# I’m just so tired of the HIP mafia!



## Hermastersvoice

You know those people who claim that nothing, NOTHING before Beethoven should be played on modern instruments. It allows them to immediately dismiss non-HIP performances. They use words such as “anachronistic” to sweep valid performances aside. Performances where every musical argument is not spelt out are pushed aside as “kapelmeisterisch” (despite this term being a positive one in my vocabulary) and conductors are “time beaters” (again usually a positive term, according to me). More worryingly, they are wining the battle, music before Beethoven is now largely only performed by specialist ensembles. Sic transit Gloria mundi.


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## Kjetil Heggelund

I like the way HIP sounds, and I'm not in any mafia. I just discovered the Leipzig string quartet, and they are not HIP, just hip in my book  For me HIP makes it sound "objective" and not drowned in emotion, which I like in music before Beethoven. Romantic music I regard as more "subjective" and is preferred with a personal touch.


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## Bwv 1080

So what is the problem with Beethoven performers paying for protection against a non-historical performance? I suppose you also object to violinists who use too vibrato having their kneecaps busted

I am concerned however by growing ties between the HIP mafia and the canal of aerialists that runs the world’s university composition departments. Apparantly they are collaborating on guidelines for historically informed performances of 20th century modernist works


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## DavidA

I am all for HIP but it is foolish to say it is the only way of doing the works. Composers like Bach and Handel would not have been HIP as they adapted their works according to circumstances. Even someone like Gardiner has said it is ridiculous to say a certain performance is 'authentic' as we simply don't know enough. We can guess but not know.


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## Taggart

I agree that it seems a bit silly to give more space in the CD notes to the biographies of the instruments than to the accomplishments of the performers.

Equally, I find the lush, romantic violin sound (of Menuhin for example) not to my taste. I prefer the HIP sound.

I came into classical music via folk and Early Music - the second wave with people like David Munrow. One nice thing is that because we have all these specialist ensembles we have much more Early and Baroque music being performed.

We have (Facebook) friends who are off at an Elizabethan Twelfth Night Revel this weekend organised under the auspices of the Historical Dance Society (formerly the Dolmetsch Historical Dance Society) founded in 1970 as part of the same wave of enthusiasm. This includes music dance and masques. Sounds delightful.

The HIP mafia has only taken off because a) there is so much good early and Baroque music and b) because people like the sound. Just as we now have many TV channels catering to different tastes we now have many specialist ensembles catering to a whole range of tastes. (Oh, and it seems silly to use a whole massive philharmonic orchestra to play some chamber music.)


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## Enthusiast

I have some sympathy with the OP. Not a lot, but some. Certainly, I think HIP recordings and performances of Baroque music are more reliably good - but I do have greatly loved recordings of many of the great works that are not HIP. And I often dislike the tendency for HIP performances to almost always be fast, sometimes driven. I love the Busch Brandenburg set and the first Marriner Handel Op. 6 but I do also like quite a few HIP Brandenburg sets, several of them from the early days of HIP (Harnoncourt, Collegium Aureum) but I also really like Goebel's set and quite like Savall's. There are inevitably many HIP Brandenburg sets that I just find ordinary. As for Handel's Op. 6, I have yet to find a post-Harnoncourt set I like. They all seem too fast these days. 

I am less convinced about the claims of the HIP movement for their Mozart and Haydn. There are lots of good HIP recordings of this music but I am not convinced that it is their HIPness that explains why they are so good. And there are lots of good pre-HIP recordings of Mozart and Haydn as well. I don't think HIP did much for us in Beethoven.

In the end I don't see or hear a mafia but I do see a movement for what was a new performance practice that injected life and pointed performers in interesting new directions. As we still have the best of the recordings of older performing practices, I think we are the richer for HIP. There will no doubt be a reaction against HIP at some point and that will also help keep things fresh and help to ensure that we get new insights into great music. I remember reading a couple of posts on TC claiming that the latest research suggests that music of the Classical period would have had lots of rubato.


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## Mandryka

Hermastersvoice said:


> More worryingly, they are wining the battle


Are you sure? If you look at this discography of recordings of the Goldberg Variations there seems to be a lot of ones on modern instruments, for example. The one place where what you say seems right to me is in organ music.

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/NVD/BWV988-Rec2005.htm


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## Hermastersvoice

DavidA, does it matter if it is authentic or not? Authentic Shakespeare or TS Elliot? Beecham’s Schubert is almost without a shadow of a doubt non-authentic, as is Beaux-Arts’ Haydn, but my God does it work!. Not because of gut strings but thanks to musicianship. Also, I’m not saying that HIP isn’t valid in many cases, but it’s not a reason for dismissing other ways of doing things. Klemperer’s Bach or Beecham’s Handel spring to mind.


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## Woodduck

HIP should be, at heart, an effort to take music on its own terms. Research into the ways in which it was played when it was new, and an awareness of the ways in which later aesthetic ideals have been imposed on its subsequent performance, are all to the good. But HIP becomes problematic when we think we know more about these things than we really do, and when orthodoxies develop which we allow to override our own sense of what feels and sounds natural and meaningful. Frantic tempos, skimpy, wiry strings, grown-up women hooting like little boys - ludicrously deflating the grandeur of a Handel oratorio in the name of avoiding Victorian bloatedness and sentimentality - are unlikely to represent truly the era's aesthetic or to fulfill the composer's ideal. But just as importantly, they fail to meet the clear expressive requirements of the music as anyone not cowed by the "political correctness" of the moment would perceive them.

There has never been any one right way to perform any music. Play it the way you feel it.


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## Bulldog

I try not to used the term 'HIP" because it means different things to many folks. I love period instrument performances for early to baroque music, especially in the strings. For Classical era, I can go either way.


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## Enthusiast

Given how rich we are in wonderful recordings from all eras and how this wealth grows on and on I really do wonder at the attitude that puts down one approach let alone seeing it as a conspiracy or even an orthodoxy. I suppose the was a time - perhaps it peaked around 20-30 years ago - when it might have been difficult to extol the virtues of a not HIP recording of Baroque music in some quarters. But we are over that now.


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## larold

I like and don't like historically informed practice depending on the recording (I've never heard anyone use it in performance though I have a choral director who once asked us to sing "white" -- flat tone without vibrato) but one thing I know is it is more guesswork than history. 

No one alive today has ever spoken to anyone alive in 1750 or knows anyone that heard a performance then so no one knows what it sounded like, how fast it was played, or what strings were used. They have no idea how walls or outdoor arenas or curtains in performance halls clouded sound in the period.

Another way I know this is Vivaldi: virtually nothing is known about Vivaldi's life yet HIP groups go around playing his prestos at 150, making terrible squeaky noises with instruments, playing out of tune, and insisting this is the way it would have been played in the composer's time.

You know who played his music don't you? He wrote his famous Alla Rustica violin concerto for what he called "rustic" for country musicians. These weren't the top players in Rome. He wrote most of his music for performance by the wayward and castoff girls that populated the school where he taught. You think they were all virtuosos who played allegros at 95?

I have respect for history and for rereading history from time to time and I know history changes over time. We used to think Japan surrendered in World War II because of the two atomic bombs. Now historians write they surrendered because Russia entered the war and they feared what it would be like being ruled by Russia. This because a few historians found letters stating same from Japanese generals.

I recently made a HIP recording, a CD from an old LP, that listed the period in which the instruments were built. The piece, Beethoven's Septet, was written 1799-1800 and played the latter year. The instruments the band used were all built circa 1735-1780. Guess what? It didn't sound any different than any other performance of Beethoven's Septet using modern instruments including the valved horn.

Have you ever heard the performance of Tchaikovsky's 4th symphony by Anima Eterna using period instruments? Ditto the above, not any different from anything else you ever heard.

So HIP doesn't always have to be perverse even using old instruments and it isn't any kind of musical truth. It is simply today's fashion taking over for what was previously called literalism. Toscanini was the chief architect of that beginning about 1930 when he insisted the score was sacrosanct and conductors should stop inserting their own ideas into it and just play it. Even old Arturo occasionally made cuts but his was the fashion before HIP.


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## Phil loves classical

I have no doubt that Mozart would have liked his piano music better on modern piano. With Bach I universally prefer the sound of HIP.


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## mbhaub

I spend little time (well, none) listening to old, baroque or even classical-era music so the HIP applications there don't concern me. But I have invested a lot of time in recent years listening to some of the thoroughly interesting HIP recordings from the Romantic era: Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, Scheherazade, the symphonies of Brahms and Schumann, then onto Rite of Spring, some Debussy and Ravel. There's no doubt that the instruments then had a different sound. Brass players couldn't play nearly so loud as they can on modern horns. Gut strings have a much richer, dark sound. Calf skin heads are really different. I'm glad the French bassoon was ditched, but in some French works they and the Sarrusophone make you realize what we've lost. Maybe its for the better that we've adopted modern instruments all the way around, but some of those old ones sure had distinctive sounds.


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## DaveM

I have appreciated HIP a little in the past, but overall I prefer modern instruments for almost everything including Bach. I’m glad that there is HIP for those who like it and I can appreciate why some do. However, I don’t believe HIP is the way we should listen to early 19th century -and before- music because that’s the way composers intended it anymore than I believe the best way to ride in automobiles is in Model-Ts.


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## Luchesi

I definitely like to hear different performances. HIP, staidly orthodox, or eccentric to the max, even the Swingle Singers sometimes..

I can go the score and instantly see what I would like. New ideas are never a negative. If new ideas really bother a person, then you can categorize that person. Ask him what specifically it is that he's hearing. Sometimes people read a criticism and they don't even remember where it came from, but it becomes their outlook.


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## Woodduck

mbhaub said:


> I spend little time (well, none) listening to old, baroque or even classical-era music so the HIP applications there don't concern me. But I have invested a lot of time in recent years listening to some of the thoroughly interesting HIP recordings from the Romantic era: Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique, Scheherazade, the symphonies of Brahms and Schumann, then onto Rite of Spring, some Debussy and Ravel. There's no doubt that the instruments then had a different sound. Brass players couldn't play nearly so loud as they can on modern horns. Gut strings have a much richer, dark sound. Calf skin heads are really different. I'm glad the French bassoon was ditched, but in some French works they and the Sarrusophone make you realize what we've lost. Maybe its for the better that we've adopted modern instruments all the way around, but some of those old ones sure had distinctive sounds.


I have John Eliot Gardiner's recording of the _Symphonie Fantastique,_ which was recorded in the very dry acoustic where the work was first performed, allowing us to hear the distinctive sounds of the 19th-century instruments. It's a delight, and not just for the serpent and the ophicleide. There's something to be said for being able to hear the actual sound of old music, which is a matter different from, but not wholly separate from, interpretation. We know that Brahms and Wagner both preferred the sound of the natural horn to that of the valve horn of their day, and Brahms asks for it specifically in his Horn Trio.

As far as Romantic music is concerned, we can hear the sounds of the instruments, but we still have a way to go in interpretation. This is curious, since we do have recordings from quite a few musicians active before 1900.


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## Mandryka

One thing that I've become very much more conscious of over the past year is that a performance is the result of the interaction between a composition, a performer and an instrument. HIP has opened up the possibility for performers to become inspired by the possibilities of old instruments, and by what they can learn about authentic ways of playing them, ways of making the notes and the phrases.

All that sounds very abstract, so I'll start by mentioning a couple of Chopin recordings which I've found really exciting in this respect. First Edoardo Torbianelli performance of Chopin's third sonata, he has taken inspiration not only from the physical sound quality of Chopin's piano, but also by contemporary bel canto singing practice. The booklet essay by Jeanne Roudet is stimulating too.









No less interesting is Hubert Rutkowski's Chopin recital, which I wasn't going to mention but the image has got stuck in there!


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## Dimace

Enthusiast said:


> I have some sympathy with the OP. Not a lot, but some. Certainly, I think HIP recordings and performances of Baroque music are more reliably good - but I do have greatly loved recordings of many of the great works that are not HIP. And I often dislike the tendency for HIP performances to almost always be fast, sometimes driven. I love the Busch Brandenburg set and the first Marriner Handel Op. 6 but I do also like quite a few HIP Brandenburg sets, several of them from the early days of HIP (Harnoncourt, Collegium Aureum) but I also really like Goebel's set and quite like Savall's. There are inevitably many HIP Brandenburg sets that I just find ordinary. As for Handel's Op. 6, I have yet to find a post-Harnoncourt set I like. They all seem too fast these days.
> 
> I am less convinced about the claims of the HIP movement for their Mozart and Haydn. There are lots of good HIP recordings of this music but I am not convinced that it is their HIPness that explains why they are so good. And there are lots of good pre-HIP recordings of Mozart and Haydn as well. I don't think HIP did much for us in Beethoven.
> 
> In the end I don't see or hear a mafia but I do see a movement for what was a new performance practice that injected life and pointed performers in interesting new directions. As we still have the best of the recordings of older performing practices, I think we are the richer for HIP. There will no doubt be a reaction against HIP at some point and that will also help keep things fresh and help to ensure that we get new insights into great music. I remember reading a couple of posts on TC claiming that the latest research suggests that music of the Classical period would have had lots of rubato.


As a romantic listener, I prefer the not HIP. They sound closer to the music I like. Of course, I will not dismiss a good HIP (Leipzig for example).

Bach also, in the contrary of Andras beliefs, (which are correct) sounds better to me in an elephant Steinway, than in a fragile harpsicord. (all these have nothing to do with the authenticity of this music, but with the joy I could have from it. It is obvious that my likes have nothing to do with Bach's (composers) intentions and lack originality, spirit, etc...)


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## Becca

Woodduck said:


> There's something to be said for being able to hear the actual sound of old music, which is a matter different from, but not wholly separate from, interpretation. We know that Brahms and Wagner both preferred the sound of the natural horn to that of the valve horn of their day, and Brahms asks for it specifically in his Horn Trio.


While there is a valid point to being able to hear a work the way that the composer would have, I fail to see the significance of their preference in instrument styles. Just because they preferred the natural horn to the valved horn of that time, that says nothing about what their preference in sound would have been with the modern horn. Of course we cannot ever know that so it is presumptuous to assume that natural horn, or any other instrument of the period, is still the only valid choice because that's what the composer said 120+ years ago.


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## Woodduck

Becca said:


> While there is a valid point to being able to hear a work the way that the composer would have, I fail to see the significance of their preference in instrument styles. Just because they preferred the natural horn to the valved horn of that time, that says nothing about what their preference in sound would have been with the modern horn. Of course we cannot ever know that so it is presumptuous to assume that natural horn, or any other instrument of the period, is still the only valid choice because that's what the composer said 120+ years ago.


True. I'm sure both Brahms and Wagner were quite pleased that their music would be played by valve horns as well as Waldhorns, and there's no reason for us not to do it, particularly since there are notes on the natural horn that can't be played perfectly in tune. When hornists first started reviving the natural horn in original instrument ensembles the sounds they produced could be quite hair-raising, and there were even people suggesting that out-of-tuneness was an element of authentic style! The natural horn does have a brassier, darker, more "feral" quality than the valve horn, and that sound would have had emotional resonances for German composers that it doesn't have for most people today. But I would think an accomplished hornist ought to be able to produce a pretty good imitation.


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## KenOC

Woodduck said:


> I have John Eliot Gardiner's recording of the _Symphonie Fantastique,_ which was recorded in the very dry acoustic where the work was first performed, allowing us to hear the distinctive sounds of the 19th-century instruments. It's a delight, and not just for the serpent and the ophicleide...


Thanks for mentioning this. The entire performance is on YouTube and it is, indeed, a fascinating listen.

I am always thankful for the variety of ideas, approaches, and interpretations we have.


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## Oldhoosierdude

I have some HIP. What can I say? I got an offer I couldn't refuse.


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## Guest

Woodduck said:


> I have John Eliot Gardiner's recording of the _Symphonie Fantastique,_ which was recorded in the very dry acoustic where the work was first performed, allowing us to hear the distinctive sounds of the 19th-century instruments. It's a delight, and not just for the serpent and the ophicleide. There's something to be said for being able to hear the actual sound of old music, which is a matter different from, but not wholly separate from, interpretation.





KenOC said:


> Thanks for mentioning this. The entire performance is on YouTube and it is, indeed, a fascinating listen.
> 
> I am always thankful for the variety of ideas, approaches, and interpretations we have.











*Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op.14 - 1. Rêveries. Passions -
*





*Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op.14 - 2. Un bal (Valse: Allegro non troppo) -
*





*Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op.14 - 3. Scène aux champs (Adagio) -

*




*Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op.14 - 4. Marche au supplice (Allegretto non troppo) -*






*Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique, Op.14 - 5. Songe d'une nuit du Sabbat -

*




"_. . . [an] outstanding "period instrument" version. The word that comes to mind repeatedly during the driven but crisply articulate first two movements is "dashing". Gardiner is excellent at long crescendos: well controlled build-ups, then the emotion boiling over at the climax. It isn't just in the big outpourings of feeling that he scores: at the beginning of the central lonely pastorale, the flavoursome 19th-century French oboe and cor anglais are two voices calling to each other across wide spaces, in the background a sense of growing unease. Discomfort and deliciously grotesque orchestral colouring grow splendidly during the "March to the Scaffold". The finale is a sinister spine-tingler . . ._"
- BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE on Symphonie fantastique

"_Gardiner's Symphonie fantastique is of endless fascination and enjoyment ... he brings out the daring originality of Berlioz's visionary inspiration and draws hugely spirited, yet refined playing from his period- instrument band. Exemplary sound and balance, too._"
- GRAMOPHONE


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## mbhaub

Woodduck said:


> True. I'm sure both Brahms and Wagner were quite pleased that their music would be played by valve horns as well as Waldhorns, and there's no reason for us not to do it, particularly since there are notes on the natural horn that can't be played perfectly in tune.


Two things:

First, we do know that Brahms did not like the valved horn. Despite technological improvements, the valved horn of his time was not much different than the instrument today. While it was good enough for Mahler (besides, he needed the chromatic ability), Brahms liked the sound of the Viennese natural horn and there hasn't been anyone who knew how to write for it better. His constant changing of key (horn in E, then in G, then to D, then F and so on) posed no problems - he knew exactly what the good sounding overtones were. The Mackerras Brahms set and the Ticcatiat Schumann set sound great with those natural horns.

Second, yes, there are bad notes on natural horns. But there are bad notes on every instrument. The trick is for the composer and the player to have enough combined skill to know how to mask those issues. And even with a great horn, like and Alexander, a rank amateur can make it sound like it came from eBay.


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## Luchesi

Enthusiast says - "I don't think HIP did much for us in Beethoven."

I think LvB was writing for a piano of the future. And since he couldn't hear what can we say about his hope for future instruments?
Didn't he say, my pieces will still be played 50 years from now?


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## eugeneonagain

HIP has its place and it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. I've heard some godawful string music played in 'true historical fashion' and I can only hope that it didn't really sound like that at the time, for the audiences' sake at the very least.

What is irritating about HIP evangelists is when they harp(sichord) on about how Bach isn't authentic unless played on a harpsichord, even though loads of his music was written for a clavichord anyway; or possibly the organ. He doesn't always specify.

Plus the research isn't always accurate and can only aim for a conjectural sound, since no-one is around from then in order to make a comparison to HIP performances.
In any case,why should the sound of possibly 'inferior' instruments be considered _better_? Maybe the sound Beethoven actually _got_, isn't quite the sound Beethoven actually _wanted_, had he had access to more developed instruments.

While it's fair to question some sexed-up orchestrations of older music, I don't believe you get to 'really see/hear' the contents of a composer's mind just by breaking-out the instruments of the day.


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## Guest

Part of my problem is the "I" in HIP..."Informed." That implies others are ignorant or something. Maybe violinists such as Heifetz and Grumiaux _knew_ about those baroque practices, but preferred not to have a thin, scratchy, vibrato-less tone.


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## KenOC

Enthusiast said:


> ...I don't think HIP did much for us in Beethoven.


That seems a strange thing to say. The HIP movement has transformed the way many or even most conductors approach the Beethoven symphonies. Who today takes the old approach of ponderous, massive performances and deliberate tempi? Instead the emphasis now is on smaller bands (Beethoven thought 60 was about right), attempts at the specified metronome markings, crisp articulation and transparency, and often the use of instruments common in Beethoven's time.

In a recent poll on another site, Gardiner's symphony cycle, now a quarter-century old, was voted the best of all Beethoven cycles, edging out Karajan's 1963. Even Haitink has been moved by the HIP approach, as his most recent cycle on LSO Live demonstrates.

It seems to me that the HIP movement has had a very great impact on Beethoven performances, something that many consider a benefit.


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## wkasimer

Hermastersvoice said:


> You know those people who claim that nothing, NOTHING before Beethoven should be played on modern instruments.


Which people are we talking about? I don't know anyone who makes such claims. Most music lovers I know are willing to listen to both HIP and non-HIP performances. They may have a preference, even a strong preference, but that's very different from what you are claiming.


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## Room2201974

How about playing a HIP on a gut instrument using the "exacting standards" of gut making of that time? Which reminds me of a joke that surely must be over 500 years old: Renaissance lute players spent half their time tuning their instruments.......and the other half of their time playing out of tune.:guitar:

I remain unconvinced that HIP should be a priority. For instance, you can play a guitar historically correct with the nails only approach........and you would still be playing the instrument incorrectly. I find no value in that! All music should breathe in the fullest range of tone production possibilities for the age.


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## Woodduck

wkasimer said:


> Which people are we talking about? I don't know anyone who makes such claims. Most music lovers I know are willing to listen to both HIP and non-HIP performances. They may have a preference, even a strong preference, but that's very different from what you are claiming.


There are a few die-hard authenticists who won't tolerate, for example, Bach played on the piano. This seems especially odd in that Bach, of all composers, loses nothing musically essential played on just about anything, and many of his own works are transcriptions of his own and others' music. There are also those works which appear to have been written for nothing in particular. To imagine that Bach would have been anything but delighted with the dynamic control possible on the piano (but not on the harpsichord, and only slightly on the clavichord) defies reason. He did express an interest in the early fortepianos being introduced during his late years.

It's just as unreasonable to think that Beethoven wouldn't have appreciated a piano he couldn't wreck.


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## KenOC

And let's not forget that Bach actually _sold _pianos. Sales documents survive.


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## DaveM

For me, the Stokowski transcription of the Bach Chaconne is a wonderment.


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## KenOC

DaveM said:


> For me, the Stokowski transcription of the Bach Chaconne is a wonderment.


Demidenko's performance of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne is a masterpiece, but it's not available on YouTube. Here's Helene Grimaud, who's pretty darned good!


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## Euler

I think 'HIP vs non-HIP' is a false dichotomy to an extent. Nuances of interpretation being infinite, binary choices like 'fast vs slow', 'vibrato or no', 'new vs old instruments' barely scratch the surface IMO. No performance is totally historically informed, nor totally uninformed 

Since Kontrapunctus mentioned Heifetz and Grumiaux playing baroque, and now we're onto Bach's Chaconne, let's take the violin version as an example.

The autograph gives no fingerings -- how to choose them? These days sticking to the same string is desirable for uniformity of tone, and harsh open strings are avoided, especially with modern steel strings. But this is baroque polyphony: clarifying and interpolating the multiple voices suggests using each string, i.e. lower positions and open strings. Open strings sound less plangent on the gut strings of baroque violins -- and more similar to stopped strings -- so choice of strings is an aesthetic concern, not mere ideology! But let's compare the fingerings of Heifetz and Grumiaux. Both supposedly old school, Heifetz plays more in the romantic style of tonal uniformity, higher positions and flamboyant portamenti. Grumiaux plays in lower positions, nonetheless avoiding open strings. On baroque violin, Podger plays in lower positions using open strings freely. Three approaches, three marvels. 

With stronger modern bows inspiring romantic techniques like flying staccato, should we desire it in baroque music? Heifetz uses it in the Chaconne, Grumiaux doesn't. And how should those impossible 4-note chords be played? In Bach's day, probably by playing the bass note on the beat and arpeggiating upwards. Today, by playing the 2 bass notes together before the beat, then the 2 upper notes together on the beat. Heifetz and Grumiaux break the chords the modern way. On baroque violin, Kuijken also breaks them the modern way. Podger breaks them the baroque way. Whom should we burn at the stake?

Even something as trivial as trills offer no consensus -- cadential trills being de rigueur for Bach, he didn't bother notating them. In the Chaconne he would almost certainly have played trills at the end of the three main sections. Grumiaux plays no trills. Heifetz plays a single trill at the final cadence. On baroque violin, Kuijken plays the three main plus three extra cadential trills. Podger plays those six cadential trills plus two more. Sweet freedom!

This is the simplest case of a solo instrument. How do you balance the dynamics and timbres of multiple instruments, when their relative power has changed over the centuries? Black and white answers don't exist.

Personally I love thousands of non-HIP recordings and thousands of HIP too, it seems such a shame to dismiss either. More than a shame, senseless. Variety is a beautiful thing!


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## Dimace

KenOC said:


> Demidenko's performance of the Bach-Busoni Chaconne is a masterpiece, but it's not available on YouTube. Here's Helene Grimaud, who's pretty darned good!


This way Bach meant to be! Romantic, with Berlin's* essence and airy (sometimes also violent) feelings.

*Bach and Busoni had a very special relationship with my city.


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## Andolink

I'm pretty hardcore in being turned off by the sound of modern instruments doing everything from Beethoven and earlier but the idea of a HIP "mafia" is absurd to me. As a radical libertarian, I have no inclination whatsoever to push my tastes on others. Everyone is free to pursue their music appreciation as they wish.

I'm not really sure who these Mafiosi are.


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## David Phillips

HIP is a fashion, and like all fashions, it will pass.


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## Enthusiast

KenOC said:


> That seems a strange thing to say. The HIP movement has transformed the way many or even most conductors approach the Beethoven symphonies. Who today takes the old approach of ponderous, massive performances and deliberate tempi? Instead the emphasis now is on smaller bands (Beethoven thought 60 was about right), attempts at the specified metronome markings, crisp articulation and transparency, and often the use of instruments common in Beethoven's time.
> 
> In a recent poll on another site, Gardiner's symphony cycle, now a quarter-century old, was voted the best of all Beethoven cycles, edging out Karajan's 1963. Even Haitink has been moved by the HIP approach, as his most recent cycle on LSO Live demonstrates.
> 
> It seems to me that the HIP movement has had a very great impact on Beethoven performances, something that many consider a benefit.


I have long noted the popularity of the Gardiner set with some bemusement. I don't think it is surprising that a newer set eased the old Karajan off the top spot. What "surprises" me is that among the newer sets it was the Gardiner that did this. The Harnoncourt COE (non-HIP) set is musically streets ahead and the later Vanska as well had far more of interest to tell us about Beethoven. But then popularity tells you little in CM it seems.

The Gardiner set is OK but he seems to want to make points rather than play music. It is interesting that his performances of the two symphonies that he and his band recorded again (live) are much better. It seems that, with time, his interpretations became more musical. I feel his original set should not have been rushed into the studio until his team had lived with the interpretation for a while.

It is true that many conductors changed their Beethoven style "in response to the HIP movement" and that this was needed. But the best results have not come from HIP bands in my opinion. And, anyway, the HIP fans' myth that Beethoven was invariably stodgy and/or syrupy before Norrington and Gardiner doesn't really hold water. If you go back to the days of Furtwangler and Toscanini, to name two of many, you will hear quite how open the field was. And then came Klemperer with his own very powerful conception and indeed the earlier sets by Karajan. We always had a lot of variety with Beethoven.

I do, though, think that the use of forte pianos in Beethoven's piano music has produced some interesting performances with genuinely new insights.


----------



## eugeneonagain

Euler said:


> I think 'HIP vs non-HIP' is a false dichotomy to an extent. Nuances of interpretation being infinite, binary choices like 'fast vs slow', 'vibrato or no', 'new vs old instruments' barely scratch the surface IMO. No performance is totally historically informed, nor totally uninformed
> 
> [...]
> 
> With stronger modern bows inspiring romantic techniques like flying staccato, should we desire it in baroque music? Heifetz uses it in the Chaconne, Grumiaux doesn't. And how should those impossible 4-note chords be played? In Bach's day, probably by playing the bass note on the beat and arpeggiating upwards. Today, by playing the 2 bass notes together before the beat, then the 2 upper notes together on the beat. Heifetz and Grumiaux break the chords the modern way. On baroque violin, Kuijken also breaks them the modern way. Podger breaks them the baroque way. Whom should we burn at the stake?
> 
> This is the simplest case of a solo instrument. How do you balance the dynamics and timbres of multiple instruments, when their relative power has changed over the centuries? Black and white answers don't exist.
> 
> Personally I love thousands of non-HIP recordings and thousands of HIP too, it seems such a shame to dismiss either. More than a shame, senseless. Variety is a beautiful thing!


It surely is a false dichotomy. As has already been said the music, particularly of Bach, seems to shine through any given interpretation. I know much less about the violin, and how a violinist approaches playing, and I am glad to be able to hear varied interpretations;with explanations of techniques and approaches used.
I'm not dismissive of HIP, but I am dismissive of the claims that it is the 'true' approach.


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## wkasimer

Woodduck said:


> There are a few die-hard authenticists who won't tolerate, for example, Bach played on the piano.


Of course. And there are people who can't tolerate the sound of a harpsichord (e.g. Beecham's "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm").

Neither has to tolerate what they won't tolerate. There's no dearth of performances of Baroque and Classical era music played by modern instruments, nor any lack of HIP performances of same.


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## Woodduck

wkasimer said:


> Of course. And there are people who can't tolerate the sound of a harpsichord (e.g. Beecham's "two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm").
> 
> Neither has to tolerate what they won't tolerate. There's no dearth of performances of Baroque and Classical era music played by modern instruments, nor any lack of HIP performances of same.


I meant intolerance in the sense of dogmatic rejection, not merely inability to enjoy. There really are people who are dogmatic about these things. You'll just have to believe me. Or not.


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## wkasimer

Woodduck said:


> I meant intolerance in the sense of dogmatic rejection, not merely inability to enjoy. There really are people who are dogmatic about these things. You'll just have to believe me. Or not.


Of course there are. I'm dogmatic about Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, but that doesn't mean that I have to listen to her, or that others can't or shouldn't. And it certainly doesn't make me "Schwarzkopf Mafia".


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## Luchesi

KenOC said:


> That seems a strange thing to say. The HIP movement has transformed the way many or even most conductors approach the Beethoven symphonies. Who today takes the old approach of ponderous, massive performances and deliberate tempi? Instead the emphasis now is on smaller bands (Beethoven thought 60 was about right), attempts at the specified metronome markings, crisp articulation and transparency, and often the use of instruments common in Beethoven's time.
> 
> In a recent poll on another site, Gardiner's symphony cycle, now a quarter-century old, was voted the best of all Beethoven cycles, edging out Karajan's 1963. Even Haitink has been moved by the HIP approach, as his most recent cycle on LSO Live demonstrates.
> 
> It seems to me that the HIP movement has had a very great impact on Beethoven performances, something that many consider a benefit.


I'm pleased and often diverted by the HIP movement. It has stirred up some dollars and re-exposed treasures and has given us new insights into the same old music we had already appreciated when it was performed by an accomplished generation or two of modern thinkers.

When I say old music I mean the music that cleverly said everything, but sounds less universal when HIP places it 'unceremoniously' back into those long ago decades. It takes an experienced listener to project it forward to our time. What did they know back then?

Or maybe we don't want to project it forward to our time..


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## Merl

I like lots of approaches and styles of playing works. If it works for me I'm happy, HIP or not. I have no clear favouritism for one single approach. I just like damn good music-making. One positive thing that HIP has done is speeding up Beethoven's symphony performances that had got progressively slower, predictable and more turgid by the year (think Kegel).


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## Tikoo Tuba

I think Scarlatti would like the string vibe of this old Chickering piano .


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## Bwv 1080

Room2201974 said:


> How about playing a HIP on a gut instrument using the "exacting standards" of gut making of that time?


Only if the strings were organic and free-range


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## Sid James

Hermastersvoice said:


> You know those people who claim that nothing, NOTHING before Beethoven should be played on modern instruments. It allows them to immediately dismiss non-HIP performances. They use words such as "anachronistic" to sweep valid performances aside. Performances where every musical argument is not spelt out are pushed aside as "kapelmeisterisch" (despite this term being a positive one in my vocabulary) and conductors are "time beaters" (again usually a positive term, according to me). More worryingly, they are wining the battle, music before Beethoven is now largely only performed by specialist ensembles. Sic transit Gloria mundi.


