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Historically informed performance
Hi all,Does anyone have any suggestions for resources (books, YT videos etc.) on historically informed performance? I have no desire to be a HIP specialist, I just want to make sure when I play something that its stylistically appropriate.
Thanks in advance!
Replies (94)
- The Interpretation of Early Music, by Robert Donington, Faber & Faber 1963, 766 pages!
- The Interpretation of Music, by Thurston Dart, Huthchinson University Library 1967, only a pitiful 190 pages..
They're a bit old, but then so am I.
Listening analytically is a great way of informing yourself about HIP. Listen closely to the Menuhin/Ferras Bach double violin concerto and contrast it with almost any modern recording. What is different? Look out for any of the Brandenburgs as performed in the past by I Musici. What would be different nowadays? (Remind yourself that in the mid-sixties I Musici was the gold standard for baroque performance.) If you can find Sir Thomas Beecham’s recording of Haendel’s “Water Music” and “Royal Fireworks” it will be fun to put it alongside Hervé Niquet’s Proms performances which are available on YouTube.
Musik als Klangrede: Wege zu einem neuen Musikverständnis. Essays und Vorträge
Baroque Music Today: Music As Speech : Ways to a New Understanding of Music
Sorry, I have read only its Japanese edition.
Landowska's mighty steel-strung Concert Grand harpsichord opened our ears to the new/old sound and allowed us to move towards the more subtle "real thing". As a choral scholar I had the immense privilege of singing in the "knabenchor" of Bach's St Matthew passion under..Otto Klemperer: ponderous, but entrancing! My very first LP was indeed Hamilton Harty's Water and Fireworks Music, beautifully performed.
Then we hear modern performances on period instruments: miserable tone and expression. Then we find how best to play them.
Comparing Casals' Bach with Yo-Yo Ma's I find that purist "HIP" has inspired "modern" players to lighter, bouncier playing, and modern recording transmits more colour and nuance, reducing the need for over-invasive vibrato.
I have "done" some HIP, and genuine baroque trumpets oboes etc are magical.
The Musical Dialogue: Thoughts on Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart
As additional information about Bach and Mozart.
Bruce Haynes, The End of Early Music: A Period Performer’s History of Music for the 21st Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
There’s an aspect of HIP that we haven’t mentioned, and that’s the joie de vivre that comes across in so many HIP groups. Anybody who doesn’t hasn’t yet discovered them should check out ARPEGGIATA and APOLLO’S FIRE on YouTube.
Reiter, Walter. The Baroque Violin & Viola: A Fifty-Lesson Course, Volume I and II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020
Ritchie, Stanley. Before the Chinrest: A Violinist’s Guide to the Mysteries of Pre-Chinrest Technique and Style. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012.
Ritchie, Stanley. The Accompaniment in “Unaccompanied” Bach: Interpreting the Sonatas and Partitas for Violin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016.
I don’t listen to a whole lot of HIP/period performances, but when I do, I do like the English Concert, directed by Trevor Pinnock. They’ve recorded a few albums for Deutsche Grammophon. Their interpretation of Handel’s Water Music is very good in my opinion.
I also love Trevor Pinnock's English Concert recordings on DG but they're getting on for 40 years old now and to my ears sound somewhat "period" (the 1980's!) as compared with current HIP practice.
A growing number of musicians are already shifting from the Historical Informed Performance label towards Historically Inspired Performance or Cultural Informed Performance.
Nate is right in that "‘historically informed’ is a little presumptuous" -- it implies that non-HIP folks are uninformed (which may be true in many case, but that's for another discussion), but this problem has already been addressed Taruskin and othes some three decades ago.
But kudos to the OP for seeking out different perspectives -- that's how our artform stays alive and grow.
I tend toward the PIP approach (Personally Inspired Performance). It reminds me of the early 1980s when I first discovered the piano playing of Ivan Morovec (Czech pianist) whose performance of Beethoven's 4th piano concerto was so idiosyncratic that I could not recognize it no mater how many times I listened to (even though all the notes were still there). But I loved his playing (great Chopin!).
