basic view of HIP is: In the pre-industrial world, instruments were not as loud or powerful, performance spaces were often much smaller, and ensembles were also often smaller. Those fundamental differences are at the heart of most differences between HI Performance and Modern Performance.
When a tenor sings Nessun dorma at the Metropolitan Opera, he must sing very, very loudly. (The first thing a non-classical music listener notices when they go to their first opera is how loud everyone is singing.) That has a profound impact on vibrato, phrasing, and all other aspects of vocal technique. It even affects tempo and pitch -- notice how people speak, not only louder, but also at a higher pitch and more slowly when they are speaking in a large venue? Also, since the mid-19th century, instruments have generally been redesigned to be played much louder. That has had a major impact on all aspects of instrumental technique.
Good HIP performers are not academics, or not only academics, but musicians who understand a compelling performance is what matters, not rigid adherence to a series of rules about vibrato, which they do use, or anything else. But they are turning back the clock to a quieter, gentler time, without jets and jackhammers, when you could still hear the breeze rustling the leaves. If you are willing to mentally transport yourself to that quieter time, you can appreciate their work. Otherwise, it may all seem a frustrating bore.
I could give many specific examples, but what's the point? It isn't your thing. But it is a legitimate thing.
. . . I have to deal with emptying chamber pots, getting a good supply of leeches (for when I get sick!), etc.
I'm all for quieter, gentler times however - but for me, those times are best evoked by music such as Mischa Levitzki's "The Enchanted Nymph":
...our definitions and conceptions of 'continuous vibrato' vs. ‘non-vibrato’, as well as the relative amounts or intensity of vibrato, are at odds with each other. I myself may have used these terms rather loosely, so here goes my attempt to pin it down.Putting all historical considerations aside for the moment (bear with me here), the question any violinist, violist or cellist must deal with when playing, say, music prior to 1750, is whether to vibrate on notes equivalent to or longer than a quarter note in m = 60, to pick an arbitrary starting point. I think you'll agree that trying to vibrate on eighth notes (or shorter) in this tempo is unnecessary and to a certain extent impractical--even big name violinists stop roughly at this point, give or take a few clicks of the metronome. (You said essentially the same thing in another post, but I can’t find it right now, so I think we’re in agreement).
Just for kicks, I decided to test this out this question on two of my favorite recordings of the Bach G Minor Violin Sonata, by Viktoria Mullova and the late Sergiu Luca. I picked these two artists for a reason, because both have had respectable careers playing both modern and period, so they are perhaps more flexible than the ‘sackcloth-and-ashes’ types that you despise. Luca, in fact, until his death was a professor at Rice University, and taught both styles of playing.
In the first measure of the Adagio, Mullova vibrates on the first quadruple-stop g minor chord, and quite noticeably at that. After a melisma of thirty-second notes, she plays the suspension on the third beat straight; only the resolving tone, an F-sharp, has vibrato. This is very effective in my book—the straight tone emphasizes the dissonance of the suspension, while the resolution is softened with vibrato. In the second measure, Mullova employs vibrato on beats one and three (an eighth-note quadruple-stop chord), but the two eighth notes leading to the next measure are straight, as are the sixteenth notes on the downbeat, which in her tempo are probably too short for vibrato in any case.
Measure two is handled in similar fashion, this time with vibrato on beats two and three. The ‘and’ of two consists of two straight sixteenth notes leading to the suspension on beat three, which is resolved with a thirty-second-note melisma that leads to the next measure.
As so it goes, a mix of vibrato and straight tone, obviously chosen for artistic effect and not necessarily dictated by any strict historical guidelines.
Luca handles this opening movement in similar fashion, albeit in a slower tempo which allows him even more freedom of expression. In both cases, the violin tone is always attractive (at least to my ears) and seldom entirely devoid of vibrato. The concluding chords in both recordings, for example, are given the slightest ‘shimmer’ of a vibrato, which I find very effective. So neither performer’s sound can be characterized as ‘vibrato-less’ nor ‘continuous’, but somewhere in between. When straight tone is used, it’s always for effect, to heighten the dissonance of a suspension or non-chordal passing note, for example.
A comparison with Heifetz’s recording of the same piece is revealing. He vibrates on practically every strong beat, although there are a few straight held notes (played quite jarringly and with ugly tone), which sound out of place in the overall context. Heifetz even vibrates on every note of sixteenth-note groups, which few violinists do nowadays. Because there is little distinction between strong and weak beats, the playing overall is ponderous—there is no ‘give and take’. The relatively heavy vibrato, as in ‘wide and fast’, adds to this feeling. Altogether, it’s a style of playing that sounds anachronistic and rather self-indulgent in this very rarified, cerebral type of music. Heifetz’s Bach sounds to me more like—I don’t know—Rachmaninoff? I dare say that most listeners nowadays gravitate towards the lighter, more expressive, less indulgent style of Bach playing exemplified by Mullova and Luca, to judge by record-buying habits.
