The Historically Informed Performances (HIP) debate

[jjfan]

If instrument has nothing to do with HIP, does it mean one could play Mozart or Bach in a modern piano and still be HIP? Also, does one know from the CD cover if its HIP or not?

[Bogey]

Just caught this thread.  For me, of very late, (like right now  ) I am finding that the earlier the music the more I seem to enjoy HIP recordings.  For example I can take my Beethoven either way, but probably if asked to pick would go non-HIP.  The same would go for Mozart and to a lesser extent Haydn.  As I head back toward Bach, HIP seems to fit my taste more.  However, this will not get in my way of enjoying an extraordinary performance HIP or not.  My wife has also latched on to the idea of HIP and just thinks it's (to quote our friend DavidW) the bee's knees.

[Que]

If instrument has nothing to do with HIP, does it mean one could play Mozart or Bach in a modern piano and still be HIP? Also, does one know from the CD cover if its HIP or not?

Good question - period instruments or not? Well, of course one could adopt historical musical practises without the use of period instruments. But IMO the the absence of the sound and/or the technical possibilities of the period instrument (f.i. with keyboard instruments) seriously limits the effect.

Personally I prefer HIP on period instruments. In the orchestral repertoire is HIP on non-period instruments or partly period instruments ("hybrid" orchestras) a common occurrence.

Q

[Bogey]

... or partly period instruments ("hybrid" orchestras) a common occurrence.

Q

Even the likes of AAM seem to have this happen.  Any larger ensembles that you know of Q that always has 100% period instruments?

[jochanaan]

Even the likes of AAM seem to have this happen.  Any larger ensembles that you know of Q that always has 100% period instruments?

I'm not Q, nor am I John de Lancie , but the Hanover Band, the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, and a few other sizable orchestras are, and have always been, all period instruments.

[bassio]

Adding my summarized response .. sorry I did not read through all the 5-page thread (I am new here  )

HIP is good.

HIP is fine.

I like HIP (but not all of it). - it all depends on the interpretation

HIP saved a lot of good music (true, true)

HIP does not mean that other approaches are wrong.

HIP does not mean that you cannot give a convincing interpretation with other "methods"

If you are a HIP purist then you are missing a lot by not listening to others.

0:)

Disclaimer: I play Bach on the piano 

[Harry]

Adding my summarized response .. sorry I did not read through all the 5-page thread (I am new here  )

HIP is good.

HIP is fine.

I like HIP (but not all of it). - it all depends on the interpretation

HIP saved a lot of good music (true, true)

HIP does not mean that other approaches are wrong.

HIP does not mean that you cannot give a convincing interpretation with other "methods"

If you are a HIP purist then you are missing a lot by not listening to others.

0:)

Disclaimer: I play Bach on the piano 

I agree with all, but man, playing Bach on a piano, that is strictly no go............. 

[(poco) Sforzando]

I agree with all, but man, playing Bach on a piano, that is strictly no go............. 

I agree with most of what our Egyptian friend says as well, but I have no problem when Bach is played on the piano with the dry and brittle sound of a Glenn Gould. For the Goldberg Variations, Gould's piano is definitely a go. The soupier and more romanticized tone of (say) Sergey Schepkin - that's a different matter.

[Don]

Good question - period instruments or not? Well, of course one could adopt historical musical practises without the use of period instruments. But IMO the the absence of the sound and/or the technical possibilities of the period instrument (f.i. with keyboard instruments) seriously limits the effect.


Q

There aren't any concrete definitions on this matter.  However, as far as I'm concerned, the use of modern instruments precludes a HIP performance (although the approach might well contain HIP elements). 

[(poco) Sforzando]

There aren't any concrete definitions on this matter.  However, as far as I'm concerned, the use of modern instruments precludes a HIP performance (although the approach might well contain HIP elements). 

