GMG Classical Music Forum

Of cancer:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/arts/music/richard-taruskin-dead.html

Taruskin made an outsized impact for a classical musicologist because of his knowledge, writing skill, and willingness to get into all kinds of fights. He forcefully argued in favor of non-Germanic musical traditions, disputed the Volkov "Testimony" about Shostakovich's secret political messages, argued that HIP music reflects our tastes now more than it does the tastes of the 1700s, and was passionate about music's connections to politics and contemporary events.

To me, his basic thesis - that music and composers cannot be separated from their time or place, and that art doesn't exist in some kind of ahistorical, apolitical museum wing - is quite obviously true. Although of course it disrupts the traditional romantic notion of composers being inspired by unknowable genius/divinity and writing music of timeless appeal.

Thank you for sharing this Brian.

Quoteargued that HIP music reflects our tastes now more than it does the tastes of the 1700s,

And I think he was on target there.

Quote from: Brian on July 02, 2022, 04:05:05 PM
Of cancer:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/arts/music/richard-taruskin-dead.html

Taruskin made an outsized impact for a classical musicologist

He was also a performer of early music. I have him on a couple of LPs, performing Ockeghem and Josquin.

QuoteTo me, his basic thesis - that music and composers cannot be separated from their time or place, and that art doesn't exist in some kind of ahistorical, apolitical museum wing - is quite obviously true.

I agree. But one thing I've noticed, is that for some reason a number of people have been strongly against him (including on this forum), and I can't quite figure out why. Any explanations?

What a sad news. He was my favorite musicologist and I agree with pretty much everything he stood for. May God rest him in peace.

Quote from: Brian on July 02, 2022, 04:05:05 PM
.. argued that HIP music reflects our tastes now more than it does the tastes of the 1700s...

Quote from: Archaic Torso of Apollo on July 02, 2022, 06:36:25 PM
I agree. But one thing I've noticed, is that for some reason a number of people have been strongly against him (including on this forum), and I can't quite figure out why. Any explanations?

It is not the thought itself that is provocative, but the way he presented it as being particularly original. HIP tries to rediscover the performance practices of earlier times, and it can to a certain extent be done, but of course not completely. Therefore we have to add the missing parts ourselves, and of course our own taste will be involved in this process. Nothing ingenious in this thought.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 04:16:21 AM
It is not the thought itself that is provocative, but the way he presented it as being particularly original. HIP tries to rediscover the performance practices of earlier times, and it can to a certain extent be done, but of course not completely. Therefore we have to add the missing parts ourselves, and of course our own taste will be involved in this process. Nothing ingenious in this thought.

The question is to what extent it can be and with what degree of certainty. I think Taruskin's thesis is that HIP is more 20th century Modernism than anything else.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 04:21:27 AM
The question is to what extent it can be and with what degree of certainty. I think Taruskin's thesis is that HIP is more 20th century Modernism than anything else.

This may have been true of the neobaroque proto-HIP philosophy of the 1960s, but since then, intensive studies of historical instruments, manuscripts, and musical treatises have meant that HIP is on somewhat safer ground. But of course, there is still a lot that is missing. But it can be said that recent times have made Taruskin's postulate relatively outdated (it was probably devised in the 1960s).

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 04:35:32 AM
This may have been true of the neobaroque proto-HIP philosophy of the 1960s, but since then, intensive studies of historical instruments, manuscripts, and musical treatises have meant that HIP is on somewhat safer ground. But of course, there is still a lot that is missing. But it can be said that recent times have made Taruskin's postulate relatively outdated (it was probably devised in the 1960s).

Maybe. My whole problem with HIP is the idea that this is the only way to play Baroque music. It's just another approach, one based less on aesthetics than a supposed "authenticity" which really doesn't exist. I believe it became dominant not because of an inherent aesthetic superiority but rather the thought that "this is how Bach would've wanted it". We don't know. But that's a topic for another thread.

Oh dear. Sorry to hear.

I have his 6-volume history of western music. I have not read it from cover to cover, only certain sections. Now I better commit to the whole thing...

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 04:35:32 AM
This may have been true of the neobaroque proto-HIP philosophy of the 1960s, but since then, intensive studies of historical instruments, manuscripts, and musical treatises have meant that HIP is on somewhat safer ground. But of course, there is still a lot that is missing. But it can be said that recent times have made Taruskin's postulate relatively outdated (it was probably devised in the 1960s).

Hoo boy, there's a particular Hurwitz video you should watch about this...

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 04:42:03 AM
Maybe. My whole problem with HIP is the idea that this is the only way to play Baroque music. It's just another approach, one based less on aesthetics than a supposed "authenticity" which really doesn't exist. I believe it became dominant not because of an inherent aesthetic superiority but rather the thought that "this is how Bach would've wanted it". We don't know. But that's a topic for another thread.

You express the usual misconceptions regarding HIP. No one - at least in recent times - has claimed that "this is how Bach would've wanted it", because we do not know for sure precisely what he wanted, so the authenticity will never become more than partial. This uncertainty is even evident from the many different HIP interpretations we have witnessed over the years. One can say that the uncertainty is kind of authentic, because the interpretatory freedom seems to have been great in Bach's time, possibly even greater than today.

Quote from: Madiel on July 03, 2022, 04:43:43 AM
Hoo boy, there's a particular Hurwitz video you should watch about this...

To get a cheap laugh - or what?

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 05:27:28 AM
You express the usual misconceptions regarding HIP. No one - at least in recent times - has claimed that "this is how Bach would've wanted it", because we do not know for sure precisely what he wanted, so the authenticity will never become more than partial. This uncertainty is even evident from the many different HIP interpretations we have witnessed over the years. One can say that the uncertainty is kind of authentic, because the interpretatory freedom seems to have been great in Bach's time, possibly even greater than today.

So then what's the point?

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 05:39:26 AM
So then what's the point?

The point is of course, that HIP is a valuable approach to historical music in the same way as we use historical methodes in other sciences, and that Taruskin's "ingenious" claim was self-evident and has become outdated since.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 05:45:39 AM
The point is of course, that HIP is a valuable approach to historical music in the same way as we use historical methodes in other sciences, and that Taruskin's "ingenious" claim was self-evident and has become outdated since.

OK this is a tangent, but valuable how? We can't even be sure about pitch or the amount of vibrato used by string players and singers of that time, but yet a=415 and pretty much vibrato-less playing and singing have become dogma. About as far as you can go is to use instruments from that time or built to the specifications from then.

I've always admired Taruskin, and we none of us get it right all the time.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 03, 2022, 06:27:04 AM
I've always admired Taruskin, and we none of us get it right all the time.

That's true, and to clarify things I'm not anti-HIP. It's produced a lot of great performances and honestly I'd rather hear Bach on a harpsichord (and I think Couperin's, Rameau's and Handel's keyboard music demands it).

Taruskin did enjoy many period style musicians like Harnoncourt, Bruggen and Gardiner.  Someone mentioned Hurwitz.  One of Hurwitz's favorite Beethoven PS sets is Brautigam on fortepiano!  If you dislike period style performances just for trying, you can't use Taruskin and Hurwitz for your appeal to authority fallacy, because they frankly took a more nuanced view than you do.  They evaluated the individual performers, and were not as dismissive as some think.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 06:30:58 AM
That's true, and to clarify things I'm not anti-HIP. It's produced a lot of great performances and honestly I'd rather hear Bach on a harpsichord (and I think Couperin's, Rameau's and Handel's keyboard music demands it).

I didn't take you as anti-HIP. Tangentially, I've probably only heard the Handel keyboard suites on piano ;)

Quote from: DavidW on July 03, 2022, 06:34:23 AM
Taruskin did enjoy many period style musicians like Harnoncourt, Bruggen and Gardiner.  Someone mentioned Hurwitz.  One of Hurwitz's favorite Beethoven PS sets is Brautigam on fortepiano!  If you dislike period style performances just for trying, you can't use Taruskin and Hurwitz for your appeal to authority fallacy, because they frankly took a more nuanced view than you do.  They evaluated the individual performers, and were not as dismissive as some think.

