Klarinet Archive - Posting 000024.txt from 1999/03

From: Martin Pergler <pergler@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] HIP, was RE: [kl] Sabine Meyer's Stamitz
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 15:02:10 -0500

Steve Goldman wrote:
> > One can perform compositions from another era in two ways. One using the
> > knowledge we have of what was considered proper performance practice at the
> > time of composition (a HIP performance), the other using modern performance
> > practice. Both methods can result in musical performances.
[....]
> > My feeling is that one can have a
> > musical performance without following all the HIP rules, although one must
> > understand that the result, while musical, may not conform to the composers
> > intentions. Others on the list have strongly disagreed with this. It really
> > is a matter of personal taste. Music is not a science with absolute rules,
> > even though we sometimes try to claim so.

Dan Leeson replied:

> BALONEY!! It has nothing to do with taste. "Taste" is an excuse
> that permits the performer to do anything s/he wants and then claim
> that it is historically informed.
>
> A HIP is a science with very much absolute rules. The problem is that
> for some of those rules we no longer have clear understanding of what
> was meant. But there was a rule. We don't know what it is.

I counter:

PROSCIUTTO!! The question of "taste" is *very* important in *all*
music. The parameters for freedom in performance varied by time
period (and region and style ...) and were generally wider in the
18th century than later 19th, so taste is *more* imporant there. The
science is in the determining what were those parameters, the art in
deciding what to do with them in a performance, and deciding what
to do where the scientific understanding is incomplete.

The main issues is, of course, figuring out how to interpret what is
on the printed page. Let me greatly (perhaps excessively) expand on
an analogy from Donington. This is something I've been thinking
about for a while, and I'm curious as to peoples' reactions.

Imagine presenting a talk from someone else's written material.
There are issues of "grammar", "wording", "speaking style", and
"pronunciation" here. Playing a late romantic piece corresponds to
the written material being a fully written out speech in normal
American/British/(insert your location) English. The wording (and
hence grammar) have been specified by the writer, pronunciation is
"normal", but there is still some flexibility left to the speaker
within these boundaries.

Now consider a baroque or classical piece. The crucial point is the
realization that this is not a fully written out speech, but a point
form outline. Just reading the outline will be ungrammatical and far
from the intentions of the writer. The task is to expand on this
outline (wording), and present it in appropriate speaking style.
Considerable research can and should be done to figure out what the
writer would have wanted and expected. Now the HIP purists and
non-purists diverge: the purists say the way to present the speech
is to stick to this to the letter, and the non-purists say to use
this as a starting point to present a convincing presentation to the
current audience. As a consequence, the non-purists are also less
concerned if some aspect of knowledge of the writer's expectations
or intentions not fully known. Everyone agrees that grammar mistakes
should be avoided, and both sides are sometimes appalled to find
grammer mistakes they didn't know about.

Oops, I forgot pronunciation. This is one point where the
differences are quite clear-cut. In the analogy, consider a
Shakespeare play, for instance. Should the lines be spoken in
contemporary pronunciation (sometimes the scansion doesn't work here!),
in (our best guess of) Elizabethan pronunciation (which may
be unusual and even uncomfortable for many modern day listeners, cf.
the ongoing discussion of early brass instruments on
rec.music.early), or what? Often in North America, one hears it in a
fake (=not in the actor's or audience's day to day speech)
sort-of-like-modern-British accent, an artificially developed but
quite accepted aesthetic.

Of course, the distinctions between "pronunciation", "speaking
style", and "wording", even "grammar" get blurry (for example the
scansion issue, above). To my knowledge, Donington and Neumann (and
others) are still at it over embellishment in J.S. Bach and over
aligning dotted rhythms and triplets. Many things are poorly
understood, and new issues are still being discovered. One source of
difficulty is that "common" practice and "quality" practice do not
necessarily coincide. There are a number of hilarious quotes of
composers and conductors around 1800 lamenting the wailing of
orchestras where all the players are simultaneously trying to outdo
all the others in embellishing their parts, with basses and cellos
playing up an octave to make their line more prominent, etc.

To me, the crucial things coming out of all this now in the musical
world are the following:

1) an awareness of the issues and especially of the fact that
much pre-late-19th century music is written in "point-form" and just
reading it is "bad grammar".

2) effective HIP performances which influence subsequent "mainstream"
approaches to the music, including embellishment, orchestral
balance, and tempi.

3) "correct" but boring HIP performances which show that the science
of HIP is not everything

4) an increasing general interest among musicians in performance
practice issues, especially among young musicians*. Clarinetists are
behind in this since the HIP "revolution" started with Baroque and
earlier music, which was not that relevant for us. Now we feel
uncomfortable.

[* by this I mean just that the proportion of those interested on
a least a cursory level is greater.]

I'll use point 4) to also give my background vis-a-vis this
speculation. I'm a decent amateur clarinetist, better recorder
player and singer. I play/sing mainly at that fuzzy borderline where
there are comparable numbers of quite-good amateurs, young
professional and aiming-to-be-professional musicians, and trained
musicians who now have nonmusical careers but still make music for
fun on the side. I see quite a bit of interest in this circle in
reading on performance practice issues and (as time permits) trying
to do a portion of it, or at least an awareness that one's lack of
knowledge in this area is something to be worked on or even ashamed
of, at the same level as not being happy with one's tongueing, etc.
This feeling is not universal, but it is there, often more so that
among *some* more established players (often of an earlier
generation), some of whom seem to want to still dismiss the whole
thing as hogwash and suspect that those who spend time on it do so
because they could not "make it" purely on the merits of their
playing.

Whew, that was long. Off my shaky soapbox...comments and flames
welcome.

Martin

--
Martin Pergler pergler@-----.edu
Grad student, Mathematics http://www.math.uchicago.edu/~pergler
Univ. of Chicago

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