# A Historically Informed Ring Cycle?!



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

_A Press Release offered without comment..._

*Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" in historically-informed performance practice - Concerto Köln and Kent Nagano launch an extraordinary project*

In their most recent collaboration, Concerto Köln and the internationally-renowned conductor, Kent Nagano, pursue a leading-edge project: in cooperation with scientists at the university and Musichochschule in Cologne, they are taking on Richard Wagner's tetralogy, "The Ring of the Nibelung". Their undertaking will provide the international opera scene with new impetus in historically-informed approaches to musical-theatrical works of the 19th century.

Jochen Schäfsmeier (Managing Director, Concerto Köln): "Concerto Köln is as honoured as it is inspirited to approach Wagner's ‚Ring' together with Kent Nagano and to be able to make an important contribution to the historical performance practice of 19th century music."

For the first time, the entire "Ring" is to be viewed from an early music movement perspective: the instrumental and vocal styles as well as the staging at the time of Wagner will be examined over a period of several years and compiled to form a historically-informed performance concept.

Kent Nagano (Artistic Director): "It is due to historical performance practice that nowadays there is a much different understanding of many composers and their works than was standard 30 or 40 years ago. Moreover, thanks to historicized approaches, we have gained knowledge about instruments and playing techniques which opens up to us new, pioneering pathways into the interpretation and performance of our music.

Richard Wagner's ‚The Ring of the Nibelung' is probably one of the most researched compositions yet nonetheless, a systematic approach to the tetralogy from a historically-informed perspective has not been attempted thus far. It is therefore all the more important that such an undertaking is tackled and that, in romantic repertoire now as well, normality in terms of sound which seemed irrefutable so far is called into question.

I have collaborated together with Concerto Köln for several projects in the past and am convinced that I have found two most competent partners in the Cologne ensemble and the Kunststiftung NRW who are able to provide the scientific basis for a historically-informed reading of Richard Wagner's ‚Ring'. Together we will pursue this endeavor and bring the music to the stage!"

The simultaneously scientific as well as artistic undertaking on such a mammoth scale requires tremendous effort with the additional aim of becoming a guide to performance practice of 19th century music and opera. The outcome, interpreted by Concerto Köln and Kent Nagano, will be performed from the 2020/21 onward. All research findings will be published in Open Access.

Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Wagner (Kunststiftung NRW): "For the Kunststiftung NRW, the support of the project, ‚WAGNER-READINGS', is of significance in a number of ways. For several years, supporting artistic research has played a major role within the Kunststiftung's funding programs - albeit with a primary focus on theater, dance and literature; examples of this being the Christoph-Schlingensief guest professorship for scenic research at the Ruhr University in Bochum, the Pina Bausch fellowship and the Thomas Kling lectureship at the University of Bonn. With ‚WAGNER-READINGS', the base of support is expanded to the area of music, bringing art and research together in a so to speak ideal-typical way by conducting research into the complex correlations involved in the musical-theatrical production of Wagner and translating the results into artistic practice."

Initial work already began in May of 2017. The official go-ahead for the project is a symposium in September, 2017. Financial support is provided by the Kunststiftung NRW and the Freunde von Concerto Köln e.V. Additional support is provided by the Strecker-Stiftung and MBL Akustikgeräte GmbH & Co. KG.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

It sounds intriguing. I hope it is recorded and released in a timeous fashion and I live long enough to hear it!:lol:


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Yes, should be interesting if they really go ahead and use the "Bayreuth Bark" that one hears on the ancient recordings.


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## Bill H. (Dec 23, 2010)

Not clear to me where they intend to perform this cycle when it's ready--in Köln?
Would it not make sense, for an historically informed Ring cycle to actually take place in Bayreuth? To make the use of the acoustics there? 

Not that I think for a minute that the Wagner family is going to let that happen....


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

This is certainly interesting and I would like to hear it, but . . . . . will it really be "authentic " in ay way ? Who knows ? 
So far , Concerto Koln has done a period instrument Fliegende Hollander conducted by Bruno Weil which has been released on CD but which I have yet to hear . This features the original Dresden version of the opera and uses an orchestra of only about 60 musicians .
Several years ago, Simon Rattle conducted a period instrument Das Rheingold with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in concert form, and you can hear and see this on youtube. I've heard parts of t but have not gotten around to hearing the entire thing . The orchestra doesn't sound nearly as different from contemporary ones as Baroque and Classical ensembles .


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## The Wolf (Apr 28, 2017)

Historically informed, in the musical as well as in the production; That would be a novelty. And Bayreuth would be the ideal place, but Katharina and her ideas leave a lot to be desired ...


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## Bill H. (Dec 23, 2010)

superhorn said:


> Several years ago, Simon Rattle conducted a period instrument Das Rheingold with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in concert form, and you can hear and see this on youtube. I've heard parts of t but have not gotten around to hearing the entire thing . The orchestra doesn't sound nearly as different from contemporary ones as Baroque and Classical ensembles .


Seeing some of the youtube video (thank you for mentioning it), I would tend to agree. But looking at the orchestral musicians, the instruments they are playing are certainly "of a vintage," but not radically different from recently made instruments, at least in the winds and brass (save for the Wagner tubas, which definitely look contemporary). I would speculate the strings may be using mostly gut rather than metal, but the bows appear to be pretty much the same as what are used today. I don't have perfect pitch, so I can't tell if they are playing to a lower tuning than A=440.


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## MusicBear88 (Jun 14, 2017)

Most of the instruments themselves in a Wagnerian orchestra are at least very close to what we would use today. Bill H. is right that nothing is radically different, but sometimes a bunch of smaller differences can add up to something bigger. I wouldn't have thought that a period instrument Verdi Requiem like John Eliot Gardiner's would have anything so different in it, and apart from wooden flutes, French bassoons, and a real cimbasso, there isn't much, but the texture is a little bit more transparent and the feel of the recording is somehow different enough to justify itself. So I guess we'll see what happens.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Bill H. said:


> Seeing some of the youtube video (thank you for mentioning it), I would tend to agree. But looking at the orchestral musicians, the instruments they are playing are certainly "of a vintage," but not radically different from recently made instruments, at least in the winds and brass (save for the Wagner tubas, which definitely look contemporary). I would speculate the strings may be using mostly gut rather than metal, but the bows appear to be pretty much the same as what are used today. I don't have perfect pitch, so I can't tell if they are playing to a lower tuning than A=440.


