Re: Schiff comment part 2

On Saturday, July 19, 2008, Kevin wrote:

Well, my own experience (which includes interviewing and attending the
rehearsals of Brüggen, Koopman, Harnoncourt, Norrington, Herrweghe, and
Gardiner, as well as a number of HIP players) is that HIPsters
intentionally violate the boundaries of scholarship for musical reasons
all the time.

Why do you seem to think your experiences, because they were in
person, are more valid than my experiences in print and on video? Or
was that not your intended meaning?

Not at all. You are claiming that something doesn't happen. I have seen it
happen. That you haven't seen it happen is therefore irrelevant.

That's because much of what he says is designed to sell records, and
much more of what he says is the result of great confusion on his part.
The man is a musician, not a philosopher.

Excuse me, but this is nonsense. You don't have to be a "philosopher"
simply to get your stories straight. And you are saying that
Norrington is lying?

Not at all. I'm saying that he doesn't really have a coherent view, and
that much of his incoherent view is designed to sell CDs. That said, I have
personally heard him espouse the view you are claiming he would never
utter. Also, see the quotation below.

Most of what you write in this post has to do with instruments, not
interpretation.

How is choice of instruments not an interpretive decision? And not all of
what I wrote has to do with instruments. There is also the matter of tempo,
Brüggen asking his players to ignore a marking in the score, etc.

"I know you've cited the case of HIP performers using modern
instruments. I accept that, but I'm not convinced it's an aesthetic
choice. It may just be a practical one, so they can perform in a
given city, or so they can perform with a respected orchestra, or just
with an orchestra they like, as a compromise.

Yes, it may be all of those things. But in some cases it's not.

"More convincing would be an example, say, of a HIP conductor telling an
orchestra to do something that he knows is inauthentic.

I have already given examples of this.

I never saw anything on any of those videos where HIP conductors told
their ensembles to perform something in a way that would have been
unknown in the period. So where is my mistake?

Your mistake is in inferring from that the fact that you haven't seen it to
the conclusion that it doesn't happen.

I remember Brüggen actually telling members of the OAE to play a note
different from the one printed in the score! To the extent that he gave
a justification for this, it was not historical. (The same goes for his
choice of tempi.)

Well, here's the sort of thing I was looking for. But it is still one
person, and hearsay.

If my testimony is not reliable, I don't know why we're even talking about
this. I apologize that I didn't bring a video camera to the rehearsal to
document this.

I don't know if you're accurately reporting what
you say.

This is like a conspiracy theory. Any evidence contrary to your view is
dismissed as unreliable.

Maybe you remember it wrong. Maybe you misunderstood.
Maybe Bruggen found a flaw in the edition they were using.

Yes, or maybe you're just wrong.

Maybe among the voluminous stacks of interviews you've done or the
reading you've committed yourself to you could find a quote from a
major HIP figure saying something along the lines of the following:

"The scholarship and the intentions of the composer are not so much
important as is a personal artist's interpretation. We don't
necessarily have to always 'play it the way they played it'. We can
bring our own 20th/21st century traditions to interpretation and/or
our own whimsical attitudes, as long as it results in an
interpretation that we find appealing. We can do things, even, that
would have been completely unknown in the Baroque and Classical eras."

John ***:

"As far as I'm concerned there are strong intellectual problems with a
strict insistence on using original instruments. I have a subjective
affinity to using historical instruments, because I find that their
limitations are analogous to the limitations the composer knew in his own
age, which may have influenced him to write in a certain way, to create
works in one way rather than some other way."

Anthony Rooley:

"If Monteverdi is as great as we all say he is, there is room for at least
a dozen ways of approaching him."

Anner Bylsma:

"I'd like to say something about being authentic. 'Authentic' means 'just
as alive as it ever was.' Being authentic is, most of all, Aladdin rubbing
his lamp: we rehearse some music, and all of a sudden we have the feeling,
'Hey! This is right. This is the way it must go.' And I guarantee you that
in a year's time, when we hear the tape of that, we will agree that it's
not at all how it should go. But it's a very wonderful feeling--'This is
how it should go!'--and that's authenticity. And I think it's worthwhile.
But it has nothing to do with being historically correct."

Julianne Baird:

"The modern idea of the sanctity of the composer's score simply didn't exit
in the Baroque tradition, especially among Italians. Music was a living
art, created anew by the singer in each performance. It was not a dead
artifact. When the composer in the Italian tradition set down his
directions on paper, he was not killing possibilities: he was creating
possibilities. He was providing a sort of blueprint for an artist who
would then realize the music in his or her own creative way."

Nicholas McGegan:

"The great thing about performance is that you can never be right for all
time, the way a scientist can be right about the earth going around the
sun. These things are much more fluid. In the arts, one thing you can
never be is absolutely right."

Jeffrey Thomas:

"[M]usicology is one of those disciplines that can prove anything. You can
take opposite sides of an issue and find treatises that support both. I
don't want to get into the whole business of what's right and what's
wrong--we're just trying to give really good performance. . . .
Ultimately, I'm not concerned about what Bach did, but about artistic
results *now*."

Malcolm Bilson:

"I would be the first to say that it's not necessary to be concerned with
Mozart's intentions; and if you're not, that's fine. . . Now, Mozart wrote
great notes, and you can play them in many different ways and produce
great music. I've heard wonderful Mozart from Rachmaninoff and Schnabel .
.. . . I certainly don't claim that I or other fortepianists play Mozart
better than such artists."

Roger Norrington:

"In the end you're doing the music for now, absolutely for now. People get
a bit confused about that. They think that because we're being
historically informed, we're trying to be historical or 'authentic.' I
*never* use the word 'authentic.' There is no such thing."

"I like to play early music with old instruments because it *sounds* so
good, not because it's politically correct! It isn't a question of being
more 'moral' somehow--that it's immoral to play with vibrato, for
instance. I take a more hedonistic viewpoint."

John Eliot Gardiner:

"I am not implying that two or three generations of great interpreters have
'got it wrong' up to now. That would be not merely impertinent but to deny
the valid creative tension which undoubtedly exists between the conception
of a musical work and its realization; in other words the way a
composition can survive history and not merely tolerate but be enriched by
changes of instruments and styles of performance."

"The whole challenge consists in precisely this: finding the perfect
meeting-point of heart and mind, instinct and knowledge. But we should
beware of instinct as a bottleable commodity. It changes with habit,
usage, and redefinition of stylistic parameters."

All from *Inside Early Music,* by Bernard Sherman.

Other fun tidbits from that book: Bylsma loves Kreisler, William Christie's
favorite recordings include Beecham's Zauberflöte and Messiah, Horowitz's
Scarlatti, and Casals's and Landowska's Bach.

Oh, and one final comment:

John Eliot Gardiner: Enduring musical masterpieces have a way of taking on
a life of their own, not just after the composer's death but from the
moment the ink is dry on the finished score, and of then being adapted to
conform with the prevailing tastes of each generation--and why not?" (From
liner notes to recording of Verdi's Requiem)

Explain this one. Do you mean an andante that sounds like a largo or a
presto? Or do you mean an allegro that sounds more like a presto or a
very fast reading of a movement without tempo indication?

How about Brüggen and Herrweghe telling their players to ignore Beethoven's
metronome markings on the grounds that they're "too fast"?

My understanding is that the MM marks in Beethoven are controversial. I
may be wrong about that.

What could be controverisal about a metronome marking that calls for one
bar a second?

Matty
.