The Historically Informed Performances (HIP) debate

[Elgarian Redux]

What is for instance the Romantic influence upon Andrew Parrott's recording of Machaut's Messe?

I have no idea. I'll leave that one to Florestan!

[prémont]

I have no idea. I'll leave that one to Florestan!

Nor have I, so I'll also leave that one to Florestan. 

[Madiel]

the Romantic shift of paradigm from music as performance to music as disembodied art.

You keep setting up these kinds of dichotomies.

Also, you lost me the moment you started suggesting that instruments don't matter. Given that I have a pronounced dislike for people constantly re-arranging music for different instruments from the ones that the composer chose, I'm very much of the view that instruments do matter. And I say that even though I don't have an especially great love for period instruments and a distinct horror for some period keyboards.

[Elgarian Redux]

I'm just thinking about the idea of a 'shift from performance art to disembodied art', and thinking it's not a shift - it's an extension. The change has been brought about primarily by recording, hasn't it? Elgar is on record (no pun intended) as having recognised that recording would bring about a shift in the way people listened to music, but again, shift may not be quite right. Both exist in tandem.

So ... first I sit at home listening to the disembodied art-music of let's say Acis and Galatea, via a pair of speakers. Then I go to a concert and listen to/watch a performance of the same work. The experiences are very different, but the work is recognisably the same. In the concert there is considerable awareness of the physicality of the experience: there are rustlings, scrapings, tappings extraneous to the music. The instruments themselves are vividly 'present' - one sees them and hears them differently. The acoustics of the concert venue may be substantially different to that used in the recording, and that may either enhance or detract from the experience. The whole balance of the instruments and singers will be different.

All this is so, and yet in each case it is still Acis and Galatea. The differences described above may be substantial, and yet they are nothing like so substantial as the similarities. The Acis-and-Galatea-ness of what I'm experiencing dominates every other consideration. The same is arguably true if we were to compare HIP with non-HIP performances. I'm wondering if the 'music as disembodied art' development matters as much as one might think.

[Elgarian Redux]

I was idly pottering about at the beginning of this thread when I encountered this, from Que - more than 10 years ago (#3):

I feel HIP is an attempt to approximate an historical style. I don't think it's possible to recreate an historical style in absolute terms (100% correct), but I do feel it is possible to come closer to that ideal and that efforts to that effect bring me closer to the composer. Perhaps the idea to "recover" original performance practices is a very modern idea, fuelled by the changing of tastes. But I doubt if that means that HIP can be equated to modern taste.

I repeat what he said here, chiefly because I recognise it as very close to my own view on it, perhaps better expressed than I could express it. And very broadly, in its recognition of the idea of HIP interpretation as essentially modern, it seems to be not so far from Florestan's position (though far less detailed in its explication).

[Florestan]

Werktreue was "en vogue"  around 60 years ago and meant a litteral interpretation of the score, but no serious informed musician thinks in this way any more.

As in the case of many other concepts, say "Baroque", "sonata form" of "the Classical style", the practice underlying them, or its proposal, long predates their being officially codified. The idea of Werktreue can be traced as far back as E.T.A. Hoffmann and was widely shared and proclaimed by many prominent critics and musicians all throughout the 19-th century.

[Mandryka]

Re "works" I think I can explain part of what's meant by saying that early purely instrumental music aren't "works of art" in the 19th century sense.

It's that these things, The French Suites would be an example, weren't designed to embody big metaphysical concepts like, for example, Bruckner 9 or the Liszt sonatas.

They were conceived more in a crafty, artisanal way. Their aim was to provide refreshment, or instrumental practice, or to explore a musical concept like a fugue.

In this way they're not the grand creations of a visionary, like you might say that a Van Gogh or a Rothko  is visionary.

This is why there's a link to Romanticism. The idea that an artist is a visionary creator flourished in Goethe, Kant and maybe Hegel.

Things get much more complicated for text related music like an organ choral.

[Florestan]

What is for instance the Romantic influence upon Andrew Parrott's recording of Machaut's Messe?