It would be interesting indeed if they tuned to a different pitch. The current pitch has only been standardised for about 80 years anyway. They could easily have a stab at something else but I think it would have to be radically different and certainly lower rather than higher or we would never have any singers hitting those top "C"s!:lol: they would certainly struggle if they use Highland Bagpipe pitch which is about 470+!!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

One wonders what a "historically-informed" _Ring_ will mean beyond period instruments, which weren't very different from modern ones. Pitch differed from place to place, so presumably there is no "authentic" pitch. Will string players use portamento? How liberally? Will they play without vibrato? This is controversial. Are there records of timings to help in the choice of tempi? Whose tempi are "authentic"? Above all, who will sing, and how will they give us an authentic style? Do we even know what that is, and would we like it if we heard it? The infamous "Bayreuth bark" dates from the Cosima era, but Wagner himself loved singing in the "Italian style," and the best Wagner singers have always exhibited a firm legato line and understood how to use portamento, something virtually lost since the 1950s.

This will be interesting. I just hope it doesn't resemble Roger Norrington's attempts at "authentic" Wagner.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Guess I can get rid of my Solti, Karajan, Keilberth, Furtwangler and Knappertsbush Rings now.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Itullian said:


> Guess I can get rid of my Solti, Karajan, Keilberth, Furtwangler and Knappertsbush Rings now.


I don't think we have anything to fear on that score Itullian.


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## Bruckner Anton (Mar 10, 2016)

Perhaps here the HIP has more things to do with the production, not the music playing, for Wagner himself is one of the earliest "modern conductors" that developed romantic practice that is commonly used nowadays. His German successors like Furtwangler, Knappertsbusch and Keilberth, who themselves had directly trained through the practice of that time, could not be less genuine in conveying the musical contents of Wagner's music than the present Japanese-American conductor who learned Wagner's work from books or tenth-hand performances.


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Barbebleu said:


> I don't think we have anything to fear on that score Itullian.


I did put mine a saving depot , so they are safe.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Bruckner Anton said:


> Perhaps here the HIP has more things to do with the production, not the music playing, for Wagner himself is one of the earliest "modern conductors" that developed romantic practice that is commonly used nowadays. His German successors like Furtwangler, Knappertsbusch and Keilberth, who themselves had directly trained through the practice of that time, could not be less genuine in conveying the musical contents of Wagner's music than the present Japanese-American conductor who learned Wagner's work from books or tenth-hand performances.


 Bruckner Anton, you're referring to Alan Gilbert who recently led a critically acclaimed concert performance of Das Rheingold with the New York Philharmonic at Geffen hall, formerly Avery Fisher hall . , including the superb Eric Owens as Alberich . I haven't heard Gilbert conduct Wagner yet, but I see no reason why he could not be an outstanding interpreter of this composer . 
And I'm sure he's heard the Wagner recordings of Knappertsbusch , Furtwangler and other legendary Wagner conductors . In a recent interview with Opera News, Gilbert states how he has loved Wagner's music from his earliest years . 
Gilbert would definitely deserve to invited to conduct at Bayreuth .


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

superhorn said:


> In a recent interview with Opera News, Gilbert states how he has loved Wagner's music from his earliest years .
> Gilbert would definitely deserve to invited to conduct at Bayreuth .


And I really, really hope that he, as the upcoming conductor of our NDR orchestra, or someone else, will bring the entire Ring in a concert performance to Hamburg. Spare us the modernist nonsense, just give us the music!


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2020)

I saw a lecture about this project on YouTube about a year ago. It explained that research was done to find out which musicians participated in the premiere at that time and which instruments from which instrument makers they played. (Some of these instruments that were used back then are still preserved.) It was discovered that Wagner, for example, only wanted one particular flute and rejected other flutes. 
Here is a link, but unfortunately it´s only in German, and there are no English subtitles 
But on the screen in the background you can often see pictures of the instruments and the names of the musicians of the premiere, etc.

https://wagner-lesarten.de/bd-1-holzblaeser-und-auffuehrungspraxis.html

But it also deals with many other important topics such as the correct tuning pitch, the use of instruments as they were built at that time (gut strings instead of steel strings, etc.), the placement of the orchestra, the use of vibrato etc.

About the brass instruments, for example, it was said:

*"The E-flat or F instrument has a much rounder, fuller, more substantial sound than the modern B-flat trumpet, especially in the register in which most of the soloistic passages of Götterdämmerung are written. So from a performance standpoint, it's not right that we perform the works of the classics, as well as Richard Wagner's trumpet part, with the modern, short instruments."*

I think it's great that historically informed performance practice has arrived in the 19th century, and is researching such things to get as close as possible to Wagner's ideas.



Woodduck said:


> Pitch differed from place to place, so presumably there is no "authentic" pitch.


Among other things, the following was said on this subject:

*"The tuning pitches have always raised a discussion relevant to performance, especially since, in addition to sound aspects, it entails consequences especially for the wind players and the singers. The nowadays common concert pitch a' = 440Hz was established only in 1939, much to the liking of string players and recording engineers in times of increasing radio broadcasting. Today, 442/443Hz is usually used in orchestras, but this was already prevalent in continental Europe between 1830 and 1870, and in Great Britain until the 1890s. In 1858, however, a ministerial commission in Paris agreed on the concert pitch of 435 Hz, which was practiced in the operatic and orchestral strongholds of Vienna and Munich, among others. According to the findings of those responsible for the Concerto Köln project, Wagner also appreciated this pitch, which puts him in the ranks of Verdi, Strauss, and later Harnoncourt, who spoke of a concert pitch that should not be raised."*



Woodduck said:


> One wonders what a "historically-informed" Ring will mean beyond period instruments, which weren't very different from modern ones.


As I said, there are definitely major differences; gut strings sound different than steel strings, Wagner favored certain instruments from certain instrument makers, and people today use instruments that are tuned completely differently, like the trumpet mentioned above.

