The Historically Informed Performances (HIP) debate

[Florestan]

I am a little bit cynical about her, I don't think [Angela Hewitt]'s a scholar.

You don't have to be a scholar in order to be a good, even great, interpreter. This is actually yet another problem I have with the HIP movement: because of their overtly (and overly) intellectual(ized) approach they have turned the art of performing into an academic discipline and the performer into a scholar. In their eyes --- and apparently in yours as well --- a performance, be it live or recorded, which is not the fruit of painstaking scholarly research and not backed up by a referenced article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal is at best suspicious and at worst inadmissible. Besides being utterly absurd, such a position is blatantly non-historical: that's not how they did in the past. I can't think of a single great performer, harpsichordist, pianist, violonist, cellist or whatnot, in the time frame 1700 - 1900 who spent his or her time going from one archive / library to another and publishing scholarly essays in order to justify his/her interpretive choices (writing treatises on the art of playing their instrument doesn't quite qualify); in any case, not Bach nor Mozart, for instance.

And this brings me to yet another issue: there is abounding evidence that the great performers of the past were skilled improvisers, capable of delecting and enrapturing their audience with an hour worth of extemporizing, and that this was common practice, widely appreciated and sought for. Please show me one single person in the HIP camp who advocates such extemporizing, let alone be able to produce it.

[Mandryka]

To be a good or even a great interpreter you have to be able to read the score, make sense of the score,  and in 17th century music that requires scholarship.



For improvisation check William Porter, he's got a chair in improvisation somewhere in the US. There are others.  There used to be (I've not checked recently) lots of examples on YouTube, masterclasses, including a long course he gave. It's a big area I think.

Bach built his own library of manuscripts, I think he studied the ideas about interpretation contained therein. Music by Frescobaldi, du Mage, Grigny . . .

[Florestan]

To be a good or even a great interpreter you have to be able to read the score, make sense of the score, and in 17th century music that requires scholarship.

Whose sense? The interpreter's own, or the putative one of whoever might have performed the music back then? I much prefer the former as I'm interested in music-making that is alive and fresh, not in recreating long gone practices. Evwen if these could with certainty bring us the music as it was played and heard back then, this is indeed an academic exercise; people play and hear the music now, not then.

For improvisation check William Porter. There used to be (I've not checked recently) lots of examples on YouTube, masterclasses, including a long course he gave. It's a big area I think.

I'm not talking about masterclasses. I'm talking about real performances in front of a general audience.

[Mandryka]

Whose sense? The interpreter's own, or the putative one of whoever might have performed the music back then? I much prefer the former as I'm interested in music-making that is alive and fresh, not in recreating long gone practices. Evwen if these could with certainty bring us the music as it was played and heard back then, this is indeed an academic exercise; people play and hear the music now, not then.

I'm not talking about masterclasses. I'm talking about real performances in front of a general audience.

Oh yes, I've been to concerts with improvisation. Jean Rondeau improvised a couple of weeks ago in London before playing the Goldbergs. If you go to youtube and check Robert Hill you'll find that he also improvises a prelude before a 2014 (or thereabouts) live Goldbergs performance (a friend of mine had some very cutting words to say about Hill's improvisation there!)  . . . when I saw a concert at Ste Croix Bordeaux there was some improvisation on the organ . . .

The point that you're constantly missing is that it's possible to give a personal inspired "alive and fresh" interpretation which is HIP. 

[Mandryka]

You don't have to be a scholar in order to be a good, even great, interpreter. This is actually yet another problem I have with the HIP movement: because of their overtly (and overly) intellectual(ized) approach they have turned the art of performing into an academic discipline and the performer into a scholar. In their eyes --- and apparently in yours as well --- a performance, be it live or recorded, which is not the fruit of painstaking scholarly research and not backed up by a referenced article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal is at best suspicious and at worst inadmissible. Besides being utterly absurd, . . .

I've just thought of an analogy to show how absurd and arrogant your opinion is.

Someone interpreting Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has to make sense of this

DECIUS    
3.1.75        Great Caesar—    
        
        CAESAR    
                          Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?    
        CASCA    
        Speak, hands for me!    
        
        They stab CAESAR.    
        
        CAESAR    
        Et tu, Brute?— Then fall, Caesar!   
   

Bootless in modern English means "without boots" Someone who didn't do any scholarship would think that Caesar is saying "Why does Brutus -- who hasn't put his shoes on -- kneel?"

But that's rubbish. Bootless meant something completely different for Shakespeare, and the uninformed production, with a barefooted Brutus, would be a travesty, a mockery, untruthful . . .

[Madiel]

There's a completely false dichotomy here. Who says Angela Hewitt isn't a scholar?

Given that I couldn't get as far as an associate diploma in piano without undertaking a decent amount of training in understanding the different styles of music across the centuries, I seriously doubt that a professional recording pianist can get through a career without knowing quite a bit about this stuff.

[Marc]

[...]
And this brings me to yet another issue: there is abounding evidence that the great performers of the past were skilled improvisers, capable of delecting and enrapturing their audience with an hour worth of extemporizing, and that this was common practice, widely appreciated and sought for. Please show me one single person in the HIP camp who advocates such extemporizing, let alone be able to produce it.

In this case it's a pity you're not that much into the organ.
There are worldwide improvisation organ festivals where many historically informed organists attend or compete.
Here in the north of NL there are quite a few improvisators, the best known is probably Sietze de Vries. He advocates it, and he produces it.
Another great example is renowned HIP musician and scholar Harald Vogel.

