Decoding the Tweet _ Practical Criticism in the Age of Hashtag.pptx
Period perf and instruments 2013
1. Period Performance
n History of Early Music Revival.
n Early Instrument Industry.
• Surviving instruments – archival &
literary sources – editions – musical
taste
• Part of study of ‘Historical
Performance Practice’
3. Early Music Revival 1
n Music Revival goes back to Mendelsohn’s
1829 revival of Bach’s St Matthew Passion
and of his revivals of oratorios by Handel
and Haydn. Composes Elijah and St Paul
n The Idea that before the 19th Century
people were only interested in music that
was contemporary is not really true. The
Academy of Ancient Music – related to the
Academy of the 18th century London that
aimed to maintain Corelli and Handel in
the repertoire.
5. …continued
n Handel’s Messiah has been performed
ever since it was written. Eighteenth
Century Musicologists like Hawkins knew
a lot about Renaissance Music and
Medieval Music and were able to enlighten
others.
n Bach and Handel Societies in both
England and Germany flourished in many
provincial towns and cities – and fuelled
the choral traditions in those countries.
6. Brussels Instrument
Museum
n The Development of Instrument Museums
– and the playing of old instruments
(Brussels and the Fetis’s Historical
Concerts in the 1880s and 90s).
n Brussels concerts on original instruments
heard by Arnold Dolmetsch (1858-1940)–
family tradition of instrument tuning,
mending and playing – especially of
Bach’s 48.
9. Dolmetsch’s Legacy
n The apostle of retrogression – instrument
maker, performer, polemicist, scholar and
teacher. Played all the instruments and
believed in going back to primary sources.
n Early Music and the Arts and Crafts
Movement. The personal connection with
William Morris and his emphasis on
craftsmanship, do-it-yourself and the
`grow your own’ earthiness traditions.
n Haslemere, The Dolmetsch Family, the
festival, recordings and BBC connections.
n Recorder movement in schools.
10. Elizabethan Fever in the
Edwardian Era
n Edmund Fellowes and madrigals/lute songs
(coinciding with revival of English
composition – Elgar and VW).
n Revival of Tudor Church Music – of the
Oxford Movement and Surpliced choirs in all
parish churches. Richard Terry &
Westminster Cathedral.
n Coincided with period when Britain was
convinced of its moral superiority and
empire at its height. Looking for a glorious
musical past in "the land without music".
11. Interwar Years and the
Spread of Ideas
n Interwar Years – The Schola Cantorum
Basiliensis, Schola Cantorum of Paris –
Schools starting up dedicated to reviving
Early Music – close connection with
academics. Schools in Germany in 1920s
dedicated to particular instruments, e.g.
Lute .
n Modern composers rediscover Early Music
(Stravinsky, Hindemith, Busoni and others)
n American Renaissance (Dolmetsch and
Landowska in America). Hindemith at Yale.
New York Pro Musica. Great scholars -
Reese.
n Thurston Dart and the scholar musician.
13. 1960s and Post War Generation -
Flamboyant Performers
n i960s and gathering pace of Baroque Opera
Revival. Baroque dance and stagecraft
resurrected. DG 'Archiv' label.
n Alfred Deller and the Countertenor
renaissance.
n Early music Subcultures – Noah Greenberg,
David Munrow, Gustav Leonhardt.
n Amateur factor. Industry started with
followers and groupies
n Early Music in Japan, Eastern Europe,
Scandinavia.
19. Instrument Making
n Cottage industry of instrument makers
making period instruments.
n Reviving old methods and techniques of
construction. Using old materials, etc.
Slow and painstaking craftsmanship.
Antithesis to mass production.
n Small output and high cost.
n Makers concentrating on individual
instruments.
n Colleges to train makers and exhibitions to
sell and promote.
21. 1980s and Beyond
n Beethoven, Brahms and Beyond – Classical
and Romantic Music on Period Instruments.
Influence on Concert Programming, Musical
Education and Recording Industry.
n Historical Performance: The Dominant
Musical Ideology of Our Time. Affecting the
way modern classical performers play e.g.
the erosion of acceptance of vibrato
n But also questioning of the preoccupation
with the past.