I have come across at least one such opinion dismissive of mainstream performers. I was surprised how in his address at a HIP concert, a musician derided a pianist who was expert in Chopin because he could only perform it on a Steinway, not on a period instrument. He was preaching to the crowd, so I don't think he raised any eyebrows. Plus he was judicious in not naming names.

Overall, the HIP movement has had the effect of removing unnecessary accretions and letting music speak for itself. I compare it to a restoration project, such as Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling. As other posters have pointed out, its had a revitalising effect on music.

Often people refer to HIP versus modern, but I see it the other way around. HIP has only been around for just over a century, it is a product of the modern age. As old as atonality! We can hear how things have changed in that time. Listen to a Bach piece as played by Wanda Landowska and then compare it to Gustav Leonhart. No two musicians being the same, there is the same diversity in HIP as in mainstream approaches - from objective to subjective.

I like to see HIP as complementing and also influencing the mainstream. Others have pointed this out already. An example is the wealth of scholarship that has arisen out of the movement, but also its impacts on other music, principally jazz. I see Bach and Vivaldi as being the nearest precursors to jazz musicians like Dave Brubeck, Eugen Cicero or Jacques Louissier.

On that note, I'll end with a quote by Percy Grainger, who had equal interest in folk, classical and jazz. It sums up the way I see this topic as a listener. I like to hear how musicians have been learning from the versatility of the old masters.

_What we need in our composers and in our leaders of musical thought is an attitude like Bach's. He seems to have been willing enough to experiment with all the instruments known to him and to arrange and rearrange all kinds of work for all sorts of combinations of those instruments. It is easy to guess what liberal uses he would have made of the marvellous instruments of today._


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## DavidA

Hermastersvoice said:


> DavidA, does it matter if it is authentic or not? Authentic Shakespeare or TS Elliot? Beecham's Schubert is almost without a shadow of a doubt non-authentic, as is Beaux-Arts' Haydn, but my God does it work!. Not because of gut strings but thanks to musicianship. Also, I'm not saying that HIP isn't valid in many cases, but it's not a reason for dismissing other ways of doing things. Klemperer's Bach or Beecham's Handel spring to mind.


I thought that's what I said?


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## DavidA

Sid James said:


> I like to see HIP as complementing and also influencing the mainstream. [/i]


My thought too, although as far as baroque is concerned, HIP has now become the mainstream.


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## Larkenfield

I see no mafia to complain about. Everyone is free to decide how they want the music played and on what instruments. But I do complain about some of the period keyboard instruments that supposedly pass as authentic, with the fortepianos usually being the worst. Some of them sound terrible like toy instruments because of their metallic treble register and they often cannot hold a tuning or there's a buzz or some other defect of resonance that I'm not convinced was part of the original sound when those instruments were new.

Nor do I care for the dry, sterile, vibratoless string sound on someone like Mahler, as if that was the way the orchestra sounded in his day. I don't think so. The strings can end up sounding like an elementary school orchestra unsure about how to play their instruments. But if the instruments are in good shape, have an inspiring sound that can express depth as well as lightness, I've enjoyed a number of HIP recordings and see this historical trend continuing as something positive.

Norrington's barren and dry as sawdust Mahler:






Some of the fortepianos couldn't possibly have sounded this bad in their day, and yet the pianists play these instruments as if they don't notice the poor sound quality, perhaps because they are convinced that it's authentic:


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## science

This used to be a real fight.

To me, indifferent to ideologies, it all comes down to whether I personally like how it sounds or not. I like Abbado's recording of Pergolesi's _Stabat Mater_ and Karajan's '60s recording of Mozart's _Requiem_ (the one with the muddy sound, not the remastered version), Bach transpositions for electric guitar (because transpositions are really what we're talking about here, right?), and so on for this and that, but I like the idea of HIPPI projects too.

In fact, HIPPI musicians have helped recover so much great Renaissance and Baroque music that I cannot imagine where we'd be without them. If I had billions of any currency, I'd support HIPPI musicians out of sheer gratitude for that.


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## philoctetes

I draw the line vaguely between baroque and classical. A lot of non-HIP wolfie and Haydn sounds fine to me, but some of it doesn't. With Beethoven I usually prefer modern instruments.


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## Andolink

Larkenfield said:


> ...vibratoless string sound on someone like Mahler, as if that was supposedly the way the orchestra sounded in his day. I don't think so.


Based on what? Have you researched the string playing styles and techniques of the orchestral players Mahler worked with?

I'm not suggesting your view is incorrect, but when you and others in this thread (or elsewhere) say this or that is not how it was done back in the composer's time, it needs some backing up with facts or it's meaningless.


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## DavidA

Andolink said:


> Based on what? Have you researched the string playing styles and techniques of the orchestral players Mahler worked with?
> 
> I'm not suggesting your view is incorrect, but when you and others in this thread (or elsewhere) say this or that is not how it was done back in the composer's time, it needs some backing up with facts or it's meaningless.


It is quite clear from what Mahler said that he conducted his own works differently according to his mood


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## david johnson

no musical mafia of any type is welcome in my listening room


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## Brahmsianhorn

I think it is a mafia insofar as it conflates subjective taste with “correctness.” It’s not enough now to simply say you don’t like a performance, but people use words like wrong, travesty, etc. as if an ethical line has been crossed by the offender.

And this points to the hypocrisy of many HIPers, which is that the movement very much is a subjective reflection of OUR time. Compared to 50, 60, 70 years ago we are a less sentimental, more technically perfect society. So it is taste cloaking itself in “correctness.”

I happen to think the spirit of Bach’s music comes across more in, say, Mengelberg’s 1939 St Matthew Passion than the vast majority of HIP versions. And often you will see such an opinion labeled as being a “heretic” or worse. It is in many ways an upside down world.


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## Bulldog

Some of you pay way too much attention to opinions you don't agree with; the mafia is only in your minds.


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## wkasimer

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I think it is a mafia insofar as it conflates subjective taste with "correctness." It's not enough now to simply say you don't like a performance, but people use words like wrong, travesty, etc. as if an ethical line has been crossed by the offender.


That's an opinion, not a "mafia". And I think that you're making much more out of a very few dogmatic individuals than they deserve. Anyone who dismisses another's taste in such terms usually lacks the ability to have a rational discussion.



> And this points to the hypocrisy of many HIPers, which is that the movement very much is a subjective reflection of OUR time.


Much as I hate to point it out, calling proponents of HIP "hypocrites" is a lot like calling a non-HIP performance a "travesty".



> Compared to 50, 60, 70 years ago we are a less sentimental, more technically perfect society.


I disagree, but that's not a topic for a musical forum.



> I happen to think the spirit of Bach's music comes across more in, say, Mengelberg's 1939 St Matthew Passion than the vast majority of HIP versions. And often you will see such an opinion labeled as being a "heretic" or worse.


By whom? I don't much care for Mengelberg's SMP - mostly the fault of some of his soloists - but it's certainly an interesting performance that I turn to now and then. But I don't know anyone who would call you a "heretic" for preferring it.

I think that you're setting up a strawman here.


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## Mandryka

wkasimer said:


> That's an opinion, not a "mafia". And I think that you're making much more out of a very few dogmatic individuals than they deserve. Anyone who dismisses another's taste in such terms usually lacks the ability to have a rational discussion.
> 
> Much as I hate to point it out, calling proponents of HIP "hypocrites" is a lot like calling a non-HIP performance a "travesty".
> 
> I disagree, but that's not a topic for a musical forum.
> 
> By whom? I don't much care for Mengelberg's SMP - mostly the fault of some of his soloists - but it's certainly an interesting performance that I turn to now and then. But I don't know anyone who would call you a "heretic" for preferring it.
> 
> I think that you're setting up a strawman here.


EXCUSE ME!!!!!!!!! Playing a Bach keyboard concerto with the concertgebauw orchestra using modern instruments is a travesty. Some people like travesties like some people like transvestites. Just saying


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## wkasimer

Mandryka said:


> EXCUSE ME!!!!!!!!! Playing a Bach keyboard concerto with the concertgebauw orchestra using modern instruments is a travesty. Some people like travesties like some people like transvestites. Just saying


Whatever . I rather enjoy this one:









It's anything but HIP, but it brims with energy.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Bulldog said:


> Some of you pay way too much attention to opinions you don't agree with; the mafia is only in your minds.


When I like a recording I give reasons, such as it sounds better, etc. I present it as an opinion.

What many HIPers do is state that if you don't perform it the way they like it then you are objectively wrong. They make it black and white where there is no room for disagreement. You are literally shamed out of doing it any way but the way they say is "historically informed" (a repugnantly elitist term for art if there ever was one).


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## Brahmsianhorn

wkasimer said:


> Much as I hate to point it out, calling proponents of HIP "hypocrites" is a lot like calling a non-HIP performance a "travesty".


Travesty is just a simple insult. Hypocrisy has a specific meaning, which is saying one thing and doing another.

I call many of the HIPers hypocrites because they pretend their goal is preserving history when the reality is that the style they promote has much more to do with the fad of OUR times (playing things faster, more efficiently, with less overt emotion, less vibrato, more clinically, lighter textures).


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## Brahmsianhorn

Mandryka said:


> EXCUSE ME!!!!!!!!! Playing a Bach keyboard concerto with the concertgebauw orchestra using modern instruments is a travesty. Some people like travesties like some people like transvestites. Just saying


It sounds better. The harmonic language comes through much more naturally with the fuller tones. Bach himself may have preferred it. So how is that a travesty?


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## philoctetes

Ha. IMO the harmonies benefit from transparency. Fullness is Brahms. "May have" is just speculation which was objectable for someone else in the case of Mahler, even though Mahler had a bunch of students who made recordings we can guess from. 

My opinion is that baroque string practice had been especially bad when I was younger. I remember pre-HIP recordings with massive string sections and non-stop vibrato. I never liked that. I could tell the music was good but played wrong. But what they have that I like is the slower tempos, and I agree that a lot of HIP performers just play too fast I assume its because many performers simply are capable of playing slower to good effect.

The HIP mafia may be a strawman but that strawman guards the gate. Thirty years ago, one had to go beyond the Universal / Warner type labels to find the good HIP stuff, and it's still true.


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## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> EXCUSE ME!!!!!!!!! Playing a Bach keyboard concerto with the concertgebauw orchestra using modern instruments is a travesty. Some people like . Just saying


Some people like travesties, some people like transvestites, and some people like transcriptions.


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## Woodduck

Brahmsianhorn said:


> It sounds better. The harmonic language comes through much more naturally with the fuller tones. Bach himself may have preferred it. So how is that a travesty?


What do fuller tones have to do with how the harmonic language comes through? What does it mean for a harmonic language to come through naturally? Bach played on Baroque-style instruments sounds utterly natural to me, and I can hear the harmony very clearly.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Woodduck said:


> What do fuller tones have to do with how the harmonic language comes through? What does it mean for a harmonic language to come through naturally? Bach played on Baroque-style instruments sounds utterly natural to me, and I can hear the harmony very clearly.


Because the full tones give the performer a wider palette, which allows for full expression of Bach's musical language to come through.

The obvious case is with the piano, which allows you to stress and color in a way a harpsichord does not. Bach's music is not metronomical. The musical language naturally lends itself to instruments (and performers) that allow for a wide variety of expression.


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## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Because the full tones give the performer a wider palette, which allows for full expression of Bach's musical language to come through.
> 
> The obvious case is with the piano, which allows you to stress and color in a way a harpsichord does not. Bach's music is not metronomical. The musical language naturally lends itself to instruments (and performers) that allow for a wide variety of expression.


But there are more audible overtones from a proper historical harpsichord than a Steinway type piano, a piano's tones are louder, but certainly not richer. My feeling is that it's similar for a gamba, but maybe a cellist will correct me.


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## Enthusiast

I do like Bach keyboard pieces played on the piano. But when it comes to the concertos I think there can a loss in ... er .... "seriousness" ... when the keyboard part is played on a piano and I guess that increases when the orchestra is large and rich sounding. The result can be delicious but I am not sure the music is well served. Of course, and as ever, a particular performance could turn things around and make me wrong.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Well at least we are debating based on the music and not the false authority of "historically informed" vs "historically misinformed." Bach never heard modern instruments so we have no way of knowing what he would or would not have preferred today.


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## DavidA

philoctetes said:


> Ha. IMO the harmonies benefit from transparency. Fullness is Brahms. "May have" is just speculation which was objectable for someone else in the case of Mahler, *even though Mahler had a bunch of students who made recordings we can guess from. *
> 
> My opinion is that baroque string practice had been especially bad when I was younger. I remember pre-HIP recordings with massive string sections and non-stop vibrato. I never liked that. I could tell the music was good but played wrong. But what they have that I like is the slower tempos, and I agree that a lot of HIP performers just play too fast I assume its because many performers simply are capable of playing slower to good effect.
> 
> The HIP mafia may be a strawman but that strawman guards the gate. Thirty years ago, one had to go beyond the Universal / Warner type labels to find the good HIP stuff, and it's still true.


The problem is those who knew Mahler and heard him conduct performed his music in different ways - eg Walter and Klemperer.


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## Bulldog

Brahmsianhorn said:


> What many HIPers do is state that if you don't perform it the way they like it then you are objectively wrong.


You keep using the word "many". Break it down for me; how many and where do they come from?


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## Brahmsianhorn

Bulldog said:


> You keep using the word "many". Break it down for me; how many and where do they come from?


The ones I have spoken with and read opinions from in over 20 years of being both a classical music listener and performer. I see it all the time. Performances on modern instruments and fuller tone are dismissed, and not just subjectively critiqued. In fact I often hear people state that a performance is good but obviously wrong, as if it is some sort of guilty pleasure. I find the whole premise to be repugnant.


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## Bulldog

Brahmsianhorn said:


> The ones I have spoken with and read opinions from in over 20 years of being both a classical music listener and performer. I see it all the time. Performances on modern instruments and fuller tone are dismissed, and not just subjectively critiqued. In fact I often hear people state that a performance is good but obviously wrong, as if it is some sort of guilty pleasure. I find the whole premise to be repugnant.


Well, you didn't break it down at all, continuing to use terms that make it sound pervasive. The best I can recommend is that you pay it no attention and listen to music to maximize your enjoyment and illumination.

I do offer an exact source of anti-hip bias. It's from a Fanfare magazine interview with Pinchas Zuckerman who was ranting about how those terrible hipsters were taking over baroque music - inferior musicians who only went hip because the non-hip competition was too strong.

There are extremists at both ends of the spectrum, and extremists are best forgotten.


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## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> In fact I often hear people state that a performance is good but obviously wrong,


Do you think it's a contradiction? I mean people can read the score incorrectly etc. That would make it wrong wouldn't it? Or do you think that if they've read the score incorrectly then it can't be any good?


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## DaveM

Mandryka said:


> But there are more audible overtones from a proper historical harpsichord than a Steinway type piano, a piano's tones are louder, *but certainly not richer.* My feeling is that it's similar for a gamba, but maybe a cellist will correct me.


Do you own a Steinway grand piano or, at least, play one frequently?


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## Woodduck

I'm sure that dogmatic HIPers are fewer now that so many musicians and ensembles exist with their diversity of approaches. We can be certain, too, that performing practice in 1700 was extremely diverse, as it has been in all subsequent times. Being "historically informed" means, ideally, attempting to understand the music of the past on its own terms, which is no more than good musicians try to do with any music.

In my college years I was recruited as a choral singer by the Boston-based Telemann Society and found their idea of Baroque choral technique absurdly rigid and actually unnatural, but at that date (around 1968) such dogmatic attitudes were understandable as reactions to traditions which still persisted in the local choral societies, as exemplified by the Ebenezer Prout edition of Handel's _Messiah_ which I participated in every year. As a college freshman I tried to get the soloists in our _Messiah _performances to embellish the naked Handelian vocal line in a way that my research told me would be more genuinely Baroque. Our director was open to this, but since few recordings attempting a Baroque style existed then, it was something of a new language to people. Some of us were very keen on doing it "right" back then, but our ideas of what "right" means have certainly expanded and most of us can probably enjoy a variety of approaches to the music without worrying too much about what Handel did. After all, he did use different instrumental forces at different performances, rearranged and rewrote his own music extensively, and expected that different performers would embellish the written notes _ad libitum_. None of that is an excuse for bringing back Prout, however!


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## Mandryka

DaveM said:


> Do you own a Steinway grand piano or, at least, play one frequently?


I have done so, as a child I grew up with a nice piano, not a Steinway but a Bechstein, and when I was at school and university I played a Steinway quite often. I've never cared enough for the Steinway sound to want to buy one, though I know there are some fine examples - I owned a little Pleyel grand for a long time, till about 15 years ago. In fact I've never played a historical harpsichord! I've heard good ones close up being played by people who know how to drive them, I remember a very good Ruckers once, it's quite an experience.

If I were to ever get back into playing I'd get a clavichord I think, but I'm probably not diligent enough to learn to really master it. It is such a beautiful sound though.

The last piano I heard sounded absolutely horrid to me, a Fazzioli grand.


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## Guest

Can someone post proof FROM THE BAROQUE ERA that states string players did not use vibrato?


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## Brahmsianhorn

Bulldog said:


> Well, you didn't break it down at all, continuing to use terms that make it sound pervasive. The best I can recommend is that you pay it no attention and listen to music to maximize your enjoyment and illumination.
> 
> I do offer an exact source of anti-hip bias. It's from a Fanfare magazine interview with Pinchas Zuckerman who was ranting about how those terrible hipsters were taking over baroque music - inferior musicians who only went hip because the non-hip competition was too strong.
> 
> There are extremists at both ends of the spectrum, and extremists are best forgotten.


Your Zukerman example is not the same as what I said. He was stating an opinion. Calling them inferior is an opinion, however rude it may be. I am talking about people who dismiss a performance out-of-hand as "wrong" without even considering its artistic merits.

But he's at least partly right. We are in an age where expertise is a convenient replacement for artistry. A mediocre artist can become an expert and lecture others on the "correct" way to perform a piece. The true task of the performer is then short-circuited, and the entire industry is brought down as different "experts" climb over each other trying to prove who is the most "correct." It's sad.


----------



## Mandryka

Kontrapunctus said:


> Can someone post proof FROM THE BAROQUE ERA that states string players did not use vibrato?


But they did use vibrato, if I remember correctly Geminiani talks about it positively. Not continuous vibrato though, and when they did do it they maybe used it just at the end of notes sometimes rather than through the whole note. But no, they used vibrato when they played the violin, like other ornaments.


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## philoctetes

DavidA said:


> The problem is those who knew Mahler and heard him conduct performed his music in different ways - eg Walter and Klemperer.


And it's possible that baroque practice varied even more. However I don't believe that if we had recordings from Bach's peers that we would hear steel strings. Nor would most of them use large orchestras, although exceptions might occur (Handel). It seems to me that adopting period instruments and making them sound good has been one of the great achievements of the HIP movement that qualifies for "authentic". And it's also allowed for great variety of interpretation. It may not satisfy those who like the very massive Baroque style that prevailed during the early years of recording, when romanticism ruled, but to assert that style is authentic or "better" just won't fly...


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## philoctetes

The variety of timbre and density with period instruments exceeds that with the modern ones. This is partly because they don't go "full" all the time. Instrumental overtones are more complex and less "normalized" and can be tailored by the performer or instrument maker. Modern orchestra practice is more standardized and one Steinway sounds like another, while any two harpsichords will rarely sound alike. This is the antidote to ear fatigue and being able to enjoy a composer like Vivaldi who wrote the same concerto 600 times. If all orchestras played all 600 like sludge I doubt anybody would want to collect them.


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## wkasimer

Bulldog said:


> The best I can recommend is that you pay it no attention and listen to music to maximize your enjoyment and illumination.


Amen to that! It's been a long time since I cared what other people think about my taste in music, as well as many other things.



> I do offer an exact source of anti-hip bias. It's from a Fanfare magazine interview with Pinchas Zuckerman who was ranting about how those terrible hipsters were taking over baroque music - inferior musicians who only went hip because the non-hip competition was too strong.


Colin Davis also produced a rather inflammatory, generalized rant against HIP:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-...roque-sir-colin-davis-speaks-out-7581984.html

Zukerman and Davis are two prominent musicians (and there may be others) who have expressed utter disdain for HIP. I can't think of a single prominent HIP musician who has been equally dismissive of non-HIP performances of Baroque and Classical era repertoire.



> There are extremists at both ends of the spectrum, and extremists are best forgotten.


Amen to that, too...


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## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> But they did use vibrato, if I remember correctly Geminiani talks about it positively. Not continuous vibrato though, and when they did do it they maybe used it just at the end of notes sometimes rather than through the whole note. But no, they used vibrato when they played the violin, like other ornaments.


Much the same goes for the voice. I've never been able to believe that singers for several centuries suppressed the vibrato, which is a natural function of a well-supported voice. There's a stop on organs dating back to the 15th century called the "tremulant" which is clearly an attempt to imitate the vocal vibrato, indicating that vibrato was considered attractive quite early, and suggesting that instruments capable of vibrato employed it, at least as an ornament and probably more regularly.

Ideas for which evidence is uncertain or even nonexistent tend to be held tenaciously. The "no vibrato" idea used to be quite common in early music practice, and there are still those who claim that as late as the 19th century singers sang and orchestras played without vibrato. I'm not sure how the idea got started, but I suspect it's based partly on reading too much into complaints by contemporary critics about an unattractive "trembling" and other such effects produced by certain singers and other musicians. Obviously vibrato can be excessive in singers and can be abused by instrumentalists, but that doesn't mean we should all aim to sound like glass harmonicas.


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## Mandryka

I once saw some oscilloscope images of tones produced by various singers. Emma Kirkby produced a very steady vibrato free tone until the very end of the note, when there was a slight wobble. That way may be the best way for a vocalist or a string instrument player in music with interesting counterpoint.

The most impressive oscilloscope printouts were from Jussi Björling. He used vibrato always and everywhere -- but when you see the wave it's so even, so controlled!

I suspect that the most vibrato free singers are the prople who worked with David Munrow in the Early Music Consort of London -- he hated it. In fact here's the essay written by someone I know slightly which shows the wave analysis I mentioned at the start of this post. This is well worth reading

https://www.york.ac.uk/music/conferences/nema/breen/#chapter2


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## Sid James

DavidA said:


> My thought too, although as far as baroque is concerned, HIP has now become the mainstream.


That sounds right, and even mainstream musicians have felt the need to address HIP in their interpretations. Anne-Sophie Mutter for example used a Baroque bow for her most recent recording of the Bach concertos (coupled with Gubaidulina).
Other ways that HIP has influenced the mainstream go without saying. It's more or less convention now for modern orchestras to play such music with less than the full complement.

Some extracts from the interview here:
https://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/200810/9189/

_I just love the airiness, the transparency and the purity of the sound... It was very important for me to bring that quality of articulation and inner voicing to the recording. You can achieve those qualities more easily (with a Baroque bow) because you don't have this pasty sound clone in your way. But on stage, it's a little lost.

I'm not a great believer in so-called authentic playing; we are all born in the 20th or 21st century, and we cannot shrug off what we expect of diversity of colors we are able to achieve with a contemporary bow. But what you lose with a contemporary bow is transparency of sound and the ability to use Bach's phrasing, which is very important.

So it's transparency, it's speed, it's inner voices, and it's a different sound aesthetic, a more leaner sound aesthetic._


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## Heck148

philoctetes said:


> The variety of timbre and density with period instruments exceeds that with the modern ones. This is partly because they don't go "full" all the time. Instrumental overtones are more complex and less "normalized" and can be tailored by the performer or instrument maker. Modern orchestra practice is more standardized and one Steinway sounds like another, while any two harpsichords will rarely sound alike..


Sorry, I disagree completely - modern instruments have a far greater tonal palette than original instruments....not even close. The tone is much richer throughout the extensive registers, the overtones stronger, and skilled artists can bring forth these colors thru different performance practices....
One of my main beefs with HIP is that the instruments don't sound very good, to my trained ears...they feature many of the errors that you are taught to avoid in conservatory training on modern instruments- uneven scale, uneven notes, shaky intonation, "wolf" notes, and generally thin, wimpy tone, limited dynamic range, for the wind instruments...also, that flat [tone], nasal, _sans vibrato_ gut string sound grates on me rather quickly - makes me seasick...

I could cite many examples of period instrument recordings that I find unpleasant - but a couple on my own instrument - bassoon - a recording of Bach Orchestral Suite #4 - Bouree II - 2 oboes, with the running bassoon line underneath, quite extensive - it moves right along and is technically interesting....I heard an original instrument rendition, the bassoon sounded like a pitchless buzz, like a swarm of bumblebees...he could have been playing anything, the pitches were indistinct, how would you know?? there is definitely a tune, a built in melodic/harmonic flow, but you'd never know it from this performance...
I have a Vivaldi bassoon recording by Sergio Azzolini, playing a period instrument - again, the same thing, Azzolini, a fine player, is struggling to get the right notes out in the right place, forget any sort of tonal variation, or expressive nuance of sound or dynamics...I have some of his recordings on modern instruments, he's an excellent player.
Then there are the wimpy sounding clarinos in the Monteverdi "Magnificat" - the poor guys are barely making the part - wonderful part, how great it would sound on modern D piccolo trumpets!!

I take issue with the contention that composers would reject modern instruments in favor of their contemporary ones - Berlioz, in "Symphonie Fantastique", jettisoned the ophicleides at the earliest possible moment when the valve tubas became available -
He hated the ophicleides, said "They are like an escaped bull jumping around in a drawing room".

I do like the idea of using smaller ensembles, generally shorter bow strokes, shorter notes, etc....this does give a clarity to the texture, and is a radical change from the Baroque performances of Ormandy or Karajan - full string section, massive vibrato, long, full bow strokes..very heavy thick texture..smaller ensembles, with modern instruments seems a very good combination, and when I ran my own chamber orchestra, our conductor favored this approach, and we attained some very excellent results....

Anyway, it all comes down to individual taste, and I have no problem with people who enjoy original instruments. I don't enjoy them myself, and I find the deficiencies in sound to be a major distraction..I don't find myself enjoying the music, as such, but rather critiquing the problems the musicians seem to be having in its production....I'd much rather be able to focus on the music itself.


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## Mandryka

Heck148 said:


> Sorry, I disagree completely - modern instruments have a far greater tonal palette than original instruments....not even close. The tone is much richer throughout the extensive registers, the overtones stronger, and skilled artists can bring forth these colors thru different performance practices....


have you ever owned or played a well restored Ruckers?


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## Brahmsianhorn

wkasimer said:


> Amen to that! It's been a long time since I cared what other people think about my taste in music, as well as many other things.


I don't care what people think of my taste either. What I care about is that we are at least all in agreement that it is all about taste and nothing more. What I see with period performers is the attitude that it is not a question of taste but of being advanced in knowledge and expertise vs being ignorant and behind the times.

For example, why the label "historically informed?" So if you don't like period instruments that makes you "historically uninformed?" How about you either choose to use them or you don't, and whether or not you do is a question of _taste_?


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## Kjetil Heggelund

Sorry that I didn't read every post here...Aren't you guys discussing esthetics? Esthetics in the broad sense reflects on our sensual way of being in the world (thank-you translate.google and "the big Norwegian lexicon"). Maybe we all have slightly different perception. I try to listen to music in a way that doesn't get my ego in the way. Meaning listening on the performers terms, just as they convey the music. Works great for modern music and old music.


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## Brahmsianhorn

wkasimer said:


> Colin Davis also produced a rather inflammatory, generalized rant against HIP:
> 
> https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-...roque-sir-colin-davis-speaks-out-7581984.html


What's wrong with what Colin Davis said? Just because you don't agree with his opinion? I think it was awesome what he said. My sentiments exactly.

I agree especially with this line: "I've heard Bach especially mangled, as though he has no emotional content."

There is a great quote from Furtwangler that is very similar. He attended a HIP performance of the St Matthew Passion in the 50s (yes, they existed even then) and said afterwards that not one phrase had really been felt, and that "the music of Bach, as it were, did not make an appearance."

I perform Bach myself. I sang _Ich habe genug_ last February, one of the greatest masterpieces ever written. This summer I will be Jesus in the St John Passion. I am very glad that it will be on modern instruments with a conductor who understands the emotions of the work. What is wrong about being passionate about the music I love? I think everyone has the right to express their opinion.


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## KenOC

I have a hunch that Saint-Saëns wouldn’t approve of the HIP movement: "Why cannot we understand that in art, as in everything else, there are some things to which we must not accustom ourselves?"


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## philoctetes

It's harmonic uniformity that seems to divide the two camps... I can't argue with what you say you hear, but I will argue about the better or worse of it. Which means it's just a bunch of aesthetic opinions. I like Sergio Azzolini's Vivaldi, warts and all, precisely because it doesn't sound bland like Milan Turkovic. I like quacky oboes more than Heinz Holliger's shrillness. I'm a wind player so this stuff matters to me. Baroque music often needs this kind of colorizing because it's boring otherwise. I do not want to hear HIP sounds in Bruckner however, where a different aesthetic applies, IMO...

We can all find examples of objectionable music making from any musical "movement". Doesn't keep us from avoiding those movements entirely.


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## wkasimer

Brahmsianhorn said:


> What's wrong with what Colin Davis said? Just because you don't agree with his opinion?


I have absolutely no idea whether I agree with Davis or not, because I have no idea on which performances and performers he is basing such a judgement. His comments are blanket condemnation of ALL HIP performances and performers.



> I think it was awesome what he said. My sentiments exactly.


And like Davis, you've provided no specifics with which to agree or disagree. Perhaps if you provided some specifics about HIP performances and recordings that have offended your taste, this discussion might go somewhere.



> I agree especially with this line: "I've heard Bach especially mangled, as though he has no emotional content."


I agree with this, too. And many of those emotionally neutered performances have been anything but HIP, some of it by world famous performers.



> There is a great quote from Furtwangler that is very similar. He attended a HIP performance of the St Matthew Passion in the 50s (yes, they existed even then) and said afterwards that not one phrase had really been felt, and that "the music of Bach, as it were, did not make an appearance."


Not to beat a dead horse, but without knowing who the performers were, I have no idea whether the problem was with the performance's HIPness, or the specific performers.

I agree with Duke Elliington:

"There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful; if it doesn't it has failed."


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## Mandryka

Colin Davis is a bitch in that article.



wkasimer said:


> I have absolutely no idea whether I agree with Davis or not, because I have no idea on which performances and performers he is basing such a judgement. His comments are blanket condemnation of ALL HIP performances and performers.


Doesn't he single out Jiggy and Roger Norrington? I can't bring myself to go back and check, it's so disappointing to see him behave in such an undignified way.


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## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> . This summer I will be Jesus in the St John Passion. I am very glad that it will be on modern instruments with a conductor who understands the emotions of the work.


You mean an anti-semitic conductor?


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## Heck148

Brahmsianhorn said:


> For example, why the label "historically informed?" So if you don't like period instruments that makes you "historically uninformed?" How about you either choose to use them or you don't, and whether or not you do is a question of _taste_?


the historically informed is certainly open to challenge - David McGill [former CSO principal bassoon] in his book "Sound in Motion" challenges the notion completely - he claims that for every source claiming a certain, "indisputable" performance practice of the past, he can produce an equally "indisputable treatise that claims the exact opposite!! 
I worked with one dogmatic jerk who insisted that all classical period trills were to start from the top note, on the beat!! no exceptions!! this is nonsense - one must consider the melodic line, the approach to the trill note, the flow of the line, etc....the conductor's view was different from Mr Dogma...we did it as directed from the podium...


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## Heck148

Brahmsianhorn said:


> There is a great quote from Furtwangler that is very similar.... "the music of Bach, as it were, did not make an appearance."


OUCH!! LOL!! :tiphat:


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## Heck148

philoctetes said:


> It's harmonic uniformity that seems to divide the two camps... I can't argue with what you say you hear, but I will argue about the better or worse of it. Which means it's just a bunch of aesthetic opinions. I like Sergio Azzolini's Vivaldi, warts and all, precisely because it doesn't sound bland like Milan Turkovic.


I'm not a big fan of Turkovic either, he is rather bland, but I wouldn't go to period instruments - Try John Miller or Klaus Thunneman, or if you can find it, Maurice Allard [ French bassoon - amazing player]



> I like quacky oboes more than Heinz Holliger's shrillness. I'm a wind player so this stuff matters to me. Baroque music often needs this kind of colorizing because it's boring otherwise.


 I love colorful woodwinds too, but to me, thin and buzzy, or thin and wimpy, are far too limited a range. As I said - the shortcomings of the instruments are to me a distraction....I feel like I'm back auditioning high school All-State candidates again...