And the use of period instruments does not necessarily indicate a HIP performance. To take the Goldberg Variations, they were unlikely to have been performed complete until well after Bach's death; if the anecdote about Count Kaiserling and JG Goldberg is true, the Count would frequently call for Goldberg "to play one of my variations." This may not have literally meant only one; no doubt like eating a Lay's potato chip it would be impossible to stop after only a canon or two, but it's equally unlikely the entire work was played each time Kaiserling could not fall asleep. ETA Hoffmann notes an early complete performance before a small audience in 1810; people started leaving after the fourth variation and only one listener stayed to the end. My point is that the Goldbergs were not considered a unified work so much as an anthology to dip into; complete traversals are a distinctly 20th-century phenomenon that is agreeable to modern sensibilities because we are more likely to believe in organically unified works. Hence we hear full recitals devoted to the GV or a book of the WTC, a practice that, whether on a harpsichord or a piano, is I submit as un-HIP as can be. A truly HIP approach to the GV or WTC would be to play selections for one's self, a friend, or a pupil (remember the preface to the WTC1, where Bach specifically states his intentions in writing the anthology were educational), and to not consider the 48 any kind of unified work. That, however, is an essential aspect of HIPness not very appealing to modern taste.

[Gurn Blanston]

This is an interesting and rarely discussed aspect of performance practice. I would add another on the same lines.

A "concert" (academy, whatever) almost never included a complete, uninterrupted performance of a multi-movement work. A typical lineup might be something like this:

1. The sonata-allegro (1st mvmt) of a symphony in G minor by Herr Mozart
2. An aria by Herr Haydn, sung by Mlle. Fleury
3. A duetto for soprano and bass by Messr. Gossec
4. The Andante and Minuet of the Symphony by Herr Mozart
5. A free fantasy at the keyboard by Herr Kozeluch
6. The Finale of the symphony by Herr Mozart

This is all a sanitization, of course, but you get the point.

And I doubt that modern concert goers would be just wild over an evening of this sort, but if we are being historically accurate...



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Now playing: Beethoven: Violin and Piano Sonatas - Andreas Staier, Daniel Sepec - Douze Variations pour violon et piano WoO40

[(poco) Sforzando]

This is an interesting and rarely discussed aspect of performance practice. I would add another on the same lines.

A "concert" (academy, whatever) almost never included a complete, uninterrupted performance of a multi-movement work. A typical lineup might be something like this:

1. The sonata-allegro (1st mvmt) of a symphony in G minor by Herr Mozart
2. An aria by Herr Haydn, sung by Mlle. Fleury
3. A duetto for soprano and bass by Messr. Gossec
4. The Andante and Minuet of the Symphony by Herr Mozart
5. A free fantasy at the keyboard by Herr Kozeluch
6. The Finale of the symphony by Herr Mozart

This is all a sanitization, of course, but you get the point.

And I doubt that modern concert goers would be just wild over an evening of this sort, but if we are being historically accurate...

Perhaps the silliest concert experience I have ever had was to have seen and heard James Levine and Evgeny Kissin playing an evening of Schubert 4-hand piano music at Carnegie Hall to an audience of 2800. Instead of sitting side-by-side at one keyboard (where their closer hands could have occasionally brushed against each other, as Schubert might have counted on the erotic suggestiveness of a man and his lady friend playing in proximity), they sat at huge opposing Steinway grands -- I suppose to protect Evgeny from falling off the bench. But under such conditions, even playing on opposing fortepianos would have made no difference; anything farther from an intimate colloquy between two friends at a keyboard could not be imagined.

[Don]

And the use of period instruments does not necessarily indicate a HIP performance. To take the Goldberg Variations, they were unlikely to have been performed complete until well after Bach's death; if the anecdote about Count Kaiserling and JG Goldberg is true, the Count would frequently call for Goldberg "to play one of my variations." This may not have literally meant only one; no doubt like eating a Lay's potato chip it would be impossible to stop after only a canon or two, but it's equally unlikely the entire work was played each time Kaiserling could not fall asleep. ETA Hoffmann notes an early complete performance before a small audience in 1810; people started leaving after the fourth variation and only one listener stayed to the end. My point is that the Goldbergs were not considered a unified work so much as an anthology to dip into; complete traversals are a distinctly 20th-century phenomenon that is agreeable to modern sensibilities because we are more likely to believe in organically unified works. Hence we hear full recitals devoted to the GV or a book of the WTC, a practice that, whether on a harpsichord or a piano, is I submit as un-HIP as can be. A truly HIP approach to the GV or WTC would be to play selections for one's self, a friend, or a pupil (remember the preface to the WTC1, where Bach specifically states his intentions in writing the anthology were educational), and to not consider the 48 any kind of unified work. That, however, is an essential aspect of HIPness not very appealing to modern taste.

