[pila405]

@bigshot - I don't agree with your view. There is a lot of interpretation in HIP, even though they restrict themselves in terms of instrumentation. They gave the baroque music a whole new life (anything pre-romantic, actually). For a long time this music was performed in a rigid and cold manner. Lifeless even, or waaay too grandiose and romantic with no notion of what was meant to be expressed and communicated to the audience. Besides, I don't see the players and the composer as equals, they can do whatever they wish with it, but the core idea is the composer's and usually composing is significantly more demanding than performing. I myself don't compose, but know quite a few very talented composers and players. A performer almost never invest in the composition as much as the composer, and it's understandable.

 

[Argyris]

I don't object to HIP in principle, but rather to the attitude of snobbery that some of its proponents have adopted. I routinely see statements like "all earlier performances and performance styles are obsolete" or "it would be unthinkable to produce a non-HIP new recording of <insert work>". Of course this isn't everybody, and there are plenty of people who appreciate a wide range of performances, but it happens enough to grate on me.

HIP serves a purpose as it gives us a glimpse into how music may have sounded when it was written, but the key word here is may. Since there's no way to know for certain, and indeed, performance practices from the Baroque era in particular are known to have been highly variable (and rarely explicitly notated), there's still a subjective element to any HIP performance. And that makes it no better than any other interpretation.

I'm glad HIP exists, even if I personally strongly dislike the sound and many of the stylistic choices, because I don't feel like additional interpretations of music somehow take away from the ones already employed or which one may prefer. It's not and should never be considered a zero sum game.

 

[pila405]

@Argyris - I think the snobbery is a reaction for the early mockery with which it was received at first. I don't like it either and I actually think that in many ways it makes little to no sense to play on actually old instruments. New instruments that were built in the same way in order to produce the same timbre - yes, but investing a lot of money in a few hundred years old trumpet \ flute \ violin makes very little to no sense at all.

That's not precise, because unlike how it was done before, they actually take the time to research stuff and see what was the Zeitgeist and limitations of available instruments. I think it is very reasonable to assume it gives an interpretation which is much closer to what the composer had in mind, but it's not always the best one. It's a matter of taste. But this variability in performance is what makes it into actual music and much more exciting and interesting.

It really shouldn't make you like previously known performances less, but I know it made me view many pieces differently and I couldn't go back to what I knew before.

Anyway this has become into a very interesting discussion, so I'll just link here to a 'controversial' interpretation of Mozart's Prague symphony:

 

[bigshot]

I look at it like I look at any other art form. It's interesting to see Shakespeare performed exactly the way it would have been in Shakespeare's time- boys playing the female parts and all that. And it's interesting to see operas performed in traditional dress with painted flats for backgrounds and stage mechanics from the gaslight era. But to me, performance style isn't the essence of the art, the ideas and emotions are. If I want to see Romeo & Juliet or Tristan und Isolde, I'd rather have the interpretation be free to find the core of the drama in a way that modern audiences like me can relate to- even if that means making it as a movie or using video projection to create a feeling of motion and space, or setting the story in a different place and time.

There's good HIP to be sure, and it's worthwhile to record HIP since other styles of performance have been so well documented in recordings. But as idiomatic as it is, I can't help feeling a sense of separateness when I listen to it. It almost seems like accounting, with every bar of music neatly stacked up in piles. It's very interesting to think about. There's a nice feeling or orderliness to it, but I prefer Heifetz or Gould or Stokowski where the music spills out all over and I instantly feel the bond with humanity. That stuff grabs me by the collar and makes me feel. To me, passion is the most important aspect of music making. You can't have too much of that. I want to feel what the composer felt, I don't care if it doesn't sound like what he heard. I also think that the greatest performers are equals to the greatest composers. Sinatra and Fitzgerald were just as much a part of the music as Kern and Gershwin.

The composer writes music on paper to document it. But it's just dead chicken scratches on paper until the performer brings the music to life.

You'll never find me criticizing a performance for being too fast or too slow. Speed is dependent on phrasing and the point of view. I love both slow and fast performances of the same work. It's like the old film business adage. "Q: How long is too long for a movie?" "A: How long is it good?"

 

[pila405]

I completely agree with the first paragraph.

