# HIP, what is that?



## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I have an idea what HIP is, of course, but have seen in several threads here that some refer to HIP as a direction in classical interpretation...so what is HIP (am I hip?)

Kjetil.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Historically Informed Performance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historically_informed_performance

It was a controversial approach in the 1980s when I started collecting CDs with a big battle about what was the 'correct' way to perform works from the Baroque and earlier. As the movement developed, it extended from performing on 'authentic' instruments to different ways of performing, different ways of seating the orchestra etc and extended into nineteenth-century composers too.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Ok, what I call authentic performance. Was actually fooled to think hip, as in cool...doh. HAHA...I do enjoy period instrument ensembles and not so emotional playing in old music. Thanx for enlightenment. Maybe I should start a thread on what really is hip?


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

^^^ 'authentic' performance was claimed as a descriptor by some .... but there was a furore about it because no-one really knows what musical performance actually sounded like before recordings started to emerge in the last years of the C19


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I have an idea what HIP is, of course, but have seen in several threads here that some refer to HIP as a direction in classical interpretation...so what is HIP (am I hip?)
> 
> Kjetil.


Basically the idea is this.

When a musician decides to play some music he sometimes finds that the score doesn't really help him with a whole bunch of things he need to decide on. Things like the type of instrument, pitch, touch, tempo, articulation, balance, ornamentation -- that sort of thing.

Most of the time musicians resolve these problems in a completely casual way. They just do what they feel like. This is called "romantic."

HIP performers, informed performers, try and find out what the composer expected/intended/wanted. Of course the task is quite a challenge.

Sometimes this are more approach yields decisive results. Ludwig van Beethoven NEVER wrote for a Steinway and some of his piano concertos and symphonies were not written with a big Furtwangler sized orchestra in mind. So HIP performances have been really revealing.

But often the informed approach only serves to limit the number of options rather than lead them to a single way of playing. This is not a problem, because historical evidence reveals that composers sometimes expected performers to be imaginative -- within limits of course. There's still lots of room for creativity in HIP.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

If you labeled it What Is Hip, this would have started a Tower of Power thread.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

HIP = Historically Informed Performance. The "Informed" part of that was/is a smoke-word.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Headphone Hermit said:


> ^^^ 'authentic' performance was claimed as a descriptor by some .... but there was a furore about it because no-one really knows what musical performance actually sounded like before recordings started to emerge in the last years of the C19


"Authenticity" will always be elusive in performing music of the pre-recording age, and it isn't an imperative in any case. Scholarship has its own limitations and biases, and some ideas about the performance of early music have been counterintuitive, inartistic, or impractical (such as the idea that singers before the 19th century sang without vibrato) . There are things we know and things we'll never know, and I've heard things I love, things that make me wonder, and things I detest. There is, besides, no one right way of executing any piece of music, and there's no reason to suppose that, when early music was contemporary music, interpretations didn't vary as much as they always have. There's plenty of room for pleasing our own ears and minds, thinking of scholarship as an aid to our musical instincts rather than a limitation on them. After all, we're the only ones listening.


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## Harold in Columbia (Jan 10, 2016)

There's always one right way, it's just that it's very rarely achieved.


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## Guest (Jan 13, 2016)

"By just strive for authenticity one cannot convince, only trough convincing one leaves an authentic impression".
This is a quote made by Gustav Leonhardt.I hope that my translation makes his humble statement clear.


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## Vaneyes (May 11, 2010)

Something that often needs to be replaced in codgers.


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Basically, it is now a standard practice in early music studies and performance (technical interpretation) But of course, *there is* room for musician's own artistic interpretation based on such techniques. A most simple and critical matter concerns pitch. Low pitch moves towards HIP and high pitch towards modern. But there is room for how you express the notes.


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

Harold in Columbia said:


> There's always one right way, it's just that it's very rarely achieved.


I fundamentally disagree with this when applied to music. There are interpretations, often many viable alternatives as Woodduck explains in post #8


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## Guest (Jan 14, 2016)

It is one way of performing music - an approach that seeks, through scholarly investigation, to approximate as closely as possible, the way a piece would have originally been performed in the period in which it was written - e.g. comparable instruments, methods of performance, size of ensembles. Whether it ends up being truly accurate to what actually occurred, or whether the composer themselves would have required such a strict adherence, is a matter for endless debate and discussion.