I have repeatedly stressed --- and I will do it as long as it will be necessary, which is probably till kingdom come --- that I do not discus HIP music-making but its philosophical and conceptual roots, underpinnings and tenets. It is in this respect that I maintain that the very act of studying a piece of music which is about 700 years old in the view of performing it is a typically Romantic behavior which would have been unthinkable prior to the advent of Romanticism. (Btw, it seems to me that by Romanticism you understand exclusively Romantic music and the practices traditionally associated with it; what I mean by it is a much larger movement, in which philosophical and aesthetic ideas played a central, seminal part --- for our discussion, Hoffmann or Schelling are much more relevant than Tchaikovsky or Thalberg)

Mahlerian stated that Mozart studied and loved Bach, which is correct. But then again is there any documented evidence that he ever played Bach's music in public? Actually, is there any documented evidence that he played anything else in public other than his own music?

[Mandryka]

A long time ago Andrei asked for an example of early HIP music practice. The Machaut mass may just be an example. It was performed regularly, every year i think, after his death. The world of chant may be another example. As may be the special place that the Albinoni Misere had in the Vatican. I also wonder about the history of Strauss waltz performance in Vienna

Anyway I post this to show that it's far from evident  that HIP is a recent phenomenon. Obviously I haven't  done the.necessary work

[Florestan]

You keep setting up these kinds of dichotomies.

I'm just presenting them. Blame them on (philosophical and aesthetic) Romanticism.

Also, you lost me the moment you started suggesting that instruments don't matter.

You misunderstood me. I just took issues with the idea that the sound of the period instruments is in itself enough to ensure superiority to HIP over non-HIP performances. What I suggested instead was that it is the artistry and insight of the people who play them which makes the difference. Put the most beautifully crafted and well preserved period instruments in the hands of a third-rate amateur orchestra and have them play whatever; I'll take the Berlin PO version of the same thing any time of the day, notwithstanding the fact that the former's sound is obviously closer to what they have heard back then. I find the notion that somehow the period instruments in themselves influence for better the quality of a performance, and in any case makes it superior to a non-HIP one, to be untenable.

[Mandryka]

I don't know about Parrott's Machaut, because there's a text it all becomes complicated.

But maybe, just maybe, there's something romantic about Cera's French Suites.

[Florestan]

I'm just thinking about the idea of a 'shift from performance art to disembodied art', and thinking it's not a shift - it's an extension. The change has been brought about primarily by recording, hasn't it? Elgar is on record (no pun intended) as having recognised that recording would bring about a shift in the way people listened to music, but again, shift may not be quite right. Both exist in tandem.

So ... first I sit at home listening to the disembodied art-music of let's say Acis and Galatea, via a pair of speakers. Then I go to a concert and listen to/watch a performance of the same work. The experiences are very different, but the work is recognisably the same. In the concert there is considerable awareness of the physicality of the experience: there are rustlings, scrapings, tappings extraneous to the music. The instruments themselves are vividly 'present' - one sees them and hears them differently. The acoustics of the concert venue may be substantially different to that used in the recording, and that may either enhance or detract from the experience. The whole balance of the instruments and singers will be different.

All this is so, and yet in each case it is still Acis and Galatea. The differences described above may be substantial, and yet they are nothing like so substantial as the similarities. The Acis-and-Galatea-ness of what I'm experiencing dominates every other consideration. The same is arguably true if we were to compare HIP with non-HIP performances. I'm wondering if the 'music as disembodied art' development matters as much as one might think.

That's not what I had in mind, Alan. A recorded performance is still a performance.

[Florestan]

Re "works" I think I can explain part of what's meant by saying that early purely instrumental music aren't "works of art" in the 19th century sense.

It's that these things, The French Suites would be an example, weren't designed to embody big metaphysical concepts like, for example, Bruckner 9 or the Liszt sonatas.

They were conceived more in a crafty, artisanal way. Their aim was to provide refreshment, or instrumental practice, or to explore a musical concept like a fugue.

In this way they're not the grand creations of a visionary, like you might say that a Van Gogh or a Rothko  is visionary.

This is why there's a link to Romanticism. The idea that an artist is a visionary creator flourished in Goethe, Kant and maybe Hegel.

Things get much more complicated for text related music like an organ choral.

Yes.