We can all find examples of objectionable music making from any musical "movement". Doesn't keep us from avoiding those movements entirely.[/QUOTE]


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## Brahmsianhorn

Heck148 said:


> OUCH!! LOL!! :tiphat:


Great retort, isn't it? Especially considering the HIP people claim that theirs is the ONLY correct way to play Bach.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Mandryka said:


> You mean an anti-semitic conductor?


Funny you mention that. I am Jewish myself. I have been considering whether it is better to replace the word "Juden" with "Leute." Would this only bring just more attention to the anti-semitic message of blame?


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## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Funny you mention that. I am Jewish myself. I have been considering whether it is better to replace the word "Juden" with "Laute." Would this only bring just more attention to the anti-semitic message of blame?


Where are you singing it?


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## wkasimer

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Funny you mention that. I am Jewish myself. I have been considering whether it is better to replace the word "Juden" with "Laute." Would this only bring just more attention to the anti-semitic message of blame?


Why would you want to replace Jews with lutes?


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## Brahmsianhorn

wkasimer said:


> Why would you want to replace Jews with lutes?


Haha. Wrong word. That would have been funny. I meant LEUTE.


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## Bulldog

When I returned to classical music in my 30's, I decided to reboot with baroque music. I listened to many recordings, all on modern instruments. None of them sounded good to me, and then I found Goebel playing Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites. The music was now glorious/exciting/ incisive/emotionally uplifting and satisfying; I had found my baroque home and never looked back. As the decades passed, I noticed that a higher and higher percentage of new baroque recordings were on period instruments, and I concluded that the golden age of baroque music-making had arrived for me and others of similar preference. It's not a fad, but a movement that will continue for many decades. HIP/period instrument performance rescued baroque music, and it has easily been the most rewarding aspect of my return to classical music. Your mileage may vary.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Bulldog said:


> When I returned to classical music in my 30's, I decided to reboot with baroque music. I listened to many recordings, all on modern instruments. None of them sounded good to me, and then I found Goebel playing Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites. The music was now glorious/exciting/ incisive/emotionally uplifting and satisfying; I had found my baroque home and never looked back. As the decades passed, I noticed that a higher and higher percentage of new baroque recordings were on period instruments, and I concluded that the golden age of baroque music-making had arrived for me and others of similar preference. It's not a fad, but a movement that will continue for many decades. HIP/period instrument performance rescued baroque music, and it has easily been the most rewarding aspect of my return to classical music. Your mileage may vary.


Great. I wish more HIPsters could express their opinion this way rather than the pedantic argument of authenticity and being historically informed.

Personally I find HIP's emphasis on efficiency and clarity to be boring and lacking in expressive freedom. To each their own, and that's the way it should be.


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## eugeneonagain

Unfortunately a number of my friends are well ensconced in the HIP movement (it has a strong presence in musical life of the church city I live in) and they make bizarre claims about it. One is a transverso player. While I like the sound of the baroque flute I don't think it is necessarily 'better' than a modern flute or in fact better for playing older music. However she thinks otherwise and has the extensive conservatory training to 'prove it'.

I don't even want to rehearse the arguments I've been subjected to because they are a mixture of nonsensical and pure fantasy.


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## aleazk

One of the main 'objective' premises of the HIP is that instruments back then were different (something which is unquestionably true) and that, therefore, composers thought their music with the peculiarities of those instruments in mind (debatable if stated in general terms) and that, therefore, we should play their music with period instruments since we may be missing important things in the composers' original intentions (idem to previous point). The same is often said of performance practices (and, again, is often debatable).

Regarding the instruments, I think it should be analysed case by case with a close look at the score, particularly in orchestral pieces. Often, questions of balace might arise if some dynamics marks made by the composer are interpreted literally with modern instruments (instruments like trumpets are often the cause since their design was very different in, say, Beethoven's time). But that can often be solved by the conductor, since he's there, after all, to correct such things. Thus, even then, a strict HIP may not be necessary. In other cases, it's often said by HIP interpreters that the characteristics of the fortepiano influeced the style of Mozart (particularly the highly developed right hand phrasings one encounters in the classical period and this is attributed to the very sensitive treble register of those instruments, unlike the supposedly less subtle modern grand piano). That may be true, but a fortepiano interpretation could be still replaced by one on a modern instrument but informed by those things. And then we go to the terrain of HIP interpretation rather than performance on actual period instruments. Is that approach necessary? As in the case with orchestration, I think it's strictly necessary only when some technical problems arise (bad balance being usually the most frequent). Another chapter are the alleged performance practices, like, e.g., supposedly improvised lines, which are hot topics for musicologists. I'm not sure a performer should be obsessed with their debates, but they shouldn't ignore them either.

Thus, in general, I think the neurotic HIP approach one often sees from certain people (not all, of course) is not justified. In fact, one of the identitary elements of classical music is the development of standarized instruments and playing techniques so that both composers and performers can concentrate on the actual music in abstract. Of course, that's only an ideal. Perhaps that's the magic of the string quartet, it's 'democratic' so to speak, all composers have in front of them basically the same thing and it's up to them to make a difference in terms only about what they write for it as abstract music.

I do think, however, that for pre-baroque music a strict HIP is necessary since many instruments and practices are only particular to that time frame. But, on the other hand, the historical documentation is much less abudant!


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## Woodduck

aleazk said:


> One of the main 'objective' premises of the HIP is that instruments back then were different (something which is unquestionably true) and that, therefore, composers thought their music with the peculiarities of those instruments in mind (debatable if stated in general terms) and that, therefore, we should play their music with period instruments since we may be missing important things in the composers' original intentions (idem to previous point).


The most obvious refutation of the "he had the instruments of his time in mind" idea is the readiness of Baroque composers themselves to assign the very same music to different instruments and ensembles. The notion of music being "inspired by" a specific instrumental tone quality is of very limited applicability to most music before the 19th century, mainly to music of a programmatic or representational nature, e.g., flutes imitating bird calls or, on a more sophisticated level, the "halo" of strings with which Bach surrounds the words of Jesus in the St. Matthew Passion. If a modern metal flute can play a Baroque sonata as well or better than a wooden one - or if a transverse flute can play a piece written for recorder - it is not untrue to the essence of the music to do it.


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## Guest

Food for thought:

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/teritowe/hipindex.htm


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## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> The notion of music being "inspired by" a specific instrumental tone quality is of very limited applicability to most music before the 19th century,


You may be wrong about that. Only recently is heard some transcriptions of Chopin preludes for organ, some transcriptions of Chopin Etudes for orchestra, some orchestral transcriptions of Debussy preludes, a transcription for two guitars of some piano music by Albaniz and Granados, and a piano transcription of Berlioz's symphony fantastique.

On the other hand, I can't say with any confidence that any attempts I've heard to move Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Froberger, D'Anglebert etc to other than the intended instruments have been successful.


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## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Great. I wish more HIPsters could express their opinion this way rather than the pedantic argument of authenticity and being historically informed.
> 
> Personally I find HIP's emphasis on efficiency and clarity to be boring and lacking in expressive freedom. To each their own, and that's the way it should be.


The thing about HIP is that it's informed by research about the meaning of the score, what the score implies for the rhythms, articulations, inter-relationships between the voices, embellishments etc. Its authority comes from its science, its research. HIP represents the dawning of the enlightenment in musical performance. The uninformed and benighted approaches are more casual about the composition. Dark age musicians like Gould and Barto and Landowska don't give a fk about the composer's creation -- they just do what they feel like!


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## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> You may be wrong about that. Only recently is heard some transcriptions of Chopin preludes for organ, some transcriptions of Chopin Etudes for orchestra, some orchestral transcriptions of Debussy preludes, a transcription for two guitars of some piano music by Albaniz and Granados, and a piano transcription of Berlioz's symphony fantastique.
> 
> On the other hand, I can't say with any confidence that any attempts I've heard to move Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Froberger, D'Anglebert etc to other than the intended instruments have been successful.


I said "tone quality," and wasn't talking about transcription in general. Disputes about "authenticity" aren't generally about actual transcriptions, but about modern vs older forms of the same or similar instruments, which are felt to sound "right" or "wrong." HIP advocates argue against playing Bach on the piano - or even the wrong sort of harpsichord - not against Stokowski and "Fantasia," unless they are silly, grouchy people.

As far as playing works on different instruments is concerned, a Frescobaldi toccata can work well, and remain essentially the same piece of music, on the organ or harpsichord. Mozart's opera arias were often adapted for wind ensemble in his day, and they sound perfectly natural that way. Handel's _Messiah_ orchestra may consist only of strings and continuo, or the strings may be doubled by oboes and bassoons (he did it both ways), with no change to the meaning of the music. But Chopin's preludes for orchestra? Berlioz on the piano? Bring me my smelling salts!


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## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> As far as playing works on different instruments is concerned, a Frescobaldi toccata can work well, and remain essentially the same piece of music, on the organ or harpsichord.


Hmmmm -- some can, some can't



Woodduck said:


> But Chopin's preludes for orchestra? Berlioz on the piano? Bring me my smelling salts!


I'll tell you one thing which I really liked, this. It probably shows my bad taste when it comes to C19 music








Woodduck said:


> unless they are silly, grouchy people.


Quel coup bas!


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## Mandryka

Kontrapunctus said:


> Food for thought:
> 
> http://www.bach-cantatas.com/teritowe/hipindex.htm


It's just a bit of internet litter! What a load of rubbish. What a waste of time.


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## Enthusiast

Brahmsianhorn said:


> What's wrong with what Colin Davis said? Just because you don't agree with his opinion? I think it was awesome what he said. My sentiments exactly.
> 
> I agree especially with this line: "I've heard Bach especially mangled, as though he has no emotional content."
> 
> There is a great quote from Furtwangler that is very similar. He attended a HIP performance of the St Matthew Passion in the 50s (yes, they existed even then) and said afterwards that not one phrase had really been felt, and that "the music of Bach, as it were, did not make an appearance."
> 
> I perform Bach myself. I sang _Ich habe genug_ last February, one of the greatest masterpieces ever written. This summer I will be Jesus in the St John Passion. I am very glad that it will be on modern instruments with a conductor who understands the emotions of the work. What is wrong about being passionate about the music I love? I think everyone has the right to express their opinion.


I'm just catching up with this thread. What strikes me is that the many who have enjoyed HIP performances and who do not on the whole think the movement has harmed performance practice are generally quite open to non-HIP performances but this quote shows you to apparently be the intolerant one. I guess if you are a performer you have to choose or maybe to accept the vision you have for how the music should sound. The rest of us can enjoy great music making in a variety of styles. I'm certainly hugely grateful to HIP performers for some stunningly good accounts of music I love. On occasions the results have seemed to "wipe the board clean" through making most/all past performances seem dull. On occasions there have been one or two great pre-HIP performances that can seem to continue to dominate the offers in front of us even today. And in many cases the enjoyable options have just become more.

One HIP recording of Romantic music that I do enjoy is Herreweghe's account of Franck's symphony (still coupled, I think, with a fine Faure Requiem). It is a lovely singing account that in no way replaces the great Monteux, Van Otterloo and Munch accounts but does tell us something new about the piece. This is just one example among many of how HIP has enriched our options and knowledge of how a piece can be. It has even done this in a field that it not at all the home ground of the HIP movement.


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## Larkenfield

The Godfather of the HIP Mafia: 
[video]https://moviescene.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/large-godfather1.jpg[/video]
"Play it without vibrato-or else."


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## Sid James

Larkenfield said:


> The Godfather of HIP:
> [video]https://moviescene.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/large-godfather1.jpg[/video]
> "Play without vibrato, or else."


I'm really suspicious of Fabio Biondi, quite sure he's got a Tommy gun in that violin case.


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## Guest

Sid James said:


> I'm really suspicious of Fabio Biondi, quite sure he's got a Tommy gun in that violin case.


Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante actually play the one work that I've found convinces people to at least give HIP a chance -






I've yet to meet anyone who didn't genuinely enjoy this although I'm certain that I'm just about to meet at least one if not more...

This is a second HIP version that is also really quite good -

The English Concert with Trevor Pinnock -






If you don't care for the above than perhaps this might be more to your liking -


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## Enthusiast

Bondi plays with real flair. I love his approach to Italian Baroque music. His practice is HIP but that's not what is essential to his work. Compare him with other top rank HIP performers in the same repertoire (such as Pinnock, Manze or Podger) and you'll get a sense of quite how broad the HIP camp is and what variety there is in its excellence.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Mandryka said:


> The thing about HIP is that it's informed by research about the meaning of the score, what the score implies for the rhythms, articulations, inter-relationships between the voices, embellishments etc. Its authority comes from its science, its research. HIP represents the dawning of the enlightenment in musical performance. The uninformed and benighted approaches are more casual about the composition. Dark age musicians like Gould and Barto and Landowska don't give a fk about the composer's creation -- they just do what they feel like!


For you the individual artist doesn't care about the score. For me the individual artist gives the score life. You and I just have different values. I hope someday you come to realize that just because someone has a different approach than you, it doesn't mean they are "casual." It is akin to the constitutional debate over spirit of the law vs words of the law. It is a debate as old as time. Cheers.


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## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> For you the individual artist doesn't care about the score. For me the individual artist gives the score life. You and I just have different values. I hope someday you come to realize that just because someone has a different approach than you, it doesn't mean they are "casual." It is akin to the constitutional debate over spirit of the law vs words of the law. It is a debate as old as time. Cheers.


For me the individual artist gives the score life too. Artists like Gustav Leonhardt and Richard Egarr.

Gould and people like that were casual about the composer's intentions and his creation, they probably are less casual about their own intentions and ideas.

If what you say about spirit and word is right, they must think they have magic powers to be able to get access to the spirit of the music. If I remember right Ros Tureck thought she had direct access to Bach in heaven, that it was his soul communicating directly to her . . .

These people aren't giving the composer's work life, when in their choices of tempo, articulation, embellishment or whatever they deviate far from what the composer created, from what the composer would have expected his work to sound like. They're creating a parody, possibly a stimulating and beautiful and likeable parody, but a parody nonetheless.

.


----------



## DavidA

Mandryka said:


> For me the individual artist gives the score life too. Artists like Gustav Leonhardt and Richard Egarr.
> 
> Gould and people like that were casual about the composer's intentions and his creation, they probably are less casual about their own intentions and ideas.
> 
> If what you say about spirit and word is right, they must think they have magic powers to be able to get access to the spirit of the music. If I remember right Ros Tureck thought she had direct access to Bach in heaven, that it was his soul communicating directly to her . . .
> 
> .


Why then do I so prefer Gould to Leonhardt's rigid playing?


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## Mandryka

DavidA said:


> Why then do I so prefer Gould to Leonhardt's. . . playing?


That's a psychological question, it's about your psychology. How can you expect me to answer it?


----------



## Ingélou

Hermastersvoice said:


> You know those people who claim that nothing, NOTHING before Beethoven should be played on modern instruments. It allows them to immediately dismiss non-HIP performances. They use words such as "anachronistic" to sweep valid performances aside. Performances where every musical argument is not spelt out are pushed aside as "kapelmeisterisch" (despite this term being a positive one in my vocabulary) and conductors are "time beaters" (again usually a positive term, according to me). More worryingly, they are wining the battle, music before Beethoven is now largely only performed by specialist ensembles. Sic transit Gloria mundi.


I think any way of doing things that has become the orthodoxy can start to be a bit prescriptive. I love HIP baroque playing, and my violin teacher plays HIP viola professionally in some highly-regarded baroque ensembles.

I also agree with those on this thread who've said that the HIP trend has meant that many more pieces and many more previously-little-known composers have been recorded or are available to hear in concert. I haven't researched, but I don't imagine there was much Mudge recorded before 1980 or so - he's a favourite composer with our local baroque ensemble.

But still - I do enjoy non-HIP performances if they have personality - elan - passion - pathos - emotional honesty - or whatever. It is achievable without being HIP.

And I also agree with the posters who've said that nobody can be entirely sure what is 'authentic'. All the HIP musicians I know play at the lower pitch, for example, and yet I've read one well-known authority saying that it isn't absolutely established that the HIP pitch was different to today's system. (Sorry; I read that years ago, and can't remember now who said what.)

To use an analogy that has been used by someone 'above' in this thread - I prefer Shakespeare with pentameters marked and in costume, but I am fine with naturalistic modern-dress productions too. It just depends on how well-acted and staged it is. And to be honest, a production that set out to reproduce Shakespeare's pronunciation or the rhetorical acting style of Elizabethan England - I think I would find it a bit distracting.


----------



## Mandryka

Ingélou said:


> I think any way of doing things that has become the orthodoxy can start to be a bit prescriptive. I love HIP baroque playing, and my violin teacher plays HIP viola professionally in some highly-regarded baroque ensembles. I also agree with those on this thread who've said that the HIP trend has meant that much more pieces and little known composers have been recorded or are available to hear in concert. I haven't researched, but I don't imagine there was much Mudge recorded before 1980 or so - he's a favourite composer with our local baroque ensemble.
> 
> But still - I enjoy non-HIP performances if they have personality - elan - passion - pathos - emotional honesty - or whatever. It is achievable without being HIP.
> 
> I prefer Shakespeare with pentameters marked and in costume, but I am fine with naturalistic modern-dress productions too. It just depends on how well-acted and staged it is. And to be honest, a production that set out to reproduce Shakespeare's pronunciation or the rhetorical acting style of Elizabethan England - I think I would find it a bit distracting.


Did you ever see Mark Rylance at The Globe? Some of it was fabulous I thought - amazing history plays.

Who says shakespeare with pentameters marked apart from schoolteachers and schookids? Hamlet's advice to the players sounds pretty good to me, I don't know if that's what you mean by Elizabethan rhetoric.


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## Ingélou

Mandryka said:


> Did you ever see Mark Rylance at The Globe? Some of it was fabulous I thought - amazing history plays.


Sorry, no. :tiphat:

I wish I could - it would be too expensive and difficult for me, however, at present.





Out of curiosity, I took a look at this video - the St Crispin's Day speech from Henry V at the Globe with Mark Rylance from YouTube. It is not 'authentic' Shakespearean pronunciation and it is not performed with the Elizabethan style that scholars say was more formal, measured and rhetorical than contemporary acting style. 
So, though it's the reconstructed Globe, which I'm sure must have given the production greater intimacy & atmosphere, there is a limit on its authenticity, because to recreate as accurately as possible the way it was performed in Shakespeare's time would simply make too many demands on a modern audience.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Mandryka said:


> For me the individual artist gives the score life too. Artists like Gustav Leonhardt and Richard Egarr.
> 
> Gould and people like that were casual about the composer's intentions and his creation, they probably are less casual about their own intentions and ideas.
> 
> If what you say about spirit and word is right, they must think they have magic powers to be able to get access to the spirit of the music. If I remember right Ros Tureck thought she had direct access to Bach in heaven, that it was his soul communicating directly to her . . .
> 
> These people aren't giving the composer's work life, when in their choices of tempo, articulation, embellishment or whatever they deviate far from what the composer created, from what the composer would have expected his work to sound like. They're creating a parody, possibly a stimulating and beautiful and likeable parody, but a parody nonetheless.
> 
> .


I hope Bulldog is watching this. You wanted your example of what I was talking about with HIPsters? Here it is in all its glory. For this poster it is all about right and wrong, not a question of taste and subjectivity. This is antithetical to the whole point of art. And I will call upon my magic powers to deduce that Bach would agree.


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## Ingélou

Mandryka said:


> Did you ever see Mark Rylance at The Globe? Some of it was fabulous I thought - amazing history plays.
> 
> 1. Who says shakespeare with pentameters marked apart from schoolteachers and schookids?
> 
> 2. Hamlet's advice to the players sounds pretty good to me, I don't know if that's what you mean by Elizabethan rhetoric.


1. Most actors of the past, and quite a few of the present

Mark Rylance is marking Shakespeare's pentameters in the St Crispin's Day Speech that I linked to, above - and very effective too. 
I also remember Dustin Hoffman in his production of The Merchant of Venice getting professional help to speak the lines as poetry. 
Speaking the verse in Shakespeare is a returning fashion, ironically enough, after the nonchalance of the 1960s and 1970s, which is now seen as 'of its era'.

Shakespeare wrote in poetry and prose, because he was writing both for the groundlings and for people of culture. It is his genius that he could succeed with both, and that he is flexible.

His prose could be bawdy and colloquial - or carefully structured and 'rhetorical' as some of Falstaff's speeches in Henry IV Part One. 
Where he's using pentameters he took care that even half lines and single words would 'make up' a pentameter, which his courtly audience would hear as poetry. He also uses end-stopped couplets sometimes, which would be pointless if he meant the lines to be spoken run-on aand as if they were prose.

2. No, it's not. It's more complex than that. 
https://prezi.com/d50u2v4zpqik/elizabethan-acting-style/

Like most people, I distinguish between what a character in a play says and what the dramatist might think or mean. 
Much of Hamlet's advice is concerned with clowns trying to take over the action and ad-lib to the audience, for example - so he wants the actors to respect the text as written, which presumably means speaking it as poetry. 
Further, one of the ironies in 'Hamlet' is that Hamlet remembers the excellent Murder of Gonzago and gives advice on naturalistic performance - but the Play within the Play is in fact very rhetorical stiff end-stopped verse. So 'holding the mirror up to nature' doesn't mean that the acting was 'naturalistic' by our standards, and a lot of actors that were praised for their naturalistic style in the years intervening - e.g. David Garrick, Edmund Kean or Henry Irving - we should now find artificial in some way - mannered or melodramatic.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To return to the OP - I think there's a limit to what we can know of what was 'authentic' to performance of music or drama at the time it was written. I am fond of history and of trying to empathise with the viewpoints of the people in past ages - but I am also alive today, and want to immerse myself in art, rather than sit outside.

So I prefer Shakespeare plays in costume where the actors do full justice to the different linguistic registers that Shakespeare used. But if I am moved by a modern-dress performance, where the verse is scarcely marked, I don't hold it against the producers that it is less 'authentic'. 
After all, I prefer toga-clad Romans in the Roman Plays to actors dressed in doublet and hose - the 'authentic' costume of Shakespeare's day, as we know from textual references.

In the same way I enjoy HIP performances of music, and I am grateful for the movement. 
I also enjoy non-HIP performances and think that any movement can become rigid and prescriptive if pushed too far.


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## Guest

Just a brief pause to allow everyone to catch their breath and simmer down...

I've done an extensive search with several engines on every variation of "HIP mafia" and have yet to find a single instance of the use of that phrase except here on this forum as a result of the OP's thread creation and so member "HerMastersVoice" apparently can claim credit for having coined that particular phrase.

https://www.google.com/search?sourc......1..gws-wiz.....0..0j0i131j0i10._9eQUBd64kE

https://www.bing.com/search?q=HIP+m...8-9&sk=&cvid=E41D7EC316394961B2B9018B4AD2E68A

I tried searching for other "musical mafias" and came up empty-handed... "Callas mafia?" - Nope... "'Wagner mafia?" - Again nope... "Atonality mafia?"... "Tonality mafia?"... "4:33 mafia?" - once again - Nope, nope, and nope although there is a musical group by the name of "Hip Hop Mafia" although I'm fairly certain that that is of interest to virtually no one here.

There appears to be a void in "musical mafias" both in the world at large and within this forum and so allow me to take the first step in rectifying the shortage by declaring myself the "*Capo di tutti capi*" of the Traditional Scottish Folk Music mafia - a more fierce - a more fearsome lot you'll never find... with the exception of those "musical mafias" named above if they do in fact actually exist... Even William Wallace himself would have begged off tangling with them with a brisk "thanks, but no thanks"...






and while it apparently is a violation of the ToS to threaten anyone just let me warn everyone that should they even think of crossing me as God is my witness I shall start playing this -









*Alba gu bràth!*


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## Ingélou

Donny Brook said:


> ...
> and while it apparently is a violation of the ToS to threaten anyone just let me warn everyone that should they even think of crossing me as God is my witness I shall start playing this -
> 
> View attachment 111490


Promises promises!


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## Mandryka

Ingélou said:


> 1. Most actors of the past, and quite a few of the present
> - I remember Dustin Hoffman in his production of The Merchant of Venice, for example, getting professional help to speak the lines as poetry. Speaking the verse in Shakespeare is a returning fashion, ironically enough, after the nonchalance of the 1960s and 1970s, which is now seen as 'of its era'.
> 
> Shakespeare wrote in poetry and prose, because he was writing both for the groundlings and for people of culture. It is his genius that he could succeed with both, and that he is flexible.
> 
> His prose could be bawdy and colloquial - or carefully structured and 'rhetorical' as some of Falstaff's speeches in Henry IV Part One.
> Where he's using pentameters he took care that even half lines and single words would 'make up' a pentameter, which his courtly audience would hear as poetry. He also uses end-stopped couplets sometimes, which would be pointless if he meant the lines to be spoken run-on and naturalistically.
> 
> 2. No, it's not. It's more complex than that.
> https://prezi.com/d50u2v4zpqik/elizabethan-acting-style/
> 
> Like most people, I distinguish between what a character in a play says and what the dramatist might think or mean.
> Hamlet's advice is largely concerned with clowns trying to take over the action and ad-lib to the audience, for example. Further, one of the ironies in 'Hamlet' is that Hamlet remembers the excellent Murder of Gonzago and gives advice on naturalistic performance - but the Play within the Play is in fact very rhetorical stiff end-stopped verse. So 'holding the mirror up to nature' doesn't mean that the acting was 'naturalistic' by our standards, and a lot of actors that were praised for their naturalistic style in the years intervening - e.g. David Garrick, Edmund Kean or Henry Irving - we should now find artificial in some way - mannered or melodramatic.
> 
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> To return to the OP - I think there's a limit to what we can know of what was 'authentic' to performance of music or drama at the time it was written. I am fond of history and of trying to empathise with the viewpoints of the people in past ages - but I am also alive today, and want to immerse myself in art, rather than sit outside.
> 
> So I prefer Shakespeare plays in costume where the actors do full justice to the different linguistic registers that Shakespeare used. But if a modern-dress performance moves me, I don't hold it against the producers that it is less 'authentic'. After all, I prefer toga-clad Romans in the Roman Plays to actors dressed in doublet and hose - the 'authentic' costume of Shakespeare's day, as we know from textual references.
> 
> In the same way I enjoy HIP performances of music, and I am grateful for the movement.
> I also enjoy non-HIP performances and think that any movement can become rigid and prescriptive if pushed too far.


Ah, I understand, it's just that when you said "saying Shakespeare with pentameters" I imagined something stiff. What I can't bear myself is voice beautiful acting, Olivier etc., but there are more natural ways of treating Shakespeare's poetry. I'm a great fan of Peter Brook, in fact I'm going to see something at his theatre in February.


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## Guest

Hermastersvoice said:


> You know those people who claim that nothing, NOTHING before Beethoven should be played on modern instruments. It allows them to immediately dismiss non-HIP performances. They use words such as "anachronistic" to sweep valid performances aside. Performances where every musical argument is not spelt out are pushed aside as "kapelmeisterisch" (despite this term being a positive one in my vocabulary) and conductors are "time beaters" (again usually a positive term, according to me). More worryingly, they are wining the battle, music before Beethoven is now largely only performed by specialist ensembles. Sic transit Gloria mundi.


I don't think this issue is as big as you make it out to be. Sure - many people who hear HIP performances for the first time are very committed fans. But overtime, as with everything else, they mellow out. HIP, though, is relatively new on the scene, so it is no wonder that it is seen highly represented. It also came to the scene as musical recording technology was booming - I imagine it is a lot easier to record a performance these days than pre-HIP. The smaller numbers also makes it probably not as problematic. Imagine the logistics of recording a small ensemble compared to, say, getting a really good recording of Mahler's 8th symphony?

At any rate, there is already signs of mellowing, merging some aspects of HIP with modern practices - smaller numbers but modern instruments, etc. There is always going to be a place for the myriad interpretations of works. Simply scroll through the threads here and you will still find numerous supporters of a Klemperer recording of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, or Marriner conducting Vivaldi's Four Seasons. And the fact that those works are still available for purchase shows that there is still a market for them.

Classical music, and interpretations of such, changes constantly. You don't think that people over 100 years ago, used to hearing what they would have considered "appropriate" performances of pre-Beethoven works weren't a bit dismayed by Romantics overhauling and completely re-interpreting these beloved works they had known? At least we have the option, with recordings, to hear it however we like, regardless of what the prevailing trends are. I can still listen to Beethoven's violin concerto played by both Heifetz and Kopatchinskaja.


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## Guest

A excerpt from a really first-rate interview with Christopher Hogwood -

http://www.hogwood.org/archive/interviews/opernwelt-interview-1984.html

"Authenticity is not academic a conversation from 1984 with Christopher Hogwood, the guiding spirit of The Academy of Ancient Music.

Opernwelt: Mr Hogwood, 'early' music in 'authentic sound' - is that in fact as Neville Marriner once formulated it, 'very popular with the open-toed-sandals- and-brown-bread-set', a 'macro-biotic' movement, so to speak, in the music scene?

Hogwood: I know Neville Marriner well enough from our years of working together to take what he says in jest. But there is indeed a kernel of truth in it, or rather, there used to be, when I think of the boom that dominated the mid-sixties in the area of mediaeval music. That was 'in' at the time, from every respectable record came the sound of crumhorns, Rauschpfeifen and all that kind of thing. It was an entirely new 'old' sound, but not a soul knew if it was authentic or not.

Opernwelt: You yourself took part, as a member of David Munrow's 'Early Music Consort'...

Hogwood: Naturally, it was at that time a wholly new world for all of us, and good for the public too, since it became acquainted with a new repertoire. There was a lot of showbiz attached to it. Finally my interest in this kind of music became exhausted, because we did not know whether or not what we were doing was authentic. Although the whole world thought that this type of music-making had a musicological foundation, the very opposite was the case: we had to do a lot on 'feeling', because there was insufficient basis and definite proof of the way in which music was made in the middle ages. In looking for an 'original sound', we were very much dependent upon hypotheses.

Opernwelt: Didn't that discourage you?

Hogwood: No, not at all, on the contrary. I turned to an area, to a period, which offered me reliable sources. That was the music of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Opernwelt: In the eyes of many people, the attempts to reconstruct the original sound, etc, have something about them, of the supposedly dusty atmosphere of musicological institutes, of archives.

Hogwood: In the eyes of many people there exists a gulf between boring musicology, which is done by old men in archives, and music-making, practical musical education, for example the violinists playing Wieniawski in the conservatories. Men such as Raymond Leppard, whom I met while studying at Cambridge, and who is at home in both areas, achieving great things, always tried to bridge the gap. Through them I came by this kind of music."

"Opernwelt: Wanda Landowska, whom you mentioned earlier, once said to a colleague who thought that Bach would certainly have composed for a modern piano had he known one: 'You play Bach your play, I'll play him mine'.

Hogwood: Certainly Bach would have liked a Steinway piano, he was open to everything new, but he would have composed differently. He is around today - he is called Brubeck.

I think the often-stated opinion, that composers of the past would have breathed a sigh of relief had they known 'modern' instruments, is absolute nonsense. To begin with, because the assertion that present-day instruments are better, cannot be upheld. Today's instruments may be more perfect - I would not even subscribe to that in all cases - they are, as far as the strings are concerned, louder, but on the other hand, their palette of colours and nuances is reduced."


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## Mandryka

I just want to say something general things about HIP in music, which I think are true.

1. Performing the music in ways which are compatible with how we understand the composer's intentions is a potentially interesting way of performing, an interesting experiment.

2. Playing the music in a way which we know is not consistent with the composer's conception is going to produce something which is, to a greater or lesser extent, a misrepresentation of the composition. This is why ideas like _truth, lie, parody_ are relevant.

3. The way the practice has gone from strength to strength over the past half a century sugggests it was a fruitful experiment, a fruitful project.

I think (2) is the interesting one to explore, it raises some really difficult metaphysical questions about what it is that the composer has made, what it is _essentially_, which changes alter its _identity_, which changes can it _survive_. I can't answer these questions yet, but I think it's interesting if you're that way inclined.


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## Mandryka

There’s another thing I want to add. When it comes to early music, just making sense of the score is not obvious. This is the case in Bach and even more so for earlier composers. There’s a lot to be disputed about the rhythms and the tempos and the articulation that the score implies, even in something as familiar as the 6th keyboard partita by Bach. How are you going to answer these questions in a way which preserves your integrity as an interpreter if not by looking at the historical evidence? In very early music every performer knows about the problems of creating an edition, but sometimes with late baroque music I get the feeling that people think it’s easy, that the questions have been answered and that you can read a Bach score like you can read a Chopin score, but that’s not correct. 

When I said above that Gould etc were casual I meant, they don’t care about these things much, they just do what they feel like.


