Just Wait One HIP Minuet!

[snyprrr]

When does HIP end?

In other words, at what point does modern performance become the HIP?

Is late Spohr (1848-1856) still HIP? Mendelssohn? Schumann? Schubert even?

...and so forth...

And exactly when did minuet change into scherzo?

[Lethevich]

Norrington has tried HIP to varying degrees of acclaim on both Mahler and Elgar.

Beethoven is generally credited with destroying the minuet.

[Josquin des Prez]

The HIP movement is ripe with hypocrisy. They'll use women to replace castrati in Baroque operas, turning each performance into a grotesque freak show, but they'll refuse to kick women out of Renaissance choirs. How does that make sense?

[springrite]

The HIP movement is ripe with hypocrisy. They'll use women to replace castrati in Baroque operas, turning each performance into a grotesque freak show, but they'll refuse to kick women out of Renaissance choirs. How does that make sense?

Oh, let's not forget how they refuse to wear wigs.

[snyprrr]

 

[Bulldog]

The HIP movement is ripe with hypocrisy. They'll use women to replace castrati in Baroque operas, turning each performance into a grotesque freak show, but they'll refuse to kick women out of Renaissance choirs. How does that make sense?

Sounds like discrimination against all those castrati singers waiting in the wings.

[Brian]

Sounds like discrimination against all those castrati singers waiting in the wings.

Maybe Josquin is a castrato looking for work?

[snyprrr]

Beethoven is generally credited with destroying the minuet.

That's what I was looking for!

[Brian]

HIP Stockhausen: on period helicopters.  

[greg]

this thread- so far, so funny...

[Bunny]

When does HIP end?

In other words, at what point does modern performance become the HIP?

Is late Spohr (1848-1856) still HIP? Mendelssohn? Schumann? Schubert even?

...and so forth...

And exactly when did minuet change into scherzo?

When everyone started dancing the waltz.

[snyprrr]

A) Beethoven

B) waltzer

Interesting. Anyone want to elaborate? Almost sounds political!

[Josquin des Prez]

Beethoven is generally credited with destroying the minuet.

Good riddance to that. Scherzo > Minuet.

[karlhenning]

Good riddance to that. Scherzo > Minuet.

Funny!

[Lethevich]

Good riddance to that. Scherzo > Minuet.

Indeed, as much as I enjoy Haydn's inventive tinkerings with the thing.

[Superhorn]

  Roger Norrington has an EMI Cd of HIP Wagner excerpts,including the Siegfried Idyll, Prelude and Liebestod From Tristan, Lohengrin
3rd act prelude,Parsifal prelude, and the Meistersinger overture.
Interesting, but whether this is exactly what it sounded like in Wagner's day is something I'm not sure about. The orchestra is the now defunct London Classical Players.
  And the Meistersinger overture is so brisk and light-weight as to positively trivialize it ! That's quite an accomplishment !
  There's a live HIP original version of the complete Fliegende Hollander in the original version with Bruno Weil and the Capella Coloniensis of Cologne,with a cast of non-superstar singers. Haven't heard this but would like to. I don't remember the label.
  Interestingly, the orchestra consists of only 55 players according to the Opera News review by Martin Bernheimer, who found it interestingly different.
  A few years ago, Simon Rattle did a concert performance of Das Rheingold with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in London which was very well received by critics. An HIP Ring performance. Holy smokes !
  Philippe Herreweghe has live HIP recordings of the Bruckner 4th and 7th, and Norrington has recorded the original version of the 3rd for EMI with the London classical Players.
  And believe it or not, there is a recent HIP Dvorak New World with
  Emmanuel Krivine and an HIP orchestra whose name I don't remember. David Hurwitz thought it was dreadful.
  Critic Andrew Porter has said he would like to hear an HIP Rite of Spring with the same instruments used at the legendary Paris premiere under Monteux. What next?
  A really preposterous statement was made some years ago by a New York Times critic reviewing a performance by the Bonn Beethovenhalle orchestra in Carnegie hall back in the 90s under Dennis Russell Davies, then its music director of Schumann's hellishly difficult Konzertstuck for four horns and orchestra.
  He stated that it would have been preferable to hear an HIP performance of this on natural horns. However, he was ignorant of the fact that it was written in 1849 as a showpiece for valved horns, and is unplayable on natural horns !  He missed the whole point of the piece !
  As that obnoxious kid Nelson Muntz always says on the Simpsons, Ha Ha !
   Will we have HIP performances of the Richard Strauss tone poems such as Ein Heldenleben and Also Sprach Zarathustra soon?  Heaven help us !


                                   


           
 

[greg]

  A really preposterous statement was made some years ago by a New York Times critic reviewing a performance by the Bonn Beethovenhalle orchestra in Carnegie hall back in the 90s under Dennis Russell Davies, then its music director of Schumann's hellishly difficult Konzertstuck for four horns and orchestra.
  He stated that it would have been preferable to hear an HIP performance of this on natural horns. However, he was ignorant of the fact that it was written in 1849 as a showpiece for valved horns, and is unplayable on natural horns !  He missed the whole point of the piece !
  As that obnoxious kid Nelson Muntz always says on the Simpsons, Ha Ha !
   Will we have HIP performances of the Richard Strauss tone poems such as Ein Heldenleben and Also Sprach Zarathustra soon?  Heaven help us !

[FideLeo]

The Krivine HIP recording mentioned above has the Schumann Konzertstuck also.  It was performed with period valve horns in the solo parts but natural horns in the orchestra.  I believe that is how Gardiner recorded it as well.

[Sorin Eushayson]

Well, this is a complicated question.  Gut strings, for example, were used even into the early 20th century in some cases.  Some of Brahms' symphonies can be played on natural brass, which supposedly the composer loved.  Mendelssohn's symphonies are certainly candidates for the period cleansing process as well (which has certainly been attempted, and to great effect), the Gewandhausorchester of the mid-19th century having used older brass for quite some time.  As for strings, you see the shaping of the violin (lengthening bows and necks) altering around the mid-to-late 1800's.  However, as with real estate, the name of the game is location-location-location!  Some places were more forward-looking (or more conservative) than others.  Entire books have been written about this by people much smarter than I.

[Superhorn]

  I'm bothered by the term"cleansing" when used about period instruments. This presupposes that we are automatically getting a vast improvement over modern instruments, and that the period instruments are recreating the music exactly as it sounded in the past.
  These are questionable,or at least iffish assumptions and premises.
   Not that I object to the use of period instruments in Mendelssohm, Schubert,or Brahms, etc per se . It can make for interestingly different performances, but I'm still perfectly glad to hear performances on modern instruments.
  How do we know that composers such as Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and their contemporaries would have disliked performances of their music on modern instruments if they could come back and hear them today? We don't. And we can't.  I'm sure that Schumann would be overwhelmed by the way the present day Berlin Philharmonic played his music if he could hear it today. And remember, composers of the past were not always pleased by the way in which orchestras played their music by any means. There are many,many examples of instances when they were exasperated at how badly their music was played, or the way that conductors or other musicians interpreted it.
  So using period instruments is no guarantee of anything artistically today. There is evidence that before fairly recently, orchestras often played in a ragged, out-of-tune and scrawny-sounding way.
   Playing as precise,refined, in tune, well-balanced and euphonious as today's orchestras was a rare thing indeed even about 100 years ago.