Yeah, I think my favorite interpretation of Beethoven's cello sonatas might be that Wispelwey/Komen recording.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 03, 2022, 06:37:07 AM
I didn't take you as anti-HIP. Tangentially, I've probably only heard the Handel keyboard suites on piano ;)

I think you should go onto one of the baroque PI threads and ask about Handel's piano suites! :laugh:

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 05:49:48 AM
OK this is a tangent, but valuable how? We can't even be sure about pitch or the amount of vibrato used by string players and singers of that time, but yet a=415 and pretty much vibrato-less playing and singing have become dogma. About as far as you can go is to use instruments from that time or built to the specifications from then.

We know quite a lot, but far from everything. Ideas of pitch stems eg. from well-preserved church organs, but the general impression is, that pitch was less fixed than today, giving us some options to choose between, and the vibrato-less tone is justified by period authors who write that vibrato should be used sparingly and first and foremost as an ornamentation of individual notes. In this way we can deduce much about period performance practice.

Quote from: DavidW on July 03, 2022, 07:07:50 AM
I think you should go onto one of the baroque PI threads and ask about Handel's piano suites! :laugh:

The first Handel I heard on keyboard was Svyatoslav Richter, couldn't help digging it.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 07:10:00 AM
... the vibrato-less tone is justified by period authors who write that vibrato should be used sparingly and first and foremost as an ornamentation of individual notes. ...

Which shows that vibrato was indeed used. Too many HIP recordings imo sound like dead-hand playing, at least orchestral music. What I really dislike is the idea that recordings pre-Harnoncourt/Leonhardt are somehow invalid and of value only as precursors to more "enlightened" interpretations. Now I dislike overblown over-romaticized interpretations of Bach too, but come on.

My "over-heated Bach" of choice is perforce Schoenberg. I leave Stokowsky to others 8)

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 03, 2022, 07:37:46 AM
My "over-heated Bach" of choice is perforce Schoenberg. I leave Stokowsky to others 8)

I actually love the Leibowitz orchestration of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue. It was that that got me into classical music when I was a kid, in that old Reader's Digest set.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 08:27:03 AM
I actually love the Leibowitz orchestration of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue. It was that that got me into classical music when I was a kid, in that old Reader's Digest set.

Oh, I believe I would like that.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 07:10:00 AM
We know quite a lot, but far from everything. Ideas of pitch stems eg. from well-preserved church organs, but the general impression is, that pitch was less fixed than today, giving us some options to choose between, and the vibrato-less tone is justified by period authors who write that vibrato should be used sparingly and first and foremost as an ornamentation of individual notes. In this way we can deduce much about period performance practice.

And don't forget Joachim's recording which anyone can listen to on youtube.  He used vibrato so sparingly that it was almost non-existent. 

Quote from: DavidW on July 03, 2022, 08:33:45 AM
And don't forget Joachim's recording which anyone can listen to on youtube.  He used vibrato so sparingly that it was almost non-existent.

I've listened to that. Man, I hate it.  ;D On the other hand I don't like continuous vibrato either of the Kreisler and very young Menuhin type.

(edit)I went back and listened to his recording of Brahms' Hungarian Dance #1. Joachim in that one actually is using some narrow, almost Starker-like vibrato. I like that.

Quote from: Madiel on July 03, 2022, 04:42:43 AM
Oh dear. Sorry to hear.

I have his 6-volume history of western music. I have not read it from cover to cover, only certain sections. Now I better commit to the whole thing...

I read only the volumes concerning 18th, 19th and 20th century. Beside knowing the music inside out and upside down, he had a tremendous sense of humor and an extremely enjoyable writing style. He also made use of technicalities and musical analysis in such a way that a layman could skip those sections without losing the gist of the matter.

Another book of his that I greatly enjoyed is Text and Act.

Quote from: DavidW on July 03, 2022, 08:33:45 AM
And don't forget Joachim's recording which anyone can listen to on youtube.  He used vibrato so sparingly that it was almost non-existent.

As far as I know the continuos vibrato wasn't used before ca. 1890, so Joachim belongs to a generation which grew up without this.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 10:44:56 AM
As far as I know the continuos vibrato wasn't used before ca. 1890

And yet both Geminiani and Leopold Mozart warned against, and condemned, employing vibrato indiscriminately --- which is obvious evidence that continuous vibrato was in fact used long before 1890.  ;D

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 07:35:23 AM
Which shows that vibrato was indeed used. Too many HIP recordings imo sound like dead-hand playing, at least orchestral music. What I really dislike is the idea that recordings pre-Harnoncourt/Leonhardt are somehow invalid and of value only as precursors to more "enlightened" interpretations. Now I dislike overblown over-romaticized interpretations of Bach too, but come on.

I agree with most of this. Also the more cool proto-HIP interpreters may be very enjoyable (eg. Münchinger). On the other hand Maisky, Rostropovich and Shafran use far too much vibrato.

Quote from: Florestan on July 03, 2022, 10:47:50 AM
And yet both Geminiani and Leopold Mozart warned against, and condemned, employing vibrato indiscriminately --- which is obvious evidence that continuous vibrato was in fact used long before 1890.  ;D

There are always musicians who ignore or won't follow the generally accepted codex.

Recently we were warned against walking around on railway tracks, which is obvious evidence that there are some who do this.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 10:58:46 AM
I agree with most of this. Also the more cool proto-HIP interpreters may be very enjoyable (eg. Münchinger). On the other hand Maisky, Rostropovich and Shafran use far too much vibrato.

On modern cello I've always preferred the relatively tight, narrow vibrato of Janos Starker.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 11:07:41 AM
On modern cello I've always preferred the relatively tight, narrow vibrato of Janos Starker.

Yes, I also value him much higher than the three I mentioned above.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 11:03:58 AM
There are always musicians who ignore or won't follow the generally accepted codex.

True, but if continuous vibrato had been an exception rather than a widespread practice, then why would have Geminiani and Leopold Mozart warned against, and condemned, it? Heck, one doesn't go at lengths taking issues with exceptions, one simply mentions them, if at all.

Quote from: Florestan on July 03, 2022, 11:25:57 AM
True, but if continuous vibrato had been an exception rather than a widespread practice, then why would have Geminiani and Leopold Mozart warned against, and condemned, it? Heck, one doesn't go at lengths taking issues with exceptions, one simply mentions them, if at all.

Given the absence of recordings from the 18th century I don't think anyone can really say.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 11:28:00 AM
Given the absence of recordings from the 18th century I don't think anyone can really say.

That sounds like the death sentence for hardcore HIP.  ;D

Quote from: Florestan on July 03, 2022, 11:25:57 AM
True, but if continuous vibrato had been an exception rather than a widespread practice, then why would have Geminiani and Leopold Mozart warned against, and condemned, it? Heck, one doesn't go at lengths taking issues with exceptions, one simply mentions them, if at all.

Depends probably upon how important one considers the issue. The warning against walking on railway tracks came, even if only a few practice it.

Quote from: Florestan on July 03, 2022, 11:32:23 AM
That sounds like the death sentence for hardcore HIP.  ;D

On the contrary this means, that we have to use the historical information we have even more dilligently, if we want to play old music in a way the composer has got a minimal chance of recognizing..

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 11:39:12 AM
Depends probably upon how important one considers the issue. The warning against walking on railway tracks came, even if only a few practice it.

The analogy is far-fetched --- and you know it alright. Geminiani and Leopold Mozart could not care less about people walking on railway tracks but they cared a lot about the correct and tasteful way of playing the violin. You know, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

Be it as it might, we've had this discussion before and I'm not going to revive it again. Let's just agree to disagree and RIP Richard Taruskin.

Quote from: Florestan on July 03, 2022, 11:50:46 AM
The analogy is far-fetched --- and you know it alright. Geminiani and Leopold Mozart could not care less about people walking on railway tracks but they cared a lot about the correct and tasteful way of playing the violin. You know, the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.

Geminiani cared a lot about violin playing, whereas a railway official (not Geminiani) cared a lot about traffic on railway tracks. This is the analogy, which you obviously didn't understand.

Quote from: Florestan
Be it as it might, we've had this discussion before and I'm not going to revive it again. Let's just agree to disagree and RIP Richard Taruskin.

Agree. My intention was just to point out how hopelessly banal and outdated Taruskins ideas about HIP are. For some reason, I'm not particularly keen on reading the corresponding parts of his music history. Let him rest in peace.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 03, 2022, 05:29:45 AM
To get a cheap laugh - or what?