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## Guest

I view it much the same way that I view performances of Shakespeare. There is much to be gained by seeing a straight performance, performed in the setting of the original play - a Romeo and Juliet set back in a time where duels were done with swords, a Macbeth set back in medieval Scotland. But sometimes, it is interesting to see a Shakespeare in a modern setting, provided it is done right. It says something about the work - it shows that the play is still relevant, and can be adapted to any era, because underneath the story are lessons that are timeless, themes that are timeless. 

The same with music. Some works are very much creations of their time, and trying to perform them "out" of their time just doesn't translate well. I don't think you could perform the Helicopter Quartet on "period instruments" used, say, a century before the helicopter (yes, I chose a glaring example). But some things - like a work of Bach - have things to say to us whether they are performed on period instruments with practices as close as we can determine from their era, or on modern instruments with increased ensemble sizes. It says something about how truly transcendent a masterpiece is when it can span eras so easily. So shunning any one particular kind of performance limits your ability to truly appreciate the genius behind - and in- the work.


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## Taggart

Donny Brook said:


> A excerpt from a really first-rate interview with Christopher Hogwood -
> 
> Opernwelt: Mr Hogwood, 'early' music in 'authentic sound' - is that in fact as Neville Marriner once formulated it, 'very popular with the open-toed-sandals- and-brown-bread-set', a 'macro-biotic' movement, so to speak, in the music scene?
> 
> Hogwood: I know Neville Marriner well enough from our years of working together to take what he says in jest. But there is indeed a kernel of truth in it, or rather, there used to be, when I think of the boom that dominated the mid-sixties in the area of mediaeval music. That was 'in' at the time, from every respectable record came the sound of crumhorns, Rauschpfeifen and all that kind of thing. It was an entirely new 'old' sound, but not a soul knew if it was authentic or not.
> 
> Opernwelt: You yourself took part, as a member of David Munrow's 'Early Music Consort'...
> 
> Hogwood: Naturally, it was at that time a wholly new world for all of us, and good for the public too, since it became acquainted with a new repertoire. There was a lot of showbiz attached to it.







Here's Mr Hogwood on percussion from a folk LP of 1969. Definitely sandals and showbiz.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Mandryka said:


> When I said above that Gould etc were casual I meant, they don't care about these things much, they just do what they feel like.


They care just as much you, most assuredly more. They just go to the spirit of the music for the answers, something which apparently eludes you.


----------



## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> They care just as much you, most assuredly more. They just go to the spirit of the music for the answers, something which apparently eludes you.


It certainly is true that I don't have magic powers. But nor did they. In fact I don't believe Gould was interested in the spirit of anything, but Tureck probably was and if she thought she had access she wa deluding herself. Don't know about Landowska.

I should say I very much enjoy Tureck's early Bach recordings, I know no more entertaining shot at making music out of WTC or Goldbergs or Partitas on a modern piano. And I like Landowska's pre war recordings too. But that's not the point.


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## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> I'll tell you one thing which I really liked, this. It probably shows my bad taste when it comes to C19 music


I could have guessed (and in one case did) which Chopin pieces the organist would choose. It isn't horrible, but even so I find the music becomes something completely different on the organ where, in addition to the radical difference in timbre and consequent mood, the piano's subtlety of articulation, essential to Chopin and most Romantic music, is impossible. It just isn't Chopin any more.


----------



## DavidA

Mandryka said:


> That's a psychological question, it's about your psychology. How can you expect me to answer it?


Could also be a musical question too! :lol:


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## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> I could have guessed (and in one case did) which Chopin pieces the organist would choose. It isn't horrible, but even so I find the music becomes something completely different on the organ where, in addition to the radical difference in timbre and consequent mood, the piano's subtlety of articulation, essential to Chopin and most Romantic music, is impossible. It just isn't Chopin any more.


Thanks for listening, and thanks for your interesting response.

This is just the question I'm interested in. Some changes seem to be incompatible with what the composition _essentially_ is.


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## Mandryka

DavidA said:


> Could also be a musical question too! :lol:


I don't think so. How could it be a musical question?


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## DavidA

Mandryka said:


> I don't think so. How could it be a musical question?


Well we are talking about music after all!


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## Bulldog

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I hope Bulldog is watching this.


Always. FWIW, I love Tureck's Bach, and Gould isn't far behind. Still, I prefer baroque keyboard on harpsichord.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Mandryka said:


> It certainly is true that I don't have magic powers. But nor did they. In fact I don't believe Gould was interested in the spirit of anything, but Tureck probably was and if she thought she had access she wa deluding herself. Don't know about Landowska.
> 
> I should say I very much enjoy Tureck's early Bach recordings, I know no more entertaining shot at making music out of WTC or Goldbergs or Partitas on a modern piano. And I like Landowska's pre war recordings too. But that's not the point.


Yup, Gould was soulless, as evidenced by his having made the most acclaimed recording of Bach keyboard music in history. (Or was that before the Age of Enlightenment? :lol


----------



## Merl

Donny Brook said:


> and while it apparently is a violation of the ToS to threaten anyone just let me warn everyone that should they even think of crossing me as God is my witness I shall start playing this -
> 
> View attachment 111490
> 
> 
> *Alba gu bràth!*


Please, no! As an Englishman living in Scotland, the sound of the pipes is still the one thing I loathe most about going into Edinburgh for the day (there's always some tone-deaf piper wailing away outside Waverley Train Station).


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## Enthusiast

Brahmsianhorn said:


> They care just as much you, most assuredly more. They just go to the spirit of the music for the answers, something which apparently eludes you.


This seems to be the crux of the question and of course the question can't be answered. I believe strongly that there cannot be one right way to play a piece of music. I _know _ (that's how it feels) this from listening and loving equally a number of different approaches to, say, Beethoven and Brahms. It follows that I am not convinced or particularly interested in whether or not a performer is believed to be giving us "what the composer intended". But, at the same time, I do believe there is such a thing as taste and that taste is informed by many things including a feel for how the music of the composer and his(/her) period should be played.

I do feel that by the time that HIP came along we were generally getting some awful performances of baroque (in particular) music and even when a performance was enjoyable it often sounded like an apology for or a pastiche of the real thing. So, yes, I think there were non-HIP performances of baroque music that are great. But they were not that common and much of the rest were not that memorable.

In the 1960s a new generation put some life back into the field but their "revolution" quickly ran out of steam. Take Marriner: his early work was sometimes a shock (a good one!) in being quite sprightly and imaginative and he was perhaps (with Raymond Leppard and even Colin Davis) a forerunner of the HIP movement. But, as time went by, his music making often seemed manipulative and indulgent. So I think our taste for HIP grew out of what Marriner and others did and then as a reaction against what he (and others) had become. I remember that it seemed at the time that the HIP movement had rescued us and given baroque music back to us. But it wasn't an academic matter for us so much as a matter of taste.

So, I might agree with you or I might feel your are defending music making that is in poor taste. It all depends on what examples you are defending. Of course, you can go back to a few classic accounts - accounts that will forever be wonderful - but do you really feel that the average non-HIP baroque performance in the 60s and 70s were anything like as good as those given us by the HIP pioneers? And, then, do you not recognise that the HIP camp has gone from strength to strength, giving us so many really fine performances? Are you *closed *to what they have achieved or are you merely saying that there are many routes to a good performance?


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## wkasimer

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Yup, Gould was soulless, as evidenced by his having made the most acclaimed recording of Bach keyboard music in history.


Acclamation does not equal quality. I doubt that I need to provide examples other than Gould's 1955 Goldberg Variations recording.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

What we are getting to is the crux of my issue with the HIP movement, which is the belief that audiences are too dumb to know they shouldn’t be enjoying what they hear and need to be educated (or “enlightened”). Count me among the blissfully ignorant. I will spend the afternoon enjoying the Busch Brandenburgs, Enescu Violin sonatas and partitas, Casals Cello suites, and that dastardly 1981 Glenn Gould Goldberg variations. Hopefully the Musical Correctness Police are not waiting to arrest me when I return home.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

Merl said:


> Please, no! As an Englishman living in Scotland, the sound of the pipes is still the one thing I loathe most about going into Edinburgh for the day (there's always some tone-deaf piper wailing away outside Waverley Train Station).


Isn't the HIP pipe a smaller , quieter , more simple sort ? Likely it was not the sound of a call to war .


----------



## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Yup, Gould was soulless, as evidenced by his having made the most acclaimed recording of Bach keyboard music in history. (Or was that before the Age of Enlightenment? :lol


This post has made me angry. I hope we're trying to have a serious discussion here about serious things in a way, not a scrap. A bit less sarcasm and a bit more careful reading and thinking would be a good idea.

No-one said Gould was soulless. Being soulless has nothing to do with not being interested in something called "the spirit of the music"


----------



## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> What we are getting to is the crux of my issue with the HIP movement, which is the belief that audiences are too dumb to know they shouldn't be enjoying what they hear and need to be educated (or "enlightened"). Count me among the blissfully ignorant. I will spend the afternoon enjoying the Busch Brandenburgs, Enescu Violin sonatas and partitas, Casals Cello suites, and that dastardly 1981 Glenn Gould Goldberg variations. Hopefully the Musical Correctness Police are not waiting to arrest me when I return home.


This is a bit misguided I think.


----------



## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> Thanks for listening, and thanks for your interesting response.
> 
> This is just the question I'm interested in. Some changes seem to be incompatible with what the composition _essentially_ is.


Maybe we ought to ask the deeper question: is a work of art "essentially" anything specific, definable, limitable, knowable? To the composer it might be, and he is probably delighted if some performance comes close to capturing the feeling he had about his work as he created it, to the extent that he can recall what that was. But that sounds a little vague, doesn't it? It should. Even the creative artist knows that his work has a life of its own, not only after it's been released into the world but even during the process of its creation. Novelists tell us that the process of creating a story is a process of discovering who the characters are and what they're capable of doing and likely to do, and it's not only common but normal for works of art to surprise their creators and transform themselves in the process of creation. As this process unfolds the artist has to be ready at all times to go where his work leads him, even it it leads to the painful sacrifice of fondly held ideas that inspired the work to begin with. He is as much slave as master to his work, and if he's lucky the two of them will end their relationship on amicable, if not entirely satisfactory, terms. What the work will actually be once he has sent it out of the studio is no longer in his control - as in fact it never entirely was - and if he's wise he will let the world make of it what it will.

As a creative artist myself (painter, mostly), I was never displeased when people saw things in my work that I had never considered when creating it, and in fact it pleased me to think that values beyond those my own consciousness had thought to embody had somehow emanated from unsuspected parts of my being and made themselves apparent to others. A musical work is even less definitive and finished than a painting, in that the notations on the page are not in fact the music but only a blueprint for a building which will be erected and given sensuous reality in performance. There can certainly be good and not-so-good realizations of the blueprint, and there can and should be variety in different performers' readings of what's given. But as far as I'm concerned, any performance that takes the blueprint seriously, any performance in which the interpreter has clearly engaged sincerely with the material in order to discover and reveal its implicit values, is worthy of consideration, whether I like the result or not, and whether or not the composer or his contemporaries would ever have heard the music played in just that way.


----------



## Enthusiast

I am wondering if I will get an answer to these questions from Brahmsianhorn ....



Enthusiast said:


> ...I might feel your are defending music making that is in poor taste. It all depends on what examples you are defending. Of course, you can go back to a few classic accounts - accounts that will forever be wonderful - but do you really feel that the average non-HIP baroque performance in the 60s and 70s were anything like as good as those given us by the HIP pioneers? And, then, do you not recognise that the HIP camp has gone from strength to strength, giving us so many really fine performances? Are you *closed *to what they have achieved or are you merely saying that there are many routes to a good performance?


The reasons I ask is because we are discussing an allegation that our taste is controlled by "a mafia" from someone who has not put his own cards on the table. I think few of us are convinced that there is a mafia telling us what we can and cannot like. But is the question being asked by someone who is himself open to performances from both sides of the divide.


----------



## Woodduck

Enthusiast said:


> ...we are discussing an allegation that our taste is controlled by "a mafia" from someone who has not put his own cards on the table. I think few of us are convinced that there is a mafia telling us what we can and cannot like. But is the question being asked by someone who is himself open to performances from both sides of the divide.


This is not what Hermastersvoice has claimed. The OP says merely: _"You know those people who claim that nothing, NOTHING before Beethoven should be played on modern instruments. It allows them to immediately dismiss non-HIP performances. They use words such as 'anachronistic' to sweep valid performances aside."_

Perhaps because I'm given to colorful metaphors myself (which others don't always find as amusing as I do), I take "mafia" as an amusing metaphor, nothing more. No one is going to find a horse's head under the sheets.


----------



## Enthusiast

Woodduck said:


> This is not what Hermastersvoice has claimed. The OP says merely: _"You know those people who claim that nothing, NOTHING before Beethoven should be played on modern instruments. It allows them to immediately dismiss non-HIP performances. They use words such as 'anachronistic' to sweep valid performances aside."_
> 
> Perhaps because I'm given to colorful metaphors myself (which others don't always find as amusing as I do), I take "mafia" as an amusing metaphor, nothing more. No one is going to find a horse's head under the sheets.


OK and fair enough. But the essence of the debate seems to concern whether it is OK to insist on the HIP agenda or whether to be open to fine performances regardless of their "ideological foundations". I think we have seen that no-one here insists that the only way is HIP - even Mandryka, who comes close to saying this, clearly likes the work of some earlier (and non-HIP) performers - and that there is very little evidence of a HIP mafia these days. But at the same time it is also beginning to seem like the people who are apparently arguing against the (alleged) mafia are actually the ones who lack the flexibility to respond positively to any of the very many excellent HIP performances that we have before us. That seems to completely undermine their position. A more honest approach for them might be to tell us what it is about HIP practice that they hate.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Enthusiast said:


> I am wondering if I will get an answer to these questions from Brahmsianhorn ....
> 
> The reasons I ask is because we are discussing an allegation that our taste is controlled by "a mafia" from someone who has not put his own cards on the table. I think few of us are convinced that there is a mafia telling us what we can and cannot like. But is the question being asked by someone who is himself open to performances from both sides of the divide.


I listen to all recordings. I have yet to hear a really good HIP of Beethoven or Bach. Gardiner's Magnificat is pretty exciting. Herreweghe's SMP is okay. Pinnock's Brandenburgs have their moments. My favorites tend to be older recordings. This is not the result of an inherent bias but of listening and comparing.

I have come across many people who will not even consider listening to a non-HIP recording. Some, even on this thread, have gone as far as to say even a GOOD non-HIP recording should be dismissed since it is being played "wrong."


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Mandryka said:


> This post has made me angry. I hope we're trying to have a serious discussion here about serious things in a way, not a scrap. A bit less sarcasm and a bit more careful reading and thinking would be a good idea.
> 
> No-one said Gould was soulless. Being soulless has nothing to do with not being interested in something called "the spirit of the music"


So why is Gould's interpretation of the Goldberg Variations so popular and celebrated if he was not interested in the spirit of the music? What is everyone missing? I would like to be enlightened.


----------



## Enthusiast

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I listen to all recordings. I have yet to hear a really good HIP of Beethoven or Bach. Gardiner's Magnificat is pretty exciting. Herreweghe's SMP is okay. Pinnock's Brandenburgs have their moments. My favorites tend to be older recordings. This is not the result of an inherent bias but of listening and comparing.
> 
> I have come across many people who will not even consider listening to a non-HIP recording. Some, even on this thread, have gone as far as to say even a GOOD non-HIP recording should be dismissed since it is being played "wrong."


Thank you. I'm glad you like some (none of them even close to being among my favourites) and respect your opinion more knowing that you are not as closed as you have found some HIPsters to be.


----------



## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I have come across many people who will not even consider listening to a non-HIP recording. Some, even on this thread, have gone as far as to say even a GOOD non-HIP recording should be dismissed since it is being played "wrong."


No-one has said that.

I give up.


----------



## wkasimer

Brahmsianhorn said:


> So why is Gould's interpretation of the Goldberg Variations so popular and celebrated if he was not interested in the spirit of the music? What is everyone missing? I would like to be enlightened.


1) A lot of classical listeners are older, and come from a time when Gould's recordings were the only ones easily available. If one looks at the Goldberg Variations discography (http://www.a30a.com), the vast majority of recordings date from after 1990, and most of those before that date were by obscure musicians on specialty labels that were not easy to obtain. I'm guessing that most listeners over 70 imprinted on one of Gould's recordings.

2) He recorded the Goldberg Variations for a major label, and had the power of their promotional staff behind him.

3) He recorded the work the first time with no repeats, with brisk tempos, so the recording lasts 37 minutes. Perfect for an LP release, and perfect for people with short attention spans.

4) He was a nut, and crazy people get a lot more attention.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Enthusiast said:


> Thank you. I'm glad you like some (none of them even close to being among my favourites) and respect your opinion more knowing that you are not as closed as you have found some HIPsters to be.


It is not a question of being closed to HIP. For me it is about not expecting much and thus not wanting to invest too much time investigating. Not only has what I heard been disappointing, but so many of the goals of HIP - playing things lighter and faster, reducing or removing vibrato, reducing or eliminating flexibility of tempo, emphasis on articulation and precision - are not goals that I share. What's the point? I want to hear music that melts my heart and lifts my spirit. Like this:


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

wkasimer said:


> 1) A lot of classical listeners are older, and come from a time when Gould's recordings were the only ones easily available. If one looks at the Goldberg Variations discography (http://www.a30a.com), the vast majority of recordings date from after 1990, and most of those before that date were by obscure musicians on specialty labels that were not easy to obtain. I'm guessing that most listeners over 70 imprinted on one of Gould's recordings.
> 
> 2) He recorded the Goldberg Variations for a major label, and had the power of their promotional staff behind him.
> 
> 3) He recorded the work the first time with no repeats, with brisk tempos, so the recording lasts 37 minutes. Perfect for an LP release, and perfect for people with short attention spans.
> 
> 4) He was a nut, and crazy people get a lot more attention.


5) It's an f'ing brilliant recording.


----------



## Woodduck

Enthusiast said:


> OK and fair enough. But the essence of the debate seems to concern whether it is OK to insist on the HIP agenda or whether to be open to fine performances regardless of their "ideological foundations". I think we have seen that no-one here insists that the only way is HIP - even Mandryka, who comes close to saying this, clearly likes the work of some earlier (and non-HIP) performers - and that there is very little evidence of a HIP mafia these days. But at the same time it is also beginning to seem like the people who are apparently arguing against the (alleged) mafia are actually the ones who lack the flexibility to respond positively to any of the very many excellent HIP performances that we have before us. That seems to completely undermine their position. A more honest approach for them might be to tell us what it is about HIP practice that they hate.


There is too great a tendency here to caricature the opposition, or to assume an opposition where there needn't be one. People have a variety of viewpoints, and some are quite nuanced. In general, I prefer my Bach or my Vivaldi on period instruments, with transparent textures, sharp rhythms and detailed phrasing. So far so good. But I have often disliked the results of HIP in practice and don't mind saying so. I don't want to hear the Sanctus of the B-minor Mass sung by eight people because the music committee of the Thomaskirche wouldn't budget for a decent-sized choir. I don't want to hear the grave and majestic overture to _Messiah_ zipped through with flippant rhythms like "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." I don't want to hear a grown woman singing about losing her Jesu with a hooty, sexless, choirboy voice (here's looking at you, sweet Emma). I have any number of times sampled recordings of Baroque and refused to buy them - or regretted buying them - because I found the music trivialized.

It's all to the good that we recognized the anachronism and incongruity of performing Handel ponderously and with huge choirs, as if he were Bruckner, and scholarship regarding the interpretation of rhythm and the application of ornamentation is certainly important. But these are only means to the end of making meaningful music that speaks to us on a profound level, as it did to its contemporaries, and in order to do that we have to perform it as we feel it, whether we're perfectly "correct" or not. People who find that "too subjective" are welcome to their overconfident assumptions about what's correct and what isn't.


----------



## Woodduck

Brahmsianhorn said:


> 5) It's an f'ing brilliant recording.


Agree absolutely.

I had heard few Goldbergs before Gould's first recording, and was aware that he was skipping repeats, but was blown away by his sheer vitality and his obvious engagement with and love of the music. What could prevent anyone from responding to that, except some intellectual conception of how he "should" have done it?


----------



## Guest

Woodduck said:


> Agree absolutely.
> 
> I had heard few Goldbergs before Gould's first recording, and was aware that he was skipping repeats, but was blown away by his sheer vitality and his obvious engagement with and love of the music. *What could prevent anyone from responding to that*, except some intellectual conception of how he "should" have done it?


All the damn humming.


----------



## DavidA

wkasimer said:


> 1) A lot of classical listeners are older, and come from a time when Gould's recordings were the only ones easily available. If one looks at the Goldberg Variations discography (http://www.a30a.com), the vast majority of recordings date from after 1990, and most of those before that date were by obscure musicians on specialty labels that were not easy to obtain. I'm guessing that most listeners over 70 imprinted on one of Gould's recordings.
> 
> 2) He recorded the Goldberg Variations for a major label, and had the power of their promotional staff behind him.
> 
> 3) He recorded the work the first time with no repeats, with brisk tempos, so the recording lasts 37 minutes. Perfect for an LP release, and perfect for people with short attention spans.
> 
> 4) He was a nut, and crazy people get a lot more attention.


Interesting that Gould interests thousands of people in the works of Bach and gets slated for it! I must confess I find your reasoning to say the least exceedingly selective of the facts at the time.
Gould was signed by CBS after his somewhat sensational New York debut. Present were some noted pianists (including Gary Graffman) who testified to Gould's remarkable and unique talent as a pianist. The decision to record the Goldberg's as his first album was Gould's alone. CBS wanted him to record something more mainstream as the Goldberg's were practically unheard of. 
The performance itself is incredible - I was never interested in Bach's keyboard works outside of the Italian Concerto (which I played very badly - my wife plays it better!) - but it was Gould who got my attention. As one critic said at his best you could almost imagine it was JSB himself improvising. The rest is history. 
It wasn't because it was the only recording available - there were others but the record buying public didn't want them. It was the incredible nature of Gould's performance. Don't forget Gould was practically unknown at the time outside of Canada to most people but the recording becomes a best seller. Doesn't that tell us something? People actually enjoyed it! Surely that is the purpose of music - to enjoy! 
He did record it for a major label as a major label thought he was worth investing in, even in a piece as unknown as the Goldberg variations. Of course they use their promotional staff - that's what record labels do! That is what they are supposed to do, along with publishers and other media.
The work as recorded was perfect for an LP at the time. That is a weakness? Sorry about the 'great unwashed' with short attention spans! Actually for introducing people to the music of Bach an LP might not be a bad idea. I'm sure JSB might even have approved. Interestingly I heard a version of the St Matthew recently with brisk tempi and lots of drama, where some person next tome remarked how refreshing it was after so many 'po-faced' performances they had sat through and been bored. Sorry, your criticism just doesn't hold with me. 
Yes, Gould was a nut. I don't think many people would argue with that. But think of George Szell who said, "That nut's a genius!" And if we are going to eliminate pianists (and composers) on the basis of being crazy, then we might eliminate Richter, Michelangeli and Horowitz for a start! And by all means we'll get rid of a certain L van Beethoven, perhaps! 
Sorry, the 1955 Gould Goldbergs is one of the iconic recordings of history. Sorry if you don't like it.


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## KenOC

DrMike said:


> All the damn humming.


The Zenph version has much improved sound and, best of all, discards the vocals.


----------



## DavidA

KenOC said:


> The Zenph version has much improved sound and, best of all, discards the vocals.


I must confess that they have never worried me. Don't know why as I am the sort of person who scowls if someone rustles a paper bag at the cinema. But it just seems to go along with the performance. Like Casal's grunts.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

DrMike said:


> All the damn humming.


Actually just last year the HIP Institute of Toopferhöhen, The Netherlands, uncovered a signed Goldberg Variations manuscript from J.S. Bach himself dated 1740 specifically prescribing humming during the performing of the work. So everyone who is NOT humming while playing the Goldberg is playing it wrong and thus making a flagrant mockery of Bach's true intentions. Hopefully future generations will be enlightened and past recordings, save for the Gould, thrown into the trash bin of Dark Age history where they belong.


----------



## Reichstag aus LICHT

Phil loves classical said:


> I have no doubt that Mozart would have liked his piano music better on modern piano.


I shudder to think what Beethoven might have done with a modern concert grand, which raises a potentially interesting point. Many pieces Beethoven wrote for the pianos of his day used the instruments at their (then) full capacity. So I wonder whether playing, say, the Appassionata or Hammerklavier sonatas on a modern instrument might be missing something essential, namely the "stretchiness" that Beethoven was arguably writing into these pieces. Perhaps they're _meant_ to sound as if the instrument is being pushed to its limits?


----------



## KenOC

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Actually just last year the HIP Institute of Toopferhöhen, The Netherlands, uncovered a signed Goldberg Variations manuscript from J.S. Bach himself dated 1740 specifically prescribing humming during the performing of the work. So everyone who is NOT humming while playing the Goldberg is playing it wrong and thus making a flagrant mockery of Bach's true intentions. Hopefully future generations will be enlightened and past recordings, save for the Gould, thrown into the trash bin of Dark Age history where they belong.


Yeah, I read an article about that. I remember that the manuscript also says, "This work is never, *ever*, to be played on a piano!" (emphasis in original)


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

KenOC said:


> Yeah, I read an article about that. I remember that the manuscript also says, "This work is never, *ever*, to be played on a piano!" (emphasis in original)


"or any other instrument whose future invention I may contemplate. Namely the Moog."


----------



## Bulldog

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I listen to all recordings. I have yet to hear a really good HIP of Beethoven or Bach. Gardiner's Magnificat is pretty exciting. Herreweghe's SMP is okay. Pinnock's Brandenburgs have their moments. My favorites tend to be older recordings. This is not the result of an inherent bias but of listening and comparing.


Oh, you have heard excellent period instrument recordings; you just don't like them much.


----------



## Bulldog

wkasimer said:


> 3) He recorded the work the first time with no repeats, with brisk tempos, so the recording lasts 37 minutes. Perfect for an LP release, and perfect for people with short attention spans.


That's an unwarranted low blow.


----------



## Sid James

Donny Brook said:


> Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante actually play the one work that I've found convinces people to at least give HIP a chance...
> 
> I've yet to meet anyone who didn't genuinely enjoy this although I'm certain that I'm just about to meet at least one if not more...





Enthusiast said:


> Bondi plays with real flair. I love his approach to Italian Baroque music. His practice is HIP but that's not what is essential to his work. Compare him with other top rank HIP performers in the same repertoire (such as Pinnock, Manze or Podger) and you'll get a sense of quite how broad the HIP camp is and what variety there is in its excellence.


I was joking but yes Mr. Biondi is respected and relatively popular in the HIP realm.

I think that after about 10 pages max a debate like this tends to descend to the level of farce. Its more or less happened here, with much anger and polarisation added to the mix. May as well be an atonal thread. I've basically put my two cents (or two posts) worth before that mafia joke.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Bulldog said:


> Oh, you have heard excellent period instrument recordings; you just don't like them much.


I used to think Pinnock was my favorite stereo Brandenburg set until I came upon the Britten. Still a good set for the shelf. I marginally prefer the Arkiv to the newer Avie.

Gardiner's Magnificat is joyful but I still marginally prefer the Prohaska from the 50s.

Herreweghe's SMP is a greater among evils for me. Pretty much all recordings I have heard since the 80s short change the emotion, but Herreweghe at least has a semblance of musicality, sensitivity, and nuance. Still not enough to keep me interested more than 30 minutes. The Mengelberg, Furtwangler and Jochum hold my attention throughout. (but not the Klemperer)


----------



## premont

Mandryka said:


> I'll tell you one thing which I really liked, this. It probably shows my bad taste when it comes to C19 music


I thought Messori was a more serious musician. This is almost like Gould's completely unserious recording of Appassionata, which just by the way he distorts it demonstrates his disgust for the music.


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I used to think Pinnock was my favorite stereo Brandenburg set *until I came upon the Britten. *Still a good set for the shelf. I marginally prefer the Arkiv to the newer Avie.
> 
> Gardiner's Magnificat is joyful but I still marginally prefer the Prohaska from the 50s.
> 
> Herreweghe's SMP is a greater among evils for me. Pretty much all recordings I have heard since the 80s short change the emotion, but Herreweghe at least has a semblance of musicality, sensitivity, and nuance. Still not enough to keep me interested more than 30 minutes. The Mengelberg, Furtwangler and Jochum hold my attention throughout. (but not the Klemperer)


I inherited the Britten and my wife and I came to it with high hopes. What a disappointment! We gave it away.


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## premont

DavidA said:


> Well we are talking about music after all!


Well, you were talking about yourself.


----------



## premont

Brahmsianhorn said:


> So why is Gould's interpretation of the Goldberg Variations so popular and celebrated if he was not interested in the spirit of the music? What is everyone missing? I would like to be enlightened.


What is the spirit of the Goldberg variations and in what way does Gould display, that he expressses the spirit of these variations?


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## wkasimer

DavidA said:


> I inherited the Britten and my wife and I came to it with high hopes. What a disappointment! We gave it away.


I had a similar experience. The Brandenburgs are one piece that I've almost always found more satisfying in HIP performance. The only modern instrument performance that works for me is Leppard's.


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## Woodduck

wkasimer said:


> I had a similar experience. The Brandenburgs are one piece that I've almost always found more satisfying in HIP performance.


I feel the same. Bach takes full advantage of the colorful, contrasting timbres of period instruments. Modern wind instruments tend to produce a smoother and more homogeneous ensemble, and modern strings, played with vibrato, create a thicker, fuzzier blanket which the winds and continuo don't penetrate as well.


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> I inherited the Britten and my wife and I came to it with high hopes. What a disappointment! We gave it away.


How can one hate such a beautiful recording?


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## Tikoo Tuba

One simply burns a hated object - 'tis simple - not to be shared .


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## Heck148

I can't listen to the B'burg Concerti on period instruments....some of these parts are challenging to perform on modern instruments - trumpet, horns, oboes...the tonal, dynamic and technical limitations of original instruments are too much of a distraction to me....I find the tonal colors to be quite thin, limited, restricted, relative to modern instruments, as I described on an earlier post...

I certainly don't advocate full sized string sections for this music, and not full, long bow strokes, _molto vibrato_, a la Brahms or Tchaikovsky - but small ensemble, modern instruments, sounds great to me...
but that's my own preference, and I readily admit to being a product of my own training and experience.


----------



## Phil loves classical

^ I can't listen to the Brandenbugs on modern instruments. I associate the sound of those instruments with music less archaic, sorry for the expression. I find the period instruments really bring out the colours and timbres well. It was as if they were written for those instruments


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## Heck148

Phil loves classical said:


> ^ I can't listen to the Brandenbugs on modern instruments. I associate the sound of those instruments with music less archaic, sorry for the expression. I find the period instruments really bring out the colours and timbres well. It was as if they were written for those instruments


To me, period instruments are colorless, thin, buzzy, twittery and chirpy, or braying, then there are all the weak "wolf" notes........they cannot come close to matching the colors possible on modern instruments.

I equate period instruments with the health food fad that arose at about the same time as HIP...
all of these supposedly healthy foods - like the bland, dreadful tofu, and granola bars that were like eating particle board....so good for you!! so healthy!!

<<Oh, it's good for you, it's healthy, it's "organic", etc, etc>>
"Yeh, but it tastes like s---!!" 

<<Oh, period instruments are authentic, it's what the composer heard, it's genuine, etc, etc>>
"Yeh, but it sounds like s---!!" :lol::devil:


----------



## Woodduck

Heck148 said:


> I can't listen to the B'burg Concerti on period instruments....some of these parts are challenging to perform on modern instruments - trumpet, horns, oboes..*.the tonal, dynamic and technical limitations of original instruments are too much of a distraction to me....I find the tonal colors to be quite thin, limited, restricted, relative to modern instruments,* as I described on an earlier post...


Preferences (quite legitimate) aside, I find this perspective baffling. Period instruments:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brandenburg+1

Modern instruments:






How are the quacky double reeds and brassy natural horns of the Baroque thin, limited and restricted? In ensemble they are less homogeneous; they just have more character, and the gut strings allow their personalities to shine even more clearly. It seems to me that the sounds of wind instruments have been losing character even over the last century as national differences have been smoothed over. Listen to recordings by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Ansermet; the wind section is a kaleidoscope of color compared to anything we hear now. I like woody flutes, honky reeds and brassy horns, and I don't hear this as any kind of limitation. Why do you?


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## DavidA

premont said:


> Well, you were talking about yourself.