22. Post 1980s ideas -
Instruments or Voices
n Idea that the use of instruments in
medieval music is always questionable –
very little of the notation is intended for
instruments, and before the 15th
centuries instrumentalists would not have
been musically literate. English `a capella
heresy’
n Questioning of the need for authenticity –
as it is unobtainable anyway - and
banning of the word.
23. Harry Haskell’s book on the
Early Music Revival
n `Authenticity is of course the nub, the central issue, the
very raison d’etre of the early music movement. In a
sense, the history of the movement is the history of the
search for authenticity – or more accurately, the history of
changing concepts of authenticity – in the performance of
early music. A distinction must now be drawn between
the early music revival, as that umbrella phrase has been
rather loosely used so far in this book, and what has come
to be called the historical performance movement. Clearly
many of the musicians associated with the revival of early
music and instruments have had little or no interest in
historical modes of performance. Only recently has the
attitude expressed in Landowska’s famous remark `you
play Bach your way, I’ll play Bach his way’ gained general
acceptance among early musicians’. Haskell, p.175
24. Bibliography
n Introduction to the Debate – Nicholas Kenyon’s
Authenticity and Early Music (Oxford, 1994)
n Its contribution to the development of Musicology in
the 1980s and 1990s – reference to Nicolas Cook, A
Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2000 rev. ed.)
n The History of the Early Music Revival – Harry
Haskell, The Early Music Revival (London, 1989)
n Questions of Historical Performance Practice – Colin
Lawson and Robin Stowell, The Historical
Performance of Music (Cambridge, 2002)
n Collections of primary source material - Robert
Donington, The Interpretation of Early Music (Faber
1974/New Version 1989)
25. Historical Performance today
n Sources
n surviving instruments
n representation in art & sculpture
n archival and literary sources - specific and
general
n original editions and manuscripts
n Issues for performance today
n the notes - using reliable editions
n the instruments (and what they tell us)
n performance style
• pitch & temperament, tempo, phrasing &
articulation, melodic inflection, rhythmic
alteration
• ornamentation & embellishment
• venues, platform arrangement, etc
28. Surviving Instruments
n Instruments survive in good numbers
from the sixteenth-century. Some are
playable.
n A great deal can be learnt from them and
museums and collections can be a great
resource.
n However all instruments have a history
that will be in part unknown and all will
have been reconditioned, repaired,
restored or alter to some degree over the
years to conform to changing taste.
30. Surviving Instruments
n Can tell us a huge amount about
historical performance pratice –
pitch, timbre, intensity, etc.
n Many instruments have a history
that connects them with specific
times, places and people. E.g.
Pianos of Mozart and Beethoven.
n But always be aware of pitfalls.
31. archival & literary sources
n To know how music was performed in
different periods must take in accounts of
performance.
n Social documentation on musicians and
their lives can help. How they worked –
in what groups and ensembles.
n Literature on performance practice
written in the time is always present and
invaluable.
32. Editions and Sources
n The original is always of importance and
understanding how the notes and
performance indicators were interpreted
vital.
n Many great pieces have had several
editions and understanding how the
music has changed through the editions is
important. Editions can vary hugely in
the text – this may indicate changing
musical taste and convention.
33. Musical Taste
n This is in constant flux.
n Even if you think you know all
there is to know about the
performance practice
conventions surrounding a piece
and the time it was composed it
will probably be folly to try to
reproduce it all.
n We live with modern
performance conventions
(concerts and a paying public,
varied venues, and an audience
that expects to be entertained).
34. Last Thoughts
n Any modern performance needs
to be an informed compromise
that brings to bare an
understanding of the whole
history of performance practice
in suitable way for an effective
performance to take place that is
true to th intentions of the
composer but appropriate to
that event in time and place.
35. Bibliography
n Haskell, Harry (1988) The Early
Music Revival, London, Thames and
Hudson
n Kenyon, Nicolas, (1989) Authenticity
and Early Music
n Butt, John (2002) Playing with
History, CUP, Cambridge
n Lawson and Stowell, The Historical
Performance of Music,