No, to understand that Hurwitz, like Taruskin, actually really likes a lot of period performers and can explain pretty articulately why other ones annoy the hell out of him for their incorrect reasoning about what music used to sound like.

In fact you seem to be using this thread to perpetuate the stuff about vibrato that particularly annoys him, even as people point out that you don't talk about vibrato if no-one is using it.

https://youtu.be/2oULPBv2vIY

I think the HIP argument exists outside the vibrato thing too. Probably the best evidence of our own contemporary taste affecting the HIP movement is the extreme dynamic swings associated with it - the performers' willingness to swerve between very loud and very quiet, to make dissonances and contrasts more jarring, to highlight differences between sections of music.

Personally I like this! Of course, it has influenced my taste and the movement has been influenced by the tastes of people like me. But it is clearly also a rebellion against some of the artists prevalent in the 50s-60s (like Böhm and Giulini and Karajan) who emphasized steadiness, long line, whole work structure, or in Herbie's case orchestral homogeneity.

I know an older music critic and organist whose primary complaint about today's orchestras, string quartets, and organists is that they play too loud.  ;D

Quote from: Brian on July 03, 2022, 01:43:22 PM
the performers' willingness to swerve between very loud and very quiet, to make dissonances and contrasts more jarring, to highlight differences between sections of music.

I really think that is to adjust to the modern ear.  What sounded jarring or dissonant in Bach's time sounds pleasant to our ears.  So when those composers specifically wrote something to sound unpleasant, the modern listener doesn't hear it and then the effect is lost.

Quote from: DavidW on July 03, 2022, 03:02:37 PM
I really think that is to adjust to the modern ear.  What sounded jarring or dissonant in Bach's time sounds pleasant to our ears.  So when those composers specifically wrote something to sound unpleasant, the modern listener doesn't hear it and then the effect is lost.

Yeah! Manfred Honeck confesses to this in the notes to his Beethoven Eroica. In the first movement climax that listeners then found so disturbing and dissonant, he adds a new dissonance of his own composition. The idea is to replicate the subjective listening experience of that first premiere, rather than the objective sound of it. I find that really fascinating.

Quote from: Florestan on July 03, 2022, 11:32:23 AM
That sounds like the death sentence for hardcore HIP.  ;D

I just wish the hardcore HIPsters -- and they are out there -- would come to the realization that their favorite is just another approach, no more truly "authentic" than those dismissed as "forerunners of HIP" or outright condemned as "uninformed". Personally I value beauty of sound over musicological correctness any day, and of course that's a subjective determination on my part.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 03:12:56 PM
I just wish the hardcore HIPsters -- and they are out there -- would come to the realization that their favorite is just another approach, no more truly "authentic" than those dismissed as "forerunners of HIP" or outright condemned as "uninformed". Personally I value beauty of sound over musicological correctness any day, and of course that's a subjective determination on my part.

If you watch the video I linked to, you will see that Hurwitz' chief complaint is that there's no reason to believe people in olden days liked their music to sound ugly.

And consequently, trying to make the music sound uglier to modern ears does not mean it's more historically accurate.

Quote from: Madiel on July 03, 2022, 03:28:15 PM
If you watch the video I linked to, you will see that Hurwitz' chief complaint is that there's no reason to believe people in olden days liked their music to sound ugly.

And consequently, trying to make the music sound uglier to modern ears does not mean it's more historically accurate.

That's the main thing that puzzles me about HIP. Maybe Bach wasn't all that happy at having his music played by a wheezy string quintet. I think there's evidence that he did want female singers to perform in his works but was stymied by church tradition. I don't see any particular virtue in imposing limitations that Bach himself may have hated.

And I cannot cannot CANNOT stand to hear a countertenor. Sorry.

Quote from: Madiel on July 03, 2022, 03:28:15 PM
If you watch the video I linked to, you will see that Hurwitz' chief complaint is that there's no reason to believe people in olden days liked their music to sound ugly.

And consequently, trying to make the music sound uglier to modern ears does not mean it's more historically accurate.

I wonder if there is any documentation or analysis of the movement's early figures reading or reacting to Adorno or the post-WWII pro-"truth" anti-"beauty" aesthetic.

Quote from: Brian on July 03, 2022, 03:08:33 PM
Yeah! Manfred Honeck confesses to this in the notes to his Beethoven Eroica. In the first movement climax that listeners then found so disturbing and dissonant, he adds a new dissonance of his own composition. The idea is to replicate the subjective listening experience of that first premiere, rather than the objective sound of it. I find that really fascinating.

That is interesting, I will have to listen to that recording!

btw Bach used dissonance in some of his cantatas to express death.  That doesn't make him Richard Strauss, these are not tone poems.  But it does illustrate writing intentionally ugly music.

Quote from: DavidW on July 03, 2022, 04:47:39 PM
btw Bach used dissonance in some of his cantatas to express death.  That doesn't make him Richard Strauss, these are not tone poems.  But it does illustrate writing intentionally ugly music.

A moment of dissonance is hardly what I think of as ugly music. Endless consonances are actually profoundly boring.

Conversely, a major triad will sound ugly if you play it out of tune.

Quote from: Madiel on July 03, 2022, 01:23:19 PM
No, to understand that Hurwitz, like Taruskin, actually really likes a lot of period performers and can explain pretty articulately why other ones annoy the hell out of him for their incorrect reasoning about what music used to sound like.

Generally the more informed musicianship also the more authentic music, but information has got its limits and for the remaining part one has got to rely on more or less qualified guesswork. No one, neither Hurwitz nor a hard core HIP-ster can claim that their guesses possess any higher value of truth.

Quote from: Madiel
In fact you seem to be using this thread to perpetuate the stuff about vibrato that particularly annoys him, even as people point out that you don't talk about vibrato if no-one is using it.

https://youtu.be/2oULPBv2vIY

The question of vibrato was raised by DizzyD, I just answered his post and do not use this thread for any purpose in that context.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 03:33:15 PM
That's the main thing that puzzles me about HIP. Maybe Bach wasn't all that happy at having his music played by a wheezy string quintet. I think there's evidence that he did want female singers to perform in his works but was stymied by church tradition. I don't see any particular virtue in imposing limitations that Bach himself may have hated.

And I cannot cannot CANNOT stand to hear a countertenor. Sorry.

Nor can I. And it is highly questionable if countertenors are authenticated in Bach's music.

Quote from: Brian on July 03, 2022, 01:43:22 PM
I think the HIP argument exists outside the vibrato thing too. Probably the best evidence of our own contemporary taste affecting the HIP movement is the extreme dynamic swings associated with it - the performers' willingness to swerve between very loud and very quiet, to make dissonances and contrasts more jarring, to highlight differences between sections of music.

This is only true of some performers. But we don't know who are doing the right thing.

Quote from: Brian
I know an older music critic and organist whose primary complaint about today's orchestras, string quartets, and organists is that they play too loud.  ;D

Modern instruments play too loud, much louder than period instruments.

Concerning organs Bach valued a loud plenum with gravitas highly.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 04, 2022, 01:28:06 AM
Generally the more informed musicianship also the more authentic music, but information has got its limits and for the remaining part one has got to rely on more or less qualified guesswork. No one, neither Hurwitz nor a hard core HIP-ster can claim that their guesses possess any higher value of truth.

His argument is not about guesses. His argument is looking at the information sources and pointing out how people quote one bit out of context while completely ignoring another bit that wouldn't support what they're doing.

Information certainly does have its limits, but you seem to be presupposing that someone engaged in HIP practice has inevitably properly informed themselves. His argument is that many of them haven't.

Quote from: Madiel on July 04, 2022, 02:10:30 AM
His argument is that many of them haven't.

To make such a claim, and if it is to be credible, one must be among the elite of musicologists in the widest sense and even specialized in the baroque age. Maybe Taruskin was in some respects but Hurwitz hardly is. Therefore, it would be useful with practical examples if one is to convince non-musicologists. Who is it that is not sufficiently informed and what are the exact consequences for selected music examples? In the absence of this it's just an unsubstantiated claim.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 04, 2022, 03:16:30 AM
To make such a claim, and if it is to be credible, one must be among the elite of musicologists in the widest sense and even specialized in the baroque age. Maybe Taruskin was in some respects but Hurwitz hardly is. Therefore, it would be useful with practical examples if one is to convince non-musicologists. Who is it that is not sufficiently informed and what are the exact consequences for selected music examples? In the absence of this it's just an unsubstantiated claim.

