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Interesting article.
Follow Ups:
Yes, an interesting article.
..., if only his "hunched over the keys"/"arms nearly perpendicular" posture did not constrain him so.
Edits: 07/22/15
Is there a plethora of defective musicologists? If you were forced to write a report on the subject, what would you say the ratio of good to bad musicologists is?
Edits: 07/27/15
. . . it might be an interesting project nonetheless! ;-)
Per my other posts however, I do think there's a tendency towards "group think" and overweening self-importance among academicians, musicologists in particular.
Hostile to anything that challenges the modern orthodoxy, are we? ;-) Actually, a major problem with trying to resurrect Mozartean piano technique, or at least so it seems to me, is that the pianoforte of Mozart's day, not overstrung, with a wood frame and leather covered hammers, and without the modern mechanism developed by Erard and others, was an entirely different instrument.
What we now consider the piano is a late nineteenth century instrument that began to evolve towards its current form in the early to mid-19th century, long after Mozart died (and shortly after Beethoven died). And much as we might hate to admit it, the instrument continues to evolve, including with modern electronics (shudder!).
Of course, Christina Kolb, the pianist of the NY Times article, demonstrates on an early 19th century pianoforte, or a modern replica thereof. I don't doubt such an instrument required a very different technique, though I haven't played one myself.
We have these dunderhead musicologists who get their hands on a particular treatise and instantly become enamored of it to the extent that they start to believe/claim that it explains EVERYTHING from the period of history in which it was written! How stupid! Let's do a little thought experiment. . . What if Lang Lang wrote a treatise on piano playing in the twenty-first century? I can just see some future musicologist now, pouring through the pages and noting that pianists must have played with swaying torsos and flying elbows - all the while pedaling in their Lang Lang Addidas shoes! :-)
The obvious problem with this approach is that there is WAY more diversity of playing (technique and interpretation) than any one treatise can account for at any particular period in time.
BTW, I wonder how up we all are for another discussion of vibrato. There's been another discussion over on Google Groups in which Dave Hurwitz has announced that he's presented his ideas on historical vibrato (which largely agree with mine) at several musicological conferences, and that he is about to travel to Italy to present his contentions at another of these conferences. He used to have a couple of large articles available on the Classics Today web site on this subject, but he has temporarily taken them down in order to elaborate them and to properly footnote them for scholarly use. God bless you, Dave! Let's stop this sack-cloth-and-ashes non-vibrato madness while we still can! ;-)
The proper and correct way to play the piano in the twenty-first century.
version of one of these! ;-)
It should not be surprising that early piano instruction might evolved from the same roots.
The big difference is that in the future we will have recordings and video of Lang Lang, but none from Mozart so to dismiss musicologists is a bit pretentious, I am sure that Christine Kobb is doing valid work and believe in her theory.
Edits: 07/22/15
I just deleted my previous post - sorry if it sounded harsh or arrogant. ;-)So to answer your comments in more detail, the point of my "thought experiment" is NOT that Lang Lang is actually going to write a treatise and that that's the only evidence we'll have of his playing in the future (i.e., his recordings and videos will somehow be lost). The significance of the comparison is that IF Lang Lang's presumed "treatise" were the only source we bothered to use to get an idea of twenty-first century pianism (i.e., the same methodology that the Norwegian musicologist is using with respect to Hummel's treatise vis-a-vis eighteenth - and early nineteenth-century pianism), then that methodology wouldn't deserve much notice or respect - for the reason I mentioned (i.e., that there's WAY more diversity of playing at any given time than any one treatise can account for).
IMHO, Christine is involved in some very feeble methodology - which is too bad, since, as has already been pointed out, she IS a babe. It's flimsy because claims are being made for it that go beyond all bounds of what one might realistically be able to conclude from its intrinsic worth. Sure, the practice of going back and trying to play Hummel's music on the basis of remarks in his own treatise could be interesting as a kind of experiment (and indeed, one could learn something from it!), but don't go swaggering around making sweeping claims that "that's the way it was" universally in Hummel's time, or that it should be followed in our own performances all the piano music written around then - or even that it's the best way of playing the compositions of Hummel himself! When are we going to learn that composers are not necessarily the best exponents of their own music? And, BTW, did you listen to that sound clip that accompanied the story? It was pretty bad - much like that other triumph of musicology, the quasi banishment of vibrato from performance of eighteenth- (or even nineteenth- and early twentieth- !) century music!
Finally, I agree that to dismiss all musicologists out of hand is a bit pretentious. I'm sure there MUST be some who are not susceptible to group think, exaggerated claims, and their own brand of general pretentiousness. And by "exagerrated claims" and "pretentiousness" I mean that too many musicologists consider themselves to be the final arbiters of "what the composer wanted", and that any approach to the music other than theirs is "not being faithful to the composer". You can't get much more pretentious than that - if only they had a bit more sense of humility and modesty! But no - that's not the way things work in the academe, where instructors like to prance around extolling their latest flimsy "findings"!
Edits: 07/23/15
Maybe a large part of what you don't like is the early 18th century fortepiano itself, which has a sound that can be very hard to accept if you are used to the modern piano.
