Are Modern Performances Faster Than Ever?

[Cato]

This article came to my attention:

"...Universal-owned Deutsche Grammaphon and Decca conducted a study into multiple recordings of Bach's famed Double Violin Concerto in celebration of the release of Bach 333, a box set marking the 333rd anniversary of the German composer's birth. The labels found that modern recordings of the work have shaved off one-third of the length of recordings from 50 years ago, quickening by about a minute per decade. That performance trend would fall in line with faster tempos in modern music, as audiences' attention spans shrink and streaming particularly pushes artists and songwriters to be more conscious of every second. ...

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/even-classical-music-is-getting-faster-these-days?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I am not so sure that using recordings of one work proves much: Classical Music is such a large universe, one would need to check hundreds of works, I would think, to come even halfway close to proving the thesis.

Given that, what say ye, especially those of you with very large collections which include many genres and multiple performances of single works?  Have you noticed any such trend?

[Roasted Swan]

This article came to my attention:

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/even-classical-music-is-getting-faster-these-days?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I am not so sure that using recordings of one work proves much: Classical Music is such a large universe, one would need to check hundreds of works, I would think, to come even halfway close to proving the thesis.

Given that, what say ye, especially those of you with very large collections which include many genres and multiple performances of single works?  Have you noticed any such trend?

Performances of works that are impacted by HIP will give a false 'positive' as far as this theory is concerned.  Just recently I was comparing Richard Strauss orchestral recordings - the overall sense there is if anything performances getting a bit slower.  This is in line with the move away from a performing tradition in that music (led by Strauss as conductor himself) that kept the music moving and underplayed sentiment or an inflated sense of the epic towards something lusher, "grander". 

The idea in any case that music is being speeded up to make allowances for concentration spans is absurd regardless of genre

[Jo498]

Strauss as a conductor was also crazy fast in some Mozart. Of course with historical recordings there is sometimes the issue of short shellac discs and other technicals restrictions.  As for Bach, it is probably true, that at least in the orchestral and chamber music more recent performances are (sometimes considerably) faster than before the 1970s/80s. Similarly for most of the choral works. But probably not for the keyboard works.
And there has often been a wide range. E.g. in the St Matthew recorded by Scherchen in the early 1950s the first chorus is very fast for the period, close to modern/HIP recordings while the last chorus and also the last one of the first part (O Mensch bewein) are incredibly slow for today's standards, and probably still very slow for 1950s.

[Gurn Blanston]

....

The idea in any case that music is being speeded up to make allowances for concentration spans is absurd regardless of genre 

Sadly, I read this 2 decades ago and so can't recall the source (but I think it was in Hanslick), but it had to do with the tendency during the 19th century of trimming off most/all repeats in earlier music, and the reason given was specifically that audiences wouldn't sit still for it. Admittedly that wasn't something to do with speed, but certainly with duration.

As for the OP's question, I don't presume to have answers, but maybe just more related questions. Music was trimmed down and sped up back in the 1920's & 30's in order to fit onto 78 rpm records also. Earlier times, when virtuosity was all the rage (19th century), music was sped up to allow space to show off just how fast you could play that piano or violin.

When HIP came along, the HIPpies were accused of playing blazingly fast, when in fact they felt they were merely emulating the 'Allegro' of the 17th or 18th century. But they put the repeats back in, by and large, so timings are deceptive for comparison purposes.

Point being, I'm not sure exactly what is gained here, except for proof that overall duration of performance is cyclical, as are so many things. I have 125 or so recorded performances of Beethoven's 9th, including performance dates. It will take me a while, but I will consider going through and writing down timings for them. Hell, it might be illuminating! 

[Cato]

Sadly, I read this 2 decades ago and so can't recall the source (but I think it was in Hanslick), but it had to do with the tendency during the 19th century of trimming off most/all repeats in earlier music, and the reason given was specifically that audiences wouldn't sit still for it. Admittedly that wasn't something to do with speed, but certainly with duration.

As for the OP's question, I don't presume to have answers, but maybe just more related questions. Music was trimmed down and sped up back in the 1920's & 30's in order to fit onto 78 rpm records also. Earlier times, when virtuosity was all the rage (19th century), music was sped up to allow space to show off just how fast you could play that piano or violin.

When HIP came along, the HIPpies were accused of playing blazingly fast, when in fact they felt they were merely emulating the 'Allegro' of the 17th or 18th century. But they put the repeats back in, by and large, so timings are deceptive for comparison purposes.

Point being, I'm not sure exactly what is gained here, except for proof that overall duration of performance is cyclical, as are so many things. I have 125 or so recorded performances of Beethoven's 9th, including performance dates. It will take me a while, but I will consider going through and writing down timings for them. Hell, it might be illuminating! 

My copy of the Penguin anthology of Hanslick's writings is not at hand, but I think he did complain about conductors ignoring repeats.  Was it Toscanini who usually ignored repeat indications in the scores?

Thanks for the effort in advance in the Beethoven Ninth Symphony comparisons, and for all the comments!