Nevertheless, while it was once controversial, it has now become quite pervasive. Many performances of works from the 19th century and before now will typically incorporate some HIP concept - even if only copying the size of the ensemble.

Is it the best way to perform a work? That depends on the individual work, and the listener. When I first was introduced to HIP performances, I thought that that was the ONLY way to perform baroque works - it had to be a harpsichord, you had to use gut strings, you had to use smaller ensembles. And then I mellowed and became less ideologically pure. Now my favorite recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations is on a modern piano, performed by Murray Perahia. I can appreciate both Herreweghe's HIP St. Matthew Passion, as well as Klemperer's grandiose, ponderous, "romantic" interpretation. I enjoy both Gardiner's HIP Beethoven Symphonies, Szell's more modern interpretation, as well as the "somewhere in the middle" approach of Osmo Vanska.

If you insist on only one way to interpret a piece, you miss out on so much - and, I believe you miss out on what I see as the universal beauty of so many of these works, and how they can move people in so many different ways by varying the performance style. I get a completely different emotional response to Herreweghe's slimmed down HIP St. Matthew Passion - it feels lighter, less stuffy, and almost optimistic - than I do with Klemperer's, which to me is better and depicting the solemnity and majesty of that work.

Try it all and find what you like best, and then step outside of that box and listen to it in a different light.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Harold in Columbia said:


> There's always one right way, it's just that it's very rarely achieved.





Headphone Hermit said:


> I fundamentally disagree with this when applied to music. There are interpretations, often many viable alternatives as Woodduck explains in post #8


Is this dictum really applicable in any field? Not in the arts and humanities, I think. In science we only have the hypothesis (or hypotheses) that best fit(s) the available data. Perhaps in the abstract logic of mathematics, but even then, I doubt it.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

The only certifiably "authentic " performance is one which the composer hears and approves of , or at least doesn't actively dislike . When you hear a performance on period instruments, you are hearing what the music of the past MIGHT have sounded like .
Once a composer has kicked the bucket, we can never be sure whether that individual would have liked a performance,live or recorded of his or her music .(and yes , there are and have been more women composers than most people realize ). Elliott Carter has been gone for about three years , so we have no way of knowing what he would have thought of performances of his music now .
We do, however, have recordings by musicians he trusted with his music and who devoted to it , and which he approved . These will be an invaluable guide to those who perform his music now and in the future . But unfortunately, we have no such documents of the music of Bach,Beethoven, Mozart and other great composers of the past .
The HIP movement is based on some iffy premises , for example the assumption that period instruments or copies thereof still sound exactly as they did in the past and are being played correctly , as well as the assumption that the music is being INTERPRETED exactly as the composers would have wanted . Maybe this is the case, but we can't be sure .
Yes, treatises by composers are extremely valuable, but they do not guarantee anything . The noted musicologist Frederick Neumann has pointed this fact out : A treatise may tell you how a particular compose wanted HIS music to be performed, but it does not necessarily tell you how his contemporary composers wanted it, so one must be careful about applying things with one composer to another contemporary .
Furthermore, one must be careful about applying the information from one treatise to music written before or after that treatise was written .
We must also realize that "the composer's intentions " are not an absolute, fixed thing. Composers change their minds, period . Therefore , we must avoid dogmatic insistence one ONE way of performing music being the only way .
There are plenty of examples of composers of the past disliking the way certain musicians, including conductors, performed their music , so we must not take old recordings as THE way to perform music .
Yes, there are considerable differences in the way many musicians on antique recordings interpreted the music . But we must be careful not to use these as a stick with which to bash the performers of the present day , or those recorded , say between the 1950s and 80s .
Above all, let's not be dogmatic about how music should be performed, because there is no one right way !


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

Maybe a good performance is an informed performance! I like to stick to the principles that one can read from the score. I recently bought real gut-strings for my Torres-replica guitar (built by Kevin Aram) so I'm a fan of the HIP stuff. Haven't put them on yet, and hope the cat doesn't go bananas when I do  (the cat uses my nylonstrings as dentalfloss) I'll try to play Francisco Tarrega & Miguel Llobet the way I believe it should sound.
I first liked Fabio Biondi playing on an authentic baroque violin, and now I prefere original instruments over modern ones, for the old music. Too many musicians smear their big egos over the music...haha!


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