What? One just has to read the relevant texts. They're not secret. See also: the Bible, which plenty of Christians have evidently not read large parts of despite its wide availability. I don't have to be an elite theologian to be aware of that (and exactly why I find it at least a plausible proposition that adherents to a position don't automatically inform themselves well about the basis of their position).

Honestly, you could spend an inordinate amount of time knocking over straw men for some reason... or you could have actually watched the video by now.

Or you could have actually listened to a bunch of HIP recordings and realised that they don't all sound the same. Because you keep talking as if they all must by definition be good. They're not, just as all "modern" performances are not identical to each other. By your own argument not all HIP recordings can possibly be made by elite musicologists, and yet now you're asserting that only elite musicologists credibly know the truth. Which really sucks for all the professional musicians who don't make the grade.

Hurwitz will happily give you examples of both great HIP performances and terrible ones. Including in the video I'm now getting sick of referencing. Link provided. Use it.

Though I'll give you one example of my own (which happens to be one of his as well): the Quatour Mosaiques and the London Haydn Quartet both play the Haydn string quartets on period instruments. But they sound nothing like each other at all. The tonal qualities are totally different. They can't BOTH have been talking to the same elite musicologists...

Quote from: Brian on July 03, 2022, 03:08:33 PM
Yeah! Manfred Honeck confesses to this in the notes to his Beethoven Eroica. In the first movement climax that listeners then found so disturbing and dissonant, he adds a new dissonance of his own composition. The idea is to replicate the subjective listening experience of that first premiere, rather than the objective sound of it. I find that really fascinating.

Bjorn Schmelzer discusses a similar idea in his essay on the Machaut mass. I too think it's an interesting line of thought.

Quote from: Brian on July 03, 2022, 01:43:22 PM
I think the HIP argument exists outside the vibrato thing too. Probably the best evidence of our own contemporary taste affecting the HIP movement is the extreme dynamic swings associated with it - the performers' willingness to swerve between very loud and very quiet, to make dissonances and contrasts more jarring, to highlight differences between sections of music.

Personally I like this! Of course, it has influenced my taste and the movement has been influenced by the tastes of people like me. But it is clearly also a rebellion against some of the artists prevalent in the 50s-60s (like Böhm and Giulini and Karajan) who emphasized steadiness, long line, whole work structure, or in Herbie's case orchestral homogeneity.

I know an older music critic and organist whose primary complaint about today's orchestras, string quartets, and organists is that they play too loud.  ;D

I've never noticed this point you make about dynamics! I mean, I do know that sections tend to be more incisively articulated in modern performances  of baroque music, but I hadn't noticed that the practice (which may come from ideas about musical rhetoric in baroque aesthetics) extends beyond the baroque in either direction, and I hadn't noticed the articulation underlined by dynamics.

As far as dissonance goes, that's a harmonic thing obviously and so the only way to make the chords more jarring is to either play different notes (by microtones) or to make the voices in polyphony clash out of step slightly. Harnoncourt, when he was in an uncompromising frame of mind (which wasn't always) experimented with the latter. But his reasons are explicitly NOT HIP (He's explicit about it in The Musical Dialogue) His reasons were to do with wanting to catch the attention of his audience, wanting to make his music sound really important and exciting to hear to modern people just as it did to Baroque audiences. I don't know anyone else who seriously experimented with these ideas, apart from Rübsam recently in the lute harpsichord recordings.

As you can see, there's similar thinking in Harnoncourt and Schmelzer, and you say Honeck - thanks for raising the issues, which has helped me get some thoughts together.

Quote from: Madiel on July 04, 2022, 03:24:33 AM
What? One just has to read the relevant texts. They're not secret. See also: the Bible, which plenty of Christians have evidently not read large parts of despite its wide availability. I don't have to be an elite theologian to be aware of that (and exactly why I find it at least a plausible proposition that adherents to a position don't automatically inform themselves well about the basis of their position).

Honestly, you could spend an inordinate amount of time knocking over straw men for some reason... or you could have actually watched the video by now.

Or you could have actually listened to a bunch of HIP recordings and realised that they don't all sound the same. Because you keep talking as if they all must by definition be good. They're not, just as all "modern" performances are not identical to each other. By your own argument not all HIP recordings can possibly be made by elite musicologists, and yet now you're asserting that only elite musicologists credibly know the truth. Which really sucks for all the professional musicians who don't make the grade.

Hurwitz will happily give you examples of both great HIP performances and terrible ones. Including in the video I'm now getting sick of referencing. Link provided. Use it.

Though I'll give you one example of my own (which happens to be one of his as well): the Quatour Mosaiques and the London Haydn Quartet both play the Haydn string quartets on period instruments. But they sound nothing like each other at all. The tonal qualities are totally different. They can't BOTH have been talking to the same elite musicologists...

The discussion is from my point of view about the musician's degree of information, not about the artistic quality. Don't confuse these concepts. Whatever the musician is well-informed or not, he has (in the way they had in Bach's age) a large degree of artistic freedom (cf. no two performances are alike), and this freedom is the crucial point as to whether a performance is good or not. And a strict adherence to the known parts of baroque performance practice doesn't guarantee a memorable performance. My experience is even that both well-informed musicians and less well-informed musicians most often create worthwhile performances, however different they may be, except in the cases where the musician at will indulges in an irrelevant musical style (compare the recordings of Bach's cello suites made in romantic Russian style by the three cellists I mentioned above, Maisky, Rostropovich and Shafran).

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 04, 2022, 04:24:34 AM
The discussion is from my point of view about the musician's degree of information, not about the artistic quality. Don't confuse these concepts. Whatever the musician is well-informed or not, he has (in the way they had in Bach's age) a large degree of artistic freedom (cf. no two performances are alike), and this freedom is the crucial point as to whether a performance is good or not. And a strict adherence to the known parts of baroque performance practice doesn't guarantee a memorable performance. My experience is even that both well-informed musicians and less well-informed musicians most often create worthwhile performances, however different they may be, except in the cases where the musician at will indulges in an irrelevant musical style (compare the recordings of Bach's cello suites made in romantic Russian style by the three cellists I mentioned above, Maisky, Rostropovich and Shafran).

Talk to the video.

Or maybe just not spend your time treating Taruskin as quaint. Which is how this started.

Goodnight.

Quote from: Madiel on July 04, 2022, 04:27:17 AM
Talk to the video.

Or maybe just not spend your time treating Taruskin as quaint. Which is how this started.

Goodnight.

The video isn't interactive I suppose. But since you insist I'm going to overcome my aversion to Hurwitz and see the video.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 04, 2022, 01:28:06 AM
Generally the more informed musicianship also the more authentic music, but information has got its limits and for the remaining part one has got to rely on more or less qualified guesswork. No one, neither Hurwitz nor a hard core HIP-ster can claim that their guesses possess any higher value of truth.

QFT

Quote from: Madiel on July 04, 2022, 03:24:33 AM
Hurwitz will happily give you examples of both great HIP performances and terrible ones. Including in the video I'm now getting sick of referencing. Link provided. Use it.

Having seen the video I'm a bit disappointed. In the beginning lots of words with essentially no more information than what you have written on the last two pages of this thread. And then he takes ten (in his opinion great performances - I agree about the ones I know) and talks a lot about them - but there are no sounding examples and no detailled argumentation. I had nourished the hope that he was going to talk about some terrible performances and tell why they are terrible. This would be more relevant to his topic and the discussion above.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 04, 2022, 03:16:30 AM
To make such a claim, and if it is to be credible, one must be among the elite of musicologists in the widest sense and even specialized in the baroque age. Maybe Taruskin was in some respects but Hurwitz hardly is. Therefore, it would be useful with practical examples if one is to convince non-musicologists. Who is it that is not sufficiently informed and what are the exact consequences for selected music examples? In the absence of this it's just an unsubstantiated claim.