It's funny, because to me it always felt the other way around. It's always the HIP which managed to fill the piece with life and passion. Play a gigue or badinerie you can actually dance to! Take for example the recording I linked to, such music used to be performed with a much narrower dynamic range, with much smaller differences in tempi and much more constrict articulation. Here is another example, now with comparison:




Many times those in HIP are much more engaged in the music they play:

 

[sonitus mirus]

HIP is just a modern interpretation that probably has very little to do with authenticity with the actual sound and performance from the past. The instruments made today are superior, the musicians are better trained and more talented, and there are simply so many more people on the planet today that have the means to be able to pick up an instrument and train several hours a day. (greater than 7 times as many from 1800)

I just can't believe HIP is actually any closer to the originally performed pieces than a John Williams-led theatrical performance. It is just a different, yet modern style.

That is just how I see it.

 

[bigshot]

In the past, the idea was "Let's see what Toscanini does with Beethoven." "Let's see what Stokowski does with Beethoven." Both of them had fans and detractors. But by God, they were different and unique and honest to their own point of view. With HIP, there is an underlying belief that the way it was played in the composer's time is the PROPER way to play it. I don't want proper performances. I want ones that grab me and communicate to me on an emotional level.

Here is an example of HIP Bach



And Heifetz



And Milstein



Heifetz brings tremendous sadness to it. Milstein brings a touch of anger contrasted with nostalgic delicacy. The emotions flow from their bows. The HIP one doesn't emote because the instruments of Bach's time were incapable of it and the performer feels obligated to play the notes on the page according to the manner of a totally different time and place. It's like dressing up in your grandfather's suit and pretending to be him. It can sound very good and even beautiful. But it just doesn't grab me.

OK. Now the same thing for the piano transcribed by Busoni and played by Rubinstein in a sombre way.



Now here is Stokowski throwing historicism to the winds and creating his own intensely passionate vision of the music on a grand scale.



Same piece. Five completely different sounds and five completely different attitudes. The differences are what interest me. Bach is just the starting point. The personality of the performer is what makes it real. Truly great music leaves opportunities for performers to inject their own soul into it. That isn't being excessive or non-idiomatic. That is being an artist.

Which one of these is the way Bach intended it? Well, the piece was written following Bach's wife's death. He imprinted his sadness on the abstract notes. Each of these performers finds that sadness in a different way. Each one . Well... all but one, because she was focused on the presentation, not the core. As far as I'm concerned, the more the merrier when it comes to honest heartfelt emotions. That is what I go to art to experience.

I just realized that this is a post praising subjectivity in the objective thread. Sorry!

 

[gregorio]

[1] Not holding this link up as research, but one should be skeptical of everything in classical music. [2] Also worth asking is that even if Bach did have a 'revival', were the resulting performances in any way, shape, or form 'Bach-isch'?

1. Yes, to an extent but then I didn't perpetuate the myth that Bach was completely unknown, just unknown by the general populace. It's certain for example that Mozart knew of Bach because he studied composition for a while in London with one of Bach's sons (JPE if I remember correctly).

2. As you've seen from subsequent posts, that opens a bit of a can of worms! We've got a number of issues with HIPs. While we've a fairly good idea of instrument manufacture of the time, we've got a fairly poor idea of musician abilities or performance style and the further back in time we go, the more vague our knowledge. This is not helped by the fact that the notation used in the baroque period was very vague compared to the romantic and later periods. Many, in some cases most, of the notes were not actually written in the score, just a few notes and a lot of figures and symbols informing or implying what the other notes should be. Modern Bach scores you can buy are therefore already "interpretations". It's generally accepted that musicians of the time had a great deal more flexibility in exactly what they played and how they played than is the case today and indeed, there's evidence to suggest that composers' own performances of their compositions could vary wildly from the score and even from one performance to the next. A score was more of a general guideline than the relatively precise blueprint it's become in the last century or so.

I'm not saying HIPs are a complete waste of time, certainly some pieces appear to make more sense performed on historical instruments and they might be giving us a good idea of what it would have sounded like but we don't really know. My guess is that HIPs are usually still very substantially different. We even have this problem with relatively modern music and it just gets worse the further back in time we go. For example, it's probably impossible today to perform the Rite of Spring (Sacre Du Prentemps) as it was originally performed, even to the point that some of the musical intention has been lost and this is a piece composed in 1913, in the modern era and 200 years after Bach!

G

 

[RRod]

We need a name for the concept "how long does it take on a Classical thread for Stokowski and Toscanini to come up". That they sounded very different from one another isn't any proof that HIP performances all sound the same, when in fact they don't. Taking Bach as an example: Kuijken's S&P's couldn't sound more different than Holloway's. Same with the last two HIP efforts at EKNM I heard, both of which were much more exciting and less stodgy than what I grew up with (of course, I have yet to hear a recording that has the balls to take the Romanze at an actual Andante alla breve).

