Klarinet Archive - Posting 000418.txt from 1997/01

From: "Edwin V. Lacy" <el2@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Bill Edinger's interesting comments (fwd)
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 09:09:56 -0500

On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, Roger Shilcock wrote:

> Perhaps "authenticity" in Brahms seems the ultimate absurdity to you.
> However, Roger Norrington and his London Classical Players are now
> practising it - and, even more significantly, they do "authentic"
> Schumann as well, which is the revelation any fan of Schumann's
> symphonies would hope it to be - I think.

The "authentic performance" movement is not absurd at all to me. It is a
valuable exercise in legitimate musicological research. Anyone who is
interested in history will have a natural desire to know "exactly what
things were like in those days." Hearing these performances can give us
fresh insights into music.

However, this is not without its problems. First, we don't know exactly
what the music sounded like when it was first performed. Attempts at
historically authentic performances are at best educated guesses at how
the music originally sounded - some more educated than others, and some
more successful than others.

But, the thing which such attempts can never solve is the fact that we
can't listen with 19th century ears. So in the final analysis, if the
wish is for us to experience music exactly as it was originally
experienced, that can't be accomplished. In the mid-19th century, to many
listeners, the music of Brahms would have seemed dangerously modern and
disturbing, to say nothing of such composers as Berlioz or Bruckner. This
is true even in light of Brahms' apparent philosophical stance that in
Beethoven, music had progressed as far as it could go, and that it was the
job of the composer to consolidate the gains which Beethoven had made.
The writings of critics about Brahms' music made it apparent that many
trained music listeners thought that he had not succeeded in that, but
that he was "pushing the envelope" too far.

In any event, the fact that we have heard the music and the changes in
compositional techniques that have been employed since that time means
that even if we could hear every note exactly as Brahms and his
contemporaries heard it, it would have a different meaning to us.

The point I was trying to get across in a previous message was that the
evidence seems to be that some performers, some musicologists, and some
"authentic performance" historians are much more protective of the
composer's aims, so far as they can be determined, than the composers
themselves are. There are a few exceptions: coming to mind immediately
are composers such as Hindemith and the New Viennese School of Schoenberg,
Berg and Webern. These composers, in general, seem to be very specific
about how their music is to be performed, indicating every articulation,
every dynamic, etc. Still, Bernard Heiden, to whom I referred yesterday,
was a student of Hindemith, and he doesn't seem to be so exacting in this
regard. Also, there is the instance of Hindemith who wrote a sonata for
Heckelphone, and when that work was obviously unable to be performed very
often due to the relative unavailability of the instrument, he decided
that it should be played on the tenor saxophone. If he was concerned that
change would materially alter the musical effect of the work, that fact
has never come to light, so far as I know.

There are many more examples: Schumann's Three Romances for oboe, violin
or clarinet (in A according to the composer), von Weber's Fantasy and
Hungarian Rondo for bassoon or viola, Brahms's sonatas for viola or
clarinet, etc.

I am very pleased that there are performers who are jealously protective
of the "composer's original intentions," and I hope I am one of them. It
just seems to me that we have a tendency at times to be more protective of
them than the composers would have been.

Ed Lacy
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Dr. Edwin Lacy University of Evansville
Professor of Music 1800 Lincoln Avenue
Evansville, IN 47722
el2@-----.edu (812)479-2754
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