Re: Why do you like Mozart's music?


tag gallagher wrote:
> Mr. Gable,
> you still have not offered any evidence that HIP caused HUP.
>
> Are you SO unwilling to face the fact that you are arguing that the
> most outrageous form of UNinformed performance (ie., expressionless
> phrasing) is caused by informed performance?
>
> Are you not open to the notion that the tendency to lose the sort of
> fervor you (and I) value actually parallels the advent of the LP record,
> postwar recovery, jet-age conductors, etc., far more than it does HIP?
>
>

This thread has been quite fascinating for me, a mere amateur listener
in many respects in comparison to many others here. However, I too
think there is a time lag in David7's argument. In other portions of
the thread, he cites to you examples of pre 1950 recordings as examples
of nunance filled performances. I don't have any historical recordings
because from what I've heard of them on the radio, in general I find it
difficult to get past the sound quality. Nevertheless, it seems that
the phrasing David7 refers to, passed down by prior generations, seems
to be a kind of artisan approach to the music, much like a skilled
carpenter or sculptor working on an Art Nouveau building (to take an
architectural example). And this, as you say, tends towards a fervid
approach which gives liveliness to the music (David7 seems to decry the
smoothness of many post-1950 recordings).

I'm wondering myself if this isn't actually a problem that has many
causes: a new generation of players, a greater interest in professional
music playing, especially among orchestras more than what is taught at
schools, perhaps even directions from company directors to conductors
to produce a less nuanced type of recording.

>>From what little I know, historically informed performances started
coming out more forcefully in the 70s, 80s and 90s, meaning there would
have been a gap of 20 to 30 years between the onset of less nuanced
playing on the part of orchestras, and the desire (on the part of a new
generation of players) to look at pre 1900 treatises to see what can be
gleaned from them.

If this is the case, something very similar happened in architecture.
Up until the 1920s-30s, architecture involved artisan craftsmanship in
the ornmant and furnishings. This disappeared with the advent of
manufactured products, the desire not have any ornament (coming from
the 'modern' ideals of the 1900s to 1930s, where ornament was seen as
something decadent) and translated into glass boxes through the
manufactured building product and more professional approach to design,
and the changed construction process in general. In the 1960s, interest
in historical ornament was resurrected with a new generation of
architects. This has taken essentially two paths: the crap (in my
opinion) of post-modernism, and the more rigorous application of
greco-roman ornament by 'historically informed' architects, like Terry,
Adams, etc.

If this timeline is anything similar to what has happened in music,
then the interest in historical precedent could not have created a
tabula rasa of performing nuance. The tabula rasa would have been
created by other factors a full 20-30 years prior to the more
widespread interest in historical approaches to performing. Historical
research, if anything, would have helped open the door to other
performance criteria, which may have not yet achieved the artisan
nuances of the beginning of the century, if only because existing
musicians today are still operating under the 'professional smoothness'
that started in the 1950s, and are trying to get away from that,
apparently with little success according to David7.

I don't know if this makes any sense, or if my characterizations are
correct. But at least that's how I've understood the phenomena.

In that sense, I too decry the loss of the artisan in architecture. But
it will be difficult for this to return on the same scale as before the
1930s, primarily because of the forever-changed nature of the building
profession, the more schools, the technological refinements, etc., all
of which constrain the appropriate involvement on the artisan (not to
mention the high cost of using someone with such 'specialized
knowledge' as opposed to the common knowledge of pre 1930s, when there
were many more artisans). I would not be surprised if similar problems
existed in the music world. In the end, one would have to go to the 3rd
world to find a larger base of artisan construction/playing.

Marcello

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