And you weren't?:lol:


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> How can one hate such a beautiful recording?


Why do people use the word 'hate'? I just didn't like it as it seemed all wrong to me.


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## KenOC

"Hate" is a perfectly good word and reflects, sometimes, an admirable righteousness. "It is one's duty to hate with all possible fervor the empty and ugly in art; and I hate Saint-Saëns the composer with a hate that is perfect." -- J. F. Runciman, 1896


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## DavidA

KenOC said:


> "Hate" is a perfectly good word and reflects, sometimes, an admirable righteousness. "It is one's duty to hate with all possible fervor the empty and ugly in art; and I hate Saint-Saëns the composer with a hate that is perfect." -- J. F. Runciman, 1896


Hate is sonething which destroys the individual who hates. Some people seem to ascribe any disagreement with hatred. I just to say I was disappointed and didn't care for the approach.


----------



## Ingélou

DavidA said:


> Hate is sonething which destroys the individual who hates. Some people seem to ascribe any disagreement with hatred. I just to say I was disappointed and didn't care for the approach.


It's just a different usage of hyperbole. Over here in the UK, if someone says, 'I hate rice pudding', nobody imagines that they've made it their lifetime mission to track down and destroy all the tins of Ambrosia lurking in suburban homes.

The same thing about the mafia OP. It's a colourful way of asking whether the HIP movement has become too prescriptive. Like a banner headline, it got everyone's attention.

This thread is a little too warm in places - I particularly 'dislike' those posts which suggest that there's something wrong with people who enjoy Glenn Gould. He's not my cup of tea, but he is a tour de force, and the world of music would have been poorer without him.

And yet - there've been some cracking posts on this thread, looking at the process of creation, the impact of fashion, the role of the musician in recreating a work of art, and the reasons for personal preference.

As Mr Spock said: 'Fascinating.'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PS. Just to assure people that I love rice pudding, and no tins of Ambrosia were harmed in the making of this post.


----------



## Enthusiast

Brahmsianhorn said:


> It is not a question of being closed to HIP. For me it is about not expecting much and thus not wanting to invest too much time investigating. Not only has what I heard been disappointing, but so many of the goals of HIP - playing things lighter and faster, reducing or removing vibrato, reducing or eliminating flexibility of tempo, emphasis on articulation and precision - are not goals that I share. What's the point? I want to hear music that melts my heart and lifts my spirit. Like this:


Of course the Busch Bach recordings are wonderful and I value the Britten Brandenburgs, too. But there you have it more than 75 years of recording distilled into two sets. There were many others that were quite good at the time but are not really worth resurrecting now. I believe that the 60 or so years of HIP have served us better. No, not the rather bland and characterless first Pinnock set. But either Harnoncourt set (the first was pioneering but some are distressed by a few intonation problems) or the Collegium Aureum set or the more recent and more perfect but still very much alive Goebel .... . I can't get too excited about a lack of vibrato or its tasteful presence - I just hear different performing traditions - or many of the other features of HIP that you mention. Nor do I find that all HIP performances emphasise lightness and speed above other things - Harnoncourt rarely does for example. There is a lot of variety in the HIP world and some really great performances.


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## Gallus

I think it's obvious that the HIP movement has significantly contributed to our enjoyment of Baroque and other early music especially. It's probably something which is more necessary the more remote in time one gets from the present...I don't know if it's really possible to perform e.g. the sacred music of the Renaissance without being "historically informed" in some sense or another. But I do tend to agree with the squishy moderate position that it's all really about good vs bad music, and a self-consciously un-HIP approach has produced and will always produce great music which I would never want to be without.

Which of these interpretations do people prefer? I enjoy both for different reasons.


----------



## Bulldog

I prefer the bottom video. The string sound in the other performance is mushy and irksome.


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## Mandryka

I too prefer the bottom video, I don't like the string sound or the conducting in the first, nor the delivery of the singer.


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## Dimace

Enthusiast said:


> I do like Bach keyboard pieces played on the piano. But when it comes to the concertos I think there can a loss in ... er .... "seriousness" ... when the keyboard part is played on a piano and I guess that increases when the orchestra is large and rich sounding. *The result can be delicious* but I am not sure the music is well served. Of course, and as ever, a particular performance could turn things around and make me wrong.


For me, the only thing matters! I don't want more. (I play also Bach with full pedal, in a Yamaha Concert Piano. But I will NEVER teach such things my students. For these reason, I left the MEISTER to other colleges...)


----------



## Heck148

Woodduck said:


> How are the quacky double reeds and brassy natural horns of the Baroque thin, limited and restricted?"


can they sound NOT quacky or brassy?? Not IME...it's rather like the Kazoo - there is not a lot of timbral variety....what you hear, is what you get.
Modern instruments can be quacky, brassy, but also round and mellow, or anything in between.



> In ensemble they are less homogeneous


fine, but sometimes, they should be more homogenous, sometimes less - modern instruments can do both



> they just have more character, and the gut strings allow their personalities to shine even more clearly.


LOL!! kazoos have the same sort of "character"...as for that flat, dead, nasal gut string sound - the character is similar to that of a cadaver...



> It seems to me that the sounds of wind instruments have been losing character even over the last century as national differences have been smoothed over. Listen to recordings by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Ansermet; the wind section is a kaleidoscope of color compared to anything we hear now. I like woody flutes, honky reeds and brassy horns, and I don't hear this as any kind of limitation. Why do you?


I agree, but the reason has nothing to do with a comparison of modern to period instruments....it's the present day orchestra audition/selection process that encourages this sort of homogenous, generic "Bb" sound that will not offend anybody on the audition committee. I loved the different tone qualities of different orchestras...I'm sorry that the national/regional characteristics seem to be diminishing.


> I like woody flutes, honky reeds and brassy horns, and I don't hear this as any kind of limitation.


I'm with you, I love different tone colors, it is essential, as far as I'm concerned....but instruments should not be JUST, or ONLY - quacky, buzzy, brassy.....there is a whole other side to tonal color and variety - round, full, resonant, you need both, IMO...skilled modern instrument players know how to produce this full range of colors, the full palette of timbral possibilities, articulations, attack, etc


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Gallus said:


> I think it's obvious that the HIP movement has significantly contributed to our enjoyment of Baroque and other early music especially. It's probably something which is more necessary the more remote in time one gets from the present...I don't know if it's really possible to perform e.g. the sacred music of the Renaissance without being "historically informed" in some sense or another. But I do tend to agree with the squishy moderate position that it's all really about good vs bad music, and a self-consciously un-HIP approach has produced and will always produce great music which I would never want to be without.
> 
> Which of these interpretations do people prefer? I enjoy both for different reasons.


Neither version is very good. This is a perfect example of false choice. The first version is heavy and harsh, and the soloist is not particularly sensitive or engaging. None of this has anything to do with the use of modern instruments or the basic tempo. The piece should be performed gently and sensitively.

The second version is needlessly emotionally reticent, fast, and slick. The basic approach IS the problem here. I have performed this aria myself, and at this tempo I would not be able to give it the full emotional effect. I don't think Herreweghe would want me to.


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## wkasimer

Heck148 said:


> I can't listen to the B'burg Concerti on period instruments....


A bit of specificity would be helpful to this discussion. Which period instrument Brandenburgs have you heard?


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> I inherited the Britten and my wife and I came to it with high hopes. What a disappointment! We gave it away.


Maybe hate was a strong word, but obviously you disliked it based on this statement.

How can anyone not appreciate the exquisite beauty, sensitivity, nuance and musicianship of this performance of the Brandenburg 5? It makes me melt every time I hear it! The rapport between the violin and flute is so engaging. I can only imagine someone with an inherent bias not responding to this, but maybe someone can enlighten me as to what I a missing. At the end of the day, isn't great music still great music?


----------



## wkasimer

Brahmsianhorn said:


> but maybe someone can enlighten me as to what I a missing.


You're obviously not missing anything, since you enjoy this so much, so I wouldn't dream of trying to convince you not to like it. But to my ears, the tempo is a bit too slow and the playing too homogenous, mostly legato, without much variation in phrasing or articulation. The resulting performance, for me, lacks energy and forward momentum.



> At the end of the day, isn't great music still great music?


Of course. But each of us has different criteria for "great".


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

wkasimer said:


> You're obviously not missing anything, since you enjoy this so much, so I wouldn't dream of trying to convince you not to like it. But to my ears, the tempo is a bit too slow and the playing too homogenous, mostly legato, without much variation in phrasing or articulation. The resulting performance, for me, lacks energy and forward momentum.
> 
> Of course. But each of us has different criteria for "great".


And your response indicates to me that you DO have an inherent bias and a particular sound in mind for how this work should go which precludes you from enjoying the Britten no matter how musically it is played. To each their own.

I try to approach recordings with fresh ears and give them a chance.


----------



## premont

wkasimer said:


> The only modern instrument performance that works for me is Leppard's.


With a statement like this you belittle all other existing modern instrument recordings (about 110) of the Brandenburg concertos except Leppard's, so I take it of course for granted, that you actually have heard them all.


----------



## premont

wkasimer said:


> [About Britten's Brandenburg concertos]: But to my ears, the tempo is a bit too slow and the playing too homogenous, mostly legato, without much variation in phrasing or articulation. The resulting performance, for me, lacks energy and forward momentum.


Completely seconded.


----------



## wkasimer

premont said:


> With a statement like this you belittle all other existing modern instrument recordings (about 110) of the Brandenburg concertos except Leppard's, so I take it of course for granted, that you actually have heard them all.


No, I haven't heard them all. That would be impossible (BTW, I doubt that there have been 110 modern instrument recordings, but I won't ask you to list them). Nor am I belittling anything - I'm simply stating a preference.

I've probably heard about a dozen modern instrument recordings, including Busch, Cortot et al, Koussevitsky, Munch, Karajan, Marriner, I Musici, Richter, Casals, Chailly, Britten, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few.

I was going by memory and by what's on the shelf properly organized, and on reflection, realized that I forgot about both Casals and Chailly, both of which I also like a great deal, probably as much as the Leppard. Those are the ones that have remained in my collection somewhere. The rest I've culled in the interest of space, since I didn't consider any of them worth hearing a second time (and if I change my mind, I can find most of them on Spotify).


----------



## wkasimer

Brahmsianhorn said:


> And your response indicates to me that you DO have an inherent bias and a particular sound in mind for how this work should go which precludes you from enjoying the Britten no matter how musically it is played.


Are you suggesting that after 50 years of listening, I shouldn't have developed personal preferences?



> I try to approach recordings with fresh ears and give them a chance.


Based on this thread, I tend to doubt that statement.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

wkasimer said:


> Based on this thread, I tend to doubt that statement.


Quoting myself from two pages back:

"I used to think Pinnock was my favorite stereo Brandenburg set until I came upon the Britten. Still a good set for the shelf. I marginally prefer the Arkiv to the newer Avie.

Gardiner's Magnificat is joyful but I still marginally prefer the Prohaska from the 50s.

Herreweghe's SMP is a greater among evils for me. Pretty much all recordings I have heard since the 80s short change the emotion, but Herreweghe at least has a semblance of musicality, sensitivity, and nuance. Still not enough to keep me interested more than 30 minutes. The Mengelberg, Furtwangler and Jochum hold my attention throughout. (but not the Klemperer)"

I think this pretty thoroughly and conclusively refutes your statement.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

One recording I forgot to mention: Pinnock's version of Handel's Messiah. Very nice version and my top choice for the work in stereo sound. I have always enjoyed Pinnock's choral work (see also his Haydn and Vivaldi).

THAT SAID...my absolute desert island Messiah is Sir Malcolm Sargent's 1946 version in the Dutton transfer. That is one of the great choral recordings of all time IMO.

So two very different approaches that I can appreciate in their different ways. Isn't that what it should be all about?


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## Guest

Mandryka said:


> I hope we're trying to have a serious discussion here about serious things in a way, not a scrap. A bit less sarcasm and a bit more careful reading and thinking would be a good idea.


On the internet in general? On this site in particular? Please...


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## philoctetes

This thread has gone absurd. Thank heavens we can all make our own choices and ignore the guardians of antiquity telling us what to think. When someone has to reach so far as to say that HIP is bad like health food (?), well they just lost the argument.


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## DavidA

philoctetes said:


> This thread has gone absurd. Thank heavens we can all make our own choices and ignore the guardians of antiquity telling us what to think. When someone has to reach so far as to say that HIP is bad like health food (?), well they just lost the argument.


Yes quite right. I think there are two points to make. 
First an objective one that HIP probably sound far more like what the composer had in mind when he wrote it. This applies especially to the baroque era but can also apply to later too.
The second is subjective - what you think sounds better. I have no problem with someone liking JSB or Handel on modern instruments even though I prefer HIP (in its milder form I would add). However, that does not stop me enjoying non-HIP performances. For example, in my collection of St Matt Passion I have Richter, Karajan, Harnoncourt, Gardiner, Herreweghe, Javobs and McCreesh. I can enjoy them all. But don't expect me to sit through Klemperer!


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## wkasimer

philoctetes said:


> This thread has gone absurd. Thank heavens we can all make our own choices and ignore the guardians of antiquity telling us what to think. When someone has to reach so far as to say that HIP is bad like health food (?), well they just lost the argument.


At least no one has called anyone a Nazi....


----------



## Itullian

HIP sounds anemic and colder TO ME and too fast.
So I prefer modern. I have very few HIP recordings now.
I like feeling over authentic. Just me of course. 
The ol' Toscanini approach vs the Furtwangler approach.
I'm definitely Furtwangler.
Oh, and I LOVE all things Klemperer.


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## philoctetes

I think few would claim that HIP is superior by default. I cannot stand the sound of Paul Dombrecht's (nobody else has mentioned him, so I will) recordings, made half a century ago... on the other hand, Franz Bruggen left a recording legacy that will be very hard to beat. Just my opinion of course.

I've been hit with buyer's remorse over many recordings, HIP or not. The Great Herbie has been mostly eliminated from my collection now. Does that mean I don't like traditional orchestras anymore? Not at all. I'd just rather hear Munch, Ormandy, Knappertsbusch, Furtwangler, or Monteux, after listening to CM for over 50 years. But not for Bach, sorry.

I don't expect everybody will have the same favorites in any repertory, HIP or otherwise. But the comments I've read here bear a lot of resemblance to what is now commonly known as fake news.


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## Woodduck

Heck148 said:


> can they sound NOT quacky or brassy?? Not IME...it's rather like the Kazoo - there is not a lot of timbral variety....what you hear, is what you get.
> Modern instruments can be quacky, brassy, but also round and mellow, or anything in between.
> 
> LOL!! kazoos have the same sort of "character"...as for that flat, dead, nasal gut string sound - the character is similar to that of a cadaver...


I'm sure you're right that modern instruments can produce a wider range of effects than their Baroque predecessors, and that they're more technically reliable (although, I must say, I've never heard an oboe of any vintage employ a wide range of tone color, nor thought to criticize it for failing to do so). The real question is, how relevant is this to the music being performed? Isn't it what's actually done with the instruments, and what we hear, that matters? I've heard I don't know how many recordings of Baroque music on instruments of all sorts, and I must say that I've never been moved to think about what the instruments are capable of in the abstract, but only of the sound picture I actually hear and whether the playing does the music justice. What I generally hear is that ensembles of modern instruments tend to produce a fatter, smoother, more homogeneous, blended sound in which individual voices are less sharply differentiated and instrumental lines don't stand out as clearly as they do with the older instruments. If players of modern instruments can produce similarly sharp, characterful, highly differentiated sounds, as you claim they can, then they must be choosing not to do it because they don't want to. To my ear it's a loss. Like many other people at their first encounter with Bach on Baroque instruments (with me it was the Concentus Musicus playing the violin concertos back in 1968), I felt as if a window had opened and the room had filled with clear light and fresh air.

If you want to trivialize the discussion and characterize the sounds of period instruments with analogies to granola, kazoos and corpses you're free to do so. But to lovers of their characteristic sounds, the so-called flaws of those instruments not only don't matter, but may be part of their charm.


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## Red Terror

wkasimer said:


> At least no one has called anyone a Nazi....


Or a Communist.


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## CnC Bartok

Red Terror said:


> Or a Communist.


Or - even worse - a Brexiteer.


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## hammeredklavier

Phil loves classical said:


> I have no doubt that Mozart would have liked his piano music better on modern piano. With Bach I universally prefer the sound of HIP.







_"there is the famous D minor Concerto, which has this theme in the piano... ( A-A'-C# ) ( E-D-D ) ... As we can see, in the score, these connecting slurs, are very, very clearly marked by Mozart, and they separate this...( A-A'-C# )... from this...( E-D-D )... In my opinion, that's what the expression is.

Let's play it over here on the Steinway. I don't believe it's really possible to do this here because if I separate... Those separations sound very artificial. The reason again that they do, is here is this large powerful instrument that is endeavoring to carry the tone for a long time and I'm cutting it off in the middle of its singing.

I'm sure there are people who think ( A-A'-C#-E-D-D ) is more expressive than ( A-A'-C# ) ( E-D-D ). But it's absolutely there in the score, and it really is, in my opinion, the essence of Mozart. You know there are sketches of Mozart, incomplete scores of Mozart. In Piano Concerto K537, he didn't even bother to write in the left hand, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._26_(Mozart)#The_unfinished_keyb oard_part but there's never a single bar without these articulation slurs - because they are what makes the music speak - and that's what they thought in the 18th century. "Music is like speech and it must be inflected properly.""_


----------



## premont

wkasimer said:


> No, I haven't heard them all. That would be impossible (BTW, I doubt that there have been 110 modern instrument recordings, but I won't ask you to list them). Nor am I belittling anything - I'm simply stating a preference.
> 
> I've probably heard about a dozen modern instrument recordings, including Busch, Cortot et al, Koussevitsky, Munch, Karajan, Marriner, I Musici, Richter, Casals, Chailly, Britten, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few.
> 
> I was going by memory and by what's on the shelf properly organized, and on reflection, realized that I forgot about both Casals and Chailly, both of which I also like a great deal, probably as much as the Leppard. Those are the ones that have remained in my collection somewhere. The rest I've culled in the interest of space, since I didn't consider any of them worth hearing a second time (and if I change my mind, I can find most of them on Spotify).


There is no need to doubt that there are 110 modern instrument recordings of the Brandenburg concertos. I have just made a total count and reached 111. And I have heard them all except one (Kurt Gunthner, Philips LP ca 1965). Of course I have preferences, but my preferences rest upon the widest possible basis. This is why I was surprised, when you wrote, that Leppard's recording is the only MI performance which works for you, because I know so many valuable recordings of these concertos.


----------



## wkasimer

premont said:


> There is no need to doubt that there are 110 modern instrument recordings of the Brandenburg concertos. I have just made a total count and reached 111. And I have heard them all except one (Kurt Gunthner, Philips LP ca 1965).


Impressive gluttony! So - which modern instrument recordings would you consider "essential"?


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## philoctetes

I also appreciate Leppard on modern strings. His was my first Handel Op 6 and the main thing wrong with it was an overmiced harpsichord. His CPE Bach disc on Philips is still my favorite of those works after all these years. Not many recordings I can say that about.

The Beaux Arts Haydn has also outlasted many HIPsters for me. But I Musici and ASMF have kinda lost their appeal for me. Among the early HIP conductors I think Hogwood has aged the best, Harnoncourt was hit or miss, and I usually find Pinnock and Gardiner to be too superficial. At one time there weren't many other options, but they certainly had their differences, and having so many more now leaves little excuse for making blanket comments about the whole HIP endeavor.

There is a yin for every yang. There are more pitch components to music than just the notes. It's obvious from all the music out there that timbre is not high on everybody's priorities, but manipulating the weight and pitch between contrasting tones is how new sounds are made. To me Azzolini's squawking sounds controlled and deliberately manipulated for effect, like a guitarist using feedback. He's making the most of what his instrument can (and can't) do. 

I often refer to baroque players like him and Biondi as "rock stars" partly for this reason and I suspect that's OK with them. They seem to be making music for fun which is no doubt an irritation to traditionalists but quite entertaining for their fans. It's another reason that smaller groups will continue to flourish, that they can choose how they want to make music without a lot of institutional restraints. It's all good.

Footnote- I recall the old ASMF recording of a Vivaldi bassoon concerto that I love... I think it's #498, and for a long time nobody could touch that recording, and that particular bassoon sound... nobody until Azzolini came along. He not only matched the earlier but added more interest with his gutteral effects.


----------



## Heck148

Woodduck said:


> I'm sure you're right that modern instruments can produce a wider range of effects than their Baroque predecessors, and that they're more technically reliable (although, I must say, I've never heard an oboe of any vintage employ a wide range of tone color, nor thought to criticize it for failing to do so). The real question is, how relevant is this to the music being performed? Isn't it what's actually done with the instruments, and what we hear, that matters? I've heard I don't know how many recordings of Baroque music on instruments of all sorts, and I must say that I've never been moved to think about what the instruments are capable of in the abstract, but only of the sound picture I actually hear and whether the playing does the music justice. What I generally hear is that ensembles of modern instruments tend to produce a fatter, smoother, more homogeneous, blended sound in which individual voices are less sharply differentiated and instrumental lines don't stand out as clearly as they do with the older instruments. If players of modern instruments can produce similarly sharp, characterful, highly differentiated sounds, as you claim they can, then they must be choosing not to do it because they don't want to. To my ear it's a loss. Like many other people at their first encounter with Bach on Baroque instruments (with me it was the Concentus Musicus playing the violin concertos back in 1968), I felt as if a window had opened and the room had filled with clear light and fresh air.
> 
> If you want to trivialize the discussion and characterize the sounds of period instruments with analogies to granola, kazoos and corpses you're free to do so. But to lovers of their characteristic sounds, the so-called flaws of those instruments not only don't matter, but may be part of their charm.


a previous poster asked that those who do not favor HIP performances state their reasons for feeling so....I've done that, as clearly as I can....I don't enjoy the sound of period instruments compared with modern....I find the instrumental deficiencies to be distracting, and not very enjoyable...my attention is diverted from the music itself, which is not how I like to listen....people can claim that period instruments are wonderful, authentic, that I should like the sound, cherish the shortcomings, etc, etc...but that doesn't work for me...I know what I like to hear, and I'm not going to spend $$ on HIP..

..btw- for some absolutely superb oboe playing of Baroque music:
Harold Gomberg - The Baroque Oboe
Ray Still - Music from Ravinia (Bach 2 B'bgs
, Wedding Cantata) ....incredible playing, expressively, technically superb....


----------



## Dimace

Itullian said:


> HIP sounds anemic and colder TO ME and too fast.
> So I prefer modern. I have very few HIP recordings now.
> I like feeling over authentic. Just me of course.
> The ol' Toscanini approach vs the Furtwangler approach.
> I'm definitely Furtwangler.
> Oh, and I LOVE all things Klemperer.


To the point and also very strange with my case: I DON'T like modern music and I LIKE modern instruments for interpretation. A traditional listener who likes modern interpretations… :lol: (Yes, I'm a sick MF!) :lol:


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## Itullian

I feel sorry for those baroque and classical composers and musicians,
that they only had those HIP instruments to work with!


----------



## premont

wkasimer said:


> Impressive gluttony! So - which modern instrument recordings would you consider "essential"?


I am not particularly greedy, but rather curious, and I have always loved the Brandenburg concertos. I was born in the "preauthentic" age and got to know them in modern instruments interpretations at concerts as well as on recordings. To day I much prefer period instruments, but my old love to some of the modern instruments recordings hasn't faded. However I never use words like "essential" or "definitive recording" because everything depends upon ones taste.

The modern instruments recordings I - to day - favor the most are ( in chronological order):

Adolf Busch (HMV 1835)
August Wenzinger (Archiv 1950-53)
Karl Münchinger (Decca 1958)
Rudolf Baumgartner (Archiv 1958)
Karl Ristenpart (Discophile Francais 1965)
Raymond Leppard (Philips 1974)
Max Pommer (Berlin Classics 1984)
Robert Haydon Clark (Collins 1990)
Helmut Müller-Brühl (Naxos 1999)
Jan Willem de Vriend (Challenge Classics 2007)


----------



## premont

Heck148 said:


> a previous poster asked that those who do not favor HIP performances state their reasons for feeling so....I've done that, as clearly as I can....I don't enjoy the sound of period instruments compared with modern....I find the instrumental deficiencies to be distracting, and not very enjoyable...my attention is diverted from the music itself, which is not how I like to listen....people can claim that period instruments are wonderful, authentic, that I should like the sound, cherish the shortcomings, etc, etc...but that doesn't work for me...I know what I like to hear, and I'm not going to spend $$ on HIP..


What modern instruments can do is to add romantic flavour, particularly more singing tone and more dynamic variation. And also they can play in perfect equal temperament. It seems to be what you miss with period instruments.


----------



## wkasimer

premont said:


> The modern instruments recordings I - to day - favor the most are ( in chronological order):
> 
> Adolf Busch (HMV 1835)
> August Wenzinger (Archiv 1950-53)
> Karl Münchinger (Decca 1958)
> Rudolf Baumgartner (Archiv 1958)
> Karl Ristenpart (Discophile Francais 1965)
> Raymond Leppard (Philips 1974)
> Max Pommer (Berlin Classics 1984)
> Robert Haydon Clark (Collins 1990)
> Helmut Müller-Brühl (Naxos 1999)
> Jan Willem de Vriend (Challenge Classics 2007)


Thanks. I'd completely forgotten the Ristenpart; this was my first recording, which I wore out on LP as a teenager. I haven't heard it in more than forty years, and I wonder what I'd think of it now.

I need to hear de Vriend's - I've loved everything else I've heard him conduct, but it's all been Classical Era.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Dimace said:


> To the point and also very strange with my case: I DON'T like modern music and I LIKE modern instruments for interpretation. A traditional listener who like modern interpretations… :lol: (Yes, I'm a sick MF!) :lol:


"Modern" instruments and interpretation have been around for over a century.

HIP is a modern invention.

Hence the paradox.


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## WildThing

premont said:


> The modern instruments recordings I - to day - favor the most are ( in chronological order):
> 
> Jan Willem de Vriend (Challenge Classics 2007)


Yesss. I also love his recordings of Handel's Concerti Grossi with the Combattimento Consort Amsterdam.


----------



## Dimace

Brahmsianhorn said:


> "Modern" instruments and interpretation have been around for over a century.
> 
> HIP is a modern invention.
> 
> Hence the paradox.


You are the first who denies that I'm a sick MF! Hey guys! I'm a normal man! Thanks, my friend! :lol::lol:

(and the modern music is more than 100 years old, (Berg is the KING of modern composers. Everyone after simply imitates him) but let us go forward with the good news about my character! :lol:


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## Woodduck

Brahmsianhorn said:


> "Modern" instruments and interpretation have been around for over a century.
> 
> HIP is a modern invention.
> 
> Hence the paradox.


Not so modern in 2019, except in name. The fact that Baroque sensibility and performance practice differed from the late Romantic aesthetic and practice didn't escape the attention of scholars even in the late 19th century, and there were some efforts in the early 20th century to reduce Victorian bloat, strip away heavy and anachronistic reorchestrations in favor of the original scoring, revive obsolete instruments (notably the harpsichord), and embellish naked melodic lines in the manner described in written documents. Those who associate Sir Thomas Beecham with his outrageous (if delightful) technicolor rescoring of _Messiah_ may be unaware that in 1927 and 1947 he made more conservative recordings of the work that were decidedly anti-Victorian, using smaller choral forces where he found them appropriate and some tempos remarkably swift for the time. What we like to call the "HIP movement" as a widely known and recorded phenomenon didn't really take off until the 1960s, but that was over half a century ago. Thick, ponderous, uninflected performances of Baroque music have come to seem, and are, quite old-fashioned, not modern in any sense except that the instruments they were played on haven't changed much.

The real paradox lies in the fact that the documents that describe the performance practices of earlier times must be interpreted through a contemporary sensibilty. Given that contemporary musicians have difficulty playing even 19th-century music in an authentic manner when we actually have recordings of artists from that era, I think it's safe to assume that 18th-century musicians would find some of our notions of "authenticity" a little odd. Honest HIP practitioners don't pretend that we've got it "right" in all respects, but I don't think that's a problem. As others have noted, there's plenty of variety among early music players, some of them have done really fine things, and that's the best we can hope for.


----------



## Phil loves classical

hammeredklavier said:


> _"there is the famous D minor Concerto, which has this theme in the piano... ( A-A'-C# ) ( E-D-D ) ... As we can see, in the score, these connecting slurs, are very, very clearly marked by Mozart, and they separate this...( A-A'-C# )... from this...( E-D-D )... In my opinion, that's what the expression is.
> 
> Let's play it over here on the Steinway. I don't believe it's really possible to do this here because if I separate... Those separations sound very artificial. The reason again that they do, is here is this large powerful instrument that is endeavoring to carry the tone for a long time and I'm cutting it off in the middle of its singing.
> 
> I'm sure there are people who think ( A-A'-C#-E-D-D ) is more expressive than ( A-A'-C# ) ( E-D-D ). But it's absolutely there in the score, and it really is, in my opinion, the essence of Mozart. You know there are sketches of Mozart, incomplete scores of Mozart. In Piano Concerto K537, he didn't even bother to write in the left hand, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._26_(Mozart)#The_unfinished_keyb oard_part but there's never a single bar without these articulation slurs - because they are what makes the music speak - and that's what they thought in the 18th century. "Music is like speech and it must be inflected properly.""_


Interesting video, but I don't agree with Bilson on that. I think the passage with the slurs sound nice on the Steinway, not any more "artificial" than on the pianoforte. I find the sound of the piano forte itself limited in expression.


----------



## Woodduck

Phil loves classical said:


> Interesting video, but I don't agree with Bilson on that. I think the passage with the slurs sound nice on the Steinway, not any more "artificial" than on the pianoforte. I find the sound of the piano forte itself limited in expression.


I'm with you. The idea that the modern piano can't articulate any sort of phrasing effectively strikes me as absurd. Bilson just isn't trying.


----------



## hammeredklavier

Phil loves classical said:


> Interesting video, but I don't agree with Bilson on that. I think the passage with the slurs sound nice on the Steinway, not any more "artificial" than on the pianoforte. I find the sound of the piano forte itself limited in expression.





Woodduck said:


> I'm with you. The idea that the modern piano can't articulate any sort of phrasing effectively strikes me as absurd. Bilson just isn't trying.


There are actually far more issues than just 'articulation' when 'fortepiano works' are played on the modern grand.
Here's another interesting video on this. watch from 14:30.


----------



## hammeredklavier

premont said:


> What modern instruments can do is to add romantic flavour, particularly more singing tone and more dynamic variation.


The modern piano actually hinders dynamic variation in 'fortepiano works'.






_"The frustration with playing Mozart, and I think the problem that many performers on the modern piano face - is that there is this constant battle between the instrument that we have at our disposal, let's say the Steinway, and the music in question.

And so as a young pianist, you grow up playing these pieces, and everyone yells at you all the time about playing "mezzo piano", and gracefully, and "grazioso", and not too heavy here, and don't bend too hard, and phrasing and all this..
And it was very clear to me early on that this couldn't be right. The man who is precocious, and full of attitude, and has all these strong ideas, and a very high opinion of himself as well, could not be the same person who plays this kind of constant "mezzo piano" on the Steinway.

So when I discovered the fortepiano, I suddenly could play in an unbelievably visceral, dramatic style. I could play very "fortissimo" and very "pianissimo", and the scale of the piano didn't go too far. It went just far enough that one could recapture this sense of Sturm und Drang and tempestuousness that I'm sure is present in Mozart's music and that he would have wanted.."_


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## KenOC

hammeredklavier said:


> _"The frustration with playing Mozart, and I think the problem that many performers on the modern piano face - is that there is this constant battle between the instrument that we have at our disposal, let's say the Steinway, and the music in question."_


Bezuidenhoiut carries the HIP idea to its ultimate conclusion. Interesting, but I'm not sure I'd want his versions on that desert island….


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## DavidA

Robert Pickett said:


> Or - even worse - a Brexiteer.


I thought a Brexiteer was a communist and a Nazi rolled into one! :lol:


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## Woodduck

Bezuidenhout makes an excellent case for the use of the fortepiano in Mozart. The key points of superiority over the modern concert grand, as I hear them in these demonstrations, are its quickness of articulation, its transparency even in the lowest register, and the possibilty of playing with great force without generating a heavy, overresonant roar.

I can see how the music of Beethoven, whose chord voicings can make transparency especially important, benefits from the characteristics of the fortepiano. But I can also see that the sheer power of the modern grand (not to mention its durable construction!) would have appealed to him.

