# At what point does early music become authentic?



## Five and Dime (Jul 8, 2016)

I've been listening to a lot of pre-1700 music lately. It's pretty clear to me that for the earliest music − for example Martin Codax's Cantigas de Amigo from c. 1230 - we really have no idea what the music sounded like when they were first performed. Modern performers just make "informed guesses" about what the music sounded like, based for example on the types of musical instruments depicted in paintings from that era.

Needless to say, the odds that these educated guesses really reflect the music of the time seem pretty slim. More often early music performances seem to reflect what modern "world music" listeners will enjoy hearing.

I understand that musical notation was evolving during the period, though I'm not too familiar with the details. Nevertheless, it seems safe to say that for newer music - say late baroque music - we have a very good idea what compositions sounded like when they were first performed. Of course HIP practitioners may quibble over details, but it's clear that performers are not just taking wild guesses.

So let's assume, for the sake of argument, that modern performances of early medieval music is roughly 10% correct and 90% speculative guesswork, and modern performance of late baroque music is roughly 90% correct and 10% speculative guesswork. My question is this − between these two endpoints, how quickly does our (collective) confidence grow that we know what the music should sound like? 

Was there, for example, a quantum leap forward with the introduction of proper musical notation, or is the transition between knowing and not knowing more gradual?

I'm hoping for some tidy cutoff date, such as "for most works written after 1450 we have a pretty good idea of what they sounded like when they were first performed". But I'm prepared for more vague guidelines as well.

Thanks,


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Even for a composer as late as Dominico Scarlatti, there is considerable uncertainty about some major aspects of performance, in particular about the tempos and rhythms of sections of the sonatas.

In standard musical notations much is left unspecified. It is as if there is a deliberate openness, performers are expected to use their imaginations. The idea of trying to recreate what the music sounded like in the first performances is inappropriate, an incorrect idea of what music is.

And you know, we know some important things about what the music _didn't_ sound like. We know, for example, that the Bach gamba sonatas were not played using a metal framed piano and cello, for example. We know that Buxtehude's organ music was not played on instruments tuned with equal temperament.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

From what I gather, it depends on what music, which pieces you're looking at. I've heard it claimed that some songs only have the melody notated and require an improvised accompaniment. However, many Medieval polyphonic pieces have the whole piece notated down, indeed more exactly than any Baroque basso continuo piece (where you have to perform some amount of guesswork with regards to which chords to use). 

I wouldn't equate having to guess about instrumentation with "no idea what it sounded like". Western classical music has always been more or less abstract, by which I mean that instrumentation isn't particularly importan. It became more important with Wagner and onward, but even there you could change instruments around without much harm as long as you don't try to use instruments that are simply unsuitable for playing long held notes or whatever.

The biggest issue currently in Renaissance music at least - since we have some rather good clues about tempo issues - is musica ficta, but most people don't even notice any difference when different groups use different ficta, so again not that big a deal.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Music probably changed a lot during pre-Baroque as it was a fast growing new art form. So if it works to your ears in particular, and if a lot of other listeners agree, then it's a safe interpretation.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

ArtMusic said:


> Music probably changed a lot during pre-Baroque as it was a fast growing new art form. So if it works to your ears in particular, and if a lot of other listeners agree, then it's a safe interpretation.


Fast growing and new over the course of six or so centuries. That's quite some sustained growth.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Five and Dime, you seem to be laboring under some bizarre misconceptions about the accuracy of notation in early music. Briefly: Absolute accuracy in the notation of pitch was accomplished by the 11th century, although there is one major collection of polyphonic music from that century where pitch is ambiguous. Accuracy in rhythmic notation took longer. But by the late 1200s, the problem of notating the rhythmic values of the longer notes, roughly equivalent to modern whole, half and quarter notes, was solved without ambiguity. By the mid-1300s absolute accuracy for all rhythmic values was in place. 

So the answer to your general question is: By the mid 14thc the guesswork is gone. Not 10%, not 90%, but pretty much 100% accuracy of pitch and rhythm. We know precisely how it is supposed to sound in all of the most important parameters. Moreover, there is an awful lot of earlier music about which there is no significant ambiguity. 

In the late 14thc a system for the notation of incredibly complex rhythms, polymeters, and irrational proportions was in use the like of which was not matched again until the mid 20thc. As a student I, like many other budding musicologists, learned to transcribe music from late medieval times through the Renaissance into modern notation. All of this notation is proper notation that accomplished exactly what it was supposed to accomplish.