I agree with point about difficulties in intepreting/compiling scores, but that doesn't mean that Bach would ever have taken a Stokowskian view of his own works. Or that Beethoven would have ever approved of Furtwängler's tempi. Or that Mozart would enjoy his own works bereft of improvisation.

HIP let us hear alternatives that I think infused something fresh into classical music. I can kinda agree that purely echt performances are starting to sound un-fresh, but we're also seeing bands at the level of the Berlin Phil. slimming down and even improvising for Mozart. Mission accomplished, I say.

 

[bigshot]

Toscanini and Stokowski are probably the greatest conductors who ever lived. It's not surprising they come up. And it really doesn't matter what Bach and Beethoven would have thought of their interpretations of their works. The B's are long since dead. If it wasn't for the great interpreters making the works relevant and meaningful for modern audiences, their works would be dead too.

"Sounding different" isn't really what I was talking about in my comparison. I was talking about finding different emotional angles on a work- different means of expression. A truly great conductor finds an expressive angle on the work that is unique and personal. No single approach is "correct", instead it's like looking at a jewel through different facets. That might mean changing the way something has been traditionally performed. It might work or not work. You may like it or not like it. None of that matters. The attempt to create something personal out of markings on a sheet of paper is what counts.

The best way to get to the emotional core of a work is to focus on the emotional core, not to get distracted by the technique of performance or historical details. HIP performances often sound very different from each other, but the differences are usually on the surface of the performance- timbre, tempo, dynamics. Those three things can be used for expressive purposes, but to a performer like Heifetz, technique is a given. He didn't construct his performance around technique, he constructed the technique around the emotion.Technical perfection and "appropriateness" of style aren't what performers should focus on. Technique should serve the meaning, not act as a substitute for it.

Maybe as time goes by, HIP won't be thought of in terms of performance style any more and conductors can move on to focusing on the contents instead of the wrapping. That happens occasionally in HIP recordings, but not enough in my opinion. Personally, I don't care about instruments, especially with Bach. It can be performed on Kazoos or Jamaican Steel Drums and I will like it if it expresses the essence of the music.

 

[RRod]

Toscanini and Stokowski are probably the greatest conductors who ever lived. It's not surprising they come up.

Some composer:

Interesting, because over the past few years I’ve consulted Toscanini recordings of repertoire I’ve been doing only to find his interpretations frequently bewildering and puzzling. His performance of Strauss’s Töd und Verklärung, for instance, is wildly, willfully off the mark compared to what Strauss’s meticulous score asks for.

One gets the feeling that Toscanini, famous for never using a score, eventually stopped consulting one, ending up with interpretations that could be bizarrely disconnected. The legend, of course, was that Toscanini restored “the composer’s intent” to the interpretive art. But his recordings don’t always bear that out.Stokowski, however, was something else. There is no one in the world of classical music today who can even approach him for his shocking blend of chutzpah, self-promotion, or interpretive delinquency.

Let's just agree on de gustibus non est disputandum.

 

[Zapp_Fan]

In the past, the idea was "Let's see what Toscanini does with Beethoven." "Let's see what Stokowski does with Beethoven." Both of them had fans and detractors. But by God, they were different and unique and honest to their own point of view. With HIP, there is an underlying belief that the way it was played in the composer's time is the PROPER way to play it. I don't want proper performances. I want ones that grab me and communicate to me on an emotional level.

I don't know if HIP has an essential normative POV that says "Historical is the most-right way", but I do think that at minimum, you have to believe that the "most original sound/style possible" is interesting and worthwhile in some way. I like the idea of HIP but don't think it's more valid than any other performance. On that point I am maybe out of wack with people on this board - I tend to believe there is a single "most correct" way to listen to a recording (go to the original mixing studio and listen there, lol), but there's no single best way to perform a piece of music...

NB: I am not looking to argue about what playback method is best, just noting what my view on it is.

 

[Zapp_Fan]

The resolution of ear (in frequency domain) gets worse and worse as frequencies go up. See: https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/perceptual-effects-of-room-reflections.13/

For that reason, you need to "perceptually filter" the measured response for it to equate what we hear. Once there, you go from this:

To this:

What bothers the eye is not the same as what bothers the ear.

