Re: Has GG's star faded in the midst of recent trends?

[Bradley P Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>]

On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, K. Berry wrote:

> On GG and HIP -- I'm reading Bazzana's book right now, curiously enough,
> and he talks a little about that very subject.  His idea is that
> although GG and HIP actually come to fairly similar performances in some
> cases (no big washes and rubato in Bach, to oversimplify), they come to
> it from very different places.  GG creates those performances out of his
> conviction that the interpreter is a creator just as much as the
> composer is, and his other ethical and moral stances.  HIP folks create
> the performances out of a desire to hear exactly what people back then
> heard, or so I vaguely understand.  Please correct me, someone, if
> that's incorrect.

OK, I think you're incorrect.  See below.  :)

> I'm not a big HIPster myself: the argument that `even
> if you use period instruments in a period church, the people performing
> and listening are *not* 17th century burghers, so the music will
> inevitably be different' is convincing to me.  I am somewhat interested
> in such performances as a historical thing, but as a musical thing, they
> seem no more valid to me than any other.

If that's all HIP ("historically informed performance") is, then you're
correct by that logic.  I don't think that's all HIP is, though.

My tastes and training (doctorate) are in HIP, and I care only about 10%
about what people back then heard, and 90% about making convincing musical
results that communicate well with today's people.  The point about using
appropriate instruments and playing techniques is not to recreate the
past, but to give oneself a natural and useful range of musical gestures
which are as appropriate to the music as possible.  This frees the
performer to be as naturally musical as s/he is able, without imposing
artificial problems such as balancing the wrong instruments, projecting to
the wrong types of performance spaces, or deciding how to phrase
convincingly.  Instead, one simply takes the composer's notation, culture,
improvisational expectations, style, and instrumentation seriously as a
starting point.  (Analogy: if you want to be an actor in a Norwegian play,
your performance has a lot better chance of being convincing if you first
learn Norwegian and then act/speak naturally, rather than if you merely
memorize and repeat back the sound of otherwise incomprehensible Norwegian
words and phrases.  Knowing the language lets you engage your own creative
abilities intelligently on the character's behalf.  Learn the craft first,
then see how the author used it, then emphasize the surprising points
which define the author's artistry.) 

If instead one starts from a foundation on instruments/styles that didn't
exist when the music was composed, the music will always have a "foreign
accent" and some artificiality to it.  Sure, it can still be convincing,
but one will have to work much harder to be convincing than should be
necessary.  (That's true whenever one uses the wrong tools for any job,
not just in musical performance.) 

Jerry and/or Judy wrote earlier: 

> Is the GG 'legacy', and all that that phrase conjures up, the polar
> opposite of HIP?  

Nope.

> I enjoy and appreciate both, but am I in the minority?
> and is it a generational reaction?  Shouldn't the Gould recordings be
> required listening for today's serious student?  Here's hoping...   

My opinion: if a serious student is to have experienced exposure to
anything but the down-the-middle conservatory style from his/her teachers
and fellow students, GG should certainly be required listening.  So should
other more recent styles (both HIP and mainstream), mid-20th century
styles, comparisons among national styles (if any), and especially
recordings from the early 20th century, before the days of tape/digital
splicing and before performance styles became as homogenized as they tend
to be today.  Individual "personality" was (arguably) more important as an
artistic goal back then.  And of course there's also reading the treatises
and reviews written before the days of recording (for example, Wagner's
essays about how to conduct Beethoven, or Burney's travelogues of musical
life), as well as music boxes, mechanical organs, and piano rolls.

If a student is exposed to a number of possibilities beyond those which
the current Powers That Be (conservatories, classical marketing, concert
series, competitions, etc.) deem "normal interpretation," s/he will be
better placed to develop a personal style that is personally and
historically significant.  This personal style might end up being
mainstream anyway (but better informed as to mainstream's place), or
modeled after some other style, or a synthesis of various styles, or even
something iconoclastic (like Gould, Pogorelich,
the-artist-formerly-known-as-Nigel Kennedy, etc.).  The student will at
least have been taught how to think independently and to listen
critically, rather than simply mimicking anyone. 

I think GG's style and HIP ("Historically informed performance") are not
so far apart at all.  They are both attempts to use tools and techniques
to illustrate fresh facets of music we thought we knew. 

- GG's approach often tended to be sort of a laser-pointer demonstrative
lecture *about* the pieces, espousing some didactic point of view
(analysis of structure, counterpoint, etc.).  These "lectures" considered
pieces outside historical context, putting them instead into a framework
"this is what this piece means to me today," which is *a* valid approach. 
They bring out intellectually interesting points about the pieces and
genres as we consider how this artist reacted to them, and consider what
he chose to emphasize. 

- One of HIP's main goals is to play old pieces as if they were new: 
presenting them with authentic musicality within current tradition/culture
as an attempt to recreate a composer's intended *effect* within his/her
own tradition/culture.  (Not reproducing the pond or the projectiles as
much as trying to make a similarly impressive splash...though a similar
pond and projectiles make the job a whole lot easier!)  And the more we
know about the composer's traditions, culture, instrumentation, styles,
reception, etc., the better placed we are to do something with a similar
effect on today's audiences.  That's what HIP at its best is (in my
opinion).  It's simply *another* valid approach to making a piece sound
fresh, in this case by presenting a sound palette that is typically
outside the expectations of audiences accustomed to mainstream
performances. 

Both approaches (GG's and HIP) are reactionary and make this point: "in
this piece, the mainstream (typical conservatory/competition) approach
misses something interesting and worth hearing, and so here is a different
way which brings out details you may not have noticed." 

Now near the end of this century, the HIP approach has become the
mainstream in some cases.  It has become a widespread expectation that if
one performs certain music, historically appropriate instrumentation and
styles will be used as default.  If you go to a performance of music by
Giovanni Paolo Cima, the ensemble will use a cornetto, not a clarinet. And
mainstream pianists almost never play any pre-1760 keyboard music anymore
[except for Bach and Scarlatti]...it's harder to make that repertoire
sound convincing on modern piano than it is on the instruments the
composers knew. They now leave that repertoire to "specialists," and those
specialists have become their own mainstream.

And as always, HIP stands or falls on the *musicality* of the
performances, not on the hardware or the playing/singing techniques in
themselves.  There are still some published critics, though, who regularly
bash HIP just because they don't like the sound, or because they are
remembering some earlier HIP work that was musically unsatisfactory, and
they haven't troubled themselves to listen carefully since then.  (And
some HIP work still *is* bad, though the general standard has risen
dramatically.)  It's interesting to read back through the past 40 years or
so in the critical press, watching the reception history of HIP.  It's
also interesting to watch the non-HIP mainstream performers now
repositioning themselves and rethinking their generic styles, as they
still want to perform some of the music that is "claimed" by the HIP
culture and don't want to be dismissed as clueless.  It's an inevitable
counter-revolution.  (Who wants to write the book drawing a parallel
between all this and the 16th-century religious Reformation with its
back-and-forth cultural consequences?) 

Bradley Lehman ~ Harrisonburg VA, USA ~ 38.45716N+78.94565W
bpl@umich.edu ~ http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/ 

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music 
and cats." - Albert Schweitzer