In an interview in which he spoke about Mozart, Nikolaus Harnoncourt also mentioned Wagner:

*"Today's trombones are simply too large. At a certain point, the trombones became so larger in scale that even the composers of the time, such as Wagner, were dissatisfied. He found the new, large instruments unsuitable for his early works and changed the instrumentation. Today, a normal orchestra plays everything with only one type of trombone, namely those that were already unsuitable for early Wagner, including the Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) or the Unvollendete (The "Unfinished"), for which they are even more unsuitable."*

*"Take, for example, the Fantastique by Hector Berlioz. If you listen to it with the wind instruments for which it was composed, then in some places you really have the feeling that the devil is farting. But if you play it with the modern tubas, then the devil went to the Berlin Music University beforehand and learned there how to flatulate nobly. Of course, I would only perform such a piece with original instruments."*

Greetings,
Natural Horn


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Natural Horn said:


> I saw a lecture about this project on YouTube about a year ago. It explained that research was done to find out which musicians participated in the premiere at that time and which instruments from which instrument makers they played. (Some of these instruments that were used back then are still preserved.) It was discovered that Wagner, for example, only wanted one particular flute and rejected other flutes.
> Here is a link, but unfortunately it´s only in German, and there are no English subtitles
> But on the screen in the background you can often see pictures of the instruments and the names of the musicians of the premiere, etc.
> 
> ...


All of this is interesting and some of it may actually matter in performance. But it ignores the simple fact that there has always necessarily been great variety in the way music sounds, depending on the instruments (or voices) used, the way they're played, and the acoustics of the place of performance. Wagner may have had an ideal sound in his head for every vocal and instrumental strand in every bar he composed, but none of us will ever know what that was. As perhaps the most obvious example, we know that none of his works before _Parsifal_ was written with the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in mind, so we must assume that what he heard when he performed the _Ring_ there was quite unlike what he imagined when he wrote it. Did he approve of the transformation of orchestral sound he achieved there? Did he regret it? Do we? Does it matter much?

"Authenticity" in the broadest sense is a worthy consideration, but questions such as whether a trombone is "too large" or the strings should be gut or steel don't necessarily admit of easy answers applicable to all circumstances, and in any event are trivial compared to the matter of what the musicians do with the music. Authenticity of execution and interpretation is more problematic and elusive than the timbre of an oboe (besides, there are great differences from oboe to oboe and oboist to oboist), and it's far more important in communicating what the works are about.


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

I wish they would put this much effort into giving us singers who sound like Lilli Lehmann and Hermann Winkelmann, especially as we actually have recordings of them.


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## Parsifal98 (Apr 29, 2020)

Indeed, how can they present an historically informed Ring cycle when we all know the singing will be sub-par and therefore will not properly represent the vocal art of the XIXth century? And it's not like voices did not matter much in opera... I do not have a lot of hope for such a project...


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2020)

Woodduck said:


> All of this is interesting and some of it may actually matter in performance. But it ignores the simple fact that there has always necessarily been great variety in the way music sounds, depending on the instruments (or voices) used, the way they're played, and the acoustics of the place of performance.


No, in this lecture as well as in interviews it was pointed out several times that one can of course never know 100% what Wagner wanted. But nevertheless one can approach it by research and study of sources, for example by paying attention to which instruments were used at that time, by trying to find out which instruments the composer absolutely wanted to have and which ones he rejected, etc.

I'm not a fan of words like "original sound" either, but still, you can get a lot of things wrong - using a modern, short trumpet in Bb when the composer explicitly wrote for a longer trumpet in a different tuning is one example.

In his opera _Idomeneo_, Mozart calls for clarinets in B, but these are no longer built today. Harnoncourt, however, had a clarinet in this tuning built especially for his version, instead of using a clarinet in A for it, as is customary, in order to make the sounds Mozart wanted audible again or to come closer to them.
The effort to make the historical richness of color and variety audible again is highly worthwhile. The historically informed performance practice goes against the norms and rituals of the modern concert business and brings the old ideas to life and resurrects the original richness of the works.



Woodduck said:


> "Authenticity" in the broadest sense is a worthy consideration, but questions such as whether a trombone is "too large" or the strings should be gut or steel don't necessarily admit of easy answers applicable to all circumstances, and in any event are trivial compared to the matter of what the musicians do with the music. Authenticity of execution and interpretation is more problematic and elusive than the timbre of an oboe


I disagree, because the timbre of an instrument, or the wrong timbre of an instrument, also has a very great influence on the overall sound. It can upset the balance of sound desired by the composer, it can make for soft sounds even though the composer wanted hard sounds. It can also make the sound of the instrument blend less well with that of another instrument.

To illustrate this, I would like to give an example that has nothing to do with Wagner.

Natural horns and trumpets begin to blare even at lower volumes, and sound raw, "scratchy," aggressive. A composer who wrote for these instruments knew about these characteristics and composed his music so that the volume and sound balance was right. He also considered the dynamic marks.

Valve horns and trumpets, however, only begin to blare at a higher volume, and this not only affects the overall sound, but can also distort the message of the music. For there are only two possibilities: either the hornist plays the dynamics given by the composer - in which case his horn sounds too soft, too harmonic, although the composer wanted raw, blaring sounds.
Or he plays louder, so that his instrument also blares, in which case the volume balance with the rest of the orchestra is no longer right.



vivalagentenuova said:


> I wish they would put this much effort into giving us singers who sound like Lilli Lehmann and Hermann Winkelmann, especially as we actually have recordings of them.


This has also been thought of. I quote:

*"(…) Concerto Köln is endeavoring with the linguistic institute of the University of Halle to get to the bottom of Wagner's German and it´s pronunciation. In this context, the Deutsche Gesangsunterricht ("German singing lesson") of Julius Hey, elocution teacher and Wagner's singing coach in Bayreuth, prove to be a good source. This against the background of Wagner's poetry and his demand to "speak proper German" and to sing with good vocality."*

Greetings,
Natural Horn


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Natural Horn said:


> "(…) Concerto Köln is endeavoring with the linguistic institute of the University of Halle to get to the bottom of Wagner's German and it´s pronunciation. In this context, the Deutsche Gesangsunterricht ("German singing lesson") of Julius Hey, elocution teacher and Wagner's singing coach in Bayreuth, prove to be a good source. This against the background of Wagner's poetry and his demand to "speak proper German" and to sing with good vocality."