As for your comment about musicologists, unfortunately it is a common problem throughout academia that researchers make what can be perfectly valid discoveries or findings but then tack on conclusions that exaggerate their significance and general applicability rather than acknowledge their limitations and narrow applicability. Often these conclusions are speculative on their face, and not dishonest per se, but still potentially misleading.
I don't know if that's happening here, but it seems to me studying historic treatises is one, though certainly not the only, legitimate avenue of study. Among other things, the writers of these treatises sometimes strongly and explicitly disagreed with each other, which itself can be revealing. There were two famous instances of this in the flute literature alone, one in the late 18th century and one in the late 19th century.
Ding!Ding!Ding!Ding!Ding! We have a winner!! Rbolaw has hit the nail on the head here. Sorry Chris. :)
And. . . yes. . . as I've written previously, fortepianos tend to sound variously (to me at least) like toy pianos and/or strung-and-tuned rubber-bands.
Regarding flute treatises, I still have the one by Quantz, which I used to enjoy reading, especially when he delves into topics which tend not to be covered in other treatises - such as how to dress for a concert, what clothes to wear, etc. And, as you so rightly observe, the disagreements among treatise writers are revealing in themselves and are indicative of the dangers of relying on any single one of them to dictate what is "correct" or "best" in approaching music from a given period.
Yes, Johann Joachim Quantz wrote the first important one (1750), imho still a very important book about playing baroque music. Then came an important treatise by Johann George Tromlitz (1791) which touched on his famous and nasty battle with Ribock, his former student, which I believe went back and forth in published writings a couple of times. Tromlitz took a couple of shots at Quantz, too. Apparently Tromlitz was a brilliant player, teacher and scholar, but also a mean, short-tempered guy whom everyone disliked.
In the late 19th century came the treatise battle between Englishmen R.S. Rockstro and Christopher Welch. Part of the nastiness was due to the fact that all of these guys, except for Welch, in addition to being major players, designed, made and sold flutes, and each wanted his own model to be the industry standard. It's all about the money. Of course, similar rivalries existed with other instrument makers.
I suspect that Lang Lang might actually be able to write an excellent treatise on modern piano technique. He is superbly trained and is an excellent technician.
Well, let's not get all excited about Lang Lang writing a treatise. What with recording, radio, TV and the internet, treatises on how to play an instrument probably don't have the influence they used to have, especially on stylistic issues.
Also, the most famous virtuoso stars of the stage generally weren't the ones writing the treatises back in the day, at least not the most respected and successful treatises, and I doubt they would be today. Rather, it was the most respected teachers. Hummel was a student of Mozart, was greatly respected by Beethoven, and taught Czerny (as did Beethoven), who in turn taught Liszt. But he belongs to the earlier, pre-romantic, classical period of piano music and playing, when the instruments were quite different as well.
You and David Hurwitz need not get so upset about those who would study such earlier periods in music history. We can never return to them, only learn from them.
No doubt. But are we learning the right things? Much of the time, we certainly don't seem to learn the right things from history! ;-)
I feel that academicians too often make the wrong kinds of assumptions about the historical context of their subject and draw the wrong lessons from the historical record. And the much vaunted "peer review" in scholarly journals and academia can sometimes be nothing more than an enforcement mechanism for group think. I mean by this that if your contentions/scholarship are too out of line with the prevailing thinking, the editor of a given scholarly journal may not even allow your article to see the light of day.
I am not kidding about my agreement with your post, Chris von LaFayette.
Your first paragraph -- and the first sentence of the second -- should be included in every study packet for those who aspire to learn from the past in every field of human endeavor. A phrase that my best teacher is fond of repeating: "Do not view the past through the eyes of the present." Without the proper context, an idea (or procedure or approach, et al.) cannot be understood with any degree of fullness. This self-induced blindness is not remotely limited to academe: it is endemic to the human race.
And your final two sentences are likewise pithy and precautionary for anyone interested in finding truth in any field.
And so say I!
Harrumph!
Double harrumph!!
-=- Charlie F.
And I ain't kiddin' about any of that ... except for the 'harrumphs' thingie.
where her book about the proper style of playing requires that you must play the piano with a super-short minidress that is more likely than not bright red (or orange in this case) while tossing your hair with dramatic head movements! :)
IIRC, I think she's already had an article or two in Pianist, or Piano Quarterly, or Piano Today on "How to Play the Moonlight Sonata" or something similar! ;-)
WOW!
-----
"A fool and his money are soon parted." --- Thomas Tusser
. . . Madeline and I just received the following post card from the SF Symphony earlier today (one to each of us, just to make sure we didn't miss it! - thanks, SF Symphony!):
Notice that neither MTT's name nor his picture are anywhere to be seen on this mailer. (He IS mentioned in very tiny type on the other side, but again, no picture - only Yuja's!)
So who is it that sells tickets and attracts audiences in the classical world today? ;-)
That would be Yuja.
I am going to both shows.
:)
Happy listening,
Jim
"The passage of my life is measured out in shirts."
- Brian Eno
She is indeed a babe, but if she's aiding and abetting this foolishness, I'd reluctantly move on to another subject (or babe!). ;-(
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