Historically informed performance

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The historically informed performance, period performance, or authentic performance movement is an approach by musicians and scholars to research and perform works of classical music in ways similar to how they may have been performed when they were originally written. The movement had its beginnings in the performance of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music, but subsequently came to incorporate the Classical and even Romantic eras as well. The two methods adopted by historically informed performance artists have been to use period instruments and to utilise treatises and other written evidence to gain insight into performance practice, i.e. stylistic and technical considerations based on how the works were originally played.

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[edit] Historically informed performance compared to traditional musical practice

Most historically informed performance artists advocate the practice as a way of achieving more artistically effective performances of older music. It is felt that the gradual changes in the construction of instruments and in the training of musicians have produced instruments and styles that are optimal for (roughly) mid to late 19th-century music, but not for older work.

In the community of classical musicians, students have over the centuries learned ways of playing and interpreting music from their teachers and also from performances they hear. This results, to some degree, in stylistic accretion, as modes of performing developed by outstanding musicians are echoed through time in the performances of the younger musicians that they influenced. Thus, the way that music is performed is in part a function of the musical culture as it has evolved up to that time.

The authentic performance movement emphasizes instead historical scholarship, covering both instruments and performance practice, in order to obtain a more direct view of original performance practices. Such scholarship is the work both of the performers themselves and of non-performing specialist scholars, usually working in universities.

Adherence to principles of authentic performance is not an all-or-nothing matter. Many traditional musicians are deeply interested in what scholarship can tell us about how music was performed in the composer's time. Moreover, modern instruments can be played in ways that approximate to some degree what can be achieved on instruments of the composer's day.

[edit] Early instruments

Many of the instruments of early music disappeared from widespread use, around the beginning of the Classical era. Others continued in use, but greatly altered their sound quality and playing characteristics in the course of the 19th century. In either case, when older instruments, or reconstructed versions of them, are used, they are called original instruments or period instruments. The discussion below (see also Organology) covers instruments that had to be revived entirely, followed by instruments whose earlier form was rediscovered. See also List of period instruments.

[edit] Harpsichord

Among keyboard instruments, the most dramatic disappearance was that of the harpsichord, which gradually went out of style during the second half of the 18th century. The piano became more popular by such a degree that harpsichords were destroyed; indeed the Paris Conservatory is notorious for using harpsichords for firewood during Napoleonic times and the French Revolution.[1] Composers such as François Couperin, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for the harpsichord and not the piano, which was invented ca. 1700 and only widely adopted by about 1765. The music of these composers sounds very different, and requires a different interpretive approach, when played on the harpsichord instead of the piano. Notably, since every note on a harpsichord is equally loud, subtle variations of timing and articulation, as well a judicious use of ornamentation, are employed to achieve an expressive harpsichord performance.

The harpsichord was re-introduced to the concert-going public in the first half of the 20th century by Wanda Landowska. Since most useful knowledge of harpsichord construction had been lost by that time, Landowska needed to use a rather peculiar harpsichord, based on the modern grand piano, which was made for her by the Pleyel company of Paris. In the view of many later listeners, the tone of this harpsichord was not very successful. Later, harpsichord builders learned to make better instruments by following the procedures of the harpsichord builders of long ago. The revival of the authentic harpsichord began in the 1950s, with the work of the builders Frank Hubbard, William Dowd, and Martin Skowroneck. Today, harpsichords in the style of the old makers are produced in workshops around the world.

[edit] Viol

The viols (also known as viola da gamba) are a family of bowed (and sometimes plucked) fretted stringed instruments which evolved from the Spanish plucked Vihuela in the late 15th century. The bass viol roughly resembles a six-stringed, fretted cello — but it is in fact a bowed-guitar (a bowed, fretted, lute tuned (44344), vihuela/viola guitar, a vihuela de arco). All viols were gut strung. Their voice is generally described as being more delicate, humming, and sweet, (compared to a cello's, for example), noble and richly resonant in the lower registers, and often reedy (like an oboe or organ) in the upper range. Their reediness in tone can sometimes have in a certain nasal quality.

A vast quantity of music for viols, both ensemble and solo, was written by composers of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, including: Diego Ortiz, Claudio Monteverdi, William Byrd, William Lawes, Henry Purcell, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, J. S. Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann, Marin Marais, Antoine Forqueray, and Carl Frederick Abel.

Many composers wrote complex polyphonic part-music for viol consort, ensembles of viols of different sizes (typically held vertically), playing early chamber music, arranged for trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, and more.