Bad diction is a result of wrong vocal development and technique, and it's not the main reason today's singers sound nothing like Lehmann. They don't sound like Lehmann because of the inferior technique they've learned. They would have to train singers from scratch to have 19th century vocal technique in order to get a singer who sings like Lehmann. Elocution lessons on top of modern technique won't do anything. And if the singers don't have the old technique, then why should we care whether the orchestra has the original flute? A voice is an instrument just like a flute, and today's singers have totally inauthentic instruments. Until somebody can train singers like Lehmann again, there can't be anything close to a historically authentic _Ring_.



> Natural horns and trumpets begin to blare even at lower volumes, and sound raw, "scratchy," aggressive. A composer who wrote for these instruments knew about these characteristics and composed his music so that the volume and sound balance was right. He also considered the dynamic marks.


This is exactly why it's so important to have the right vocal technique.


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2020)

I prefer to rate a HIP-recording after I have heard it. 



Greetings,
Natural Horn


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

I'm not reviewing the recording, I'm saying that if there aren't period instruments (ie voices "built" in the 19th century, bel canto manner) available they can't make an period-instrument recording. You don't need to hear the recording to know that. If there are any singers like that out there that I don't know about, I would be delighted to be made aware of them, and then by all means, make the HIP _Ring_.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Natural Horn said:


> No, in this lecture as well as in interviews it was pointed out several times that one can of course never know 100% what Wagner wanted. But nevertheless one can approach it by research and study of sources, for example by paying attention to which instruments were used at that time, by trying to find out which instruments the composer absolutely wanted to have and which ones he rejected, etc.
> 
> I'm not a fan of words like "original sound" either, but still, you can get a lot of things wrong - using a modern, short trumpet in Bb when the composer explicitly wrote for a longer trumpet in a different tuning is one example.
> 
> ...


The "original instruments" movement has been very useful in the case of music before the later 19th century. It has altered substantially our perception of what the music can sound like. I do not say "should sound like," since composers have never been as narrow-minded as academics and critics, and have typically shown adaptability to the circumstances of performance so long as the essential meaning of their work has been respected and put across by perceptive musicians. Even modern (late 19th- and 20th-century) composers have approved very different performances of their works, and perhaps even welcomed them in the knowledge that no single performance can express eveything a work is capable of expressing. Sibelius - whose work is nothing if not precise in its orchestral coloring - expressed pleasure with such different conductors, along with their very different-sounding orchestras (back when orchestras really had distinctive sounds), as Beecham, Karajan and Ormandy. Have you ever compared the sounds that the Vienna Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande were making in 1950? Or, closer to home, the sound of _Gotterdammerung_ at Bayreuth and the sound of it at the Met? Do you suppose there was less variety of orchestral sound in Wagner's day, or perhaps more? And do you think this was a problem for him? Or did he expect it?

An attempt to find and utilize instruments exactly like those Wagner used at Bayreuth in 1876 is a project of historical interest for those interested in such things, but the likelihood that it would give us major insights into his works that we can't derive from present-day study, performance practices and instrument technology is slim. As vivalagentenuova has pointed out, we get far closer to authentic Wagner by hearing it sung by singers whose voices exemplify real bel canto technique, for which the composer expressed an emphatic preference. If such singers are not to be had it matters little how bright the sound of a trumpet, or how nasal the tone of an oboe. We listen to such timbral variants with understanding and acceptance. What we should not accept are the cumbersome, strained, wobbly voices some people seem to think sound "Wagnerian."


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

My pause with this, in addition to the vocal issues that many have expressed, is the authenticity of the conducting and playing. The last great conductor of the Wagnerian school is almost universally recognised as Furtwängler and he died nearly seventy years ago. I fear this will be like virtually every hip recording of Beethoven where they religiously play near the tempo indications of a deaf man with no fluidity of tempo while ignoring this same deaf man said: "my tempo indications are only valid for the first few bars"; or the pianists playing note-perfect but ultimately dry renditions of Beethoven's piano sonatas on fortepianos and thereby claiming to be closer in "authenticity" to a man who said "to make a mistake is unimportant; to play without emotion is inexcusable" than Artur Schnabel; or the legions of performers claiming using larger forces, that Baroque or Classical composers often excplictly stated in preserved letters that they'd prefer, is inauthentic due to the fact the majority of the performances of the time were technically limited. I don't have a burning desire to hear a horn that sounded like the one Wagner wrote for, but I do have a burning desire to hear a performance from a man so passionate about the music that he would seize the baton in a live performance and slow the tempo down to a point where the singers could barely breathe because he felt that the music, in that moment, absolutely, positively, and _emotionally_, demanded it.

In other words, I fear they will get the flutes and trumpets right, but won't bother with the things I would (personally, as a listener, in my opinion, batteries not included, usage may vary) like to hear.

As another thought, we have Wagner recordings from the early 1900s which isn't too long after the master died. How "inauthentic" could things have gotten in that short period?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BachIsBest said:


> My pause with this, in addition to the vocal issues that many have expressed, is the authenticity of the conducting and playing. The last great conductor of the Wagnerian school is almost universally recognised as Furtwängler and he died nearly seventy years ago. I fear this will be like virtually every hip recording of Beethoven where they religiously play near the tempo indications of a deaf man with no fluidity of tempo while ignoring this same deaf man said: "my tempo indications are only valid for the first few bars"; or the pianists playing note-perfect but ultimately dry renditions of Beethoven's piano sonatas on fortepianos and thereby claiming to be closer in "authenticity" to a man who said "to make a mistake is unimportant; to play without emotion is inexcusable" than Artur Schnabel; or the legions of performers claiming using larger forces, that Baroque or Classical composers often excplictly stated in preserved letters that they'd prefer, is inauthentic due to the fact the majority of the performances of the time were technically limited. I don't have a burning desire to hear a horn that sounded like the one Wagner wrote for, but I do have a burning desire to hear a performance from a man so passionate about the music that he would seize the baton in a live performance and slow the tempo down to a point where the singers could barely breathe because he felt that the music, in that moment, absolutely, positively, and _emotionally_, demanded it.
> 
> In other words, I fear they will get the flutes and trumpets right, but won't bother with the things I would (personally, as a listener, in my opinion, batteries not included, usage may vary) like to hear.
> 
> As another thought, we have Wagner recordings from the early 1900s which isn't too long after the master died. How "inauthentic" could things have gotten in that short period?