I think that even those who enjoy Hurwitz would concede that his emphasis is on monetizing his opinions.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 04, 2022, 05:27:52 AM
I think that even those who enjoy Hurwitz would concede that his emphasis is on monetizing his opinions.

Yes, despite how original he seems to be, he is certainly not alone in this respect.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 03, 2022, 03:33:15 PM
That's the main thing that puzzles me about HIP. Maybe Bach wasn't all that happy at having his music played by a wheezy string quintet. I think there's evidence that he did want female singers to perform in his works but was stymied by church tradition. I don't see any particular virtue in imposing limitations that Bach himself may have hated.

He wasn't stymied by church tradition. He got Anna Magdalena to sing three arias in the Matthew Passion, and according to Parrott (Composer's Intentions?) it was not uncommon to use female singers to sing in church in Coethen.

What may well be the case though is that in some contexts he preferred a boy's voice -- because boys' voices tend to be more delicate and sweeter.

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2022, 05:43:19 AM
He wasn't stymied by church tradition. He got Anna Magdalena to sing three arias in the Matthew Passion, and according to Parrott (Composer's Intentions?) it was not uncommon to use female singers to sing in church in Coethen.

What may well be the case though is that in some contexts he preferred a boy's voice -- because boys voices tend to be more delicate and sweeter.

Good points.

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2022, 03:48:24 AM
I've never noticed this point you make about dynamics! I mean, I do know that sections tend to be more incisively articulated in modern performances  of baroque music, but I hadn't noticed that the practice (which may come from ideas about musical rhetoric in baroque aesthetics) extends beyond the baroque in either direction, and I hadn't noticed the articulation underlined by dynamics.

As far as dissonance goes, that's a harmonic thing obviously and so the only way to make the chords more jarring is to either play different notes (by microtones) or to make the voices in polyphony clash slightly. Harnoncourt, when he was in an uncompromising frame of mind (which wasn't always) experimented with the latter. But his reasons are explicitly NOT HIP (He's explicit about it in The Musical Dialogue) His reasons were to do with wanting to catch the attention of his audience, wanting to make his music sound really important and exciting to hear to modern people just as it did to Baroque audiences. I don't know anyone else who seriously experimented with these ideas, apart from Rübsam recently in the lute harpsichord recordings.

As you can see, there's similar thinking in Harnoncourt and Schmelzer, and you say Honeck - thanks for raising the issues, which has helped me get some thoughts together.

That was interesting what you said about Harnoncourt.  I've only heard Rubsam in some of the organ works, but he is an interesting and thoughtful performer.  I'll have to check out some of his work on the lute harpsichord.

Even if you don't care for period style performances, you have to admit that these musicians have pioneered recording and performing a great deal of baroque era music previously unexplored.  That is I think especially important when so many modern orchestras stick to recording Mahler and Beethoven repeatedly and pianists stick to Bach and Beethoven.

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2022, 05:43:19 AM
He wasn't stymied by church tradition. He got Anna Magdalena to sing three arias in the Matthew Passion, and according to Parrott (Composer's Intentions?) it was not uncommon to use female singers to sing in church in Coethen.
...

Do you have any other references for that? Bach's main concern in Köthen was secular instrumental music.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 04, 2022, 06:49:26 AM
Do you have any other references for that? Bach's main concern in Köthen was secular instrumental music.

Yes, it's in Parrott's  Composers Intentions? page 359. He cites stuff in support, a journal article. The point about boys' voices being perceived as more delicate is a bit cheeky of me - but there are references in Parrott's book to that being precisely what some people felt about some renditions of Purcell's music in the 17th century : they thought boys' voices were better than women's in some contexts because women's voices were too loud and theatrical.

I bought Partott's book a few years ago when an academic said to me in conversation that it was a good summary of the state of play on this subject - but I'm not a scholar myself and so really can't vouch for his accuracy.

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2022, 07:43:56 AM
Yes, it's in Parrot's Composers Intentions? page 359. He cites stuff in support, a journal article. The point about boys' voices being perceived as more delicate is a bit cheeky of me - but there are references in Parrott's book to that being precisely what some people felt about some renditions of Purcell's music in the 17th century : they thought boys' voices were better than women's in some contexts because women's voices were too loud and theatrical.

Was there back then in Bach's time anything resembling a professional choir whose contractual, paid duty was for all its members to sing every Sunday in the church or else face penalties? Or was it rather a matter of "do what you can with whomever you can" and different Sundays had very variable choir geometry? I don't have the answer, I'm just asking.

Quote from: Florestan on July 04, 2022, 07:50:04 AM
Was there back then in Bach's time anything resembling a professional choir whose contractual, paid duty was for all its members to sing every Sunday in the church or else face penalties? Or was it rather a matter of "do what you can with whomever you can" and different Sundays had very variable choir geometry? I don't have the answer, I'm just asking.

I'm pretty sure the answer is yes and no, and here and there, and maybe and maybe not, but give me a bit of time and I will peruse the book. I remember for sure that there were such choirs earlier - Dufay and such like - but Bach is a bit late for me (or early, depending on how I'm feeling) so I haven't retained anything I may or may not have read.

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2022, 07:52:03 AM
I'm pretty sure the answer is yes and no, and here and there, and maybe and maybe not, but give me a bit of time and I will peruse the book. I remember for sure that there were such choirs earlier - Dufay and such like - but Bach is a bit late for me (or early, depending on how I'm feeling) so I haven't retained anything I may or may not have read.

Take all the time you need, my friend.

By the way, a lot of Parrott discussion is about the singers in the music Bach wrote for Prince Leopold's funeral, and I've just seen that Parrott made a recording of it with women, I'll check it out some time hopefully. It looks interesting partly because it's all so speculative.


https://www.avie-records.com/releases/trauer-music-for-prince-leopold/

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2022, 07:43:56 AM
Yes, it's in Parrott's  Composers Intentions? page 359. He cites stuff in support, a journal article. The point about boys' voices being perceived as more delicate is a bit cheeky of me - but there are references in Parrott's book to that being precisely what some people felt about some renditions of Purcell's music in the 17th century : they thought boys' voices were better than women's in some contexts because women's voices were too loud and theatrical.

I bought Partott's book a few years ago when an academic said to me in conversation that it was a good summary of the state of play on this subject - but I'm not a scholar myself and so really can't vouch for his accuracy.

Yes I understand the comment about boys' voices was your impression, and it sounds reasonable. I was referring more to things like Anna Magdalena Bach singing in the Passion music in church in Leipzig. I had never heard of that happening. Then again I'm not an expert.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 04, 2022, 08:56:15 AM
Yes I understand the comment about boys' voices was your impression, and it sounds reasonable. I was referring more to things like Anna Magdalena Bach singing in the Passion music in church in Leipzig. I had never heard of that happening. Then again I'm not an expert.

Parrott's reconstruction of Bach's music for Leopold's Funeral contains three arias taken from the Matthew Passion, which he argues were sung by Anna Magdalena . I think the passion had only received a single performance in Leipzig and I don't know who sang.

Quote from: Madiel on July 04, 2022, 03:24:33 AM
What? One just has to read the relevant texts. They're not secret.

I read Taruskin's "Text and Act" some years ago, particularly to get to know his view on HIP. His implied polemical style I found tiresome and his main ideas not strikingly original, but they were presented as if they were. My impression of his efforts stems largely from then.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 04, 2022, 10:21:11 AM
I read Taruskin's "Text and Act" some years ago, particularly to get to know his view on HIP. His implied polemical style I found tiresome and his main ideas not strikingly original, but they were presented as if they were. My impression of his efforts stems largely from then.

Most interesting, thanks!

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2022, 10:07:27 AM
Parrott's reconstruction of Bach's music for Leopold's Funeral contains three arias taken from the Matthew Passion, which he argues were sung by Anna Magdalena . I think the passion had only received a single performance in Leipzig and I don't know who sang.

I don't quite get his argument, since he as "proof" merely refers to hard-to-reach books and articles by secondary authors without quoting the text from the primary sources..

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 04, 2022, 10:46:38 AM
Most interesting, thanks!

But this is a subjective impression which maybe tells more about me than about Taruskin. Maybe a different sense of humour.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 04, 2022, 10:54:33 AM
But this is a subjective impression which maybe tells more about me than about Taruskin. Maybe a different sense of humour.