Needless to say, this is hardly the ‘sackcloth-and-ashes’ way of playing Bach. You may dislike the artistic decisions that they have made, but the playing is far from inexpressive, and none of the decisions made are doctrinaire or based on some strict historical rule. As Amphissa said, this style of performing Bach (or Handel, or Vivaldi) is simply one of many options out there. I can’t imagine anyone having a problem with this, unless you’re somebody like Pinchas Zuckerman who has vowed, in print, to gun down anyone he hears playing Bach this way (I kid you not).
So the question for you, Chris, is this: do you object to period violinists because they violate the holy doctrine of the ‘true vibrato’ (as revealed in the Strad article), or do they violate some other 'historical' principle, or do you simply not like the artistic/interpretative choices they make? If it’s any of the above, then give me an example of a modern violinist who floats your boat in Bach, and I’ll give it a listen. Haven’t heard any yet who were half as interesting as the examples I gave, but who knows? Maybe I’m in for a surprise.
BTW—your citing Elly Ameling as an example—as fine a singer as she was—is bogus. Modern singers, even more than modern violinists, depend on vibrato for tone production. The two types of vibrato are produced quite differently, and sound entirely different. I think it’s wrong for a violinist to model his vibrato after that of a singer, since most singers just don’t know how to modulate or control their vibrato .
I say this as a former professional singer (and teacher of singing) who has been paid to sing everything from Obrecht to operetta. It’s a serious problem, one that can’t be dealt with in the limited space here, but suffice it to say that the majority of singers, especially the ones that are coming out of conservatories today, are clueless as to how they produce their vibrato, or that they even have one in the first place. I’ve told students that they have to produce a straight tone in order to blend and sing in tune, e.g. in a Renaissance motet, and they complain that singing straight “will ruin their voice”!
"You weren't afraid of being born--why would you be afraid of dying?" Alan Watts
Edits: 02/22/15 02/22/15
I admit, I was trying to bait you into something more emotional! ;-)
Regarding the Bach G minor Sonata, I don't know either of the two "thoughtful vibrato" recordings you mention. Re the Luca recording - it's been around for a long time I know, but, in its LP incarnation, I either heard part of it on the radio, or I read enough reviews to know that it wasn't for me. Mullova is of course for me a tragic case of someone who sold out her earlier principles to the lure of HIP. Perhaps, as you suggest, she made something out of that bargain with the Devil.
I do appreciate your analysis - but nevertheless, the vibratoless tone on sustained notes is just such an ugly, amateurish sound (IMHO) that I'll never abide it. It's the very opposite of cultivated sound I expect of a professional musician. I'll grant you that one can devise a certain kind of expression by withholding vibrato from certain notes - and in fact, I agree with that approach in certain, VERY LIMITED instances. (Some short places in the Beethoven Quartets come to mind.) But still, with all the other expressive means that we have (articulation, dynamics, etc.), why do we have to resort to this ugly, dessicated sound so often? To me, it has just grown out of control these days.
Allow me to quote the Sulzer treatise again: "A fundamental part of good singing and playing requires holding out EVERY NOTE [my caps] with such vibrato. It is easiest in singing, because Nature herself ensures that the vocal instrument does not remain on any sustained tone with the same rigid tension." In fact, singing is the ideal. I do kind of agree with you that string players can never quite approach even the modest application of vocal vibrato used by such singers as Elly Ameling - but they can sure come a LOT closer than HIP groups do! ;-) And while it may be true that many singers can't modulate or control their vibrato, there are clearly certain singers (the ones I've named already, in addition to many others) who control their vibrato well enough for string players to aspire to, even though, as you say, the vibrato is produced differently.
Your comments about the Heifetz recording are interesting, especially in view of the Auer quote in the comments section of the Strad article (with Heifetz being an Auer student). Strange. In any case, Heifetz' rather strenuous renditions of the Sonatas and Partitas are not my cup of tea. You asked whom I like - I would say J-Fi for sure; I also like both of the Szeryng recordings (although I haven't heard the mono one in many years) even though he is a bit too free with the rhythm in places for my taste. I also like Lisa's B-minor Partita on her debut album - she's another tragic case, who, on evidence of her latest sorry Bach recording on DG, has abandoned her previous artistic principles (at least as they relate to vibrato).
Regarding singers and singing (your last paragraph) - yeah, that's funny. There is so much mythology and charlatanism connected with singing (boh teaching and performing) - I think partly because it's all internal.
Anyway, thanks again for the reply - but I've still got my wooden stake and mallet ready to go! ;-)
Excellent points.
We had (at Houston Symphony) McGegan, Harry Picket and other baroque specialists, always a treat.
As a former pro singer, I sang everything but certainly did not sing romantic music the same way that I sang pre Romantic.
Can't really listen to those big band Messiahs.
"If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them" - Sol Hurok
to Chris for mentioning the article and to you for your excellent and thoughtful comments. You both make very good contributions in this forum, and this is no exception.
I wouldn't be too hard on Chris, though, he likes to have fun and be provocative, and I for one enjoy it. I do side with you on this HIP controversy thing. Some excellent musicians and scholars have written very cogently on the subject, as you say.
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