I've noticed that fortepianos vary greatly in tone quality. I find some of them rather horrible, too reminiscent of the honky tonk uprights played by the wild west saloon piano players we're urged not to shoot. The one Bezuidenhout is playing in post #243 sounds nice.


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## Larkenfield

I enjoyed watching "The Piano is not a Piano" presentation, and the marvelous period performance that Ken posted. Yes, Mozart wrote for a different keyboard instrument with its own advantages when compared to the modern piano. But the question is rarely or never asked: why in the first place did the clavichord, harpsichord, and fortepiano eventually become superseded by the modern grand in public favor?

How about because the changes made in the instrument were considered _ improvements_, often desired by the musicians and composers themselves, the middle and higher register normally sounding weak or sickly, almost what could be considered today as the sound of a toy piano that's hard to take seriously. The sound doesn't project, and the worst sin of all is the basic inferior sound quality that lacks _beauty_ in and of itself. The bass in the fortepiano has a pleasant resonance, but as the pitches go up, the quality of the sound goes down and gets thinner and thinner like a watered down soup.

Had Mozart had the modern grand, I believe he would have embraced the piano's development, flexibility and improvements in sound wholeheartedly. So would have Bach over the primitive sound of these previous keyboard instruments.

Nevertheless, it still seems that something new is needed in an instrument that lies between the feeble fortepiano and the power of the modern grand, a keyboard instrument that has a greater ability to articulate the written lines, a lighter string sound in weight, but with the superior beauty of the sound of the modern grand. I see no evidence that such an instrument exists.

As of now, I consider most fortepianos as being unbearable relics, inferior and lacking in its quality of sound, often sounding like rattletraps, with the inability to project itself in volume to a wider audience from the stage and match the high quality of the string instruments not subject to an inferior key mechanism, an often feeble resonance within the instrument itself, and an increasing metal sound as it moves up into the middle and treble range until it sounds tinny and metallic.

The fortepiano was superseded for a reason, despite whatever it may have lost in its ability for phrasing and articulation, and the gain in the superiority of the beauty and wholeness of the modern piano sound assured its overall acceptance at the expense of whatever it may have lost in the advantages of the fortepiano. I've yet to hear a fortepiano that I could ever imagine inspiring a composer to write for it, though they can vary greatly in their quality of sound. Normally though, they lack an obviously inspired quality of beauty even if the performer is wearing a tux:

Sharp and metallic in the right hand and a lack of consistent tone quality in its different registers:






Just as bad but for different reasons:


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## Enthusiast

DavidA said:


> I have no problem with someone liking JSB or Handel on modern instruments even though I prefer HIP (*in its milder form *I would add). However, that does not stop me enjoying non-HIP performances. For example, in my collection of St Matt Passion I have Richter, Karajan, Harnoncourt, Gardiner, Herreweghe, Javobs and McCreesh. I can enjoy them all. But don't expect me to sit through Klemperer!


I agree with what you say but wonder about what you mean by the "milder form" of HIP ... and also what the opposite of mild is in this context?


----------



## DaveM

hammeredklavier said:


> There are actually far more issues than just 'articulation' when 'fortepiano works' are played on the modern grand.
> Here's another interesting video on this. watch from 14:30.


Thanks for that. Very interesting! Believe it or not, I preferred the Mozart on the Steinway, but I understand why others prefer the fortepiano version. Btw, highly recommend that people watch the rest of that video with the Cornell Alma Mater with variations. Excellent and probably not available anywhere else!


----------



## hammeredklavier

Larkenfield said:


> Yes, Mozart wrote for a different keyboard instrument with its own advantages when compared to the modern piano. But the question is rarely or never asked: why did the clavichord, harpsichord, and *fortepiano eventually become superseded by the modern grand in the first place in public favor?*


I think Robert Levin pretty much answers your question in this video. The piano was gradually designed and developed in such a way it would suit Romantic era music better, somewhat adhering to the bel canto opera singing and orchestration styles of the 19th century.








Larkenfield said:


> As of now, I consider most fortepiano as being unbearable relics, inferior and lacking in its quality of sound, often sounding like rattletraps, with *the inability to project itself in volume to a wider audience from the stage* and match the high quality of the string instruments not subject to an inferior key mechanism, an often feeble resonance within the instrument itself, and *an increasing metal sound as it moves up into the middle and treble range until it sounds tinny and metallic. *


Interestingly, Bezuidenhout says these are actually the advantages of the fortepiano in 18th century music performance.


----------



## Woodduck

Larkenfield said:


> Yes, Mozart wrote for a different keyboard instrument with its own advantages when compared to the modern piano. *But the question is rarely or never asked: why did the clavichord, harpsichord, and fortepiano eventually become superseded by the modern grand in public favor? *
> 
> *How about because the changes made in the instrument were considered to be improvements*, often desired by the musicians and composers themselves
> 
> Had Mozart had the modern grand, I believe he would have embraced the piano's development, flexibility and improvements in sound wholeheartedly. So would have Bach over the primitive sound of these previous keyboard instruments.
> 
> Nevertheless, *it still seems that something new is needed in an instrument that lies between the feeble fortepiano and the power of the modern grand, a keyboard instrument that has a greater ability to articulate the written lines, a lighter string sound in weight, but with the superior beauty of the sound of the modern grand.* I see no evidence that such an instrument exists.
> 
> The fortepiano was superseded for a reason, despite whatever it may have lost in its ability for phrasing and articulation, and the gain in the superiority of the beauty and wholeness of the modern piano sound assured its acceptance. I've yet to hear a fortepiano that I could imagine inspiring any composer to write for it.
> 
> It. Is. Not. Beautiful.


I should say right off that I'm not generally a lover of the fortepiano, and that I agree that the modern piano has a splendor that earlier pianos can't equal. However, there appears to be one idea that hasn't occurred to you, and that is the great likelihood that changes to the sound and technology of the piano were not necessarily objective improvements and were not universally regarded as such, but were a natural correlate of changes in music itself. Presumably, the evolution of keyboard instruments was, to a significant degree, motivated by new musical requirements, and there can be no doubt that changes to touch and sonority in turn inspired composers to write new kinds of music for the keyboard.

As I listen to Mozart well-played on the fortepiano, it seems to me that the sort of music he wrote for it was beautifully designed to exploit its qualities and capabilities, as seen in the above posts. Similarly, changes to the piano's tone and action were exploited by composers of the Romantic period with different expressive needs. The fact that we, listening from our historical position, might prefer the sound of one instrument or another is a matter of taste, but it makes sense to try to judge the instrument in terms of its actual historical use, its effectiveness in the music written for it. Fortepianos vary; the unevenness of tone quality from lower to upper register we find in some of them would be crippling in Rachmaninoff, but in relation to 18th-century music it's been viewed by lovers of the instrument as a desirable range of color, to be exploited by composer and performer.

Perhaps the universal instrument you express a desire for - the one with the quick articulation and transparency of the fortepiano and the warm loveliness of tone of a modern grand - is most nearly found in some of the better digital pianos, on which both touch and tone can be controlled at the press of a button.


----------



## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> Bezuidenhout makes an excellent case for the use of the fortepiano in Mozart. The key points of superiority over the modern concert grand, as I hear them in these demonstrations, are its quickness of articulation, its transparency even in the lowest register, and the possibilty of playing with great force without generating a heavy, overresonant roar.
> 
> .


Sometimes I wonder if some of these problems are a limitation of post war instruments. If you listen to the earlier recordings that Edwin Fischer made of late Beethoven sonatas you hear a modern grand with a very clear lower register and no sense of roar. I don't know if it was a Steinway that he used, I think so, maybe the Steinways from the 1930s weee just better instruments.

More generally I was interested in the way Bezuidenhout's suggested that the old piano helped him arrive at a sturm und drang interpretation of Mozart solo piano music. This is precisely the sort of interaction of performer, instrument and music which makes HIP such a fruitful experiment. I'm not saying or denying, by the way, that I enjoy Bezuidenhout's Mozart, or indeed that the Sturm and Drang conception is one I find attractive or unattractive .

By coincidence I was thinking yesterday of a similar idea that Hardy Ritter wrote about in his essay in his the Chopin Etudes recording. He chose a piano there, a Graf, which, he says, helped him for the first time to make musical sense of some of Chopin's accent markings and rubato. Apparently people who play on a modern piano just ignore these accents.

I thought of this because the volume and colour of the Graf is really impressive in the more explosive passages of the Chopin Etudes, and I thought he gave op 10/3 a Strurm and Drang character, which I thought was revealing, insightful and bold. Again, I'm not saying or denying that I like it.


----------



## Larkenfield

Woodduck said:


> Perhaps the universal instrument you express a desire for - the one with the quick articulation and transparency of the fortepiano and the warm loveliness of tone of a modern grand - is most nearly found in some of the better digital pianos, on which both touch and tone can be controlled at the press of a button.


Bingo! I was starting to think the same thing. Now _that_ would be worth hearing when the fade of the tone could be tailor-made in length, with nimble articulation, a similar weight in sound, plus a decent, consistent, transparent, beautiful quality of sound throughout the entire range of the instrument. The problem, though, is that it would never be accepted as a viable alternative to a period fortepiano.

I do not accept the idea that the fortepiano evolved into the modern piano only because of the new music being written with longer lines, not without giving sufficient weight to the improved quality and beauty of sound of the modern grand over that of the unflattering sound of the fortepiano, and Mozart has certainly been successfully performed on the modern grand whether it was originally performed on a fortepiano.


----------



## DavidA

Enthusiast said:


> I agree with what you say but wonder about what you mean by the "milder form" of HIP ... and also what the opposite of mild is in this context?


Not too astringent and doctrinaire.


----------



## DavidA

Mandryka said:


> Sometimes I wonder if some of these problems are a limitation of post war instruments. If you listen to the earlier recordings that Edwin Fischer made of late Beethoven sonatas you hear a modern grand with a very clear lower register and no sense of roar. I don't know if it was a Steinway that he used, I think so, maybe the Steinways from the 1930s weee just better instruments.
> 
> More generally I was interested in the way Bezuidenhout's suggested that the old piano helped him arrive *at a sturm und drang interpretation of Mozart solo piano music*. This is precisely the sort of interaction of performer, instrument and music which makes HIP such a fruitful experiment. I'm not saying or denying, by the way, that I enjoy Bezuidenhout's Mozart, or indeed that the Sturm and Drang conception is one I find attractive or unattractive .
> 
> By coincidence I was thinking yesterday of a similar idea that Hardy Ritter wrote about in his essay in his the Chopin Etudes recording. He chose a piano there, a Graf, which, he says, helped him for the first time to make musical sense of some of Chopin's accent markings and rubato. Apparently people who play on a modern piano just ignore these accents.
> 
> I thought of this because the volume and colour of the Graf is really impressive in the more explosive passages of the Chopin Etudes, and I thought he gave op 10/3 a Strurm and Drang character, which I thought was revealing, insightful and bold. Again, I'm not saying or denying that I like it.


I have Levin's performances of Mozart concertos and they have a different emphasis in that the forte piano can be played really loudly in a way that would be inappropriate for a modern grand. Different emphasis.


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## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> I have Levin's performances of Mozart concertos and they have a different emphasis in that the forte piano can be played really loudly in a way that would be inappropriate for a modern grand. Different emphasis.


That's the problem with playing Mozart on your Boesendorfer. If you really let yourself go you're going to frighten the dog or have the neighbors calling the police, and so you stay with that namby pamby mezzo-forte. Whence, perhaps, Mozart's undeserved reputation for sissiness.


----------



## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> Sometimes I wonder if some of these problems are a limitation of post war instruments. If you listen to the earlier recordings that Edwin Fischer made of late Beethoven sonatas you hear a modern grand with a very clear lower register and no sense of roar. I don't know if it was a Steinway that he used, I think so, maybe the Steinways from the 1930s were just better instruments.


It's hard to see how a muddy, overresonant bass register benefits any music of any period. I wonder if your speculation about early 20th-century pianos being superior in that respect has any truth to it.


----------



## Woodduck

Larkenfield said:


> Bingo! I was starting to think the same thing. Now _that_ would be worth hearing when the fade of the tone could be tailor-made in length, with nimble articulation, a similar weight in sound, plus a decent, consistent, transparent, beautiful quality of sound throughout the entire range of the instrument.
> 
> I do not accept the idea that the fortepiano evolved into the modern piano only because of the new music being written with longer lines, not without giving sufficient weight to the improved quality and beauty of sound of the modern grand over that of the unflattering sound of the fortepiano, and Mozart has certainly been successfully performed on the modern grand whether it was originally performed on a fortepiano.


Here is something relevant:

https://slippedisc.com/2015/05/barenboim-builds-a-new-piano/

From skimming this I gather that the cross-stringing of modern pianos has something to do with the loss of transparency in the sound. Pianos up to the time of Liszt were straight-strung. Steinway seems to have been responsible for introducing cross-stringing, and soon everyone was imitating them.


----------



## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> It's hard to see how a muddy, overresonant bass register benefits any music of any period. I wonder if your speculation about early 20th-century pianos being superior in that respect has any truth to it.


Well see what you think about the pianos Edwin Fischer used.


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## Woodduck

Mandryka said:


> Well see what you think about the pianos Edwin Fischer used.


Any specific recordings? Any on YouTube?


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## DavidA

My own feeling is not to be too doctrinaire about it and accept that HIP and modern instruments can live together. I heard recently a very gripping St Matthew with local choirs and professional soloists. The soloists and choirs mixed in with brisk speeds and the result was thrilling. So not either or but both and in my book


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## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> Any specific recordings? Any on YouTube?


Maybe this, I'm not sure, somehow I'm starting to lose confidence in the idea! And of course the recording is old.


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## Mandryka

Oh another thing maybe worth exploring is Angelich's recording of Beethoven piano concertos, the restoration of the Pleyel was done with an eye to "modern performance" -- have they over restored it? I'm not sure. It's not so old either -- 1892


----------



## eugeneonagain

Woodduck said:


> Here is something relevant:
> 
> https://slippedisc.com/2015/05/barenboim-builds-a-new-piano/
> 
> From skimming this I gather that the cross-stringing of modern pianos has something to do with the loss of transparency in the sound. Pianos up to the time of Liszt were straight-strung. Steinway seems to have been responsible for introducing cross-stringing, and soon everyone was imitating them.


The first piano I ever had was a straight-strung upright piano. I can't even remember the name/manufacturer of the piano. When I left home I couldn't take it with me and eventually it had to be sold. Apparently (I wasn't present) the buyer made quite a thing about it being straight-strung.

When I was at school all the straight strung pianos were considered old-fashioned and they were eager to replace them. There was an old, brown straight-strung Bechstein grand which was in poor repair and they let it linger until there was money to replace it with a cross-strung grand.

Personally I think 'modern' straight-strung pianos (i.e. ones _not_ historical with classical era build and a wooden harp frame) tend to sound quite thin as well as transparent. They are useless for playing a composer like Debussy. Also I think tunings matter for older music. For the music of, say, Chopin well-tempered tuning on any instrument is more colourful and perhaps the same goes for Liszt.


----------



## Mandryka

eugeneonagain said:


> The first piano I ever had was a straight-strung upright piano. I can't even remember the name/manufacturer of the piano. When I left home I couldn't take it with me and eventually it had to be sold. Apparently (I wasn't present) the buyer made quite a thing about it being straight-strung.
> 
> When I was at school all the straight strung pianos were considered old-fashioned and they were eager to replace them. There was an old, brown straight-strung Bechstein grand which was in poor repair and they let it linger until there was money to replace it with a cross-strung grand.
> 
> Personally I think 'modern' straight-strung pianos (i.e. ones _not_ historical with classical era build and a wooden harp frame) tend to sound quite thin as well as transparent. They are useless for playing a composer like Debussy. Also I think tunings matter for older music. For the music of, say, Chopin well-tempered tuning on any instrument is more colourful and perhaps the same goes for Liszt.


So Chopin wasn't writing at a time when equal temperament had become standardised? I'd be quite interested to explore this because I know that it can make a big differences.


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## PlaySalieri

I've got no strong feelings about this - a perf either works for me or it does not regardless of how historically informed it is. I have noticed there are factions within the HIP mvt though - and Herreweghe warriors ready to rip every Gardiner master recording to shreds.


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## premont

Mandryka said:


> So Chopin wasn't writing at a time when equal temperament had become standardised? I'd be quite interested to explore this because I know that it can make a big differences.


Do we know which temperament Chopin preferred?


----------



## Larkenfield

Beethoven and the development of the piano:



> The truly lucky would hear Beethoven himself at the piano, but the instruments available to him were less than adequate for the dynamics and nuances of his playing. His dissatisfaction and frustration with the pianos available to him is outlined in Jan Swafford's new biography on page 194:
> 
> _"What Beethoven wanted from pianos, as he wanted from everything, was more: more robust build, more fullness of sound, a bigger range of volume, a wider range of notes. As soon as new notes were added to either end of the keyboard, he used them, making them necessary to anyone wanting to play his work. From early on, piano makers asked for Beethoven's opinion, and they listened to what he said."_
> 
> Beethoven was tremendously frustrated by the inability of the fortepianos of his day to emote his compositions. Innovations made by the Steinway Company after Beethoven's death made for a much stronger, more robust sound. British piano maker Broadwood finally produced a grand piano designed to Beethoven's satisfaction in 1817, only he'd already lost most of his hearing by then. [unquote]
> 
> http://blogs.kcrw.com/music/2015/03/beethovens-pianos/
> 
> Of course, the desire for a more robust fuller sound, greater volume range, was never mentioned in "The Piano is Not a Piano" presentation in its discussion of the fortepiano. This is what I meant previously in another post about _the musicians themselves_ asking for improvements in the inadequate quality in the sound of the fortepianos... and this was _way_ before the Romantic era came along in full bloom with its longer more sustained melodic lines... So the development of the piano may have been based just as much on it being_ a better sounding instrument_ as much as it was on the kind of music being played on it. There were complaints about the fortepiano even in its own day, and it could be easily argued that its feeble, irritating and inadequate sound hasn't improved one iota over the last 200 years. Nevertheless, I enjoy most HIP performances other than perhaps when one of these unfortunate instruments are used, though admittedly they can vary greatly in their quality of sound, but IMO it's mostly poor and disappointing.


----------



## RICK RIEKERT

Mandryka said:


> So Chopin wasn't writing at a time when equal temperament had become standardised? I'd be quite interested to explore this because I know that it can make a big differences.


Equal temperament was not truly attained before the early 20th century. There are no explicit pronouncements by Chopin on the temperament he preferred, but during his lifetime there were at least five unequal temperaments that were available to him. Tuning manuals and guides available in Europe during Chopin's lifetime feature uneven temperaments that allowed for playing in every key while preserving some amount of key coloration. Since Chopin was so sensitive to issues of tonality, timbre, and dynamic, it seems likely that he would have taken temperament into account when at the piano. The only reference to piano tuning by Chopin is in a letter written towards the end of his life to his friend Julian Fontana which suggests the vital role temperament held for him: "All those with whom I was in most intimate harmony have died and left me. Even Ennike, our best tuner, has gone and drowned himself; and so I have not in the whole world a piano tuned to suit me."


----------



## Mandryka

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Equal temperament was not truly attained before the early 20th century.


This is something I wasn't aware of, thanks.


----------



## wkasimer

Larkenfield said:


> Had Mozart had the modern grand, I believe he would have embraced the piano's development, flexibility and improvements in sound wholeheartedly. So would have Bach over the primitive sound of these previous keyboard instruments.


Of course - but the music that they wrote for these instruments would have been rather different from the Mozart and Bach that we know.


----------



## Mandryka

Here's Chopin preludes played on a late C19 Bechstein tuned unequally -- the piano seems very good to me, strong and clear in the bass.






If he was inspired by WTC in this music then you can see that an equal temperament makes no sense because the keys lose so much of their individuality.


----------



## Larkenfield

Mandryka said:


> Here's Chopin preludes played on a late C19 Bechstein tuned unequally -- the piano seems very good to me, strong and clear in the bass.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If he was inspired by WTC in this music then you can see that an equal temperament makes no sense because the keys lose so much of their individuality.


I greatly enjoyed hearing these performances. It's just too bad not to know more specifically about the tuning that he used. But to me, it's very close to the equal temperament, though not equal temperament, because when Chopin goes into the black keys, there are no obvious "wolf" tones or conspicuously bad intervals. Amazing too was the excellent sound quality of the Bechstein piano, an obvious improvement in the fullness, pleasantness and beautiful quality of sound over the feeble fortepiano in a relatively few short years after Beethoven's death, if one assumes that it was manufactured during the 1830s or 1840s. It was light-years ahead in its development of a far more rounded, richer, bell-like tone, and I doubt if Mozart would have objected to its use with its dramatically improved, more aesthetically pleasing sound.


----------



## hammeredklavier

Larkenfield said:


> Beethoven and the development of the piano:
> 
> The truly lucky would hear Beethoven himself at the piano, but the instruments available to him were less than adequate for the dynamics and nuances of his playing. His dissatisfaction and frustration with the pianos available to him is outlined in Jan Swafford's new biography on page 194:
> 
> _"What Beethoven wanted from pianos, as he wanted from everything, was more: more robust build, more fullness of sound, a bigger range of volume, a wider range of notes. As soon as new notes were added to either end of the keyboard, he used them, making them necessary to anyone wanting to play his work. From early on, piano makers asked for Beethoven's opinion, and they listened to what he said."_
> 
> Beethoven was tremendously frustrated by the inability of the fortepianos of his day to emote his compositions. Innovations made by the Steinway Company after Beethoven's death made for a much stronger, more robust sound. British piano maker Broadwood finally produced a grand piano designed to Beethoven's satisfaction in 1817, only he'd already lost most of his hearing by then. [unquote]
> 
> http://blogs.kcrw.com/music/2015/03/beethovens-pianos/
> 
> Of course, the desire for a more robust fuller sound, greater volume range, was never mentioned in "The Piano is Not a Piano" presentation in its praise of the fortepiano. This is what I meant previously in another post about _the musicians themselves_ asking for improvements in the inadequate quality in the sound of the fortepianos...


Bilson does mention in "The Piano is Not a Piano" presentation at 14:30 the modern piano does fantastic job in simulating the orchestra (as in Liszt's piano transcriptions of Beethoven symphonies) and has a wide dynamic range. There are people who prefer the fortepiano over the modern piano, thinking that the latter is dry and dull (lacking in variety of tone over registers) in comparison. There is a grain of truth in saying that pre-Romantic music on modern piano sounds like a "baroque angel" as pointed out by Bilson and Levin, if both hands are played in equal volume on the modern piano, much of the music will sound awkward.

Another thing is that for pre-Romantic composers like Bach, Mozart, the piano was just one of the keyboard options available at the time. For some, it wasn't even their favorite. Even Mozart, in a letter to his father in 1777, he wrote: "In my eyes and ears *the organ is the king of instruments.*" https://books.google.ca/books?id=tn...he organ is the king of instruments."&f=false and certainly his K399 (Overture), K594, K608 sound much better on the organ than piano for for hands. K394 even sounds good on the harpsichord.

We never know if Bach, Mozart would have approved their music be played on the modern piano cause unlike Beethoven, they did not express dissatisfaction and frustration with the pianos available to them in their lifetime, did not sympathize with the Beethovenian, early Romantic 'obsession' for bigger pianos with louder sound and wider range.


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## Mandryka

Just from briefly browsing the internet, it looks as though a musician who’s exploring non equal temperaments in Chopin is Adolfo Barabino, he’s got four Chopin CDs on Spotify. 

On that attractive YouTube with the preludes, the tuning (according to one of the comments) is Kellner. If Chopin was indeed writing at a time when non equal temperaments were common, then either he wrote in a way which avoids strong dissonances (like Bach in WTC I guess), or he wanted the dissonances there as part of the composition, or he expected the pianist to make alterations depending on how his piano was tuned. Anyway Kellner isn’t a particularly strongly dissonant non equal tuning, though I think it makes a difference to the “poetry” - a big question must be about the best temperament for Chopin.


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## philoctetes

I had not distinguished between well and equal tuning until now. I always thought well-tempered used regular intervals of 2^(1/12). This is obviously a major factor for HIP performance.

http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/~mrubinst/tuning/tuning.html

Equal temperament, the modern and usually inappropriate system of tuning used in western music, is based on the twelfth root of 2. The ratio of frequencies for each semi tone is equal to the twelfth root of two. So, twelve semitones, one octave, gives a doubling of frequency. The uniformity that one gets by having each semitone equal allows one to freely modulate amongst the different keys. One main drawback to equal temperament is that all major thirds are quite a bit off from where they ought to be, roughly fourteen percent of a semitone. Perfect fifths are all pretty close. More importantly, though, other than pitch, nothing distinguishes the various keys.

The well temperaments used throughout the 17 and 18 hundreds also allow one to modulate amongst different keys. However, the octave is not divided into equal steps. Rather, some semi tones are smaller and some are larger. Overall, perfect fifths tend to be pretty close, while the quality of major thirds varies around the circle of fifths, with the more unstable major thirds tending to fall on the black keys, giving the various keys different characteristics.


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## Phil loves classical

hammeredklavier said:


> There are actually far more issues than just 'articulation' when 'fortepiano works' are played on the modern grand.
> Here's another interesting video on this. watch from 14:30.


Interesting video, but again I don't quite buy what he is saying. The "Fp" marking means to play softly immediately after the strong note(s), not as he says "wait until the sound goes away". All versions on modern piano I've heard do that. I see more versions of K332 on modern piano than fortepiano, when he said there isn't a single recording on modern piano? The slur marking just means play the notes under the slur legato, it doesn't mean to end the last note as short as he was demonstrating (a staccato) the first time which, if called for, would still work anyway.

Also, Mozart used very long slur markings in many pieces, much more than with short slurs. That implies the modern piano would sound better for those, according to his argument. And the sound of the modern piano does not increase over time, it still decays.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Furtwangler writing about a HIP performance of the St Matthew Passion:


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## hammeredklavier

Phil loves classical said:


> Interesting video, but again I don't quite buy what he is saying. The "Fp" marking means to play softly immediately after the strong note(s), not as he says "wait until the sound goes away". All versions on modern piano I've heard do that.


Bilson said "Czerny said Beethoven waited till the sound went away." (He didn't say this is the definition of Fp.) It's impossible to achieve this effect on the modern piano with the notes held for the entire duration. In order to fake this effect, today's pianists on the modern piano gradually lift the fingers, (and not hold down for the entire duration) somewhat managing to mimic the quick sound decay of the fortepiano.



Phil loves classical said:


> I see more versions of K332 on modern piano than fortepiano, when he said there isn't a single recording on modern piano? The slur marking just means play the notes under the slur legato, it doesn't mean to end the last note as short as he was demonstrating (a staccato) the first time which, if called for, would still work anyway.


You're misinterpreting what he said. It wasn't "there are more versions of K332 on modern piano than fortepiano." It was "all versions of K332 on modern piano aren't played 'as written and played by Mozart himself on his fortepiano', because if they are actually, they'll 'sound weird.'" They're intentionally played with the left hand part in constant mezzo-piano and the slurred markings ignored. Also watch Levin's demonstration on how Beethoven's Waldstein sounds much clearer on the fortepiano. *"Cross-strung bass muddy, lacks clarity and focus. Equal distribution of voices creates unpleasant, confusing sound picture."* 











Phil loves classical said:


> Also, Mozart used very long slur markings in many pieces, much more than with short slurs. That implies the modern piano would sound better for those, according to his argument. And the sound of the modern piano does not increase over time, it still decays.


Still, Mozart's slurs are much shorter than say, Chopin Etudes Op.10 No.6,7 for example. Unlike Clementi, Mozart was a proponent of the non-legato style and he actually thought Clementi's playing style dry cause of the extensive use of legato which was foreign to Mozart's own. https://books.google.ca/books?id=ez...CAkQA Q#v=onepage&q=mozart nonlegato&f=false. the sound of the modern piano *increases and decays slower* than the fortepiano, and the sounds are often 'killed just as they develop', if Mozart is played as written on the modern piano, that's the point.


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## Enthusiast

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Furtwangler writing about a HIP performance of the St Matthew Passion:
> 
> View attachment 111575
> 
> View attachment 111576


It is always a little sad, isn't it, when a true great from the past makes an embarrassing statement about something new that they just don't get.


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## eugeneonagain

"Doesn't sound like Mozart played it on his Walter fortepiano". So what? How can anyone play like a fortepiano on a modern instrument with wider keys, with a deeper descent and different internal build? 

Having said that the lengths some go to try and convince everyone that that a fortepiano and a modern piano are as different as chalk and cheese and the music incapable of transferring between them, borders on the ridiculous. 

When pianists playing on a modern grand adjust their technique to accommodate music from an earlier period, they are not 'faking it', they are using skill to pay homage and respect to the music.

Should Mozart not be played unless a concert hall has a fortepiano? Maybe the orchestra for a Shostakovich symphony also has to be authentically Russian to achieve the right level of melancholy?


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## hammeredklavier

eugeneonagain said:


> When pianists playing on a modern grand adjust their technique to accommodate music from an earlier period, they are not 'faking it', they are using skill to pay homage and respect to the music.
> 
> Should Mozart not be played unless a concert hall has a fortepiano? Maybe the orchestra for a Shostakovich symphony also has to be authentically Russian to achieve the right level of melancholy?


I'm saying people should be aware of the difference, "what they like" vs "what the composer originally intended."

"Mozart did not intend his music be played on modern piano in constant mezzo piano with slur markings ignored, but still it's the way I like it."
is different from thinking,
"Mozart would have approved of the way his music is played on modern piano today because the modern piano is totally a technological advancement from the fortepiano, just like how today's computers are better than ones from the 60s."


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## eugeneonagain

hammeredklavier said:


> I'm saying people should be aware of the difference, "what they like" vs "what the composer originally intended."
> 
> "Mozart did not intend his music be played on modern piano in constant mezzo piano with slur markings ignored, but still it's the way I like it."
> is different from thinking,
> "Mozart would have approved of the way his music is played on modern piano today because the modern piano is totally a technological advancement from the fortepiano, just like how today's computers are better than ones from the 60s."


What the composer intended is different from projecting into a future the composer could not possibly have known.

Mozart intended his piano music for the piano he knew and used, but this does not mean it doesn't translate to the modern piano, with the necessary changes of technique. That is the fundamentalist HIP falsehood.


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## Phil loves classical

hammeredklavier said:


> Bilson said "Czerny said Beethoven waited till the sound went away." (He didn't say this is the definition of Fp.) It's impossible to achieve this effect on the modern piano with the notes held for the entire duration. In order to fake this effect, today's pianists on the modern piano gradually lift the fingers, (and not hold down for the entire duration) somewhat managing to mimic the quick sound decay of the fortepiano.
> 
> You're misinterpreting what he said. It wasn't "there are more versions of K332 on modern piano than fortepiano." It was "all versions of K332 on modern piano aren't played 'as written and played by Mozart himself on his fortepiano', because if they are actually, they'll 'sound weird.'" They're intentionally played with the left hand part in constant mezzo-piano and the slurred markings ignored. Also watch Levin's demonstration on how Beethoven's Waldstein sounds much clearer on the fortepiano. *"Cross-strung bass muddy, lacks clarity and focus. Equal distribution of voices creates unpleasant, confusing sound picture."*
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Still, Mozart's slurs are much shorter than say, Chopin Etudes Op.10 No.6,7 for example. Unlike Clementi, Mozart was a proponent of the non-legato style and he actually thought Clementi's playing style dry cause of the extensive use of legato which was foreign to Mozart's own. https://books.google.ca/books?id=ez...CAkQA Q#v=onepage&q=mozart nonlegato&f=false. the sound of the modern piano *increases and decays slower* than the fortepiano, and the sounds are often 'killed just as they develop', if Mozart is played as written on the modern piano, that's the point.


The K 475 is a good example where darker hues of the modern piano would work better. I'm saying as long as the slurs are longer than a bar, the modern piano would sound better, which is what Bilson is inadvertently implying. The 2nd movement of K545 is another example. The additional string per note makes a richer sound, which all pianists strive for in these movements.






My other point is the marking is to play legato for a slur, which any pianist can easily do. He was interpreting the slur meant letting go of the last note of the slur way earlier like a staccato to prove his point, but a slur only means the last note is detached from the next phrase. Either piano can do that just as well. I still don't buy the sound of a modern piano increases after the note is pressed. Look at the decay over time. How can the sound increase unless rigged by the sound engineer? He could do that with a fortepiano as well then. Also Mozart was not the last composer who wrote those sort of rhythms. They went well into the 20th century. I guess he could argue those works would sound better on the fortepiano? I doubt it.

http://www.few.vu.nl/~henkb/Betamusica/Weinreich.pdf

The waiting till the sound dies opening of the Pathetique is really the only valid point in my view. But a darker hued work again like the Pathetique, the modern piano's advantages would still outweigh that one disadvantage.