Perhaps. I've enjoyed all of the Taruskin I've read, but none of it bore upon "ancient music"

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 04, 2022, 10:49:18 AM
I don't quite get his argument, since he as "proof" merely refers to hard-to-reach books and articles by secondary authors without quoting the text from the primary sources..

Yes maybe there's someone with access to a university library who can let us see Samantha Owens, "Professional women musicians in early eighteenth-century Württemberg." Music & Letters 82 (1) 32-50 (2001)

https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/82/1/32/1115504?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2022, 11:31:25 AM
Yes maybe there's someone with access to a university library who can let us see Samantha Owens, "Professional women musicians in early eighteenth-century Württemberg." Music & Letters 82 (1) 32-50 (2001)

https://academic.oup.com/ml/article-abstract/82/1/32/1115504?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Yeah but the point was whether or not women sang in Leipzig churches during Bach's tenure. My understanding (maybe incorrect) is that they didn't.

Here's Samantha Owens' paper (which I haven't read)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jIaYop42gGTo6DotAQLyY2UYyAhsFL_x/view?usp=sharing

Quote from: DizzyD on July 04, 2022, 11:50:39 AM
Yeah but the point was whether or not women sang in Leipzig churches during Bach's tenure. My understanding (maybe incorrect) is that they didn't.

As far as I can see women did not sing in Leipzig.

Quote from: Mandryka on July 04, 2022, 12:09:30 PM
Here's Samantha Owens' paper (which I haven't read)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jIaYop42gGTo6DotAQLyY2UYyAhsFL_x/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for the effort in posting that paper. That looks like an interesting read.

Either Bach's music is universally valid, in which case it doesn't matter whether it's played on the harpsichord or on the piano --- or it's heavily dependent on the instrument, in which case it's not universally valid. Pick your choice.

Quote from: Florestan on July 04, 2022, 12:25:05 PM
Either Bach's music is universally valid, in which case it doesn't matter whether it's played on the harpsichord or on the piano --- or it's heavily dependent on the instrument, in which case it's not universally valid. Pick your choice.

I think that's a false choice. There are degrees to which "it doesn't matter", and "heavily dependent on" is sketchy. It's possible to say it's universally valid while still preferring to hear the music on a harpsichord or a Baroque cello etc. Is Bach played by an orchestra of 30 Fender Stratocasters "valid"?

Quote from: DizzyD on July 04, 2022, 12:28:28 PM
I think that's a false choice. There are degrees to which "it doesn't matter", and "heavily dependent on" is sketchy. It's possible to say it's universally valid while still preferring to hear the music on a harpsichord or a Baroque cello etc.

Why, of cpurse! It's all a matter of preference. But it's exactly the "preference" that the hardcore HIP brigade will not allow. I mean, if one likes Maisky''s performance of Bach's Cello Suites one is certainly likely to be censured --- on no other ground that either a rigid ideological commitment to HIP or on the basis that "I don't like it".

Quote from: Florestan on July 04, 2022, 12:36:20 PM
Why, of cpurse! It's all a matter of preference. But it's exactly the "preference" that the hardcore HIP brigade will not allow. I mean, if one likes Maisky''s performance of Bach's Cello Suites one is certainly likely to be censured --- on no other ground that either a rigid ideological commitment to HIP or on the basis that "I don't like it".

Yeah I get frustrated with attitudes like that too BUT people are free to prefer what they want. Some people may actually prefer Bylsma or Wispelwey to Fournier or Starker. I think the pendulum will eventually swing away from HIP rigidity.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 04, 2022, 12:42:57 PM
people are free to prefer what they want.

Exactly, HIP be damned.  ;D

Quote from: DizzyD on July 04, 2022, 12:42:57 PM
I think the pendulum will eventually swing away from HIP rigidity.

I would like that.  I rarely hear baroque era music live anymore because I think that it is presumed that MI can't play them.  We have room for both.

Quote from: Florestan on July 04, 2022, 12:55:36 PM
Exactly, HIP be damned.  ;D

Well there are some HIP recordings that I love, Suzuki's for example, but overall what HIP tends to show me is why instruments evolved the way they did. There's a reason.  ;D I prefer modern instrument recordings like Richter's and Rilling's...and give me Britten's interpretation of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas ANY day. I couldn't care less if it's "inauthentic".

Taruskin was spot on; the HIP movement and ideology is a typical product of the 20th century which has got little, if any, to do with the 17th or 18th centuries. It is an entirely modernist concept.

Quote from: DavidW on July 04, 2022, 12:55:45 PM
I would like that.  I rarely hear baroque era music live anymore because I think that it is presumed that MI can't play them.  We have room for both.

Actually it would be cool to hear more interventionist modern arrangements for full orchestra of baroque pieces. Since it is not the original instrumentation anyway, why not have fun? Like Berio's Boccherini study.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 04, 2022, 05:27:15 AM
Having seen the video I'm a bit disappointed. In the beginning lots of words with essentially no more information than what you have written on the last two pages of this thread. And then he takes ten (in his opinion great performances - I agree about the ones I know) and talks a lot about them - but there are no sounding examples and no detailled argumentation. I had nourished the hope that he was going to talk about some terrible performances and tell why they are terrible. This would be more relevant to his topic and the discussion above.

Among the things you were supposed to get out of it is that he has academic qualifications. Do you deny this? Having characterised him as knowing nothing at all.

You were also supposed to ask yourself why people bother to invent or adopt a new form of instrument if they're perfectly happy with how the old one works.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 04, 2022, 10:21:11 AM
I read Taruskin's "Text and Act" some years ago, particularly to get to know his view on HIP. His implied polemical style I found tiresome and his main ideas not strikingly original, but they were presented as if they were. My impression of his efforts stems largely from then.

. The relevant texts are not Taruskin. The relevant texts are the ones from past centuries that HIP folk invoke.

Quote from: Florestan on July 04, 2022, 01:02:22 PM
Taruskin was spot on; the HIP movement and ideology is a typical product of the 20th century which has got little, if any, to do with the 17th or 18th centuries. It is an entirely modernist concept.

It's something that cuts across a lot of art and culture, I think - a preoccupation with "authenticity". A concept that I always tend to be a bit skeptical of, to be fair.

Quote from: Florestan on July 04, 2022, 01:02:22 PM
Taruskin was spot on; the HIP movement and ideology is a typical product of the 20th century which has got little, if any, to do with the 17th or 18th centuries. It is an entirely modernist concept.

What do you think follows from this, assuming it's true?

(By the way, it isn't entirely true, the Solesmes palaeographical project for recreating authentic forms of church chant was supposed to be historically informed.)

Quote from: Brian on July 04, 2022, 01:18:06 PM
Actually it would be cool to hear more interventionist modern arrangements for full orchestra of baroque pieces. Since it is not the original instrumentation anyway, why not have fun? Like Berio's Boccherini study.

Fully agreed!  And these great composers are fading from memory of concert goers due to neglect.

Quote from: Madiel on July 04, 2022, 02:02:07 PM
Among the things you were supposed to get out of it is that he has academic qualifications. Do you deny this? Having characterised him as knowing nothing at all.

I'm not able from that Youtube movie to judge his academic qualifications. He might as well be an experienced music-lover who - like me - has developed his own musical taste.                 

Quote from: Madiel
You were also supposed to ask yourself why people bother to invent or adopt a new form of instrument if they're perfectly happy with how the old one works.

This is because the musical fashion is changing and creates a need for new instruments. But we are all different in our tastes, and when one - like me - is most fascinated by early music and fully satisfied with the instruments relevant to its performance, one doesn't see any need for new instruments - to exaggerate the point a bit. For example, I would be reasonably happy if modern electronic instruments had never been invented.

I still miss from Hurwitz some examples of horrible performances and a qualified explanation of why they are horrible, which means explanation based on examples from period treatises.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 04, 2022, 12:24:34 PM
Thanks for the effort in posting that paper. That looks like an interesting read.

+1

Quote from: Florestan on July 04, 2022, 12:36:20 PM
Why, of cpurse! It's all a matter of preference. But it's exactly the "preference" that the hardcore HIP brigade will not allow. I mean, if one likes Maisky''s performance of Bach's Cello Suites one is certainly likely to be censured --- on no other ground that either a rigid ideological commitment to HIP or on the basis that "I don't like it".