As Dr. Toole is fond of saying, "a lot of our problems in acoustics started when we started to measure!"

This makes sense and is pretty interesting. Not to go all evolutionary-psychology but I'd guess if we were really sensitive to comb filtering in nature, it would be more distracting than useful. It's just interesting that FR features that are very obvious when listening to a sine sweep are rather hard to pick out when listening to program material. Luckily most music doesn't have a lot of sine sweeps.

 

[bigshot]

I agree that HIP is worthwhile. It's like visiting a grand old building that is now a museum in its own original context. That is fascinating. But it isn't the same as a grand old building still serving a vital use for modern people. I think art is best when it's alive. Not when it's tidied up and put on the proper shelf and dusted off every once in a while.

 

[bigshot]

When I was a teenager back in the 40s, Leopold Stokowski shared for some years the podium of the New York Philharmonic. His co-director was the late Dimitri Mitropoulis and together they contributed to that memorable Sunday afternoon series on CBS radio, which was one of the few redeeming features of American broadcasting in the years after World War II. Running opposite the Stokowski/Metropoulis programs on CBS was NBC’s entry in the symphonic sweepstakes, a series featuring the orchestra which bore the network’s name, which was created for and conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

The attitude of the young people of my generation toward these weekend music specials was rather interesting. It was generally bandied about by my conservatory friends that you were either a Stokowski fan or a Toscanini devotee. There was apparently no middle ground, except perhaps that which was occasionally occupied by Bruno Walter. According to the academic banter of that time, Toscanini embodied most progressive musical virtues. His performances were direct, straightforward and emotionally objective. Whichever notes, dynamic marks or tempo indications appeared before him in the score were, to the best of his and the NBC Orchestra’s ability, what you heard. For Toscanini, the composer’s notational suggestions were gospel.

Not so with Stokowski. He was and is, for want of a better word, an ecstatic. Stokowski is involved with the notes, the tempo marks, the dynamic indications in the score to the same extent that a filmmaker is involved with the original book or source which supplies the impetus- the idea of his film. So, Stokowski’s performances either stand or fall depending on the degree he can infuse them with a sense of his own commitment to the project. And happily for those who became addicted to his way of making music, there’s rarely been a more committed, more imaginative, more resourceful artist than Leopold Stokowski.

There was however another reason for the disrepute into which Mr. Stokowski’s interperative techniques had fallen in those years, besides that penchant for a neo-literalist performing style which the young people of my generation espoused. He was not only a popularizer- a man who thought nothing of transforming the keyboard works of Bach into massive orchestral statements. But more than that, he was a film personality. In the mid-1930s, he’d relinquished his post as the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, in which he single-handedly transformed the standards of orchestral playing in North America, in order to join Deanna Durbin and Donald Duck on the silver screen in Hollywood.

“I go to a higher calling.” he was reported to have said to the press conference which was called to announce his departure, and if one can filter out the inevitable quotient of defensiveness which one may assume to infiltrate a remark of that kind, it was a remarkably revealing comment.

Technology for Stokowski was a higher calling. He was indeed the first great musician to realize that the future of music would inexorably wound up with technological progress, and that communications media were in fact the best friend that music ever had. Many of his recordings… and all of which I know from personal experience where he maintains a firm hand in relation to the processes of production… were years ahead sonically.

But the real benefit of his interest in technology, I think, was that it enabled Stokowski to resist the inhibitions induced by those pre-technological attitudes toward music-making which created the stratified roles of performer, listener and composer; and which held that those roles would ever remain separate and distinct. For Stokowski, I think, those distinctions are themselves are the single greatest danger that the artist must face. And I suspect that the enormous appeal of his music-making over the last sixty years or so is precisely his realization of that fact, and his willingness to act upon the assumptions that follow from it.

Stokowski is 88 now, at least he was when I interviewed him for this program. Nothing in his manner, his outlook or the vitality of his music-making suggests the incipient nonagenarian, but it’s perhaps useful to recall that Stokowski was born while Wagner was still alive, and when Brahms died, Stokowski himself was already a teenager.

In theory, his outlook and his art should represent the aesthetic attitudes of a bygone era, or eras. But in fact, because of his extraordinary warmth and humility, his remarkable receptivity to new ideas, and above all because in his lifetime we’ve already seen nothing but triumph. But the essential humanity of those technological ideas which have informed all of his work as a musician, Leopold Stokowski is very much a man of the future.

-Glenn Gould