[Brian]

I think that conducting and playing of romantic and 20th century music is slower than ever. Compare Elgar conducting Elgar to newer recordings, or Rachmaninov playing Rachmaninov, or Charles Munch in French music to Jun Markl or Lionel Bringuier or Yannick Nezet-Seguin. Compare Monteux to Boulez in La valse, or Stravinsky to Andrew Litton on BIS in his ballets, or Reiner/Strauss to Dudamel/Strauss, or Heifetz playing Sibelius to Hilary Hahn. Listen to, say, Robert Casadesus in piano literature vs Andrea Lucchesini. There's a recording from Sibelius' lifetime in which the 7th Symphony takes 16 minutes to play, not 22.

The HIP movement really underscores the profound difference between how we treat baroque/classical music now, versus the new vogue in romantic playing and conducting which believes that transparency and detail are more important than fun, and "musicality" is opposed to excitement. Conductors like Szell and Munch show how to combine the two ideals in ways that many of today's practitioners have forgotten.

[Kaga2]

More interesting to me is the question, is there more uniformity in performance? In the core orchestral repertoire I mean. I don't collect enough recent recordings to know but my impression is that yes there is, and it's been a trend for decades.

[Jo498]

I think some trends that were in place in the 60s and 70s, i.e. "Karajanization", perfectly smooth "streamlined" interpretations because with the stereo LP  great sound became paramount) have been broken up by both HIP elements (or mannerisms) and a  "rollback" towards more early/mid 20th century trends, e.g. Thielemann with slow and flexible tempi.

I also suspect that there is some tendency towards more "extreme" or "mannered" interpretations because of a) the "streamlining of the golden age of stereo and early digital and b) the fact that the core repertoire is still mostly the same as 50-70 years ago and with dozens of almost any repertoire work in the catalogue it is hard to find anything new to do with them that will not seem mannered to some listeners.

[Florestan]

One thing is for sure: the modern concerts are much shorter and much less varied than the concerts of yore.

Does it have anything to do with the much shorter attention span and interest span of modernity? Possibly. Probably. I don't know.

[Jo498]

But this is a comparison to the mammoth concerts from the late 18th to the late 19th or maybe early 20th century, not between ca. 100 years ago and now. The "modern" orchestral concert was already largely in place in the 1880s, i.e. roughly a solo concerto or two and another orchestral work or two, as opposed to Beethoven's time when one would additionally have a bunch of arias and an improvisation by the pianist who had also played a concerto with orchestra before.

[Brian]

I also suspect that there is some tendency towards more "extreme" or "mannered" interpretations because of a) the "streamlining of the golden age of stereo and early digital and b) the fact that the core repertoire is still mostly the same as 50-70 years ago and with dozens of almost any repertoire work in the catalogue it is hard to find anything new to do with them that will not seem mannered to some listeners.

Oh, this is a good point. Nowadays we have Pogorelich, Lonquich, Venzago, Ballot, Say, Barto, Currentzis, Kopatchinskaja, all sorts of decided eccentrics and extremes.

[Florestan]

Oh, this is a good point. Nowadays we have Pogorelich, Lonquich, Venzago, Ballot, Say, Barto, Currentzis, Kopatchinskaja, all sorts of decided eccentrics and extremes.

Do we have an overture, followed by an aria, followed by a concert movement, followed by an instrumental piece, followed by a  whole overture etc etc?   

I would have such a concert any time of the day over the boring such concerts...

[Brian]

I think you replied to the wrong person...

[some guy]

One thing is for sure: the modern concerts are much shorter and much less varied than the concerts of yore.

Does it have anything to do with the much shorter attention span and interest span of modernity? Possibly. Probably. I don't know.

One thing I noticed when I first started attending concerts of new music, as opposed to simply listening to new music on recordings, was that concerts of new music were significantly longer than the symphonic concerts I had been attending since age 14 or so.

The next thing I noticed, once I had attended a more statistically significant number of new music concerts, was that their lengths varied widely. Sure, there were trends, and there were more long concerts than not, but I have also been to new music concerts that were only an hour or even a half an hour long.

Starting in the late nineteenth century, there does seem to have been a trend away from Wagnerian lengths of composition to more, say, Webernian lengths. I don't know of anyone who has speculated that audiences in the early twentieth century had shorter attention spans.

And long pieces by Sorabji and Feldman certainly do not support a perception of shorter attention spans. The second string quartet, after all, is six hours long, not six minutes.

I think the safest course is to note that while there may be trends, there has always been a lot of variety in concert lengths, in lengths of individual pieces, in performance lengths of this or that piece, in the variety of pieces performed at any given concert.

[As a brief addendum, I would note that many (most?) references to concerts on classical music forums are to symphonic concerts. And even counting only presentations of older music, there is quite a lot more going on than just symphonic concerts.]

[Florestan]

I think you replied to the wrong person...

I don't even know to whom the reply was addressed. 

[Brian]

[As a brief addendum, I would note that many (most?) references to concerts on classical music forums are to symphonic concerts. And even counting only presentations of older music, there is quite a lot more going on than just symphonic concerts.]

As an addendum to your addendum, I was recently quite surprised to learn that my city has multiple chamber music series, solo recital series, a baroque opera even. And the reason I didn't know was that they're all managed by people who have no idea how to promote their events to the public. Even a guy like me who loves classical music and has lived here 8 years hadn't heard of their existence because of the poor marketing and media infrastructure.

But that is a VERY different subject!