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## Enthusiast

I don't really know what type of piano is right for this or that music but I do love the sound of many forte pianos that I have heard and have not formed an impression that even big works by Beethoven can't be believably realised on such instruments. This doesn't mean I think it shouldn't or can't be done on a Steinway or a Bosendorfer (obviously there have been toweringly great performances on these instruments). I am interested enough in arguments about what is right but mostly because they fertilise exploration.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Enthusiast said:


> It is always a little sad, isn't it, when a true great from the past makes an embarrassing statement about something new that they just don't get.


Some of us think he was being prescient about the direction of music.


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## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Furtwangler writing about a HIP performance of the St Matthew Passion:
> 
> View attachment 111575
> 
> View attachment 111576


I thought this review was very sweet, thanks for sharing it. It shows a man who cares very much about Bach's music, and who has developed his own ideas about how it should be performed.

Do you know who was playing in the concert and when?

Is it true that small choirs are better in polyphonic music? In some polyphonic music, the tension and release can come as much from the drama among the voices as it does from harmony. Potentially it's a very good way of making the music expressive because it can have multiple layers of meaning -- one voice pressing forward and one voice holding back, for example. SMP may be like this in fact, and if it is, I suspect a small choir is better -- but I'm sure a good large choir with a good conductor could do things with this sort of music.

Furtwangler is keen to make a distinction between "playing correctly" and making Bach's music. It's as if they were playing inexpressively, maybe mistaking the music for the score. This is perfectly possible, but if it was the case it wasn't HIP -- an informed interpretation would use expressive embellishments. That's why it's important not to assume that it was a HIP performance -- it may have just been an early, unenlightened, experiment using period instruments.

Furtwangler felt ill at ease in the world he found himself in. Poor chap! I think that you can sense a bit of that bitter discomfort in the spleen of the review. What looks like stupid Colonel Blimp arrogance is probably in fact just the knee jerk defensive reaction of a man whose whole musical Weltanschauung was starting to be threatened by new waves. The nastiness of the cutting_ bon mot_ at the end is so typical of the bitchy performers I've known, it seems to come with the trade! In my experience these sort of people often prefer to dismiss ideas they don't share, especially later in life, in the context of a written review where they feel safe. We must try to forgive him.


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## Brahmsianhorn

Mandryka said:


> I thought this review was very sweet, thanks for sharing it. It shows a man who cares very much about Bach's music, and who has developed his own ideas about how it should be performed.
> 
> Do you know who was playing in the concert and when?
> 
> Is it true that small choirs are better in polyphonic music? In some polyphonic music, the tension and release can come as much from the drama among the voices as it does from harmony. Potentially it's a very good way of making the music expressive because it can have multiple layers of meaning -- one voice pressing forward and one voice holding back, for example. SMP may be like this in fact, and if it is, I suspect a small choir is better -- but I'm sure a good large choir with a good conductor could do things with this sort of music.
> 
> Furtwangler is keen to make a distinction between "playing correctly" and making Bach's music. It's as if the performance was performing very inexpressively, maybe mistaking the music for the score. This is perfectly possible, but if it was the case it wasn't HIP -- an informed interpretation would use expressive embellishments. That's why it's important to to assume that it was a HIP performance -- it may have just been an early, unenlightened, experiment using period instruments.


I think the issue is that HIP takes the focus off the true purpose of art. Ironically, through its insistence on perfect duplication of the music as it was first performed, HIP diminishes the music as a living, breathing, relevant force in today's world. I had a conversation once with a music enthusiast who never understood classical. He told me he thinks of classical music as being "academic." I, like Furtwängler, find the great works to be "soul-stirring." It should never be academic. Unfortunately many performers use authenticity as a shortcut to their own fame and advancement, and the music itself suffers.


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## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> He told me he thinks of classical music as being "academic." I, like Furtwängler, find the great works to be "soul-stirring." It should never be academic.


I agree with this.



Brahmsianhorn said:


> I think the issue is that HIP takes the focus off the true purpose of art. Ironically, through its insistence on perfect duplication of the music as it was first performed, HIP diminishes the music as a living, breathing, relevant force in today's world.


If HIPsters insisted on a perfect duplication of how it was in fact, actually performed, they'd be daft and your anxieties would be justifiable. They don't. But they do insist that expressive embellishments are consistent with original performance practice in the milieu of the composer. In HIP, there can still be that encounter between composition, instrument and the temperament and vision of the musician which gives a performance its soul. This insistence on authentic embellishment is an experiment -- the claim is that it's not uninteresting in itself and that, possibly, it may give rise to more satisfying performances.

In my opinion the experiment is proving and has proved to be a very fruitful one, at least in the areas of music that I'm familiar with. A couple of very good example of this is Gustav Leonhatdt's second (DHM) Art of Fugue and The Hilliard Ensemble's Machaut motets.

I think there's much more agreement between us -- you, me and Furtwangler -- than first appears.


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## hammeredklavier

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I think the issue is that HIP takes the focus off the true purpose of art. Ironically, through its insistence on perfect duplication of the music as it was first performed, HIP diminishes the music as a living, breathing, relevant force in today's world.


It's not the composer's original intentions that's the only issue here. Frankly speaking, I don't like the mechanism of the modern piano that forces performers to play pre-Romantic music like Mozart at constant mezzo-piano, which makes it sound sissy and boring. Honestly it sounds as if it's played on upright piano with soft pedal held down. If they can't afford the fortepiano for HIP, they should at least play on the modern piano like they would on the fortepiano.


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## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> *I think the issue is that HIP takes the focus off the true purpose of art.* Ironically, through its insistence on perfect duplication of the music as it was first performed, HIP diminishes the music as a living, breathing, relevant force in today's world. I had a conversation once with a music enthusiast who never understood classical. He told me he thinks of classical music as being "academic." I, like Furtwängler, find the great works to be "soul-stirring." It should never be academic. Unfortunately many performers use authenticity as a shortcut to their own fame and advancement, and the music itself suffers.


Frankly I think that this statement is ridiculous. What justification have you for saying it? A non-HIP performance can be just as academic and dull. It depends on the musicality of those involved. I recently went to a performance of the SMP and was moved to tears even though it was the dreaded HIP. I think you are confusing the stodginess of what went for a kind of reverence for 'art'.


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## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Furtwangler writing about a HIP performance of the St Matthew Passion:
> 
> View attachment 111575
> 
> View attachment 111576


As Furtwangler died in 1954 I cannot see the relevance of this to the modern HIP movement over 60 years later.


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## Woodduck

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I think the issue is that HIP takes the focus off the true purpose of art. Ironically, through its insistence on perfect duplication of the music as it was first performed, HIP diminishes the music as a living, breathing, relevant force in today's world.


Is Machaut or Albinoni a relevant force in today's world? In what way? How does a piece of music four hundred years old lose such value as it possesses for us merely because an attempt is made to understand and convey what it sounded like when it was unquestionably relevant to its own world? Is it conceivable that a more nearly authentic experience of the artifacts of past cultures can make them more relevant to today's world, rather than less?

It seems to me that these are questions worth asking about any presentation of the arts of the past.


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## Brahmsianhorn

DavidA said:


> Frankly I think that this statement is ridiculous. What justification have you for saying it? A non-HIP performance can be just as academic and dull. It depends on the musicality of those involved. I recently went to a performance of the SMP and was moved to tears even though it was the dreaded HIP. I think you are confusing the stodginess of what went for a kind of reverence for 'art'.


I don't know what you mean by stodginess. I am talking about when performers put the emphasis on precision, accuracy, and authenticity as opposed to a personal connection with the music. I think the music suffers, and interest in the music declines.


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## Mandryka

Woodduck said:


> Is Machaut or Albinoni a relevant force in today's world? In what way? How does a piece of music four hundred years old lose such value as it possesses for us merely because an attempt is made to understand and convey what it sounded like when it was unquestionably relevant to its own world? Is it conceivable that a more nearly authentic experience of the artifacts of past cultures can make them more relevant to today's world, rather than less?
> 
> It seems to me that these are questions worth asking about any presentation of the arts of the past.


I think in Brahmsianhorn's naive misconception of HIP, the performer's role is to reconstruct, to copy. Putting aside the difficulty, the impossibility even, of this task of reconstruction, what he does may indeed be interesting. It may even speak to us.

However it means that the performer's inspired and creative role is obliterated. And in the balance of performer, composition and instrument, it's the performer who is, potentially at least, responsive to our present condition.

My own view, as you know, is that in a good informed performance, the musician will express his vision through the music and hence help to make it speak to us. It's just that what he does to make the music expressive will be based on what we know about the embellishments, phrasing, articulation, colours etc from the composer's world. The musician has a constrained freedom of expression, a limited catalogue of expressive resources.

Having said that, which style of performance works best for contemporary audiences is contingent -- the HIP or the casual may attract people, move people, fascinate people. Nothing is necessary. However I think it's fair to say that in medieval, gothic and renaissance music HIP is a resounding success. I would say in baroque and C19 music too.

But this is not surprising. All composers I guess wrote for the resources at their disposal and knew the conventions which the musicians at their disposal followed. And the great ones knew what they were doing.


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## premont

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I don't know what you mean by stodginess. I am talking about *when performers put the emphasis on precision, accuracy, and authenticity as opposed to a personal connection with the music*. I think the music suffers, and interest in the music declines.


This may have been more obvious in the 1950es and 1960es (the so called pre-authentic age) where a more "neutral" view upon early music was prevalent, but to day there is a large contingent of historically informed musicians, who very clearly display a very personal connection with the music. The difference between them and you is, that you have different opinions of what the music should sound like.


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## Tikoo Tuba

Beginning any long time ago this teacher begat that teacher begat another and another and an old way of music is preserved , authority recognized ? With or without that , we have logical reconstruction and such inspirations that may come from long-isolated peoples .

One day I was walking along and heard strange music at a distance . Yet , in that direction I was going anyway . My first guess it could be the college marching band warming-up . Nope , it turned out to be a Tibetan Buddhist temple band playing at the river bank . Drums and horns and bells . Maybe a gong , I forget . It'd be so fine if the marching band just be happy playing that old holy mountain music - obviously they feel it , know it well-enough because I've heard them do it .


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## eugeneonagain

Woodduck said:


> Is Machaut or Albinoni a relevant force in today's world? In what way? How does a piece of music four hundred years old lose such value as it possesses for us merely because an attempt is made to understand and convey what it sounded like when it was unquestionably relevant to its own world? Is it conceivable that a more nearly authentic experience of the artefacts of past cultures can make them more relevant to today's world, rather than less?
> 
> It seems to me that these are questions worth asking about any presentation of the arts of the past.


It is indeed worth asking. I don't think there is any error in aiming to understand a work of art as it was presented at the time, but to think by going through the motions we _understand_ it as it was understood then? This seems to me more limited.

It's like doing history - either academically or as 'living history' - and having a taste of what things meant in a different time and world; also discovering what _hasn't_ changed over time. What it doesn't do is actually put you in the shoes of those people, those observers. We remain outside observers; understanding empathetically, but very possibly not experiencing it in the same way.

I can't be certain, any more than the HIP people can be certain (though I'm sure they think they are having a time-travelling experience). To my mind the more important thing about art that travels through the ages is what _doesn't _change, even when so many things around it, culturally,have changed. So that it maintains an impact.

For me it doesn't much matter whether Scarlatti is played on a genuine Ruckers harpsichord, a Cristofori piano (sounds superb btw) or a Steinway. The music shines through it all. I initially heard Scarlatti on a piano and I assume the same thing that struck me about it is what struck people about it when it was only to be heard through a different medium.

HIP is an exercise in living history by enthusiasts as much as it is about music.


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## Mandryka

eugeneonagain said:


> For me it doesn't much matter whether Scarlatti is played on a genuine Ruckers harpsichord, a Cristofori piano (sounds superb btw) or a Steinway. The music shines through it all. I initially heard Scarlatti on a piano and I assume the same thing that struck me about it is what struck people about it when it was only to be heard through a different medium.


Just notice something here, that in a discussion about informed performance you've made a point about _instruments_. This all started with a point that Furtwangler made which wasn't primarily about instruments at all, though no doubt the instruments were part of what got his back up.

I know performances of the same Scarlatti sonata on clavichord, piano, organ and harpsichord which seem to bring out special things in the music, and I've heard it played with dynamics, ornamentation, colour, phrasing, rubato (or lack of rubato) and articulation on piano and harpsichord which, though not painful, seem to skirt over or obscure some of the most inspired ideas in the music. The music most certainly does not always "shine through."


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## eugeneonagain

Mandryka said:


> Just notice something here, that in a discussion about informed performance you've made a point about _instruments_. This all started with a point that Furtwangler made which wasn't really, primarily, about instruments at all.
> 
> I know performances of the same Scarlatti sonata on clavichord, piano, organ and harpsichord which seem to bring out special things in the music, and I've heard it played with dynamics, ornamentation, colour, phrasing, rubato (or lack of rubato) and articulation on piano which, though not painful, seem to skirt over or obscure some of the most inspired ideas in the music


It's the opposite point I'm making, that the the music supersedes any major concern about instruments, let alone whether they are 'period correct' or not. 
I don't for a moment doubt - because I've also heard Scarlatti played on different instruments - that different aspects of music can be played better or worse on different instruments, but I tire of the opinion that the modern piano can't match the magic of 'historical instruments'. It's just metaphysical twaddle.

The dynamics and colouring possibilities on a modern piano are enormous and the phrasing and articulation are down to the individual skill of the performer. The performances of Mozart keyboard sonatas in my own collection range from fortepiano performances by various people down to Mitsuko Uchida on modern grand. They both have different qualities, but the essence of the music is the same.


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## Mandryka

eugeneonagain said:


> , but the essence of the music is the same.


I have no idea how to determine whether this is true. What I do know is that, to take an example, K310 played on a piano by Uchida sounds very different in all but the most superficial way (i.e. the tunes) when played by Uchida on a Steinway and Rampe on a harpsichord. What you say about essence being preserved isn't obvious at all. It certainly is possible to deform a piece of music so much that it changes its identity, it's no longer the same piece of music. And playing Mozart or François Couperin or Frescobaldi or Orlando Gibbons with extreme dynamics and modern piano colours etc may well do this for all I can say at the moment.


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## eugeneonagain

Mandryka said:


> I have no idea how to determine whether this is true. What I do know is that, to take an example, K310 played on a piano by Uchida sounds very different in all but the most superficial way (i.e. the tunes) when played by Uchida on a Steinway and Rampe on a harpsichord. What you say about essence being preserved isn't obvious at all. It certainly is possible to deform a piece of music so much that it changes its identity, it's no longer the same piece of music. And playing Mozart or François Couperin or Frescobaldi or Orlando Gibbons with dynamics and piano colours etc may well do this for all I can say at the moment.


All this tells me is that you are more inclined to HIP performance and it has coloured your view of anything played on a modern piano. It's a familiar refrain.

If it's not possible for you to recognise the essence of music, then I don't see how it's possible for you to recognise its absence. To say that Uchida merely, superficially 'plays the tunes' is a typical obtuse remark from the HIP fascists.


----------



## Mandryka

eugeneonagain said:


> All this tells me is that you are more inclined to HIP performance and it has coloured your view of anything played on a modern piano. It's a familiar refrain.
> 
> If it's not possible for you to recognise the essence of music, then I don't see how it's possible for you to recognise its absence. To say that Uchida merely, superficially 'plays the tunes' is a typical obtuse remark from the HIP fascists.


How do you recognise the essence? Do you have magic powers?


----------



## eugeneonagain

Mandryka said:


> How do you recognise the essence? Do you have magic powers?


No, but my ears are less influenced by ideology and delusions of sensitivity to performances by magic hands on magic historical instruments.


----------



## Woodduck

eugeneonagain said:


> It is indeed worth asking. I don't think there is any error in aiming to understand a work of art as it was presented at the time, but to think by going through the motions we _understand_ it as it was understood then? This seems to me more limited.
> 
> It's like doing history - either academically or as 'living history' - and having a taste of what things meant in a different time and world; also discovering what _hasn't_ changed over time. What it doesn't do is actually put you in the shoes of those people, those observers. We remain outside observers; understanding empathetically, but very possibly not experiencing it in the same way.
> 
> I can't be certain, any more than the HIP people can be certain (though I'm sure they think they are having a time-travelling experience). To my mind the more important thing about art that travels through the ages is what _doesn't _change, even when so many things around it, culturally,have changed. So that it maintains an impact.
> 
> For me it doesn't much matter whether Scarlatti is played on a genuine Ruckers harpsichord, a Cristofori piano (sounds superb btw) or a Steinway. The music shines through it all. I initially heard Scarlatti on a piano and I assume the same thing that struck me about it is what struck people about it when it was only to be heard through a different medium.
> 
> HIP is an exercise in living history by enthusiasts as much as it is about music.


As a proponent of judicious HIP, I agree with all of this. Any advocate of historical studies as an aid to musical interpretation who isn't jusdicious - and very humble - about it is perpetrating an artistic fraud and possibly artistic self-mutilation, even if unconsciously. There is no knowing how we would play music if we were not who we are; we are people of our own time, and we will always make music as ourselves, no matter what technical knowledge we glean from reading Quantz. I'm for reading as much as possible, learning as much as we can about the intention behind the dots and squiggles on the page, and then playing in the way that moves us to feel most deeply even if Quantz is ignored or rejected in the process.


----------



## premont

eugeneonagain said:


> If it's not possible for you to recognise the essence of music, then I don't see how it's possible for you to recognise its absence.


I think you use your concept "the essence of music" in a somewhat arbitrary and unclear way. You need to explain how you define it, and also to give some examples of what you are meaning.


----------



## eugeneonagain

premont said:


> I think you use your concept "the essence of music" in a somewhat arbitrary and unclear way. You need to explain how you define it, and also to give some examples of what you are meaning.


Arbitrary? Let's be simple about it then. The essence of anything is that which, if you take it away, it is no longer that thing. So in the case of _any_ music it has to be the elements: its melody, harmony, rhythm etc.

From a performance perspective the same elements are used to create every performance,which is the same, but subtly different. That is the case whether it is two different performers on different instruments or two different performers on the same instrument or one performer on different instruments or various ensembles of different types.

In essence all these are _playing Mozart_. To deny this on 'historically correct' grounds is quackery. It may not be the Mozart some think it ought to be, but to deny it is Mozart's work is to be ideologically obtuse. To argue that a current piano (and a current pianist working in the modern idiom) cannot play Mozart or Beethoven, or Haydn or Couperin or Clementi etc etc, in the 'right' way, is an argument that can't be sustained because it will collapse into nonsense.


----------



## Tikoo Tuba

When I was with Gunther Schuler he commented on musical essence one afternoon . To this effect : an original orchestral symphony of colors reduced to a string quartet lost no essential meaning .


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## Heck148

Tikoo Tuba said:


> When I was with Gunther Schuler he commented on musical essence one afternoon . To this effect : an original orchestral symphony of colors reduced to a string quartet lost no essential meaning .


??? Gunther was a fine musician, fine composer, but his verbal expressions were at times.....um...er...let's say...bizarre....


----------



## Woodduck

eugeneonagain said:


> Arbitrary? Let's be simple about it then. The essence of anything is that which, if you take it away, it is no longer that thing. So in the case of _any_ music it has to be the elements: its melody, harmony, rhythm etc.
> 
> From a performance perspective the same elements are used to create every performance,which is the same, but subtly different. That is the case whether it is two different performers on different instruments or two different performers on the same instrument or one performer on different instruments or various ensembles of different types.
> 
> In essence all these are _playing Mozart_. To deny this on 'historically correct' grounds is quackery. It may not be the Mozart some think it ought to be, but to deny it is Mozart's work is to be ideologically obtuse. To argue that a current piano (and a current pianist working in the modern idiom) cannot play Mozart or Beethoven, or Haydn or Couperin or Clementi etc etc, in the 'right' way, is an argument that can't be sustained because it will collapse into nonsense.


To make this concrete: pianist A, playing a modern Yamaha, may play Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata in a manner truer to the essence of the work than pianist B playing Beethoven's own 1817 Broadwood.


----------



## Mandryka

Here's three recordings which may be worth thinking about in the context of this discussion


----------



## DavidA

Brahmsianhorn said:


> I don't know what you mean by stodginess. I am talking about when performers put the emphasis on precision, accuracy, and authenticity as opposed to a personal connection with the music. I think the music suffers, and interest in the music declines.


 Hasn't it ever occurred to you that performers can put the emphasis on precision, accuracy and authenticity and also have a personal connection with the music? You appear to have the strange idea that they are mutually exclusive. I think you'll find that many of the performance today have delved into the music and its history in greater depth than possibly the performers of a past generation .


----------



## Phil loves classical

DavidA said:


> Hasn't it ever occurred to you that performers can put the emphasis on precision, accuracy and authenticity and also have a personal connection with the music? You appear to have the strange idea that they are mutually exclusive. I think you'll find that many of the performance today have delved into the music and its history in greater depth than possibly the performers of a past generation .


Herrweghe's 2nd HIP version of Bach's St. Matthew Passion is full-blooded, while I find McCreesh's HIP version uninvolving.

Gardiner's 2nd and King's on HIP instruments of Montrverdi's Vespers are powerful and moving. McCreesh's OVPP version strikes me as sterile. I can say I'm not a fan if Paul McCreesh


----------



## Enthusiast

^^^ Strange because I feel McCreesh has a tendency to passion! He also tends to prepare his performances very well and I think he allows his forces to really get into the piece they are playing with him. But there you go. I like Herreweghe as well but am less likely to associate him with passion (full-blooded, yes sometimes, but not so much passion). I try to avoid Gardiner if there are other viable alternatives. I think of him as a HIP performance factory. For me, his product is almost always OK but hardly ever inspired. How differently we are all made.


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## Mandryka

So what do wee conclude from this? One says it's sterile, another says it's passionate.


----------



## RICK RIEKERT

Mandryka said:


> So what do wee conclude from this? One says it's sterile, another says it's passionate.


"These questions of taste, of feeling, need no settlement. Everyone carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels." 
~ Henry Adams


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## eugeneonagain

Any woman will tell you that an inch-rule can be applied not only according to taste, but according to wishful thinking and desire.


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## premont

Enthusiast said:


> I try to avoid Gardiner if there are other viable alternatives. I think of him as a HIP performance factory. For me, his product is almost always OK but hardly ever inspired. How differently we are all made.


I find Gardiner variable. It difficult to deny, that his first recording of the SJP is dramatic and full of passion.


----------



## premont

eugeneonagain said:


> Arbitrary? Let's be simple about it then. The essence of anything is that which, if you take it away, it is no longer that thing. So in the case of _any_ music it has to be the elements: its melody, harmony, rhythm etc.


Am I to understand this in the way, that you say the essence of the music is the score? Or did I get you wrong?


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## Merl

If the 'HIP Mafia' hadn't come along, and bearing in mind that every romantic composer's music has slowed down progressively since it was written, imagine how slow, syrupy and turgid performances would be now. Celi would be considered a speed merchant.:lol:


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## premont

Mandryka said:


> So what do wee conclude from this? One says it's sterile, another says it's passionate.


In these subjective matters opinions will always differ, and nothing can be concluded.


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## Enthusiast

^^ Which was my main point in posting, I guess. It is always a little uncomfortable to disagree so it is good to have a reason for doing so.


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## Enthusiast

premont said:


> I find Gardiner variable. It difficult to deny, that his first recording of the SJP is dramatic and full of passion.


I don't dislike his first SJP - there are many good reasons to like it! - but there are quite a few powerful ones out there ... including Britten's and Suzuki's (one of his best records, I think) and the Naxos recording of Higginbottom.


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## Mandryka

RICK RIEKERT said:


> "These questions of taste, of feeling, need no settlement. Everyone carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels."
> ~ Henry Adams


It's just that _sterile_ and _passionate_ look as they have some cognitive content, I mean clearly there's an element of taste involved in the concepts, but they look more substantial than "good/bad" or "I like/don't like"

Have you read Richard Hare? Phrastic and neustic!


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## Mandryka

Here's a go

Sterile = clean, accurate, precise (and bad)
Passionate = energetic, violent (and good)

(For the philosophers here, a Proustian memory. I was once at a seminar with Derek Parfit, Amartya Sen, John McDowell and Chuck Taylor, they were talking about moral concepts. Richard Hare was there in the audience, and participated in the discussion, he "argued" that the concept _courageous_ had a cognitive and evaluative component and they could be separated out (phrastic and neustic style, like I just half heartedly did with _passionate_ and _sterile_) John McDowell challenged him to put up or shut up, as it were, and come back next week having done the work and show us the analysis

He didn't come back the following week.)


----------



## Mandryka

Enthusiast said:


> I don't dislike his first SJP - there are many good reasons to like it! - but there are quite a few powerful ones out there ... including Britten's and Suzuki's (one of his best records, I think) and the Naxos recording of Higginbottom.


I never listen to his recordings, for no good reason, but over the years I've see quite a bit of him in concert with baroque music, and it seems to me that the quality of the choir goes from strength to strength, in concert you sense their pleasure and energy, and they sing totall6 together and with tremendous verve. I certainly wouldn't say no to hearing them again.

Actually it's not true that I never listen to the recordings, there was a good renaissance one I heard a couple of years ago, at least I thought it was good, no one agreed with me about that!


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## Enthusiast

^^ I do think his work is reliably good but tend to avoid him if there is a viable alternative. But it can be good news to see that he has recorded something that has otherwise not been given a decent modern performance.


----------



## RICK RIEKERT

Mandryka said:


> It's just that _sterile_ and _passionate_ look as they have some cognitive content, I mean clearly there's an element of taste involved in the concepts, but they look more substantial than "good/bad" or "I like/don't like"
> 
> Have you read Richard Hare? Phrastic and neustic!


Yes, I'm familiar with Hare's work. I read him with some care as a philosophy degree student under the tutelage of another brilliant analytic philosopher some years back. Incidentally, Hare's favorite composer was Bach (both he and his wife sang in the Oxford Bach Choir) and his daughter Bridget is now the executive director of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. However, he had little use for Beethoven, whose music he thought exceedingly superficial and insipid.

The Cambridge critic F.L. Lucas tells how his friend, the philosopher Frank Ramsey, listened to their group's aesthetic controversies with the calm, detached indulgent amusement of an anthropologist watching the war dances of Bushmen. Lucas never forgot Ramsey's contribution to the discussion: 'It seems to me like one person saying "I walked to Grantchester this afternoon" and another shouting "No, I did NOT!"'


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## eugeneonagain

premont said:


> Am I to understand this in the way, that you say the essence of the music is the score? Or did I get you wrong?


And the performer's/listener's encounter with it.


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## Luchesi

premont said:


> Am I to understand this in the way, that you say the essence of the music is the score? Or did I get you wrong?


I wonder where else it could be? This is a question I've had all my life playing music. I've asked many people who I've disagreed with. Where else could it be?

The best answer I've heard is that it's not only in the one score but in all the related scores. And I said, well, that makes it complicated. ..Yes, it does.


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## Mandryka

Luchesi said:


> I wonder where else it could be? This is a question I've had all my life playing music. I've asked many people who I've disagreed with. Where else could it be?
> 
> .


It could be all the conventions which determine how that score was interpreted in the milieu of the composer.

Look, noone could possibly imagine the music is the score in early music, there just isn't enough written down! They don't even show you how to line up the words and the music, let alone how to play the rhythms and the tempos and the phrasing. Instead the authors of the manuscripts just assumed that whoever was playing would have been trained up in all of that stuff, or the composers themselves worked closely with the performers, so it wasn't worth writing it down.

The principle's not dissimilar in a lot of later music.


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## Tikoo Tuba

Heck148 said:


> ??? Gunther was a fine musician, fine composer, but his verbal expressions were at times.....um...er...let's say...bizarre....


The man had a bumper-sticker . I read it exactly this : *all musics are equal .*

It's well-accepted not all opinions are equal . Shall I think opinions of music are not music ? 
Stinky opinions are shy of defining what music is .


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## eugeneonagain

The fact of it not being written down in earlier music is not entirely relevant. The people to whom music was passed on were bequeathed what a score aims to represent. The score won't always be able to reproduce styles and methods of interpretation particular to a period of history - though some aspects will certainly indicate it, such as mordants and trills and whatever scribblings in the margin the composer or performer has left behind. 

It's the same story when trying to reconstruct the possible sound of dead languages or older forms superseded by new ones like e.g. Old English and Egyptian before Coptic. Both are reconstructed by filling in the gaps with guesswork from later or related sounds which are known. Reconstructing their music is done in the same way: by gleaning information from what has been handed down through the centuries and millennia. It's very difficult to be accurate, though having the written materials: hieroglyphs or a musical score will tell you more than guesswork based upon comparison of bequeathed tradition, which undergoes huge changes. 

Music is doubtless a reflection of the world in which was created, but with formalised ideas of music, such as emerged in the baroque and classical period the scores become more like mathematical formulas or perhaps more like blueprints which can be read and solved no matter what the century is. Even then there is going to be some doubt.

HIP works from scores anyway and without a time machine to visit a performance of whatever they are aiming at, it relies upon guesswork from handed-down tradition and research. 

I think that since Bach sounded as good coming from Wendy Carlos's Moog as it does from a clavichord is enough evidence to demonstrate that the essence of the music lies in the structural element, the score - whether it is on paper or recalled from memory and passed on.


----------



## premont

Mandryka said:


> It could be all the conventions which determine how that score was interpreted in the milieu of the composer.
> 
> Look, noone could possibly imagine the music is the score in early music, there just isn't enough written down! They don't even show you how to line up the words and the music, let alone how to play the rhythms and the tempos and the phrasing. Instead the authors of the manuscripts just assumed that whoever was playing would have been trained up in all of that stuff, or the composers themselves worked closely with the performers, so it wasn't worth writing it down.
> 
> The principle's not dissimilar in a lot of later music.


And if so is the case, we can conclude, that we are approaching the essence of the music the most in our informed interpretations of the score (and possible alternative manuscripts of the same music). In most instances we shall never fully know what the essence is.


----------



## premont

eugeneonagain said:


> I think that *since Bach sounded as good coming from Wendy Carlos's Moog as it does from a clavichord* is enough evidence to demonstrate that the essence of the music lies in the structural element, the score - whether it is on paper or recalled from memory and passed on.


I strongly disagree with this. It may be, that Wendy Carlos' Bach has got some superficial appeal in its highligting of the motoric element of the music, but Bach's music is much else than that, and in these ears Wendy Carlos presents a monochrome and distorted version of the music.


----------



## eugeneonagain

A distortion of Bach no less, which shows you can tell what it is. The rest is mere taste and that seems to be the main complaint of the HIP mafia.


----------



## premont

eugeneonagain said:


> And the performer's/listener's encounter with it.


A confusing statement which make no sense to me. Would you mind to elaborate a bit and (as I wrote earlier) bring some examples of what you mean?


----------



## eugeneonagain

premont said:


> A confusing statement which make no sense to me. Would you mind to elaborate a bit and (as I wrote earlier) bring some examples of what you mean?


I think I've done enough already. I can't tolerate that persistent: 'elaborate', 'expand', 'give examples', 'but show me exactly what you mean...' line of questioning.


----------



## premont

eugeneonagain said:


> A distortion of Bach no less, which shows you can tell what it is. The rest is mere taste and that seems to be the main complaint of the HIP mafia.


But this does not imply that it contains all the essence of the music.


----------



## premont

eugeneonagain said:


> I think I've done enough already. I can't tolerate that persistent: 'elaborate', 'expand', 'give examples', 'but show me exactly what you mean...' line of questioning.


If you want to convince, you have to make yourself clear. You have posted much, but most of it has been beating around the bush.


----------



## Mandryka

eugeneonagain said:


> the essence of the music lies in the structural element, the score - whether it is on paper or recalled from memory and passed on.


We're getting close to agreement here, because of all the contextual stuff, that's what interests the HIP people, that's what they bring. What's on paper may not be strictly speaking be the score -- composers wrote prefaces with advice to performers, biographers wrote about how people played the music, theoreticians wrote accounts of common contemporaneous practices.

The instrument matters because the instrument reveals the music. When a performer plays on a period instrument it helps him understand the phrasing, portato, the line-up of the voices etc. One very interesting account of this, it used to be on the web, is Hans Davidsson's account of playing Butehude on a 1/4 comma meantone tuned organ.


----------



## vmartell

Bulldog said:


> You keep using the word "many". Break it down for me; how many and where do they come from?