A beautiful post with which I couldn't agree more.


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## Guest (Dec 29, 2020)

I could have saved myself the trouble of writing my posts and researching more about this project. No one is interested. Instead, I only read a lot of prejudices against HIP.

I should not have signed up for this forum. But as we all know, you learn from your mistakes.

Goodbye.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Natural Horn said:


> I could have saved myself the trouble of writing my posts and researching more about this project. No one is interested. Instead, I only read a lot of prejudices against HIP.
> 
> I should not have signed up for this forum. But as we all know, you learn from your mistakes.
> 
> Goodbye.


It isn't a prejudice against historically informed practice, but a desire to avoid reductionism, to maintain a larger perspective on the matter of "authenticity," and even to question whether an "authentic" _Ring,_ assuming it could be achieved (which it can't), would accord with Wagner's wishes. A few 19th-century instruments will not take us far in resolving these issues.


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Natural Horn said:


> I could have saved myself the trouble of writing my posts and researching more about this project. No one is interested. Instead, I only read a lot of prejudices against HIP.
> 
> I should not have signed up for this forum. But as we all know, you learn from your mistakes.
> 
> Goodbye.


I haven't read any prejudices, only arguments.


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## Andrew Kenneth (Feb 17, 2018)

There have been earlier attempts at "period Wagner".

- Hartmut Haenchen's live Ring for De Nederlandse Opera (available on dvd and SACD)









Excerpt from Fanfare review of this 13 SACD-set =>
"Haenchen's cycle is based on the Neue Richard-Wagner-Gesamtausgabe, but the conductor and his collaborators at The Netherlands Opera went well beyond that, making a serious effort to get at the nature of the first performances, and even at Wagner's unrealized intentions. Extensive notes taken by the composer's Bayreuth assistants in 1876-especially Heinrich Porges, but also Felix Mottl, Hermann Levi, and Julius Kniese-were scrutinized to inform these performances. Wagner made changes to pitches, rhythms, and texts at rehearsals and gave copious instructions regarding tempo, inflection, and other interpretative matters. "

- There's also Marc Minkowski's period Dutchman (conducting his "Musiciens du Louvre")


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## Andrew Kenneth (Feb 17, 2018)

News on Nagano's Wagner project =>

This january he will team up with Bayreuth University in order to find out how artists of the 21st century can sing the "Ring of the Nibelung" -within the framework of historically informed performances.

full article (with more info) => https://ubtaktuell.uni-bayreuth.de/kent-nagano-and-fimt-d72f334a4e2c56c1

Nagano's first Wagner-Lesarten concert is scheduled in Köln on febr. 7th.
https://www.koelner-philharmonie.de/en/programm/wagner-lesarten/409


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Andrew Kenneth said:


> News on Nagano's Wagner project =>
> 
> This january he will team up with Bayreuth University in order to find out how artists of the 21st century can sing the "Ring of the Nibelung" -within the framework of historically informed performances.
> 
> ...


For me, the striking parts of the foregoing are:

*'In comparison to the sound recordings made around 1900 - which represent a historical intermediate step to today's Wagnerian singing - as many aspects of historical performance practice as possible are to be reconstructed and made usable as material for a performance today.'

'The starting point for the research is the fimt project "Voice", which, among other things, dealt extensively with the singer Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient (1804 to 1860). The extreme modes of the singing voice (speaking, whispering, shouting) often used by Schröder-Devrient are used as a basis, as well as contemporary singing and acting schools that Wagner considered important.'*

I have to wonder in what sense the manner of singing Wagner in 1900 was "intermediate" between the manner of 1876 (when the Ring premiered) and the manner of 2020. From 1876 to 1900 is 24 years. From 1900 to 2020 is 120. That gives us an oddly placed "intermediate." Moreover, what is the measure of comparison, and what is the historical evidence? The article mentions only Wilhelmine Schroeder- Devrient, whom Beethoven was able to hear (or at least see) as Leonore in his _Fidelio_ and who in 1876 was already dead 16 years. We're further told that certain extreme vocal effects ("speaking, whispering, shouting") she supposedly employed are to be studied as a "basis" for exploring historical singing styles supposedly relevant to performing the _Ring_ in an authentic manner.

I don't know about you, but all of this scares the bejeezus out of me. Frida Leider and Friedrich Schorr, watch out!


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

I’m sorry. This strikes me as some academic mince aimed purely at milking some university/college/cash-cow with no discernible use. Academics with too much time on their hands. Give me a break!! Or more colloquially in my neck of the woods - gies peace! Google it,


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

In fifty years we'll have HIP Puccini. Cesira Ferrani will be seen as intermediary between original performance practice and Franco Fagioli who will have become a renowned Mimi.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Barbebleu said:


> I'm sorry. This strikes me as some academic mince aimed purely at milking some university/college/cash-cow with no discernible use. Academics with too much time on their hands. Give me a break!! Or more colloquially in my neck of the woods - gies peace! Google it,


I gather it's a slightly milder dismissal than "Awa an bile yer heid."


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

vivalagentenuova said:


> In fifty years we'll have HIP Puccini. Cesira Ferrani will be seen as intermediary between original performance practice and Franco Fagioli who will have become a renowned Mimi.


At least we have recordings to tell us what HIP Puccini _is._ We don't have to theorize about Puccini's opinion of people "speaking, shouting and whispering" instead of singing.


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

Woodduck said:


> At least we have recordings to tell us what HIP Puccini _is._ We don't have to theorize about Puccini's opinion of people "speaking, shouting and whispering" instead of singing.


As I see it, the word "intermediary" in the above article is a way to get around dealing with what we hear on vocal recordings from the early 1900s. Nobody knows how to make voices like that, so we go back before recordings to some singer that seems pretty randomly chosen in order to make up a technique which can't be judged against those recordings. It sounds absurd, but I wouldn't put it past someone to somehow avoid dealing with the recordings in the case of Puccini too, even where we literally have premiere singers on record. They do it now. We have how many thousands thousands of soprano recordings from the early 20th century, and YNS can still say that old sopranos had weak lower registers and get people on the internet to ignore what their own ears say because he's an "expert".


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Experts or specialists - people who know more and more about less and less until they know absolutely everything about nothing!!