The viol family consists of these sized instruments, largest to smallest:

  • contrabass or Violone (about the size of a modern double bass)
  • bass viol (about the size of a cello)
  • tenor viol (about the size of a guitar)
  • alto viol (about the size of a viola)
  • treble or decant viol (about the size of a violin).

In England, slightly smaller specialized bass viols were developed, called division viols, and lyra-viols.

Viols were largely abandoned by the end of the 18th century, being overtaken by the violin family.

Among the foremost modern players of the viols are: Paolo Pandolfo, Wieland Kuijken, Jordi Savall, John Hsu, Vittorio Ghielmi, and Guido Balestracci. Many fine modern viol consorts (ensembles of violists) can also be enjoyed, among them the group Fretwork.

[edit] Recorder

The recorder is a wind instrument, made of wood. Its tone is similar to the flute, but it is played by blowing through the end, rather than by blowing across a soundhole. Like viols, recorders were made in multiple sizes (contra-bass, bass, tenor, alto, soprano, the tiny sopranino and the even smaller kleine sopranino or garklein). Handel and Telemann wrote solo sonatas for the recorder, and recorders were often played in consorts of mixed size, like viols. For a number of important modern exponents of the recorder, see Recorder player.

[edit] Other instruments

Other instruments that ceased to be used around the same time as the harpsichord, viol, and recorder include the lute, the viola d'amore, and the baryton. Instruments that lost currency rather earlier in musical history include the cornett, the shawm, the rackett, the krummhorn, the theorbo, and the hurdy-gurdy.

[edit] Developed instruments

Even the instruments on which classical music is ordinarily performed today have undergone many important changes since the 18th century, both in how they are constructed and how they are played.

Stringed instruments (the violin, viola, cello, and double bass) were made with progressively longer necks and higher bridges, increasing string length and tension — though the latter has varied a lot depending on string thicknesses. The most prized stringed instruments of today, made by Antonio Stradivari and by the Guarneri family in 17th-18th century Italy, started out their careers as "early instruments". They were modified in the 19th century to achieve the more powerful romantic sound. (See baroque violin)

From the heavy rigging of the early to mid 1800s, however, the tendency shifted to using lighter strings for an easier playing technique and more soloistic brilliance. From around 1900 until our times, the average string tension has been lighter than in most Baroque traditions except for 18th century France, but the longer strings and the more compact material (including, in our days, steel e strings) has lead to a more brilliant and short-range penetrating tone with a greater acoustical emphasis on the even overtones.

In modern string playing, a more or less constant vibrato is the norm, with lack of vibrato used as a special expressive effect. In the 18th century, it was just the opposite, with vibrato serving as an ornament.

The oboe likewise became more powerful in its sound. The baroque oboe was more pastoral or reedy in tone while the Classical oboe, which came to the fore c. 1780, was more silvery. A similar difference is found between the early and modern bassoon.

The flute of the 18th century was typically made of wood rather than metal, and likewise had a gentler but more characteristic woody tone.

Early brass instruments were less powerful, but more colorful (containing more overtones) than their modern equivalents. The tonal difference is perhaps less than is found among the woodwinds and strings. However, the playing of early trumpets and horns was very different and indeed much more difficult, since versions of these instruments incorporating keys or valves were only invented around the end of the 18th century. The players of the earlier type of instrument had to use mostly just lip control to determine pitch; the early horns also had their pitch altered by the placement of the player's hand in the bell. Anthony Halstead is widely considered to be among the finest modern exponents of the "natural horn". The earlier trombone of course offered manual pitch control, as did its similar predecessor the sackbut.

The effect of these instruments in their original form is particularly noticeable when they play together in orchestras, since not only do the musical lines sound different, but their relationship to one another is altered by the difference in relative volume (wind instruments generally being louder relative to the strings). A number of authentic-performance orchestras have achieved a broad following, notably the Academy of Ancient Music under the direction of Christopher Hogwood, Taverner Players under the direction of Andrew Parrott and the English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardiner.

For the piano, the difference between 18th century and modern versions is probably greater than for any other instrument; for discussion of these differences and their consequences for performance, see Piano history and musical performance. The construction of replica 18th century pianos came somewhat after the revival of the authentic harpsichord, but used many of the same skills, since early pianos resembled harpsichords in their construction. Leading modern-day performers on the early piano or fortepiano include Malcolm Bilson, Robert Levin, and Melvyn Tan.