Well - Reinhard Goebel is famously dogmatic on the matter and pretty aggressive about it - however, I slightly disagree with the term mafia... I agree that it does feel like it - to me, is more like their concerted efforts changed the perception of how this music should be played.

I believe this interview is good example of Brahmsianhorn statement - towards the end you will see the dogma pop up

https://van-us.atavist.com/reinhard-goebel

You also see it in the condescending attitude towards non HIP interpretations - masters like Karl Richter (Bach) or Karl Boehm (Mozart) when reviewed in retrospectives or re-releases will always get the "old fashioned" or "romantic" or sometimes "not authentic therefore now a curiosity" treatment...

So not mafia, but there something of a critical consensus that a HIP approach is preferable - witness the (in my mind excessive) praise for the very HIP informed recent Beethoven Symph cycles by Haitink, Chailly and a further back Zinman and compare them to the reception of Thielemann's latest cycle - same words pop up - heavy (sometimes called "full-bodied" if trying to be polite). Anything that is more relaxed or even slower is dismissed as "plodding".

v


----------



## premont

eugeneonagain said:


> .. the essence of the music lies in the structural element, the score - whether it is on paper or recalled from memory and passed on.





Mandryka said:


> We're getting close to agreement here, because of all the contextual stuff, that's what interests the HIP people, that's what they bring. What's on paper may not be strictly speaking be the score -- composers wrote prefaces with advice to performers, biographers wrote about how people played the music, theoreticians wrote accounts of common contemporaneous practices.
> 
> The instrument matters because the instrument reveals the music. When a performer plays on a period instrument it helps him understand the phrasing, portato, the line-up of the voices etc. One very interesting account of this, it used to be on the web, is Hans Davidsson's account of playing Butehude on a 1/4 comma meantone tuned organ.


Yes, taken out of the context it sounds convincing, but the example with Carlos spoils the argument completely.


----------



## Mandryka

premont said:


> Yes, taken out of the context it sounds convincing, but the example with Carlos spoils the argument completely.


Yes.

Msnmsxmxm


----------



## eugeneonagain

premont said:


> If you want to convince, you have to make yourself clear. You have posted much, but most of it has been beating around the bush.


It's not. It's because I have said the opposite of what you want to hear. It can cause the illusion of lack of clarity in the 'hearer'.


----------



## eugeneonagain

Mandryka said:


> Yes.
> 
> Msnmsxmxm


Based upon what line of reason? The fact that you don't like the approach of Switched on Bach? Because a moog doesn't emulate the exact sound of a harpsichord?


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

vmartell said:


> Well - Reinhard Goebel is famously dogmatic on the matter and pretty aggressive about it - however, I slightly disagree with the term mafia... I agree that it does feel like it - to me, is more like their concerted efforts changed the perception of how this music should be played.
> 
> I believe this interview is good example of Brahmsianhorn statement - towards the end you will see the dogma pop up
> 
> https://van-us.atavist.com/reinhard-goebel
> 
> You also see it in the condescending attitude towards non HIP interpretations - masters like Karl Richter (Bach) or Karl Boehm (Mozart) when reviewed in retrospectives or re-releases will always get the "old fashioned" or "romantic" or sometimes "not authentic therefore now a curiosity" treatment...
> 
> So not mafia, but there something of a critical consensus that a HIP approach is preferable - witness the (in my mind excessive) praise for the very HIP informed recent Beethoven Symph cycles by Haitink, Chailly and a further back Zinman and compare them to the reception of Thielemann's latest cycle - same words pop up - heavy (sometimes called "full-bodied" if trying to be polite). Anything that is more relaxed or even slower is dismissed as "plodding".
> 
> v


Goebel is horrible. And so hypocritical. He chides other musicians for "self-righteousness and arrogance" when he himself is the king of those traits. He thinks music is about demonstrating one's superior knowledge. Total bunk. He is an abomination.


----------



## premont

eugeneonagain said:


> It's not. It's because I have said the opposite of what you want to hear. *It can cause the illusion of lack of clarity in the 'hearer'*.


Face to face with this surprising and unserious statement I abandon further discussion.


----------



## eugeneonagain

premont said:


> Face to face with this surprising and unserious statement I abandon further discussion.


I'm very serious about it. Since you've only responded with one-sentence replies exhorting me to keep adding further clarification, it will hardly be a respite from hard work for you. For me it is like a holiday.


----------



## Mandryka

Brahmsianhorn said:


> Goebel is horrible. And so hypocritical. He chides other musicians for "self-righteousness and arrogance" when he himself is the king of those traits. He thinks music is about demonstrating one's superior knowledge. Total bunk. He is an abomination.


I enjoyed the article and agree with quite a bit of what he says, though I've only read it once. He's worse than Furtwangler though - the things he says about Harnoncourt and Sigiswald Kuijken show he's a prize bitch.

You're frightfully anti-intellectual you know!


----------



## Mandryka

eugeneonagain said:


> Based upon what line of reason? The fact that you don't like the approach of Switched on Bach? Because a moog doesn't emulate the exact sound of a harpsichord?


Because the relation between what you like (I assume when you say the music on moog is good you're just saying you like it), and the essence of the music is just so unclear to me.


----------



## eugeneonagain

Mandryka said:


> Because the relation between what you like (I assume when you say the music on moog is good you're just saying you like it), and the essence of the music is just so unclear to me.


No, what I'm saying is I like Bach and that I know it's Bach and that all the excellence of Bach's music is there when it's played by the New London Consort, a solo harpsichordist, or even when its coming out of a musical digital watch or one of those melody birthday cards.

Why that's unclear to you is extremely unclear to me.


----------



## Brahmsianhorn

Mandryka said:


> I enjoyed the article and agree with quite a bit of what he says, though I've only read it once. He's worse than Furtwangler though - the things he says about Harnoncourt and Sigiswald Kuijken show he's a prize bitch.
> 
> You're frightfully anti-intellectual you know!


Lol, because I'm not a snob?


----------



## Mandryka

eugeneonagain said:


> all .


That's the problem -- that's where we disagree. But I have a guest who I must attend to, so good night.


----------



## eugeneonagain

Mandryka said:


> But .


We all have guests to whom we must attend.


----------



## Gallus

eugeneonagain said:


> I think that since Bach sounded as good coming from Wendy Carlos's Moog as it does from a clavichord is enough evidence to demonstrate that the essence of the music lies in the structural element, the score - whether it is on paper or recalled from memory and passed on.


Okay, so what about the un-notated accidentals in Renaissance music? Are they part of the "essence" of e.g. Gombert's work or not? How is one to decide where to employ them without a historically informed understanding of the piece?

But as a first order objection, the claim that 'only the score matters' is an argument that timbre is irrelevant in music, which is prima facie ridiculous.


----------



## Poppin' Fresh

Gallus said:


> But as a first order objection, the claim that 'only the score matters' is an argument that timbre is irrelevant in music, which is prima facie ridiculous.


From way back on page 8 of this thread:



Woodduck said:


> The most obvious refutation of the "he had the instruments of his time in mind" idea is the readiness of Baroque composers themselves to assign the very same music to different instruments and ensembles. The notion of music being "inspired by" a specific instrumental tone quality is of very limited applicability to most music before the 19th century, mainly to music of a programmatic or representational nature, e.g., flutes imitating bird calls or, on a more sophisticated level, the "halo" of strings with which Bach surrounds the words of Jesus in the St. Matthew Passion. If a modern metal flute can play a Baroque sonata as well or better than a wooden one - or if a transverse flute can play a piece written for recorder - it is not untrue to the essence of the music to do it.


----------



## Gallus

Poppin' Fresh said:


> From way back on page 8 of this thread:


Okay, so the fact that Stravinsky transcribed the Rite of Spring for piano means that he was not inspired by the instrumentation of the orchestra when writing the ballet? Again, this is just a completely ridiculous claim. The idea that before 1800 no composers ever considered timbre is just an absurdity.


----------



## Woodduck

Gallus said:


> Okay, so the fact that Stravinsky transcribed the Rite of Spring for piano means that he was not inspired by the instrumentation of the orchestra when writing the ballet? Again, this is just a completely ridiculous claim. The idea that before 1800 no composers ever considered timbre is just an absurdity.


No one has ever said that "before 1800 no composers ever considered timbre." Moreover, comparing, e.g., an 18th-century concerto - which might have been played effectively by a violin or an oboe (or a clarinet, once that was invented) and accompanied by anything from a chamber group to a string orchestra without essential change of character - to a unique 20th-century ballet by a master orchestrator is of dubious value. Virtually any music can be transcribed for some other medium. But what does that bare fact tell us about the effect of doing so? Absolutely nothing. Is _The Rite of Spring_ on piano comparable in its effect to the original? Was it intended to be? Is it, really, much more than a curiosity? No, no, and no.


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## Gallus

Woodduck said:


> No one has ever said that "before 1800 no composers ever considered timbre." Moreover, comparing, e.g., an 18th-century concerto - which might have been played effectively by a violin or an oboe (or a clarinet, once that was invented) and accompanied by anything from a chamber group to a string orchestra without essential change of character - to a unique 20th-century ballet by a master orchestrator is of dubious value. Virtually any music can be transcribed for some other medium. But what does that bare fact tell us about the effect of doing so? Absolutely nothing. Is _The Rite of Spring_ on piano comparable in its effect to the original? Was it intended to be? Is it, really, much more than a curiosity? No, no, and no.


Right, Stravinsky is a master orchestrator so the fact that he transcribed his music for other instruments means nothing, but when Bach does it that must mean that he was writing absolute music because 18th century concertos are interchangeable in their effects.  Come on. I don't mean to be rude, but this is pure Romanticist-Modernist bigotry.



Woodduck said:


> The notion of music being "inspired by" a specific instrumental tone quality is of very limited applicability to most music before the 19th century


Did Biber write idiomatically for the violin or not?
Did Gibbons write idiomatically for the viol or not?
Did Josquin write idiomatically for the voice or not?
Did Froberger write idiomatically for the harpsichord or not?
etc. etc.

Again again, this claim that only in the 19th century did composers suddenly discover the timbral effects of different instruments and decide to introduce them into their compositions is utterly ludicrous.


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## Mandryka

Gallus said:


> I don't mean to be rude, but this is pure Romanticist-Modernist bigotry.
> 
> this claim that only in the 19th century did composers suddenly discover the timbral effects of different instruments and decide to introduce them into their compositions is utterly ludicrous.


Yes, I think the bad logic starts off with the observation that people know that organists practised on clavichords, viol composers made transcriptions of masses, contrapuntal music was written with each voice on a separate stave, music was described in general terms as being "for keyboard" etc. And then they rush to the conclusion that it was abstract music.

But you're right, the toccata from the sixth keyboard partita in CU1 by Bach is clearly a harpsichord piece, it's written for something with the brilliance of a harpsichord, as is the Goldberg Variations, and Biber wrote the rosary sonatas for violin and (and what? -- let's not go there now!) etc.


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## premont

Woodduck said:


> Is _The Rite of Spring_ on piano comparable in its effect to the original? Was it intended to be? Is it, really, much more than a curiosity? No, no, and no.


I always thought that Stavinsky transcribed some of his ballets for piano in order to make it more comfortable for the dancers to practice.


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## premont

Mandryka said:


> Yes, I think the bad logic starts off with the observation that people know that organists practised on clavichords, viol composers made transcriptions of masses, contrapuntal music was written with each voice on a separate stave, music was described in general terms as being "for keyboard" etc. And then they rush to the conclusion that it was abstract music.


You know, many Baroque composers advertised their sonatas or concertos as being alternatively for e.g. violin, oboe or recorder. But this was surely for marketing reasons, in the same way that Beethoven's early piano sonatas were advertised as being for piano or harpsichord.


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## eugeneonagain

Gallus said:


> Okay, so what about the un-notated accidentals in Renaissance music? Are they part of the "essence" of e.g. Gombert's work or not? How is one to decide where to employ them without a historically informed understanding of the piece?
> 
> But as a first order objection, the claim that 'only the score matters' is an argument that timbre is irrelevant in music, which is prima facie ridiculous.


Which is why I didn't make that argument. If you are going to reply to me, you must first read what I wrote and then reply to _that_ rather than objecting to things I _haven't_ written.

I referred to 'score' as either written or passed on, as master to apprentice. It is the thing, the work of art, which includes all the un-notated accidentals and things like cadential trills, since at the time when it was considered the standard interpretation they are assumed. Handel, for example, often left them out of his own copies when they are in his original sketches.

I said that the score is the only really solid evidence because unrecorded things disappear and culture handed down often alters; sometimes out of all recognition so that mistaken assumptions are made about how things were.

In this sense I am not dismissing HIP research or performance (and I never was because I also listen to them). What I am arguing is what is presented in the OP: that the HIP fundamentalists drone on about 'authenticity' from a position that is a percentage of guesswork and with the intention of rubbishing performances that they consider to be straying from what they insist is 'authentic'.

Considering timbre though... do you really believe that if we were to resurrect e.g. Handel and he heard one of his recorder sonatas played on a flute, that he would be acting in the way the HIP purists act? The man himself transposed at least one of his treble recorder sonatas into a flute work and another into an organ concerto! Clearly he thought the music worked in transposition of not only key but also timbre.
For me it only means that while acknowledging that Handel wrote six sonatas for treble recorder and harpsichord (basso continuo) - and playing them as such -playing them on a flute does not attempt to countermand Handel and defy his wishes.

One final thought: prior to the late 19th century people largely played and listened to the music of their own era (as pop music is consumed today) and it is only after this time that the great 'revivals' and heavy research into 'authenticity' has properly taken root. It bespeaks a part of the fossilisation of music, whereas previously to alter things according to change and innovation wasn't considered so much to be vandalism, though it may well have been rash at times.

I don't say HIP versus modern interpretations; I say HIP AND modern interpretations because the greatness of the music survives both.


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## Tikoo Tuba

Antique instruments must be by their nature historically informed ? I've know an adventurous modern composer , with a mind to what a harpsichord does well , who wrote for a tradition-devoted harpsichordist . I heard a performance of those works sounding , hey , quite like a harpsichord and mostly not very busy .. fast and exact , though . There's the story a 1600's artist who would play like that just fooling around . Or maybe draw pictures of starships .


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## Bwv 1080

Tikoo Tuba said:


> Antique instruments must be by their nature historically informed ?


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## Woodduck

Gallus said:


> Right, Stravinsky is a master orchestrator so the fact that he transcribed his music for other instruments means nothing, but when Bach does it that must mean that he was writing absolute music because 18th century concertos are interchangeable in their effects.  Come on. I don't mean to be rude, but this is pure Romanticist-Modernist bigotry.
> 
> Did Biber write idiomatically for the violin or not?
> Did Gibbons write idiomatically for the viol or not?
> Did Josquin write idiomatically for the voice or not?
> Did Froberger write idiomatically for the harpsichord or not?
> etc. etc.
> 
> Again again, this claim that only in the 19th century did composers suddenly discover the timbral effects of different instruments and decide to introduce them into their compositions is utterly ludicrous.


Well, this is a first. Never before has anyone accused me of Modernist bigotry! :lol:

You are still taking a relative statement for an absolute one. I repeat: no one, including me, has suggested that the timbre of instruments meant nothing to composers prior to the 19th century. But when you ask whether certain composers wrote idiomatically for certain instruments, you're taking the matter beyond the scope of my statement, which referred to tone color or timbre, not to other aspects of different instruments or voices. Obviously, certain things can be executed naturally on certain instruments but only with difficulty or not at all on others, and certain instruments can do things others can't (e.g., the organ can sustain tones while the harpsichord cannot).This influenced the kind of figuration composers wrote. But such limitations on execution aside, the fact remains that composers of the Baroque readily dressed the same material in different instrumental clothing in a way that later music would not tolerate. Handel's harp concerto can easily dispense with the harp and be played on the organ with no change to the expressive meaning of the music. The meaning lies primarily in the notes, not in the sound of the instrument used. If you think that playing a Baroque oboe sonata on clarinet or violin would make the same fundamental difference to its character as would a transcription of Sibelius's _Swan of Tuonela_ from cor anglais to cello, or Berlioz's _Harold in Italy_ from viola to clarinet, or Dvorak's _Cello Concerto_ from cello to bassoon, I doubt that I can convince you otherwise.


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## christomacin

Leave the theorbo and take the cannoli!


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## David Pinnegar

I'm the tuner of the Bechstein for the Chopin 24 Preludes referred to on Page 19 of this thread.

I've been tuning for 35 years and about 10 years ago had a revelation hearing Chopin's 2nd sonata and realising from my teenage interest in historic organs that Chopin was exploiting Bb minor for the effects the historic tuning would give and assisting the feeling of desolation with the cold wind blowing over the graves.

Accordingly I set about discovery of use of unequal temperament on the piano but discovered that I wasn't the first. Enid Katahn and Ed Foote and others had trodden the path before me, but in organising concerts I encouraged musicians to explore with me and the results are starting to flourish.

The old tunings aren't just for the old instruments. They work wonderfully for modern ones and even improve their tone. They open up techniques of tonality and pedalling used by the original composers and open windows to the mind of the piece.

Whilst HIP is important for a special reason it should be borne in mind, as Adolfo Barabino told me, that a composer doesn't own his composition - it can develop beyond as exemplified by performers who have moved composers by their playing.

But understanding the original emotional content of music is key, forgive the pun. Many performances now are attempts at mechanical perfection, exact reproduction (even if intended as exact reproduction of what the performer intended!), an exercise in precision, speed, volume and virtuosity. That nature of performance has led to music being considered as an entertainment only, optional, and not the vital communication which it is beyond words.

And words are limited. That's why the emotional communication of music is essential, and its literature when performed in such understanding, profound. As profound as Shakespeare. No-one would consider it right to cut budgets for the teaching of Shakespeare, but to do so for music, mere entertainment, it is OK. But it's more important to that.

Music is intrinsically vibration. For that reason attention to tuning is important and long overdue. The one-size-fits-all equal temperament does not give the variety for the music to speak.

For this reason on 6th May 2019 I am hosting a seminar on "Temperament and the Romantic Piano" - "Restoring the emotional communication of music through the colour of tuning, the restoration of chromaticism". If anyone's interested please contact me.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar


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## vtpoet

Hermastersvoice said:


> You know those people who claim that nothing, NOTHING before Beethoven should be played on modern instruments.


For what it's worth, while there may be some dogmatic opinions out there, I don't get the sense that there's any sort of HIP mafia. Ultimately, performers have to perform what the public is willing to buy. As far as that goes, I think HIP has been fantastic insofar as it has rejuvenated performance practices and given space for new specialist groups. I like that. For instance, I love Kuijken's OVPP performances of Bach's cantatas. I personally think OVPP is the "correct" way to perform the cantatas, but I still greatly enjoy Gardiner, Koopman, Suzuki.

That said, I am loving CPE Bach's keyboard concertos performed on the modern piano (Rische), and I'm looking forward to a complete Scarlatti on the modern grand (and with a first rate performance). And, gasp, I'd also love Frescobaldi on the modern grand.

And that said, I'm a huge fan of the pedal harpsichord, and would love to hear more of Bach's organ works performed on the instrument.


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## Luchesi

David Pinnegar said:


> I'm the tuner of the Bechstein for the Chopin 24 Preludes referred to on Page 19 of this thread.
> 
> I've been tuning for 35 years and about 10 years ago had a revelation hearing Chopin's 2nd sonata and realising from my teenage interest in historic organs that Chopin was exploiting Bb minor for the effects the historic tuning would give and assisting the feeling of desolation with the cold wind blowing over the graves.
> 
> Accordingly I set about discovery of use of unequal temperament on the piano but discovered that I wasn't the first. Enid Katahn and Ed Foote and others had trodden the path before me, but in organising concerts I encouraged musicians to explore with me and the results are starting to flourish.
> 
> The old tunings aren't just for the old instruments. They work wonderfully for modern ones and even improve their tone. They open up techniques of tonality and pedalling used by the original composers and open windows to the mind of the piece.
> 
> Whilst HIP is important for a special reason it should be borne in mind, as Adolfo Barabino told me, that a composer doesn't own his composition - it can develop beyond as exemplified by performers who have moved composers by their playing.
> 
> But understanding the original emotional content of music is key, forgive the pun. Many performances now are attempts at mechanical perfection, exact reproduction (even if intended as exact reproduction of what the performer intended!), an exercise in precision, speed, volume and virtuosity. That nature of performance has led to music being considered as an entertainment only, optional, and not the vital communication which it is beyond words.
> 
> And words are limited. That's why the emotional communication of music is essential, and its literature when performed in such understanding, profound. As profound as Shakespeare. No-one would consider it right to cut budgets for the teaching of Shakespeare, but to do so for music, mere entertainment, it is OK. But it's more important to that.
> 
> Music is intrinsically vibration. For that reason attention to tuning is important and long overdue. The one-size-fits-all equal temperament does not give the variety for the music to speak.
> 
> For this reason on 6th May 2019 I am hosting a seminar on "Temperament and the Romantic Piano" - "Restoring the emotional communication of music through the colour of tuning, the restoration of chromaticism". If anyone's interested please contact me.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> David Pinnegar


Welcome to the forum!

I did hear something 'better' in that recording of the Preludes. I've been tuning pianos for a long time and I didn't think I would (hear something 'better').

I think I'd have to play the piano to see what the disadvantages are.. ..because I try not to tune my piano too often.


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## Couchie

Kind of depends for me. Bach can be played on virtually anything. But all attempts to play Royer on something other than harpsichord are failures.


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## Mandryka

David Pinnegar said:


> I'm the tuner of the Bechstein for the Chopin 24 Preludes referred to on Page 19 of this thread.
> 
> I've been tuning for 35 years and about 10 years ago had a revelation hearing Chopin's 2nd sonata and realising from my teenage interest in historic organs that Chopin was exploiting Bb minor for the effects the historic tuning would give and assisting the feeling of desolation with the cold wind blowing over the graves.
> 
> Accordingly I set about discovery of use of unequal temperament on the piano but discovered that I wasn't the first. Enid Katahn and Ed Foote and others had trodden the path before me, but in organising concerts I encouraged musicians to explore with me and the results are starting to flourish.
> 
> The old tunings aren't just for the old instruments. They work wonderfully for modern ones and even improve their tone. They open up techniques of tonality and pedalling used by the original composers and open windows to the mind of the piece.
> 
> Whilst HIP is important for a special reason it should be borne in mind, as Adolfo Barabino told me, that a composer doesn't own his composition - it can develop beyond as exemplified by performers who have moved composers by their playing.
> 
> But understanding the original emotional content of music is key, forgive the pun. Many performances now are attempts at mechanical perfection, exact reproduction (even if intended as exact reproduction of what the performer intended!), an exercise in precision, speed, volume and virtuosity. That nature of performance has led to music being considered as an entertainment only, optional, and not the vital communication which it is beyond words.
> 
> And words are limited. That's why the emotional communication of music is essential, and its literature when performed in such understanding, profound. As profound as Shakespeare. No-one would consider it right to cut budgets for the teaching of Shakespeare, but to do so for music, mere entertainment, it is OK. But it's more important to that.
> 
> Music is intrinsically vibration. For that reason attention to tuning is important and long overdue. The one-size-fits-all equal temperament does not give the variety for the music to speak.
> 
> For this reason on 6th May 2019 I am hosting a seminar on "Temperament and the Romantic Piano" - "Restoring the emotional communication of music through the colour of tuning, the restoration of chromaticism". If anyone's interested please contact me.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> David Pinnegar


Where is the conference?


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## David Pinnegar

Thanks for the welcome.

The conference will be at Hammerwood Park near East Grinstead Sussex UK on 6th May.

I tried to repost the original post that I'd written but probably the system didn't like the large number of YouTube links.In attempting to post my original posting I get referred to "Access Denied - Sucuri Website Firewall" which is very frustrating.

Whether unequal temperaments are historically relevant is potentially a matter for debate but it seems to me that placing notes of the scale specifically upon harmonics of lower strings will bring a particular coherence and beauty to the sound of the instrument, the wonder of the modern instrument, as well as having pedagogical advantages in getting young people learning to listen to the sound they're making rather than regarding the learning process as a mere muscular technical challenge.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar


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## David Pinnegar

I'll have a go at posting my original response, some of which might be of interest and may do so block by block of the response in separate replies as there's something that the Firewall doesn't like.



> HIP is really vital to the understanding of music and without it it's like trying to understand a Chinese text with Google translate set to Greek.
> 
> Whenever I hear a programme including Haydn's variations on F Minor played by a pianist in equal temperament I draw a certain conclusion about the erudition and understanding of that pianist. Likewise C Minor. https://jungleboffin.com/mp4/jill-c...-fortepiano/mozart-twinkle-jill-crossland.mp3 is an example played on an 1854 Emerich Betsy http://emerichbetsy.com with original strings before restringing where the minor provides a deeper contrast. Were this to have been in Meantone, it would have been really fantastic, although whereas for the purposes of providing an X-Ray into the music I like the crunchiness of 1/4 comma meantone
> 
> 
> 
> https://www.academia.edu/37951978/T...antasias_K594_and_K608_for_Mechanical_C lock
> Mozart might have favoured 1/5 comma or 1/6 comma tuning. Meantone was the revelation crucial to the understanding of Mozart's Fantasias normally performed on large organ.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> However, many people don't hear the more subtle nuances of tuning so perhaps sometimes going beyond historical accuracy has a value but certainly 1/4 comma meantone was the norm for many organs of this period.
> 
> The ability to experiment with putting the very strongest of musical chilli in the curry is a really important research tool. Formerly I hadn't understood Beethoven's Tempest . . . thinking that it was just something about a storm. There was a legendary suggestion that it was associated with Shakespeare's play but
> 
> 
> 
> 
> rather tweaks our ears and once one's got over notes being "out of tune" and rather simply in a different scale, the sound really transports us to Shakespeare's Enchanted Isle and invites us to do more serious research in that direction.
> 
> Likewise in F Minor in meantone
> 
> 
> 
> 
> we really get the sourness, dismal landscape of mourning and death.
> 
> In taking such musical items to these tunings they are no longer merely matters of technical accomplishment, entertainment but are an emotional communication which cannot be ignored.


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## David Pinnegar

I tuned the 1895 Bechstein for the videos of the Chopin 24 Preludes quoted of page 19 of this thread 




(it's worth searching for the other two subsequent videos as all 24 Preludes were recorded then) and the 1885 Bechstein through which I've been researching tuning for the past decade 




Currently I'm working with a friend on working with the 1859 Hallé Broadwood tuned both to Equal Temperament and to Kirnberger III and about to publish YouTube recordings.

Planned for 6th May 2019 we're working towwards a seminar in England at Hammerwood Park, East Grinstead, for musicologists, performers, piano technicians and manufacturers (although Steinway, Fazioli and Bechstein so far haven't given much response to invitations sent) to put tuning on the table as a vital component of our musical appreciation, and neglected for too long.

Whether it be called "Temperament and the Romantic Piano" or more directly
"Restoring the emotional communication of music through the colour of tuning, the restoration of chromaticism"
we're not quite sure yet but if felt appropriate I might post more details here and or if anyone is interested please email me [email protected] and I'll send further details as appropriate.

I've been tuning for over 35 years, discovering the subtle and beautiful power of temperament




over the past decade and gradually perfected application of the tunings with many perfect fifths to the modern piano




(a Steinway on this one), have tools and will travel to tune anywhere.

Historical tuning is necessary for historical music but does not need to be confined to the historic instrument.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar


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## Kjetil Heggelund

This HIP is a new level for me!  I tried gut strings on my Torres (guitar) replica. The Chopin Ballade sound great!


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## Enthusiast

Funny that a thread with an anti-HIP title has become a place for discussing and celebrating technical aspects of HIP! Is it that the mafia is so strong?


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## David Pinnegar

Enthusiast said:


> Is it that the mafia is so strong?


No. It's simply that the music is stronger





Best wishes

David Pinnegar


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## Tikoo Tuba

It's well enough young people are introduced to HIP . Some musicians of a Shakespeare Festival acquainted me - sackbutted me soul a bit . I , a curious young artist casually hanging about the scene .


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## David Pinnegar

In exploration of 19th century temperaments we tested some Schubert on an 1854 fortepiano with leather hammers by Emerich Betsy





The temperament is conjectured by a friend and to my mind doesn't always work. In my opinion other unequal temperaments are better.

The problem with HIP is that some people present conjecture as fact which gives HIP a bad name. But to explore brings us closer to the music as much as in hearing what doesn't work as hearing what works well.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar


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## Mandryka

In your posts, David, there are sometimes comments along the lines « this doesn’t work » , »that doesn’t suite the much » 

It would be great if you would say more about this to help me understand what you’re trying to achieve with these tunings.

Re the conference, have you talked about it with the people at the Cobbe collection?


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## Larkenfield

David Pinnegar said:


> In exploration of 19th century temperaments we tested some Schubert on an 1854 fortepiano with leather hammers by Emerich Betsy
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The temperament is conjectured by a friend and to my mind doesn't always work. In my opinion other unequal temperaments are better.
> 
> The problem with HIP is that some people present conjecture as fact which gives HIP a bad name. But to explore brings us closer to the music as much as in hearing what doesn't work as hearing what works well.
> 
> Best wishes
> 
> David Pinnegar


The problem of this tuning seems more noticeable in the lower going into the bass register. But really, unless you're specifically spelling out the tuning, what exactly is being tuned, the examples are really not very useful. There's an intent behind each tuning, so what was the intent behind this one? What keys are you trying to enhance? In this particular example the bass register seems to be out of tune with the mid-range. Well, how does something like that happen when both the bass and the mid-range are supposedly tuned in the same temperament?


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## David Pinnegar

Larkenfield said:


> There's an intent behind each tuning, so what was the intent behind this one? What keys are you trying to enhance? In this particular example the bass register seems to be out of tune with the mid-range. Well, how does something like that happen when both the bass and the mid-range are supposedly tuned in the same temperament?


I'm sorry to say that the tuning of the Betsy wasn't the best in this recording but the recording is interesting as a matter of the instrument's tonality. The instrument has been recently restrung and has only had around 6 tunings so far and so isn't rock solid stable. More than that, there's a matter that I need to investigate with string tension, although I think it's fine, as when tuning by meter with a needle, the striking pitch is 10 or 15 cents higher than the resting pitch. Accordingly the instrument has to be tuned by ear, both notes moving dynamically at the same time, or a stroboscopic tuner where one can see the movement of pitch vibrationally. This tuning was given to me in the form only of a set of cent deviations, so I had no aural reference from which to tune. It may be that by the time that I came to be tuning the bass the middle reference octave had moved and that would explain mistuning of the bass. Ideally I'd have liked more time to retune for the recording but my friend was catching a plane back to Italy at 6am the next morning and already this was 10pm at night.

However the tuning came about from another friend who has been examining Chopin's works and found adjustments which he considered gave Chopin the effects known to have been expected. It accords generally with the smooth home keys and the strident remote keys as other tunings, so is in the right family of sounds, but has a D major which in my experience of historical sources is too strident.

All the other tunings on my other recordings have been mostly Kellner (Bach) tuning, ridiculed by some but which works remarkably well for all repertoire generally. Recently I've experimented with Kirnberger III which is very close but a little more strident, to good effect such as





The purpose of exploration of temperaments has been to demonstrate that there is a good alternative to standard modern universal bland and equally disturbing equal temperament and which brings music to life and musicianship to the fore, and greater understanding of the music and encouragement of musicians and audiences to listen. Only with that can we reinvigorate enthusiasm for classical music, not as mere entertainment but as the medium of essential emotional communication which it is, but perception for which has been increasingly lost.

No doubt there are questions I haven't answered - please forgive me and please keep asking.

When the bass of the piano resonates properly with the tuning of the scale, not as the Betsy recording, much pleasure derives from the sound.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar


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## Oldhoosierdude

Get HIP to the jive Ya'll!


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## Mandryka

I listened to Jan Van Elsacker singing Winterreise today, the piano’s tuning is described as a “well” temperament by Jean Jousse (1832)

Im not sure to what extent this sequence of songs is an exploration of key affects.


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## Haydn70

As a listener you don't wanna listen to historically informed performances? As a performer you don't wanna adhere to historically informed performance practices? As such, you might hafta deal with dese guys...








Paulie Walnuts is pointing out to Tony that the violinists and violists are using chin rests and all of the string players aren't using gut strings. "And Ton, what's wit dat cello pin?"

Fugget about it...


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## Haydn70

Tony and company at the opera for a performance of _L'Ofeo _performed by Le Concert des Nations with Jordi Savall. Jordi's not Italian but he is HIP.


----------