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## Andrew Kenneth (Feb 17, 2018)

This is the website of Wagner-Lesarten; Richard Wagner's »The Ring of the Nibelung« in historical performance practice. - - a scientific-artistic project by Kent Nagano, Concerto Köln and the Kunststiftung NRW.
site => https://wagner-lesarten.de/project.html

So far five lectures are available to watch on this site :

- "Whoever cannot distinguish between g and ch is an un-German barbarian ... ".
- Richard Wagner and the pronunciation of (sung) German in the 19th century
=> https://wagner-lesarten.de/bd-1-wagner-and-pronounciation.html

- Expressivity in the »Valkyrie«. An analysis of contemporary listening habits.
=> https://wagner-lesarten.de/expressivity-in-the-valkyrie.html

- Richard Wagner: »On [my] conducting« (1869) - From beginner to interpretive conductor.
=> https://wagner-lesarten.de/bd-1-on-my-conducting-1869.html

- On the woodwinds, their instruments and the performance practice of the 1876 Bayreuth Festival.
=> https://wagner-lesarten.de/bd-1-the-woodwinds-and-performance-practices.html

- »The scenery on which the eyes of the Master had reposed«
- Wagner's "Gesamtkunstwerk" with historically informed staging practices?
=> https://wagner-lesarten.de/bd-1-Staging-Practices.html


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I gather it's a slightly milder dismissal than "Awa an bile yer heid."


Yes it is. I could have said something a lot worse but I wouldn't want to upset the sensibilities of any snowflakes that might be reading these posts. :lol:


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

*The Ring on period instruments*

Excerpt:


> From the first low rumble, it is clear that Wagnerian period instruments offer a glimpse of another universe. Gut strings and a background in historical performance mean a string sound that is more woody, more mellow, and infinitely more articulate than today's. Players accustomed to the precise articulation of baroque music bring a refreshing clarity to the attack of individual notes. It is as if a string of shapeless vowels have suddenly acquired consonants, making language from what used to be just sound. The gut also changes the implications of playing without vibrato - instead of bare and slightly shrill, as it can be with metal-wound strings, it is soft and warm.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SixFootScowl said:


> *The Ring on period instruments*
> 
> Excerpt: "It is as if a string of shapeless vowels have suddenly acquired consonants, making language from what used to be just sound."


So, let me get this straight... the Wagner we're used to is a string of shapeless vowels, but gut strings make language out of them? Or it's merely "as if" that is happening?

Even more entertaining are these remarks:

"Nagano's direction is crystal clear and exquisitely structured. Sometimes you yearn for a little more unfettered wildness, a little more metric freedom, a little less sobriety; but you can get those things elsewhere."

"The Rhinemaidens seem about to break into the Village People's YMCA; they are also the ones who make the most use of a kind of melodramatic speech used to replace song, which sounds more like Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire and sends the audience into titters."

I would point out that at the Bayreuth premiere of the _Ring_ in 1876, the great (and then very young) Lilli Lehmann sang Woglinde, Ortlinde and the woodbird, and that in 1882 Wagner had her lead the flowermaidens in _Parsifal._ If you can conceive of the composer asking her to produce anything remotely resembling _Sprechstimme_ in any of that music, you are far more imaginative (and possibly inebriated) than I.


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## 89Koechel (Nov 25, 2017)

Woodduck - VERY fine, and thanks for remembering "another" of the Lehmann's - Ms. Lilli ... as we know the contributions of the "other" Lehmann ... Lotte, herself, in her indelible ways. Well, Good God, is there TRULY historically-informed Ring cycle, of the BEST, of all? I'm not a lawyer, but could make a CASE for Lilli, or Lotte ... Lehmann ... or Schorr, or Baklanoff, or Varnay/Rysanek of certain female voices .... and is there any need to mention - Flagstad, Melchior, Helen Traubel or others?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

SixFootScowl said:


> *The Ring on period instruments*
> 
> Excerpt:


All for it - can't wait to hear it. :tiphat:


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## OffPitchNeb (Jun 6, 2016)

There have been some cognitive dissonances within the HIP movement, right? On one hand, there are endless futile academic attempts at guessing what Handel's and Mozart's music might have sounded like. On the other hand, we have solid evidence of how singers who worked directly with Verdi, Wagner, Massenet, Strauss, and Puccini actually sounded like, and no one attempt to study and mimic their "correct" style. Aren't Verdi, Wagner, Massenet, Strauss, and Puccini "historical"? How come the current singing style is so tasteless and generic and bears no resemblance to the singers of the golden age?

Back to conducting. I wonder if these "period instruments" dudes listened to Karl Muck at all.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^Precisely. ....................


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

OffPitchNeb said:


> There have been some cognitive dissonances within the HIP movement, right? On one hand, there are endless futile academic attempts at guessing what Handel's and Mozart's music might have sounded like. On the other hand, we have solid evidence of how singers who worked directly with Verdi, Wagner, Massenet, Strauss, and Puccini actually sounded like, and no one attempt to study and mimic their "correct" style. Aren't Verdi, Wagner, Massenet, Strauss, and Puccini "historical"? How come the current singing style is so tasteless and generic and bears no resemblance to the singers of the golden age?
> 
> Back to conducting. I wonder if these "period instruments" dudes listened to Karl Muck at all.


I think the issue is more with the orchestra: use of period instruments and how they are set-up, articulation, bowing, tempi, and other interpretive aspects and not so much with the singers.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SanAntone said:


> I think the issue is more with the orchestra: use of period instruments and how they are set-up, articulation, bowing, tempi, and other interpretive aspects and not so much with the singers.


The use of period instruments is the easy part. How we make music with or without them is a much more complex question. But are even questions about "authentic" instrumental forces answerable in a way that's useful to us? When Wagner devised his covered orchestra pit for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, he was changing the sound of the orchestra - of its overall sound image and of every component within it. What does being tucked under the stage do to the sounds of those Wagner tubas? What did the music gain or lose, and how did the composer feel about it? Did he consider the difference between what _Die Walkure_ sounded like at Bayreuth in 1876 and what it sounded like at the Munich Nationaltheater in 1870 - not to mention what it sounded like in his head as he composed it - important? Did he think subsequent performances using instruments made and played in different countries and sung by people with different voices would be somehow deficient, wrong or "inauthentic"? Which of his own performances, if any, represented his ideal of how his music should sound? Should we try to reproduce that sound, even to the limited extent that we know what it was?

