# An Explanation of Modern Dragging Tempi; portamento and legato



## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

Wagner himself said he took only a little longer than eight minutes to get through the overture and complained bitterly about conductors who dragged their way through the score - and, no, Wagner was not rushing to fit a recording onto fewer 78 rpm discs since he predated recording**. Yet between Muck (8' 31") and Norrington (8' 28") it could hardly be more different. One makes it sound completely natural, the other makes it sound rushed and facile. It only serves to remind us why Wagner gave up adding metronome markings to his scores - conductors would mindlessly follow the metronome marking and, still, the tempi sounded all wrong.

I suspect there are reasons for Norrington's abject failure in this instance. Part of the problem is that modern orchestral musicians are uncomfortable playing music at fluid tempo after a lifetime of playing it at dragging tempi. Older generations of musicians such as those in Karl Muck's era play like faster tempi just came naturally - they probably never once stopped to even think that the tempi might be considered fast. Even the playing techniques of that era are better suited to faster tempi. For example, portamento helps to create as sense of greater legato and helps to prevent the choppy staccato effect that can creep in with faster tempi. Portamento also helps to elongate phrase lengths. Flowing, longer phrases are one of the main advantages of fluid tempi. The long phrases in turn encourage a greater flowing cantabile. A greater emphasis falls too on bowing technique rather than fingering.

The older generation were brought up to play as much of the phrase in a single "breath" of the bow as possible. Today, string plays seem to take many more breaths of the bow. If you do this at faster tempi, it sounds very choppy as the line get broken up into a series of subphrases. The only way to regain the legato of the line then is to play the music more slowly. All you have to do now is to add more vibrato to add interest to the line. Presto - you have modern period practice.

The trouble is that it is very hard to get modern musicians to adjust to the nineteenth century period aesthetic of faster, more fluidly cantabile phrases. You have to rethink your approach to the music from scratch. If you merely play it the same way as you do in the modern slow, vibrato laden manner only sped up, naturally it sounds too fast.

The other trouble with Norrington is that the musicians sound like they are concentrating too hard on trying to get used to unfamiliar period instruments to really be able to have time to totally rethink their approach to musical interpretation. In this day and age, rehearsal time is precious too. The end result is a bunch of under-rehearsed musician who really never feel fully comfortable playing the music on strange instruments at even stranger tempi. This is how you get these under-rehearsed train wrecks passed off as "authentic performance practice". Then you get these fools concocting the most ridiculous high blown defence about how this is how the composer supposedly "really wanted it to be played". Hah!

Of course, there is also the unfortunate example of Toscanini (1867-1957). Some of his tempi are very old fashioned, in the nineteenth century manner (though some of his Wagner is some of the slowest in history). Toscanini generally went against the grain of the fashion of his time by refusing the adopt the modern fashion of increasingly slower tempi. In the case of his Beethoven, Toscanini often justified this by pointing to the older generation of conductors, especially Karl Muck. However, the musicians in Toscanini's NBC Symphony all too often produce a choppy sound, with harsh accents in all the wrong places. This may be a sign that come the 1950s musicians had already grown uncomfortable with the old fashioned fast tempi Toscanini imposed on his musicians. So once again, like Norrington, Toscanini is a prime example of what not to do. I would rather listen to Furtwängler - slow tempi done right.

*Read more at* http://thinkclassical.blogspot.com/2012/07/thoughts-on-brahms-symphonies.html

*The standard line is that orchestras are getting better*, even as great singers (the 50s was the "silver age" of Wagner singing and the 30s/40s the golden age) and great conductors disappear. Orchestral playing is supposedly the best it's ever been, but is it really? This article gives me the impression that orchestras are playing fewer incorrect notes because they're playing slower ("dragging tempi") . This article has provided the most persuasive hypothesis for why (most) HIP recordings often sound so terrible even though it's supposedly close to what the composer had in mind. This also explains why the best modern faster-than-average-tempo recordings were done by a conductor whose rehearsal requirements were legendary (Kleiber rehearsed 30 times for his studio Tristan recording, 10 with the orchestra alone.) Usually in HIP recordings of the romantic repertoire so much legato is lost and the concomitant luxurious beauty.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

You're talking about the Meistersinger Prelude there in the beginning. Just to clarify.


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## Krisena (Jul 21, 2012)

Another little note: Wagner didn't mean that all music should be played fast. I read his "On Conducting" essay where he said that all music has an "ideal tempo" where the music comes alive, and that it's the conductor's job to find that tempo, whether it be slow or fast. Wagner actually complained about Mendelssohn's tendency to set too fast tempos for the music he conducted. I think this problem is a bit more nuanced than you make it out to be.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

BRIANWALKER.

Toscanini's NBC Orchestra was a superb precision instrument and he was a superb Wagner conductor.
I think you have been confused by the lousy recordings that RCA gave him.


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