You are free to listen as much to Maisky's Bach as you want, and I'm free not to listen to him, that's the important thing for me. However I'm also free to express my opinion of him, in the same way you are free to express your opinion of informed interpreters.

Quote from: Madiel on July 04, 2022, 02:03:44 PM
. The relevant texts are not Taruskin. The relevant texts are the ones from past centuries that HIP folk invoke.

I am not musicologist. I have not been around in Europe and studied the relevant  texts in situ. I owe musicologists my information. This is why Taruskin's argumentation should have been much more specific, drawing upon examples from period treatises. Otherwise his efforts are just useless generalisations or - what I unfortunately might think - a hateful attempt to downplay the HIP movement.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 05, 2022, 07:47:51 AM
You are free to listen as much to Maisky's Bach as you want, and I'm free not to listen to him, that's the important thing for me. However I'm also free to express my opinion of him, in the same way you are free to express your opinion of informed interpreters.

Absolutely. Maisky's not one of my very favorites, but I like his playing in isolated movements of the Bach suites. I also like Bylsma and other historically-informed performances. It's not either/or.

Yesterday and today, a friend and fellow composer shared these thoughts via Facebook:

Last week we lost one of America's most prominent musicologists in Richard Taruskin. There is no doubt that he drew a lot of controversy over many subjects and his views on many composers. I remember my one and only meeting with him back in 1995 at a conference that combined the American Musicological Society, Center for Black Music Research and the Society for Music Theory, and I talked to him about his criticism of Prokofiev's score for Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, which he faulted primarily for its political aspects (Stalin's shadow, more or less) which hindered its musical language.

I, in turn, mentioned that this score was one of Bernard Herrmann's favorite scores and, in fact, he considered it the finest film score ever composed, seconded by Karol Rathaus' score for an earlier film adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov. Taruskin was quite startled about Herrmann's adoration of the Prokofiev score and asked me how he came to this conclusion. My only response to him was that he most likely enjoyed it to the point where he paid homage to it by composing his score for "The Egyptian" (which, for those that are unfamiliar with this film, he wound up co-composing with Alfred Newman when the release date was moved up and Herrmann could not finish the score in time). Taruskin then acknowledged to me about Herrmann's residence in the UK in the last years of his life and thanked me for sharing my take on the matter.

I'm sure if Herrmann had lived long enough to read Taruskin's article in The New York Times about Prokofiev's score, you can bet that he would have offered a firm and potent rebuttal. Whether Taruskin would have been impressed or not will remain a mystery, but I can say that in our discussion I can say he was intrigued, but still bewildered how a major composer could like a score that he dismissed.

Nonetheless, Taruskin's writings will continue to intrigue many musicologists of the present day, as well as generations to come. He will be mourned by those who revered him greatly.

=======

In doing a quick run-through of the indexes of the fourth and fifth volumes of Richard Taruskin's five-volume* The Oxford History of Western Music, I noticed a number of glaring omissions and barely mentioned composers, some of them totally contemptible. Among them are...

- The fact that he ONLY mentions the Adagio from Mahler's tenth symphony. NOT once does he discuss the remainder of the draft, nor mentions Deryck Cooke's involvement with it (I don't expect him to name any other musicologists or conductors who have prepared their own editions), a cardinal sin in my book;

- That he only mentions Bernard Herrmann only once, and this is in reference to Hitchcock's Spellbound which was scored by Miklos Rozsa (In fact, this is the only time that Rozsa is mentioned as well). NOT ONCE does he mention Herrmann's involvement with the music of Charles Ives, another egregious error on his part. I'm sure he knew of it, but again pegs Herrmann as a film composer {said with a snobbish sneer} and not as a major force in American concert music in the 20th century.

That said, he mentions Max Steiner in passing (his technique of scoring), no mention of iconoclasts like Alex North, David Raksin and Leonard Rosenman, or other innovators such as Henry Mancini, Jerry Goldsmith and John Williams, but he does devote a good deal of space to Erich Wolfgang Korngold. It is obvious that the man has no real love for film scores unless they come from the likes of Copland, Walton, Vaughan Williams and Glass.

- NO MENTION OF ANY BLACK COMPOSERS! Not even Scott Joplin, Nathaniel Dett, William Grant Still, Ulysses Kay, Anthony Davis, David Baker, or even "Duke" Ellington, John Coltrane and Anthony Braxton, but he does mention Miles Davis by way of two of his albums, namely "Bitches Brew" (which is excellent) and "In a Silent Way" (also excellent). I don't know if he mentions Samuel Coleridge-Taylor in the 19th Century portion of the series, but I won't be surprised if he doesn't.

To be honest, his neglect of Jazz is abominable. You would think he would mention how this chapter of African-American music would play a significant role in influencing classical music of the last century in many ways, but I guess he decided that it's best left to jazz musicologists. Sorry, but if I had read this book while he was alive, I would have given him an eyeful with a letter. I'm sure some folks have criticized him for this, but he probably didn't give a rat's rear.

And there are other iconoclasts of the last century that are omitted including, but not limited to, Sorabji, Vermeulen, Pettersson, Oliveros, Takemitsu, Gloria Coates, Sondheim and if I omitted some names and you looked at his series, please let me know!

The bottom line is this: I agree that you can't put everyone in a book, even one this vast. Sooner or later, the writer and/or their editor will have to make it as taut and cogent as possible, but there are some folks he mentions that are also in passing that I wouldn't have put in the book, but...

Flawed? I think so. Perhaps someone else will come along with another series, and this time put some of the composers he omitted, but then you'll find other omissions and folks will scream about those as well. You can't please everyone, but I'm sure that Taruskin didn't please a whole lot of people.

============

And a friend of the friend writes: When I think of Taruskin I always think of this brilliant put down by Charles Rosen "Taruskin writes brilliantly and at the top of his voice, and his most crushing arguments are often reserved for opinions that no one really holds. He asserts: "To presume that the use of historical instruments guarantees a historical result is simply preposterous." No doubt. Still, Taruskin beats his dead horses with infectious enthusiasm, and some of them have occasional twitches of life."

Quote
The bottom line is this: I agree that you can't put everyone in a book, even one this vast. Sooner or later, the writer and/or their editor will have to make it as taut and cogent as possible, but there are some folks he mentions that are also in passing that I wouldn't have put in the book, but...

True enough, but in a book or rather multi-volume work with the expansive title of History of Western Music you can't omit that much.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 05, 2022, 07:38:21 AM
I'm not able from that Youtube movie to judge his academic qualifications. He might as well be an experienced music-lover who - like me - has developed his own musical taste.                 

Right, so when he specifically mentions his 2 degrees in history, you're calling him a liar.

You keep obsessing over musicologists. His point, which you apparently completely missed, is that a lot of musicologists make lousy HISTORIANS.

Quote from: Madiel on July 05, 2022, 01:53:59 PM
Right, so when he specifically mentions his 2 degrees in history, you're calling him a liar.

He very, very, VERY clearly did not call anyone a liar. "I am not able to judge" is exactly the opposite of such a determination.

What I took Premont to mean was not, "I question whether his academic qualifications are real," but "I am unable to judge the quality of the education received." Which surely is completely true and fair. And, as you said, a little bit beside the point.

Quote from: Madiel on July 05, 2022, 01:53:59 PM
Right, so when he specifically mentions his 2 degrees in history, you're calling him a liar.

You keep obsessing over musicologists. His point, which you apparently completely missed, is that a lot of musicologists make lousy HISTORIANS.

Well, I thought this was a question of his [Hurwitz's] musicological qualifications, and I still can't judge these from the video. Forgive me for writing academic qualifications above instead of musicological qualifications, which was what I meant.

I respect his degrees in history, according to Wiki he has two degrees in modern European history, and I find it a bit unclear if these per se makes him a musicologist with special knowledge about early music.

Quote from: k a rl h e nn i ng on July 05, 2022, 10:23:00 AM
He [Taruskin] asserts: "To presume that the use of historical instruments guarantees a historical result is simply preposterous."

Certainly a straw man if there ever was one.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 05, 2022, 03:29:30 PM
Certainly a straw man if there ever was one.