The instruments of the orchestra, and the sounds of orchestras that result from their use, are now pretty standardized and homogenized. But even as late as the mid-20th century this was not the case. Listen to performances, back to back, of a Tchaikovsky symphony by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy and then by L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Ansermet. Which of them is the "authentic" sound of Tchaikovsky? Either of them? What does the term "authentic" even mean? The technology of musical instruments underwent continuous evolution during Wagner's lifetime, and instruments varied in sound not only over time but from place to place. No composer expected that his music would sound the same everywhere and forever, regardless of his intentions while writing it or his personal preferences in instrument makers. We can and should enjoy the sound of Brahms's Horn Trio played on the natural horn, which Brahms preferred to the newer valve horn (at least in that work), but such clear statements of preference by composers are uncommon, and need not convince or bind anyone performing or listening to their music. Even the notion that composers have an ideal sound in their heads for their own music is presumptuous, and often untrue. Sibelius praised conductors as diverse as Beecham, Ormandy and Karajan for their very different-sounding performances of his works. I would argue that the instrumental sounds composers "hear" when composing are often quite generic and can accommodate quite a range of actual sonority and articulation in performance.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Woodduck said:


> The use of period instruments is the easy part. How we make music with or without them is a much more complex question. But are even questions about "authentic" instrumental forces answerable in a way that's useful to us? When Wagner devised his covered orchestra pit for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, he was changing the sound of the orchestra - of its overall sound image and of every component within it. What does being tucked under the stage do to the sounds of those Wagner tubas? What did the music gain or lose, and how did the composer feel about it? Did he consider the difference between what _Die Walkure_ sounded like at Bayreuth in 1876 and what it sounded like at the Munich Nationaltheater in 1870 - not to mention what it sounded like in his head as he composed it - important? Did he think subsequent performances using instruments made and played in different countries and sung by people with different voices would be somehow deficient, wrong or "inauthentic"? Which of his own performances, if any, represented his ideal of how his music should sound? Should we try to reproduce that sound, even to the limited extent that we know what it was?
> 
> The instruments of the orchestra, and the sounds of orchestras that result from their use, are now pretty standardized and homogenized. But even as late as the mid-20th century this was not the case. Listen to performances, back to back, of a Tchaikovsky symphony by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Ormandy and then by L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Ansermet. Which of them is the "authentic" sound of Tchaikovsky? Either of them? What does the term "authentic" even mean? The technology of musical instruments underwent continuous evolution during Wagner's lifetime, and instruments varied in sound not only over time but from place to place. No composer expected that his music would sound the same everywhere and forever, regardless of his intentions while writing it or his personal preferences in instrument makers. We can and should enjoy the sound of Brahms's Horn Trio played on the natural horn, which Brahms preferred to the newer valve horn (at least in that work), but such clear statements of preference by composers are uncommon, and need not convince or bind anyone performing or listening to their music. Even the notion that composers have an ideal sound in their heads for their own music is presumptuous, and often untrue. Sibelius praised conductors as diverse as Beecham, Ormandy and Karajan for their very different-sounding performances of his works. I would argue that the instrumental sounds composers "hear" when composing are often quite generic and can accommodate quite a range of actual sonority and articulation in performance.


The idea of "authenticity" is a red herring, vis a vis the HIP/PI movement. Richard Taruskin has written plenty on this aspect of the concern with performance practice and period instruments. But what a composer hears in his head while composing is inextricably linked to the instrumental sounds he knows of during his lifetime. And we know a lot about instrument technology as well as orchestral performance practice.

Gut strings simply sound different than steel strings. Also during the Romantic period, portamento was more common than we are accustomed to hearing. Tempo markings were interpreted differently in the 19th century, and in fact metronome markings are not exactly accurate due to the cruder technology of their metronomes compared to ours. Usually tempi are a bit faster than are often taken in modern performances. Tuning has also undergone changes over the centuries gradually becoming lower as A=440 became standard pitch.

I fail to see putting speculative ideas about what Wagner _may_ have preferred concerning modern instruments as opposed to what we know he actually heard in his orchestra.

The Bayreuth covered pit was designed in order to advantage the singers by muting the orchestra's volume making it easier for them to be heard. An appropriately sized orchestra using period instruments will also produce a softer sound and a more transparent orchestral texture.

All of these things would seem to improve Wagner, not the opposite.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Late Romantic HIP: What Are We Waiting For?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SanAntone said:


> The idea of "authenticity" is a red herring, vis a vis the HIP/PI movement.


How is it a red herring?



> But *what a composer hears in his head while composing is inextricably linked to the instrumental sounds he knows of during his lifetime.* And we know a lot about instrument technology as well as orchestral performance practice.


Which sounds - the sounds of which instruments, played by whom, at what point in his lifetime - does a composer have in his head while composing? Did Mozart, Schubert, Chopin or Liszt imagine their keyboard music only in terms of the instruments in their parlors? Are toccatas and fugues written only for specific organs, symphonies only for specific halls, and operas only for specific singers?



> Gut strings simply sound different than steel strings. Also during the Romantic period, portamento was more common than we are accustomed to hearing. Tempo markings were interpreted differently in the 19th century, and in fact metronome markings are not exactly accurate due to the cruder technology of their metronomes compared to ours. Usually tempi are a bit faster than are often taken in modern performances. Tuning has also undergone changes over the centuries gradually becoming lower as A=440 became standard pitch.


I could question some of this. There are things we know, and things we don't. Some of the differences between then and now are clear, some are debatable, some matter, some don't, and much comes down to personal preference. The actual preferences of composers themselves as to precisely what instruments they liked to hear in their music, we generally don't know.



> I fail to see putting speculative ideas about what Wagner _may_ have preferred concerning modern instruments as opposed to what we know he actually heard in his orchestra.


What orchestra was "his orchestra"? The one he led in his twenties at the Dresden Opera? The one he heard at the Paris Opera when he lived in that city? The ones in Munich or Vienna? The one he assembled at Bayreuth in 1876? In 1882?