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## Ingélou (Feb 10, 2013)

^^^ What an interesting post. Thanks, EdwardBast! :tiphat:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Five and Dime, you seem to be laboring under some bizarre misconceptions about the accuracy of notation in early music. Briefly: Absolute accuracy in the notation of pitch was accomplished by the 11th century, although there is one major collection of polyphonic music from that century where pitch is ambiguous. Accuracy in rhythmic notation took longer. But by the late 1200s, the problem of notating the rhythmic values of the longer notes, roughly equivalent to modern whole, half and quarter notes, was solved without ambiguity. By the mid-1300s absolute accuracy for all rhythmic values was in place.
> 
> So the answer to your general question is: By the mid 14thc the guesswork is gone. Not 10%, not 90%, but pretty much 100% accuracy of pitch and rhythm. We know precisely how it is supposed to sound in all of the most important parameters. Moreover, there is an awful lot of earlier music about which there is no significant ambiguity.
> 
> In the late 14thc a system for the notation of incredibly complex rhythms, polymeters, and irrational proportions was in use the like of which was not matched again until the mid 20thc. As a student I, like many other budding musicologists, learned to transcribe music from late medieval times through the Renaissance into modern notation. All of this notation is proper notation that accomplished exactly what it was supposed to accomplish.


It's one thing to say that the notation was capable of specifying pitch, but it's quite another to say that in a performance, the musicians produced the pitch as notated, rather than flatten it or sharpen it for expressive (or other?) reasons. Hence how the score relates to the music is problematic.

There are also debates and contentions about duration certainly and rhythm possibly - at least that's my impression from reading Gérard Geay's essay for Lucian Kandel's Machaut mass. Any pointers to find out more about how Geay's work has been received would be much appreciated by the way, since I rather like what Ensemble Musica Nova have done.


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## Five and Dime (Jul 8, 2016)

Edward: Thanks for this insight. I'm sure you know much more than I ever will.

I am surprised by how early you say our confidence in the accuracy of modern performance practices skyrockets. I wonder how universal such confidence is across works from the period.

The reason why I ask is that I know that for some composers we know a fair amount about when they were born, where they lived and worked, when they died, etc. But for other composers we know almost nothing, and can only guess in which decade their most famous works were written. I would imagine that the quality of existing manuscripts for early works can also vary greatly by location, period, composer, etc.

To be a little more concrete, I have in my collection:
- Alfonso X El Sabio: Cantigas De Santa Maria
- Carmina Burana
- Cantigas de Amigo
- Coincy: Miracles of Notre-Dame
- Music From The Montpellier Codex
- Neidhart: A Minnesinger and his 'Vale of Tears'
- The Song of the Sibyl
- Codex Chantilly
- La Messe de Tournai
- Machaut: La Messe de Nostre Dame; Songs from Le Voir Dit
- Codex Faenza

Would it be fair to say that we are pretty close to 100% in our understanding of what ALL of these works should sound like, perhaps after the first three or four on the list?

Also, you mentioned pitch and tempo. I'm curious about your thoughts about instruments used and performance practices as well.

I should read those CD booklets more carefully and probably other sources of information as well. But I am grateful for your (and everyone's) insights.

By the way, in the case of Cantigas de Amigo, I think my CD booklet (or maybe wikipedia) said that all we know for sure are the lyrics. Performers have applied melodies taken from other sources to the lyrics, and made informed guesses about instrumentation, etc. I'm not sure if that's an outlier or par for the course for songs from the thirteenth century.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Five and Dime said:


> Edward: Thanks for this insight. I'm sure you know much more than I ever will.
> 
> I am surprised by how early our confidence in the accuracy of modern performance practices skyrockets. I wonder how universal such confidence is across works from the period.
> 
> ...


For the Machaut mass, I think no, see my comment about Kandel and Geay. I would very much doubt it for the Chantilly Codex, just because performances of the music sound so different! Probably the same for Carmina Burana, but I've explored that one less.


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## premont (May 7, 2015)

As Mandryka pointed out, it is easier to tell what early music *did not *sound like, than to tell what it *should* sound like. At best we may be able to tell, what it *might* have sounded like. The indications in the scores are generally so few, that options are legio, and the more so the earlier the music in question is. So in earlier times the performers certainly had much freedom in interpretation, and why shouldn´t we have a similar freedom?