[edit] Singing

The human voice is a biological given, but can be trained in different ways. Singers in authentic performance typically aim at a more natural, less loud tone, usually with less vibrato. It is feasible for the singer not to sing so loud, since the instruments playing at the same time are softer. Listeners to early music seldom complain that the singers are "shrieking" or "barking"–though of course this does not exclude the possibility that quite different vocal problems might be present. A few of the many outstanding singers who have contributed to authentic performance are Emma Kirkby, Julianne Baird, Nigel Rogers, and David Thomas.

Authentic performances sometimes use male singers, called countertenors, to sing alto parts. Although it is often a vexed question how often this was done in early performance, a number of countertenors have won acclaim for their purity of tone, vocal agility, and interpretive skill. Modern countertenor singing was pioneered by Alfred Deller, and leading contemporary performers include David Daniels, Derek Lee Ragin, Andreas Scholl, Michael Chance, Drew Minter, Daniel Taylor, and Brian Asawa.

One vexing problem concerns compositions intended to be sung by castrati. Modern substitutions employ female sopranos or high countertenors (known as sopranistas), but neither of those seems to capture the true effect of the castrato sound. The 1994 movie Farinelli Il Castrato, about an 18th-century castrato, used digital effects to create the voice by mixing the sound of a countertenor with a soprano singer.

The use of boy sopranos, or trebles, in certain music (i.e. the church music of Johann Sebastian Bach), while historically authentic, is not often done because of the belief that boys cannot put the emotional understanding into the music that adult female sopranos do. Voices broke at a later age in the 18th century, so boys as old as 16 or 17 could sometimes still sing soprano parts. Boy sopranos in choirs are not uncommon, even in non-HIP performances, but the use of boy sopranos as soloists is rare. Most notably, much of the music of Bach that Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt recorded made use of boy sopranos even for the solo parts.

[edit] Recovering early performance practices

Recovering the available written information about how music was performed in the past is a difficult scholarly task, requiring fluency in multiple languages, skill in navigating old archives, and thoughtful judgment in weighing sometimes contradictory evidence. Both pedagogical works and the correspondence of musicians from past centuries play an important role. Representative of the works from which valuable information has been obtained are the following:

  • Syntagma musicum (1614-1620) by Michael Praetorius
  • Traité de l'Harmonie Universelle (1627) by Marin Mersenne
  • Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen ("A treatise of instruction in playing the transverse flute," 1752) by Johann Joachim Quantz
  • Versuch über das wahre Art das Klavier zu spielen ("An essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments," 1753-1762) by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
  • Versuch einer grundliche Violinschule ("An essay on the fundamental principles of violin playing," 1756) by Leopold Mozart

Among the letters of musicians, those of Mozart are notable for their liveliness and insight, and from them considerable information about performances of his work is obtained. In the case of Haydn and Beethoven we have the advantage that they became very famous–in fact, venerated–in their own lifetimes, and many people with whom they conversed attempted to remember and write down their words.

Occasionally, the written record tells us things we might prefer not to know. For instance, a letter from Haydn (Oct. 17, 1789) says:

Now I would humbly ask you to tell the princely Kapellmeister there that these three symphonies [ 90-92 ] because of their many particular effects, should be rehearsed at least once, carefully and with special concentration, before they are performed.

implying of course that symphonies were often performed with no rehearsal at all. Likewise, there is testimony that the task of keeping early instruments in tune was difficult and perhaps also neglected. One critic wrote in 1684:

At the beginning of the concerts, we observe the accuracy of the chords ... some time after, the instruments make a din; the music is for our ears no longer anything but a confused noise.

Such evidence is a reminder that authentic performance must aim at the highest ideals of past music making, rather than what was achieved on particular occasions.

[edit] Interpreting musical notation

One area in which scholarly interpretation is quite crucial is in interpreting the musical notation of the past, which becomes progressively less explicit as one goes back in time. Some familiar difficult items are as follows:

  • Early composers apparently often wrote dotted rhythms (where the first of two notes is three times the length of the second) to mean instead a time ratio of 2 + 1, in a context where triplets are present elsewhere in the musical line. The opening line of the last movement of J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #5 is a good example.
  • In a French overture, it is often held that dotted notation was meant to indicate double dotting; that is, a duration ratio of 7 to 1 instead of 3 to 1. A well-known example is the overture to Handel's Messiah, often played in the double-dotted manner by authentic performance specialists.
  • What is written as an appoggiatura is often meant to be longer or shorter than the notated length. This convention is pervasive in Mozart's music.
  • In Renaissance music, musica ficta are employed; these are accidentals (sharps and flats) not written in the score, but rather inferred using the performer's judgment or via rules laid down by theorists.
  • Lastly, the notes of earlier music cannot generally be interpreted as designating the same pitch that they do today, since concert pitch has frequently changed. For discussion, see pitch (music).