> The Bayreuth covered pit was designed in order to advantage the singers by muting the orchestra's volume making it easier for them to be heard.


His main concern was theatrical illusion. He wanted the orchestra to be invisible, and the stage completely visible, from every seat in the theater. Everything about the space was calculated to remove all distractions from the stage picture.



> An appropriately sized orchestra using period instruments will also produce a softer sound and a more transparent orchestral texture.


Wagner doubled the traditional size of the orchestra for the _Ring_ before Bayreuth was even an idea.



> All of these things would seem to improve Wagner, not the opposite.


Granted, it's better not to drown out the singers.


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## OffPitchNeb (Jun 6, 2016)

Do you notice that HIP singers not only tend to have pallid, unindividual voices, they also have significantly smaller voices? 

I admit that I haven't followed the HIP movement closely, but I think the smaller voice problem is a consequence of smaller, "muted" orchestras. I don't think you could hear Sandrine Piau or Patricia Petibon if Beecham or Dorati are conducting Handel. 

Imagine if it is Wagner, do you want to have Flagstad/Melchior/Traubel/Andresen singing over the ensemble of Marc Minkowski?


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Did Mozart, Schubert, Chopin or Liszt imagine their keyboard music only in terms of the instruments in their parlors?


With Mozart, I have to say yes 100%. 


hammeredklavier said:


> "People sometimes say that if Mozart or Beethoven knew the Steinway, let's say, that they would have preferred it. I would say that there's no way that we could prove that one way or another, but one thing is rather clear- to the extent that masters such as they would have written exactly the pieces they wrote, for the Steinway rather than the instruments which they had, to that extent- they would be rather poor composers. Because one writes for the acoustical and aesthetic properties of the instruments at hand and one cannot separate the master works of music from the forces and the instruments and the vocal training, which is associated with these things."
> "It doesn't mean that we can be sure that everything we do will be identical with that which was done 200 years or more ago but it certainly gives us a sense of what is expected because every instrument wishes to be played in a certain way, and you either learn that, and you get the instrument to sound the way it wants to sound, and then it will do anything for you. Or you fight it and if you fight it, you will lose the battle."


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> With Mozart, I have to say yes 100%.


So your answer to the question,"Did Mozart, Schubert, Chopin or Liszt imagine their keyboard music only in terms of the instruments in their parlors?" - in a thread about a historically informed_ Ring_ cycle - is that Mozart would have written differently for the Steinway?


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Woodduck said:


> How is it a red herring?


The idea of authenticity.

Despite the best scholarship we can't know with certainty how the music if long ago eras sounded. Mainly the HIP movement is based on the use of period instruments, and a continuum of philosophies concerning performance practice. But the bottomline is that the entire movement is guided almost exclusively by modern taste, i.e how we prefer to hear this music played. Or to be a bit kinder, how we hope to think it was played back in the day. We know a lot, but not nearly enough to make a claim of authenticity.

The rest of your post is a series of questions regarding special circumstances which can all be addressed by competent conductors and musicologists for each individual work.

We have a lot of knowledge and can make educated guesses, which is why it is called _informed performance_ - but we can never know with certainty if what we are doing is how the music was played by a Wagner orchestra. But we also know what wasn't done, or which instruments did not exist during the period. So a HIP approach is most likely closer than an absolutely modern approach.


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## vivalagentenuova (Jun 11, 2019)

The other difficulty is that it's hard to know what terminology describing sound from the past really means. For example, you can watch Fedora Barbieri flatly deny ever using chest voice (!), and then demonstrate what she did that she claims isn't chest voice that is clearly massive chest voice:




But if you only had text and no sound and none of her recordings, you might look at that interview and conclude that female singers of the 1940s and 50s like Fedora Barbieri, one of the great mezzos, never used chest voice, only "voice supported by the breath," whatever that means. Giulietta Simionato similarly swears off chest voice (sure). Apollo Granforte would speak of "singing in the mask". Does this sound like what singing in the mask conjures up as an image:




I'm extremely skeptical that we can know what words that describe sounds really mean without recordings.

But as OffPitchNeb points out, we _do_ have many situations in which there are recordings of premiere singers. We have the premiere Otello, the premiere Iago, a Desdemona who worked directly with Verdi on the part; we've got the premiere Adrianna Lecouvreur, etc.. If the HIP people were serious, they'd try and recreate that technique. But they don't. Melba, who worked directly with Puccini and received high praise for her singing of his roles, sings Si mi chiamano Mimi like this:




Melba sings it like this:
"A tela o a seta
ri*camo in casa e fuori*"
With strong chest on all the bottom notes. If anyone dared to sing that way now, they'd not only be told they would lose their voice, they would be called vulgar.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Hans Knappertsbusch ( 1888 -1965 ) was a protege of the legendary conductor Hans Richter, who conducted the first complete Ring cycle at the opening of the Bayreuth festival in 1876 and in turn had been a close associate of Wagner himself and his amanuensis . 
Richter lived from 1843 to i9i6 and was active in Vienna , London and other major European cities , and was also a champion of the music of Brahms, Bruckner and others . 
Knappertsbusch learned so much from Richter , and when "Kna" died in 1965 , Solti spoke of how he in turn had learned so much from Knappertsbusch and knew him well . Solti said "Kna" was like a father to him , even though his Wagner interpretations were quite different from the older master . 
And no doubt, Kent Nagano has studied the Wagner recordings of Knappertsbusch, Furtwangler and other legendary Wagner conductors carefully . The Wagner tradition is b no means dead .


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Well, I decided to listen to the singers mentioned in the review who, supposedly, all stole the show, and I think we may be able to merge this thread with the "state of modern operatic singing" thread. Here are some samples












(it's hard to tell what the tenor would sound like in a full production of Wagner from this, but he's not really on youtube, so I will withhold judgement until I hear the recording)

If that enunciation training turns these guys into "revelations", then they better start handing it out like candy at the local fair.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

BachIsBest said:


> Well, I decided to listen to the singers mentioned in the review who, supposedly, all stole the show, and I think we may be able to merge this thread with the "state of modern operatic singing" thread. Here are some samples
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Inadequate at best. Yeugh! With regard to the Lohengrin extract, come back Otto Wiener, all is forgiven. The other two extracts? Devoid of personality and flat, monotonous tone. Back to my fifties performances for me.


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