[North Star]

I have repeatedly stressed --- and I will do it as long as it will be necessary, which is probably till kingdom come --- that I do not discus HIP music-making but its philosophical and conceptual roots, underpinnings and tenets. It is in this respect that I maintain that the very act of studying a piece of music which is about 700 years old in the view of performing it is a typically Romantic behavior which would have been unthinkable prior to the advent of Romanticism.

Yes, because there wasn't music that was 700 years old available for study before the advent Romanticism.  But of course there was also a wider fascination with, and appreciation of the past with Romanticism. And really I would say that in many respects the Modern era is just a (post) industrial scale version of Romanticism.

Mahlerian stated that Mozart studied and loved Bach, which is correct. But then again is there any documented evidence that he ever played Bach's music in public? Actually, is there any documented evidence that he played anything else in public other than his own music?

I wonder if he played the first four keyboard concertos in public, or the concertos K. 107 after J.C. Bach.
As for J.S. Bach, he did arrange some of his keyboard music for string quartet, I wonder if those were not played for a public of some kind, though of course not necessarily with Mozart in the quartet.

[North Star]

Re "works" I think I can explain part of what's meant by saying that early purely instrumental music aren't "works of art" in the 19th century sense.

It's that these things, The French Suites would be an example, weren't designed to embody big metaphysical concepts like, for example, Bruckner 9 or the Liszt sonatas.

They were conceived more in a crafty, artisanal way. Their aim was to provide refreshment, or instrumental practice, or to explore a musical concept like a fugue.

In this way they're not the grand creations of a visionary, like you might say that a Van Gogh or a Rothko  is visionary.

This is why there's a link to Romanticism. The idea that an artist is a visionary creator flourished in Goethe, Kant and maybe Hegel.

Things get much more complicated for text related music like an organ choral.

The Biber Rosary Sonatas are surely a 'work', with metaphysical concepts.

[Florestan]

A long time ago Andrei asked for an example of early HIP music practice. The Machaut mass may just be an example. It was performed regularly, every year i think, after his death. The world of chant may be another example. As may be the special place that the Albinoni Misere had in the Vatican.

These were liturgical works which served a specific function --- early Gebrauchmusik. 

Seriously now, the case of church music is very special in this respect and bear little relevance, if any, for instrumental music.

[Elgarian Redux]

That's not what I had in mind, Alan. A recorded performance is still a performance.

Yes of course. But the method of listening to it is different. The recorded performance enhances the sense of 'disembodied art' in a way that wouldn't have been possible without the invention of recording.

Perhaps I don't understand what you mean by 'disembodied art'. But in any case, I'm just thinking aloud.

[Florestan]

there was also a wider fascination with, and appreciation of the past with Romanticism. And really I would say that in many respects the Modern era is just a (post) industrial scale version of Romanticism.

Precisely what I have been arguing all along: HIP is part and parcel of the Modern era, ergo...

[North Star]

A long time ago Andrei asked for an example of early HIP music practice. The Machaut mass may just be an example. It was performed regularly, every year i think, after his death. The world of chant may be another example. As may be the special place that the Albinoni Misere had in the Vatican. I also wonder about the history of Strauss waltz performance in Vienna

Anyway I post this to show that it's far from evident  that HIP is a recent phenomenon. Obviously I haven't  done the.necessary work

Strauss waltz concerts started with the Nazis, I think. And surely you mean the Allegri Miserere - incidentally another example of Mozart's interest in early music.

[Florestan]

Yes of course. But the method of listening to it is different. The recorded performance enhances the sense of 'disembodied art' in a way that wouldn't have been possible without the invention of recording.

Perhaps I don't understand what you mean by 'disembodied art'. But in any case, I'm just thinking aloud.

I mean the typically Romantic (philosophically Romantic, that is*) ideas that (1) music is an abstract art whose value and meaning resides in itself and (2) a piece of music is a self-contained entity which needs no particular performance to reveal its beauty and meaning, in some cases performance being even harmful.

* I cannot stress hardly enough this qualification, because actually the practice of Romantic music was quite at odds with how the Romantic philosophers viewed music, and people familiar with the former but not with the latter might get puzzled by my posts.