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## Five and Dime (Jul 8, 2016)

Here's an interesting essay on this question from www.medieval.org. I don't know much about that site but here it is:

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/misc/progress.html

There's lots more stuff on that site as well for the curious - Pythagorean tuning, etc. I'm just starting to sniff around.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> It's one thing to say that the notation was capable of specifying pitch, but it's quite another to say that in a performance, the musicians produced the pitch as notated, rather than flatten it or sharpen it for expressive (or other?) reasons. Hence how the score relates to the music is problematic.
> 
> There are also debates and contentions about duration certainly and rhythm possibly - at least that's my impression from reading Gérard Geay's essay for Lucian Kandel's Machaut mass. Any pointers to find out more about how Geay's work has been received would be much appreciated by the way, since I rather like what Ensemble Musica Nova have done.


There were a number of situations in which performers were expected to flatten or sharp notes, but the rules and criteria for such _musica ficta_ were well-understood by contemporary musicians. The reasons are usually to raise leading tones at cadences, a practice that is pretty well understood, or to avoid tritones. There are cases that are difficult to decide but in the grand scheme of things this is a relatively minor area of ambiguity. I'll check the notation treatises I have on hand, see what they say about the Machaut Mass and report back.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Notation is one thing, articulation another. Compare performances of Handel's _Messiah_ or Bach's _Brandenburg Concertos_ from the 1950s with those of today. But we don't have to go back that far. How about Verdi? Take this short baritone aria, "Vieni meco" from _Ernani:_

Bruno Prevedi in 1969: 




Piero Capuccilli in 1972: 




Renato Bruson in 1983: 




They all sing the written notes accurately. But do we care?

Now hear Mattia Battistini (1856-1926) in 1906: 




Rubati, portamenti, embellishments, dynamic variety - as if the music were created on the spot. Welcome to Verdi's world. We're lucky to have recordings of 19th-century performers, however ancient their sound quality, to show us how little we know about the true sound of the music of the past.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Early music is authentic only when it is played on original instruments by the original performers in original century it was written.


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## Guest (Jul 25, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Notation is one thing, articulation another. Compare performances of Handel's _Messiah_ or Bach's _Brandenburg Concertos_ from the 1950s with those of today. But we don't have to go back that far. How about Verdi? Take this short baritone aria, "Vieni meco" from _Ernani:_
> 
> Bruno Prevedi in 1969:
> 
> ...


I fully understand your point,unfortenately I am not able to watch your examples.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Five and Dime said:


> To be a little more concrete, I have in my collection:
> - Alfonso X El Sabio: Cantigas De Santa Maria
> - Carmina Burana
> - Cantigas de Amigo
> ...


Running all of these down would take a lot of research. However, since most of them are early, before rhythmic notation was rationalized and disambiguated, there is likely to be a fair amount of conjecture involved. I can comment on a few: The Montpellier Codex is a collection of 13thc motets, it uses rhythmic modal notation, and there is ambiguity and controversy about how to transcribe many examples in this style of notation.

The Chantilly Codex contains examples of very difficult and complex notation (of music ca. 1400). Apparently there is some difficulty establishing the meter of many of the works it contains, since the use of mensuration signs is spotty in this manuscript. Nevertheless many works have been transcribed with a great deal of agreement as to the accuracy. I would check the source Mandryka cites for the Machaut. I haven't had time to do so.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Unfortunately, a time machine has yet to be invented , so we cannot be sure exactly how authentic performances on period instruments are . And remember - once a composer has begun to "decompose " , we can never know exactly what they would or would not have approved of . Remember also, that composers CHANGE THEIR MINDS . Always beware of anyone, whether a performer or musicologist ,who says "You must to it this way - period ! " And who claims to know exactly what the composer wanted .
The oldest recordings by famous opera singers or others , are of course extremely valuable and interesting , and can be very helpful to modern performers . But they do not necessarily show exactly what the composer wanted , and some may actually be doing things the composer would not have liked .
We must be careful of using these old recordings as a stick with which to bash contemporary musicians, which many critics and others have done .
Its wonderful to have the composer's own recordings , but even THEY have changed their minds as to how to perform the music when they have left more than one recording of a work. For example, Stravinsky recording Le Sacre at least twice if I remember correctly . He was always railing at conductors for taking unwarranted liberties with his music, but even he performed the same music he wrote differently on different occasions .
Performers, listeners and critics should avoid dogmatism and try to keep an open mind regarding interpretation .