[edit] Mechanical music

Some information about how music sounded in the past can be obtained from contemporary mechanical instruments. For instance, the Dutch museum Van Speelklok tot Pierement owns an 18th century mechanical organ of which the music programme was composed and supervised by Joseph Haydn.

[edit] Linguistic issues

An additional relevant area of scholarship is the determination of how the languages of sung music were pronounced at the time of first performance. Such information can help in establishing rhymes and in aligning the syllables to the musical notes (underlay). The disciplines of historical linguistics and philology play the primary role here. Some early music performers prefer to sing using the old pronunciations, feeling that the notes sound better when sung to their original syllables.

Issues of pronunciation even carry over to church Latin, the language in which a huge amount of early music was written. The reason is that Latin was customarily pronounced using the speech sounds and patterns of the local vernacular language; see Latin regional pronunciation.

[edit] Tuning

Twelve tone equal temperament is the predominant tuning today, but was not so in the past. For many periods tuning may have depended upon region, varied by composer, with some composers even preferring different tunings at different times in their lives. However, it is often hard to determine exactly what these tunings were.

[edit] Issues in historically informed performance

The perceived esthetic benefits of authentic performance vary with what kind of music is being played. In rough terms, they can be characterized as follows.

  • Historically informed performance is argued to achieve greater transparency of musical texture. The instruments have a less overpowering tone, so that the playing of one note interferes less with the hearing of simultaneous or neighboring notes.
  • In orchestral performances, dynamic contrast is typically increased: the contributions of the brass instruments and timpani on accented notes stand out more, since the difference in volume level between brass and strings is somewhat greater than with modern instruments.
  • Greater transparency and greater dynamic contrast lend themselves, in turn, to greater rhythmic energy. This is particularly important in the choruses of 18th century cantatas and oratorios. To the ear that has become attuned to authentic performance, older "mainstream" performances of such works often sound heavy and rhythmically dull. Paradoxically, for such listeners, the monumental character of these choruses comes through more clearly when they are performed with the lighter forces of the authentic performance movement.
  • Many listeners appreciate the sheer sound quality of authentic performance instruments, finding it more beautiful and filled with character than what is heard from modern instruments. The same could be said of the human voice, when it is not required to compete with modern instruments in volume.

[edit] Variety of opinion

Opinions on the authentic performance movement vary widely, from very strong support to very strong opposition.

A generally skeptical but moderated position has been taken by Charles Rosen, a distinguished traditional classical musician and author on music. One criticism Rosen has made is that the spread of authentic performance has depended very heavily on the recording industry. This results from two factors. First, the lower volume of authentic performance instruments means they tend to be ineffective in large modern concert halls, so that live performance is difficult to sustain financially. Second, the unstable intonation and lesser reliability of early instruments means that a high-quality performance is most easily obtained in the recording studio, where multiple takes can be spliced together to iron out mistakes, and it is possible to interrupt the music frequently to retune the instruments. A musical culture based predominantly on recordings is arguably an impoverished one, given that most listeners respond more intensely to a live performance than to a recording.

There are many listeners who enjoy both authentic performance and traditional performance. Such esthetically-flexible listeners might, for instance, enjoy Malcolm Bilson's vivid and stylish authentic performances of Haydn's piano sonatas on a replica 18th century piano, but also enjoy Vladimir Horowitz's interestingly idiosyncratic (and quite heavily pedaled) performances of the same works on a modern concert grand.

"Authentic" performances of Baroque music are usually in "chamber pitch" (tuned about a semitone down compared to modern concert pitch; see historical pitch standards).

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/10982.html
  • Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making by Frank Hubbard (1965; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-88845-6) is a classic tale of scholarly detective work, both with old instruments and old written sources, that led to the rediscovery of how the old harpsichords were built.
  • Charles Rosen's discussion of authentic performance may be found in Chapter 12 of his book Critical Entertainments (2000; Cambridge: Harvard University Press; ISBN 0-674-00684-4). This chapter contains the full version of the quotation above concerning tuning, which is from the French critic Charles de Saint-Evremond.
  • The quotation above from Joseph Haydn about the necessity of at least one rehearsal is taken from p. 145 of Rosen's book The Classical Style (2nd ed., 1997; New York: Norton; ISBN 0-393-31712-9).
  • Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (1997). "The good, the bad and the boring", Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816540-4.
  • Arnold Dolmetsch, The Interpretation of the Music of the 17th and 18th Centuries Revealed by Contemporary Evidence, London: Novello, 1915.

[edit] External links

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