So one can get a harpsichord recording of the Goldbergs and just play a few selections.

[M forever]

I guess to this Sforzando could reply that listening to the music on a CD player isn't "HIP" at all either. You need to have your own harpsichord player who eats in the kitchen in the basement along with your other servants, and you need to listen to the music in a candlelit, badly heated room to get the real "HIP" feeling. You also need to have really bad teeth.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I guess to this Sforzando could reply that listening to the music on a CD player isn't "HIP" at all either. You need to have your own harpsichord player who eats in the kitchen in the basement along with your other servants, and you need to listen to the music in a candlelit, badly heated room to get the real "HIP" feeling. You also need to have really bad teeth.

As well as all kinds of intestinal complaints, syphilis, and poorly corrected eyesight.

I guess to the comment by Don, Sforzando would actually reply that yes, of course you can play a selection from a harpsichord recording of the Goldbergs. But it would be more radically HIP yet to record only a selection from them, which I don't think anyone has done. I believe that most of us in the 20th-21st century are so attuned to the concept of the work as something unified and inviolate that we would feel it distinctly odd to hear only a variation or two from the Goldbergs; I myself was reading the Handel Chaconne in G at the piano a few days ago, the one with 60+ variations on an 8-bar theme, and I gave up after about 15 because they were getting too difficult for my out-of-practice fingers. Yet in Handel's time that wouldn't have mattered a bit. (The excellent study of how the concept of a unified "work" came into being is Lydia Goehr's "The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works," a difficult but eye-opening book.)

My overall feeling about HIP-ness is that no matter how much we can recover from past practice, we cannot get away from the history that followed, and we are inevitably bound to the prejudices and assumptions of our own time - making truly HIP performance impossible. So the HIPsters cherry-pick the aspects of older performance style that are most palatable to our modern sensibilities. I'm jumping way ahead chronologically now, but for example, one aspect of our modern insistence that a work is a unified organic whole is that we do not applaud between movements. Yet as recently as the late 19th century, when Bruckner's 7th received one of the composer's rare public triumphs in Vienna, the composer was called on stage for bows after each movement. Just try applauding between movements of a symphony today and see what dirty looks you get from your neighbors.

[M forever]

The whole "HIP" thing isn't about imitating actual historical performances, practices, and circumstances. It is simply about studying these parameters to learn more about what options there are to perform the music. To learn what is not written in the notated music because contemporary performers read the music in different ways in their day. All the stuff you say above is really extremely old news. That has been discussed by the more serious "HIP" people for decades.
Good thing though you finally begin catching up on that, too. Good morning!

[(poco) Sforzando]

All the stuff you say above is really extremely old news. That has been discussed by the more serious "HIP" people for decades.

And who are the more serious "HIP" people, so they can be distinguished from the more frivolous ones?

[M forever]

Harnoncourt, for instance. He has written about these things decades ago, and explained that countless times in many interviews. A lot of his writings are available in book form - good reading if you want to finally find out what "HIP" actually means. Other "serious" "HIP" people are Goebel or Hogwood.  Mackerras. Pommer. Immerseel. Östman. To name just a few.
Another book you should read is Leopold Mozart's book about violin playing. That alone will make you understand (hopefully!) that studying historical performance practice is not a fashion, but an important source of information for anyone interested in historical music.

[(poco) Sforzando]

That alone will make you understand (hopefully!) that studying historical performance practice is not a fashion, but an important source of information for anyone interested in historical music.

I never doubted that or denied it.

[DavidW]

Gurn, I think that I would like your historical program.  My attention span has been short of late when it comes to music.