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## Five and Dime (Jul 8, 2016)

Here is something I dug up on the Niedhart disc listed above (taken from musicweb intnl):

_All the Neidhart songs in Leones' recital, both music and texts, are taken from the so-called Frankfurt Neidhart Fragment, dated to around 1300 and housed at Frankfurt-am-Main University. The eight surviving pages of a larger manuscript reveal - at least to the patient and trained eye of a scholar like Lewon - six songs by Neidhart, five with *more or less complete melodies*. This is the first complete recording and performance, made possible by Lewon's *painstaking reconstruction* of the surviving material, necessitating in one case the *borrowing of appropriate melodies from elsewhere*. The results *may or may not be entirely authentic*, but the songs are compellingly evocative and utterly convincing. The instruments employed by Leones are recent reproductions but they sound terrific, especially when played with the delicacy and intuition of Lewon and Romain. 
_
In this case, maybe 50% authentic and 50% guesswork? Or am I being too critical?

As an aside, I find it interesting how much of our knowledge of early music is constrained by known manuscripts and/or fragments. For example, I read on wiki that our understanding of the first generation of the Franco-Flemish school (i.e. Guillaume Dufay, Gilles Binchois, Antoine Busnois, and John Dunstaple) is based on just 65 surviving texts.


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

Barbebleu said:


> Early music is authentic only when it is played on original instruments by the original performers in original century it was written.


You guys with time machines are always such snobs.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Mahlerian said:


> Fast growing and new over the course of six or so centuries. That's quite some sustained growth.


Re-interpreting for modern times too with historically informed practice. That's why such music is so well loved today.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Traverso said:


> I fully understand your point,unfortenately I am not able to watch your examples.


I have the same "problem" so often .


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Five and Dime said:


> Here is something I dug up on the Niedhart disc listed above (taken from musicweb intnl):
> 
> _All the Neidhart songs in Leones' recital, both music and texts, are taken from the so-called Frankfurt Neidhart Fragment, dated to around 1300 and housed at Frankfurt-am-Main University. The eight surviving pages of a larger manuscript reveal - at least to the patient and trained eye of a scholar like Lewon - six songs by Neidhart, five with *more or less complete melodies*. This is the first complete recording and performance, made possible by Lewon's *painstaking reconstruction* of the surviving material, necessitating in one case the *borrowing of appropriate melodies from elsewhere*. The results *may or may not be entirely authentic*, but the songs are compellingly evocative and utterly convincing. The instruments employed by Leones are recent reproductions but they sound terrific, especially when played with the delicacy and intuition of Lewon and Romain.
> _
> ...


A reconstruction from a fragment is going to be largely speculative. Not sure why you are trying to express the authenticity in percentages since you know how much is authentic: five more or less complete melodies! How much more is there on the recording besides these melodies? Obviously, everything beyond that is going to be reconstruction created by Lewon.

You misinterpreted the WIKI article on the Burgundian School. Your statement "just 65 surviving texts" is misleading. The article actually says 65 _manuscripts_, which in most cases are collections of music each containing multiple musical works. Some of these 65 manuscripts each contain more than 65 works, which means there are hundreds of songs, motets and masses surviving - a large and representative collection of music.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

premont said:


> As Mandryka pointed out, it is easier to tell what early music *did not *sound like, than to tell what it *should* sound like. At best we may be able to tell, what it *might* have sounded like. The indications in the scores are generally so few, that options are legio, and the more so the earlier the music in question is. *So in earlier times the performers certainly had much freedom in interpretation, and why shouldn´t we have a similar freedom?*


We do have such freedom, as did the music's first contemporary performers. Expanding on your point: Great freedom seems to have been sanctioned and expected by those who composed and notated the music. Consider your average late-medieval or early renaissance three-part chanson and what is not specified: No instruments were indicated. No tempos were indicated. No dynamics were specified. The most standard performance forces were apparently two instruments and a solo singer, but any other combination of voices and instruments might have and apparently were used depending on what was available. Contemporary performers would have had to make decisions about tempo and dynamics based on the nature of the text and the nature of the musical lines. There is nothing but freedom! This suggests to me that one should take a very wide view of what counts as authentic. Any three contemporary performances of a Dufay chanson would likely have differed enormously, and all would have been "authentic."


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## Guest (Jul 26, 2016)

Pugg said:


> I have the same "problem" so often .


Sure you have,lucky man.:lol:


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