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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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In Reply to: before misapplied historical performance practices robbed the music of feeling, drama, and musicality !!!!!! posted by Timbo in Oz on March 14, 2012 at 03:55:28:
The B minor mass shouldn't be reverential?!? Timbo, you have got to be kidding!
I'm not into classical music for the challenge. I'm into it for the music. And I confess I don't much care whether performers take to something or not. What I care is whether the music touches me in the many ways that great music can.
If a backwards performance on a kazoo did that, I'd say, great.
Actually, in case it isn't clear (I did have a discussion of this here at great length a few weeks back), I have no objection to the use of original instruments -- a sound I often but don't always love. Or historically correct ornamentation. Or historical pitch, or Werckmeister III, which whether or not Bach actually used it is certainly interesting (the contemporary description of his tuning, and the presence of Werckmeister's tome in his library, are suggestive but not conclusive). Or to what is known of other historical practices, so long as they make musical and practical sense.
Which, unfortunately, they often do not.
An extreme example: harpsichord continuo in Carnegie Hall that YOU COULDN'T EVEN HEAR.
What, exactly, is historically informed about that?
Less extreme: Sending half the performers packing in a hall that is many times the size of the space for which the music was originally scored, and so robbing it of impact in an attempt to preserve purity of line.
But my real objection to the HIP movement is in the realm of interpretation. IMO, HIP interpretations have more to do with Rorscharch blotting a 20th century aesthetic onto partially-understood 18th- and 19th century practices than with historical versimilitude.
For one thing, it frequently doesn't even match the historical descriptions of the time.
Performance practice through the time of Mozart was extremely improvisatory. We are told by a reasonably credible source that Bach wrote out all his notes. But other composers did not. So what we hear are the musical skeletons of the works. And that aspect of performance is largely lost.
At least one baroque source says that there was a difference style of performance for religious works than for secular ones. Just as there is today, because it's the natural thing to do: a mass is not a dance tune. But you wouldn't guess that from listening to some of these "informed" performances.
We know that Bach favored the cantabile style of playing. In describing it, CPE Bach wrote of rubato in the right hand, played against a firm rhythm in the left. Like a singer, as the name implies. Instead we get playing that would do a player piano proud.
We have a blow-by-blow description of a few bars of Beethoven's piano playing. It is much more expressive, takes far more liberties, than any playing today.
But the bottom line for me is the musicality of the performances. So what if Bach played the B minor mass at a faster clip than Klemperer, as, since we're told that Bach took his tempi fast, he undoubtedly did? What matters is whether an interpretation works or not. And while I don't believe I'm quite as uninformed as you apparently think, that doesn't make any difference, because listening is what it is, and interpretation is something that you can't bottle. It comes from skill and training and study, yes, but also from an organic tradition, communicated by playing the music itself, shared between performer and audience, and from within -- from the musical understanding of the performer himself. There is no text that can impart more than the rudiments of it, and no theory that can make an insensitive performer into a sensitive one, or deprive a great performance of its greatness merely because it didn't follow some dry academic precepts.
Those precepts can be useful, even valuable; one can't hear a Bach cantata with the original instruments without understanding that these are the sounds he had in mind. Sometimes, they're necessary: it just isn't possible to play the Moonlight sonata on a modern instrument and achieve the remarkable effect Beethoven achieved.
But when those precepts are poorly understood and conflict with musicality, I say out the window with them! And I have no doubt that Bach, who was not beyond arranging a concerto movement for chorus and is said to have had little patience for dry theory but to have taught instead by example, would agree.
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Follow Ups
- RE: before misapplied historical performance practices robbed the music of feeling, drama, and musicality !!!!!! - josh358 20:03:38 03/21/12 (0)
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