Indeed.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 05, 2022, 03:12:00 PM
Well, I thought this was a question of his [Hurwitz's] musicological qualifications, and I still can't judge these from the video. Forgive me for writing academic qualifications above instead of musicological qualifications, which was what I meant.

I respect his degrees in history, according to Wiki he has two degrees in modern European history, and I find it a bit unclear if these per se makes him a musicologist with special knowledge about early music.

I'm not suggesting it makes him a musicologist. I'm suggesting it makes him qualified to comment on the historical abilities of musicologists.

It's called historically informed performance, not musicologically informed performance. You keep talking as if musicologists own the field of looking at historical documents.

Quote from: Madiel on July 05, 2022, 04:30:09 PM
...
It's called historically informed performance, not musicologically informed performance. You keep talking as if musicologists own the field of looking at historical documents.

Isn't that pretty much the same thing though? I don't know if I would trust James McPherson or David McCullough very much to determine how Rameau should be played in an historically "accurate" way. We're taking about musical history.

Quote from: DizzyD on July 05, 2022, 05:03:09 PM
Isn't that pretty much the same thing though? I don't know if I would trust James McPherson or David McCullough very much to determine how Rameau should be played in an historically "accurate" way. We're taking about musical history.

Indeed we are talking about musical history, but the point is a historian with an interest in music is amply qualified to critique the techniques being used by musicologists on historical documents. Documents about music are not in some special category such that historians' techniques for dealing with documents become irrelevant.

I don't particularly know whether Hurwitz is entirely right in his criticisms, but he's qualified. He's not "just a music reviewer", he's a historian, and he might well know more about how to approach and analyse a historical document than someone whose starting point is music rather than history.

It's even an interesting point as to whether we are talking about musical history rather than historical music.

Quote from: Madiel on July 05, 2022, 04:30:09 PM
I'm not suggesting it makes him a musicologist. I'm suggesting it makes him qualified to comment on the historical abilities of musicologists.

It's called historically informed performance, not musicologically informed performance. You keep talking as if musicologists own the field of looking at historical documents.

As I said, I am not a musicologist, but I agree that some musicians, who are probably not trained musicologists, sometimes come up with some musical solutions that may seem far-fetched. Often, however, the results are both interesting and rewarding. OVPP eg. opens up the possibility of a whole new experience of Bach's cantatas, no matter how unlikely the thought is, which, incidentally, I do not see myself able to assess. But that Hurwitz without a specific musicological background should be able to credibly critizise today's leading musicologists, I strongly doubt. How much can you trust a historian specializing in the recent history of Japan if he begins to criticize the theories of classical philologists about the ancient Greek theater? Shouldn't he have a thorough philological and linguistic background to be able to do this?

And I have to repeat a question because you are constantly shying away from it. What exactly is Hurwitz criticizing and with which specific musicological arguments? Who are the musicians doing horrible performances, and why are they horrible?

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 06, 2022, 02:53:55 AM
And I have to repeat a question because you are constantly shying away from it. What exactly is Hurwitz criticizing and with which specific musicological arguments? Who are the musicians doing horrible performances, and why are they horrible?

And maybe this is not a repeat, but that was not the point of showing you the video. If you want to know this, go look through his other videos, and read his academic articles. But his chief bugbear did come up in that video, a lack of vibrato in string playing.

I can tell you that when it comes to Haydn's string quartets, he admires both Mosaiques and Festetics and hates the London Haydn Quartet. The LHQ avoids vibrato, has stodgy, slow tempos and intonation problems.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 06, 2022, 02:53:55 AM
But that Hurwitz without a specific musicological background should be able to credibly critizise today's leading musicologists, I strongly doubt.

And there you go again, creating a closed shop which no-one outside of the shop is allowed to question. Though apparently idolising them constantly is permissible.

Quote from: Madiel on July 06, 2022, 03:31:21 AM
And maybe this is not a repeat, but that was not the point of showing you the video. If you want to know this, go look through his other videos, and read his academic articles. But his chief bugbear did come up in that video, a lack of vibrato in string playing.

As far as I understand from the title, his book about vibrato deals with the period from 1800 and forth. This irrelevant to the baroque era.

Quote from: Madiel on July 06, 2022, 03:32:34 AM
And there you go again, creating a closed shop which no-one outside of the shop is allowed to question. Though apparently idolising them constantly is permissible.

This is how it works: If you are going to critizise the experts in a credible way, you must have similar qualifications yourself.

None-the-less note that I wrote, that I feel some PI musicians are more or less self-studied and not deeply musicologically qualified. But often these musicians base their ideas on practical musical views and not on musicological theories, and the results are often illuminating and well-working. This may be more important than musicological correctness. In these matters taste is the decisive factor.

Quote from: (: premont :) on July 06, 2022, 03:59:52 AM
This is how it works: If you are going to critizise the experts in a credible way, you must have similar qualifications yourself.

The whole notion of cross-disciplinary discussion appears to have eluded you.

For one thing, your proposition makes my own job completely impossible. I am a lawyer and legislative drafter constantly querying whether people with expertise in other areas have or haven't given me correct instructions about the laws they want in order to implement policies. In doing so I regularly query the actual policy and whether it makes sense. Because describing my task as simply being about "law" is terribly inaccurate. It's about the interaction of law with other things.

I have a science degree as well, though I wouldn't for a second claim to be an expert scientist. But some of the very best legislative drafting work I've done has involved discussions about science, informed by what I do know. I'd say the single best project I ever worked on involved a constant back and forth with scientists, where I questioned them and where they questioned me, and in both cases we made changes to what we were saying as a result.

So no, this is not how it works. The proposition one that can only be credible if one has similar qualifications is a recipe for never correcting the short-sightedness of one discipline by bringing the perspective of another discipline to bear. You are advocating silos of knowledge, and there is ample evidence that silos are not good things when it comes to knowledge.

Besides, Taruskin was a musicologist and it seems you're not even happy with a musicologist critiquing other musicologists on this issue.

Quote from: Madiel on July 06, 2022, 04:13:22 AM
The whole notion of cross-disciplinary discussion appears to have eluded you.

I'm talking about the theoretical part of a science. If you want to be taken seriously in these things, you must have the necessary prerequisites.

With regard to law, it is only the examination of legal history and the examination of juridic thinking of earlier times which constitute the theoretical part. The rest is judicial practice, which is a rather inexact science and mostly deals with something as subjective as the wording and interpretation of laws. I understand well why cross-disciplinary discussions are useful here.

Likewise, it is probably clear what is theoretical and what is practical musicology. Taruskin made the mistake of abusing his authority in theoretical musicology to make a number of very subjective claims about the HIP movement, and he did so in an unnecessarily vicious way. In some obituaries it's mentioned that he did similarly concerning a number of other topics, and still you blame me for not respecting him.

Compared to Taruskin Hurwitz may look quite human.

What does "the theoretical part of a science" have to do with historical documents about music?

No, don't bother answering. This is utterly pointless.

It's lovely for you to come onto a thread about someone's passing to talk about how much you don't respect him. Tremendously classy of you.

Quote from: Madiel on July 06, 2022, 06:13:30 AM
What does "the theoretical part of a science" have to do with historical documents about music?

No, don't bother answering. This is utterly pointless.

It's lovely for you to come onto a thread about someone's passing to talk about how much you don't respect him. Tremendously classy of you.

Please calm down. Observe that I don't attack you in my posts, whereas you attack me in almost every of your posts.

The comparing of eg. manuscripts in musicology is part of the theoretical part of it.

When someone dies the obituaries often idealize the deceased person, but others try to describe him as he actually was including plusses and contra's. I dont know if Taruskin has become an angel, but we are not obliged to describe him as one.

When you get as far as suggesting that someone else "may look quite human" in comparison, you have gone WELL beyond what is appropriate in a discussion of a recently deceased person. It's quite frankly disgusting at that point.

Goodnight.

I would like to bring this quote (from a Taruskin obituary by William Robin):

"Following a 1991 broadside by Mr. Taruskin contending that Sergei Prokofiev had composed Stalinist propaganda, one biographer complained of his "sneering antipathy." Mr. Taruskin's response? "I am sorry I did not flatter Prokofiev enough to please his admirers on his birthday, but he is dead. My concern is with the living."

I'm sorry I didn't flatter Taruskin enough to please his admirers, but he is dead. My concern is with the living.