1. Lecture on Performance Practice
n Follow up to lecture on Period
Performance and Early Music revival.
n Broader application of these ideas. On
modern instruments and in today’s
conditions.
n Is it important to play with a sense of
composers era or period style?
n Should you just aim to play music how you
feel it – what feel instinctive to you?
2. Historical Performance
Practice – Performance as
Discipline
1.There is now some 1,000
years of notated music in the
Western Art Tradition.
2. But for the music to be
brought to life as the composer
intended we need to go beyond
the written message.
3. Beyond the Notes
n 3. It is this interpretation of tradition,
or lack of it, that constitutes
performance practice
n 4. Has developed as an important
subject area with its own literature in
the last 100 years.
4. Back 100 years to the late
Romantics
n With music from the high romantic period 1860s/
70s which has been continuously played since
being composed we are on fairly firm ground.
The period might go back to Brahms (d.1897)
and the generations following him.
n The music is annotated with directions to the
performer as to how the notes are to be played.
n Early recordings of artists who were young in the
late 19th century exist.
6. More 100 years ago
n The instruments he (Brahms) composed for and
the musical language he used are still in use.
n The tonality the composer assumed was based
on 12 equally spaced notes to the octave, giving
access to all 24 minor and major keys on an
equal basis.
n There are recordings from the 1890s. However
they do show how differently the music was
interpreted just a 100 years ago.
7. Back 300 years to the Baroque
and Handel (d.1759)
n Go back 300 years to Handel and the baroque
and problems are greater.
n We must consider the musical world Handel
knew and the instruments at his disposal as it
was within these constraints that he composed.
n Harmony was more restrictive than that of
Brahms, but within the smaller number of keys in
which he wrote his ear was more sensitive to
inaccuracy of tuning.
8. Two recordings of Saul
n Nicolas Harnoncourt 1980
n Rene Jacobs 2004
9. … more 300 years ago
n Each of the 12 semitones were not equal – more
consonance in a smaller range of keys.
Variants on meantone tuning the norm.
n Minimal performance directions of speed,
phrasing, dynamics.
n Today’s performers need recourse to period
treatises and musical commentaries as well as
surviving instruments to recreate a reasonable
picture of the musical world Handel inhabited.
n Concerts very new in the early 18th century and
still in their infancy. Formal listening more
familiar in the opera house and in religious
services.
10. Back 600 years to Dunstable (d.
1435) and late Medieval
n Late medieval world and the problems are
of an altogether greater magnitude.
n Tonality was different again (Pythagorian)
and the notation very different.
n Performance conditions utterly different –
no concept of `a concert’ in late medieval
period. Music largely functional.
13. More medieval
n We have little idea how instruments were
included in the performance of polyphonic
music, if at all.
n We have now to fall back on pictorial
evidence, accounts and chronicles to
throw light on performance practice.
15. But is there more we should do?
n At a deeper level we may wish to consider how
the composer intended his music to be
performed.
n Public concerts were unknown before the late
17th century.
n Composers may have intended to the music to
fulfill a function – ritual, religious,
accompaniment to dance, etc.
n Are we undermining the composers intentions if
we ignore these associations. E.g. Satie’s
Furniture Music
16. The Stuff of Performance Studies
n Primary Sources – the music as notated,
instruments, iconography, treatises and literary
accounts, editions, contemporary tasted.
n Understanding of style – national idioms,
articulation, melodic inflection, tempo,
ornamentation, extemporisation and
improvisation.
n Conditions and practices – pitch, temperament,
vocal styles, venues and programmes,
orchestral constitution and placement, direction.
17. Is this going a bit far?
n Given that we cannot recreate the music as the
composer intended, should we even try?
n Can we assume that a composer would want his
music heard today in the way that he conceived
it?
n Most people would allow that a composition can
benefit from a variety of interpretations. So does
anything go?
n Composers are often pleased to adapt their
compositions to the needs of specific
performances. So is this license to do it your
way?
18. Case of Glen Gould
n Gould believed Bach would have wanted
his music played on a modern grand had it
been available to him. He felt Bach would
have preferred it.
n Why should we deny composers the
benefits of modern technology just
because it was not available to them in
their own time?
19.
20. Development of Historical
Awareness.
n There has now been over 100 years of
development in the historical performance of
music (theory and practice) and it is now part of
the mainstream.
n Ideas of `authenticity’ developed in the
performance of early music and now arguably
affects all music performance.
n There have always been critics – Leopold
Stokowski – believed in musical progress and in
a continuous tradition that did not need
interpretation by experts.
21. The Current Scene
n Up until the 1980s the precepts of historical
performance practice were unchallenged.
Conspiracy of silence.
n Then `early music’ specialists started to tackle
baroque, classical and romantic repertoires the
debate hotted up.
n Some saw the `historical/academic’ approach
as lacking in expression and too often indulgent
towards poor standards.
n Lose of something vital – of a living culture?
23. The arguments against
n Lawrence Drayfus suggests … `that the
authentic musician acts willingly in the
service of the composer, denying any form
of self-expression, but attains this by
following the text-book rules for `scientific
method’ with a strictly empirical
programme to verify historical practices.
This is then magically transformed into the
composer’s intentions.
24. More against
n Richard Taruskin `I am convinced that `historical
performance’ today is not really historical; that a
thin veneer of historicism clothes a performance
style that is completely of our own time, and is in
fact the most modern style around; and that the
historical hardware has won its wide acceptance
and above all its commercial viability precisely
by virtue of its novelty, not its antiquity.
25. More Thoughts
n Peter Kivy took the philosophical
argument a step further by arguing for
several categories of historical
authenticity, relating to a composer’s
original conception, restoration of
sound materials, the performer’s
individual expression and the
meaning attached to a piece by its
audience.
26. … last words
n The efficacy of historical performance has
continued to divide musical opinion with a
dedicated opposition.
n A last word from Pinchas Zuckerman on
historical performance `asinine stuff … a
complete and absolute farce … nobody
wants to hear that stuff. I don’t.’
27. How does it affect me? I just
want to play.
n It is not possible to be an innocent. You have to
make a stand. You cannot plead ignorance.
n Awareness of ideas on performance practice are
so much part of the mainstream that to ignore
them will place you in the anti-historical camp by
default.
n These concerns get more pressing the older
your music – but it affects all performance
practice – including 20th century.
28. Be an informed performer
n If you are a performer you must, at the
very least, be informed.