It's the approach I took when studying the Bach Cello Suites in my early 70s. I played them the way they felt right to me and then I listened to recordings of great cellists to see who agreed with me. Some did and some did not. I have just checked and find 16 recordings of the Suites in iTunes library (guess I checked out more performers than I remembered). I confess - I never even tried the 6th Suite!
Well, whether true or not, I'm sure that that's what the reaction might be by any composer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vH98NL6Vxk
Wonderfully skilful as it is, it appears nobody wants to play like that any more. If we could hear some of the great performers of the 19th century we'd probably LOL.
Autographs of composers. Historical treatises on performance practice
Leopold Mozart’s
Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule
HIP comes from these sources, other accounts, and surviving instruments.
Slides, to some degree, come through on these recordings, one of which is his own cadenza to Paganini 1, and it can be reasonably concluded it was a common practice in his day, and does not necessarily reflect the styles of preceding eras, for which, of course, we have no acoustic evidence.
Jan Kubelik composed six violin concertos and a handful of salon pieces. Two of his salon pieces, together with Concerto no.1 in C, are available on IMSLP (scores only and no modern recordings on IMSLP).
chinrests (from 1820 onwards) and shoulder rests (post WW2). I say "possibility" because it is quite practicable, and comfortable, to play the violin without the add-ons, and without slides.
So Trevor, to remove any possible uncertainty the time was about 1.15pm...
For those who don't know what Jan Kubelik sounds like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkGiASsIafk&list=OLAK5uy_lyxKqUi3SAksKLn2cpPrekisSUMsjpipA&index=11
The mainstream performance tradition has lost a lot of timbral variety favoring cleanliness and splice-able takes. We can all learn a lot from Kubelik, Marie Soldat, and all those great violinists of another era. They don't sound grotesque to me. Our ears just has another set of aesthetics (one that is often rather predictable for me of often times...)
I prefer a modern bow(holding it short as appropriate) to a baroque bow in combination with a modern instrument.
We are all conditioned by what we are used to hearing, no? Perhaps the spirit of HIP is opening up our ears to appreciate other possibilities of bygone eras. Marketing niche? Absolutely -- that has always been the lifeblood of the Early Music Revival movement.
Andres, I agree very much with your assessment on Ritchie's tome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b24_rysm2S8&t=242s
I have seen these performances. But I apply vibrato for unbroken turning into the following trill.
Steve - glad to hear that the trio made a better impression subsequently!
1) The ABRSM books that Gordon Shumway mentioned above
2) "Baroque string playing for Ingenious Learners" by Judy Tarling
3) "Before the Chinrest" Ritchie
They're all quite accessible and the 2nd and 3rd are violin-focused and practical. I see Ritchie's come in for some criticism in this thread - I think Tarling's book is better but Ritchie is probably still worth having if you get into it.
Then, if you're feeling brave enough, you can look at the original documents by L. Mozart, Geminiani, Tartini and so on.
Enjoy!
It will practically force you to change your bowings and articulations. For example, you will be less likely to hook--you won't need to. You will be less likely to play with the kind of frog-to-tip sustain we use in today.
You may try to emulate a modern bow in the beginning, but will eventually change as it becomes evident that it won't work.
https://youtu.be/b73g8LR3zD4
"...holding a regular bow somewhat above the frog (shortening it, in effect) allows one to approximate the effect of a baroque bow."
It may be a fun short exercise, but I respectfully discourage people do that for the long haul. You get the worst of both worlds. Hold any bow the way it's designed to be held. If one is genuinely interested in Baroque bow strokes, get the right equipment.
Last night, at the Library of Congress, we saw a concert by a violinist named Johnny Gandelsman. He is recording the Bach Cello Suites on violin (transcribed, obviously), and he played one of them for us using the technique I described. He did a wonderful job, and he was able to get the effect quite well, even giving the suites a spin I had never heard. So, you can be a pro, and use the technique.