[prémont]

You don't have to be a scholar in order to be a good, even great, interpreter. This is actually yet another problem I have with the HIP movement: because of their overtly (and overly) intellectual(ized) approach they have turned the art of performing into an academic discipline and the performer into a scholar. In their eyes --- and apparently in yours as well --- a performance, be it live or recorded, which is not the fruit of painstaking scholarly research and not backed up by a referenced article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal is at best suspicious and at worst inadmissible. Besides being utterly absurd, such a position is blatantly non-historical: that's not how they did in the past. to produce it.

The HIP movement is more or less a result of our interest in our past history. This interest has occupied the Western civilisation for many hundreds of years, and without it we would become people without history and without identity. You are the one you are, because of your past and because you are able to recall it. This is what defines your identity. Here in my country I am sometimes faced with young people, who don't even know, that there was a Second World War. Very depressing. And if we are supposed to learn from our past, we have at least to know it.

[prémont]

  CAESAR     
                          Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?     
        CASCA     
        Speak, hands for me!     
         
        They stab CAESAR.     
         
        CAESAR     
        Et tu, Brute?— Then fall, Caesar!   

In this quote even the word Brute may be misunderstood by a modern Englishman.
     

[Karl Henning]

Rosalyn Tureck said she had a direct line to Bach and he was guiding her (I think in dreams, but maybe voices, I can't remember) about how to play his music. So if you like Tureck you'd have liked Bach.

Unless you think she was in some way deluded in this.

[Karl Henning]

Yes, sentiments can be, but sentimentality can not.

I think sentimentality can be serious, but it thereby becomes an atrocity 

[Karl Henning]

Lutherans also have a sense of irony.

The things I learn on GMG! 0:)

This, my mildly facetious post notwithstanding, please know that I appreciate all (well, practically all) my fellow GMG'ers.

[Karl Henning]

[...] Why cannot we not presume that had he be able to Bach too would have abandoned the harpsichord?

He might have, or he might not have.  As a fertile musical mind, he might have abandoned the harpsichord for the piano.  As a human being of some habits, some of the habits entrenched, he might never have abandoned the harpsichord.

Yours is a reasonable speculation, but only speculation.  (By which, I do not mean to single you out by any means.)

[Que]

He might have, or he might not have.  As a fertile musical mind, he might have abandoned the harpsichord for the piano.  As a human being of some habits, some of the habits entrenched, he might never have abandoned the harpsichord.

Yours is a reasonable speculation, but only speculation.  (By which, I do not mean to single you out by any means.)

And if Bach would have have abandoned the harpsichord and had written for the piano, he wouldn't have written the same music.

Q

[Florestan]

I've just thought of an analogy to show how absurd and arrogant your opinion is.

If you inferred that what I meant was "the music should be interpreted without any care at all for its historical context" you misunderstood me. I don't advocate such an approach --- but neither am I so strongly opposed to it as you are. (I judge the net result of any approach, ie how the music sounds to me and whether I enjoy it or not, on a case by case basis. Liszt and Sarasate probably didn't spent much time thinking about how Bach's music was played in his lifetime yet their performances delighted both connoisseurs and amateurs alike.)  As Madiel pointed out, no professionally trained pianist with at least a moderately succesful career is unaware of, and uninterested in, the hisstorical context of the pieces they play. What I object to is the obsessive preocupation with playing the music as close as possible to how it must have been played back then, imho a clear case of trying to be more Catholic than the Pope himself.

As for your analogy with Shakespeare, it doesn't work for the very simple reason that music is not a spoken language. "Bootless" is a word; it had a different meaning in 1600 than it has now, but in both cases it has one that can be ascertained and upon which people then, or people today, were / are in perfect agreement. Now, what is the perfectly agreed upon meaning of this today?

[Florestan]

In this case it's a pity you're not that much into the organ.
There are worldwide improvisation organ festivals where many historically informed organists attend or compete.
Here in the north of NL there are quite a few improvisators, the best known is probably Sietze de Vries. He advocates it, and he produces it.
Another great example is renowned HIP musician and scholar Harald Vogel.

I guess that I would enjoy hearing an organ live in a church acoustics. But I live in Romania, a country where such thing is a rarity for me  --- the Orthodox church music is exclusively vocal and my home is not in Transylvania where there are many Catholic and Protestant churches with organs. I'll try to go to one of the few organ recitals offered in Bucharest in the Catholic Cathedral or the Lutheran Church.

[prémont]

This, my mildly facetious post notwithstanding, please know that I appreciate all (well, practically all) my fellow GMG'ers.

I think we all do.

[Florestan]

The HIP movement is more or less a result of our interest in our past history. This interest has occupied the Western civilisation for many hundreds of years, and without it we would become people without history and without identity. You are the one you are, because of your past and because you are able to recall it. This is what defines your identity. Here in my country I am sometimes faced with young people, who don't even know, that there was a Second World War. Very depressing. And if we are supposed to learn from our past, we have at least to know it.

Fully and completely agreed and sharing your depression, the situation here in Romania is no better, I assure you. But there is a risk in the other direction, namely to be so obsessively preocupied with the past as to refuse to allow for anything new.

[Florestan]

I think we all do.

Me too. I have been enjoying this debate enormously and I think it's one of the most civil and humorous GMG has ever seen.

[Karl Henning]

And if Bach would have have abandoned the harpsichord and had written for the piano, he wouldn't have written the same music.

Q

He may not have . . . or, he may have.