What I remember most about that concert (besides some of the bow holds), however, was the "ophicleide", an early 19th century precursor of the tuba, that had stops similar to those on today's saxophone instruments - and the way it sounded in Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream Incidental Music". Really gorgeous deep bass sound - like nothing I ever heard before.
I wonder if this could have due in part to the advent of the Tourte bow at that time?
Dorian, I would suggest, following on from Tom Holzman's advice, that you also learn to play without a shoulder rest. Further, I would add playing without a chinrest. This can be more challenging and probably requires some face-to-face help in the early stages, but the end result is a relaxed playing style that pays dividends across all violin playing.
I don't feel a kind of necessity of "almost no vibrato" and "holding a bow short" with their pieces.
In the mid-18th century composers (particularly Italians) are writing violin music in a vocal, sostenuto style. Tartini often that isn't that different to Viotti, Viotti isn't that different to Mozart, Mozart isn't that different to Beethoven, Mendelssohn isn't that different to Beethoven - at least in terms of how the violin is used. You can hear the gradual evolution of style between them.
I also find it quite possible to play much classical and early-Romantic repertoire with a Baroque bow. That is not to say that one should. You can't do true spiccato, and staccato is virtually impossible. But you can actually sustain fine with a Baroque bow, as well as using sautille bowing.
To me all this suggests a gradual shift in tastes, a gradual shift in equipment, a gradual shift in technique - and certainly not a scenario where the miraculous arrival of the Tourte bow heralded an everlasting change (which is the way some people seem to talk about it).
The idea that a shoulder rest is "too modern" and somehow "verboten" is less a productive thing and more of a mannerism that period players have copied from each other as part of their schtick.
I'm not anti-period performance and have spent plenty of time doing it. I just think forcing oneself to play without a shoulder rest often has more to do with conformism than music making.
I think the verifiable facts about vibrato are roughly as follows:
1) The modern approach of 'everyone should do continuous vibrato on everything' dates from roughly the 1920s, and was probably brought about by early broadcast and recording technology
2) By the 1980s, continuous vibrato was so deeply ingrained that when period performance researchers said "hey let's try it without vibrato" this was such a radical departure that vibrato was seen as the defining issue of the whole thing
3) From about 1650 to 1920 actual practice with vibrato varied widely; sometimes it was conceived as a sort of ornament, sometimes it was used to add expression to a melodic line, sometimes it was broad, sometimes it was narrow. All of those are valid options!
Violin vibrato probably parallels the development of the very wide operatic style as halls and pit orchestras got larger.
Modern violins with metal strings also encourage the use of vibrato.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MqKmNjAc-xs
https://youtu.be/DEGilsfGTXM
https://youtu.be/hUHUdHY82kY?t=121
I like this solution in terms of tone color, but it isn't seen in many cases as of now.
https://youtu.be/KgSKvOAJMb8
You can play the movies in slow motion, as you know. And I'll enumerate other instances.
I find HIP has also helped me to discover other composers. While Bach and Scarlatti sound great on the piano, Rameau and Couperin really need the specific sound of the harpsichord. Similarly Bach can be played many ways on the cello, but Couperin and Marin Marais only work on the viola da gamba.
Books and videos on baroque violin playing usually assume one has already had modern training, but I don't have such habits to change. She's using me to test pilot her baroque violin pedagogy under development, maybe to someday become a baroque method. Imagine a Suzuki-like method for baroque violin. Right now in my elementary fundamental stage we've been working on holding the violin and bow so the instrument resonates as the bow falls via arm weight, etc.
My musical goals include someday playing some 17th century violin sonatas with a keyboard and/or lute and/or gamba as continuo. Just in local taverns of course.
Someday I would love to hear you playing your violin in a tavern!!
In any case, I think it's important to explore the composer's intention regarding certain notes and slurs(hierarchy, natural damping, sustention...) . And Harnoncourt has explained in his books that the notation manners had changed between 18th and 19th century.
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