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

[Xavier Otazu <xavier@fajnm1.am.ub.es>]

	Hi:
	
	
 I've really enjoyed your message. It made me thoguht about some points
 in this question.


On Wed, 1 Jul 1998, Bradley P Lehman wrote:
> 
> 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,

[...]

> 
> 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.) 

 Ok, I agree. But I have another point. It the music itself goes beyond
 the hardware avaliable at its composing epoch, if music surpasses the
 original instrumentation, if composer possibilities goes beyond the
 available material, why don't play his works in a different instrument?
 I am not saying that hapsichord is a "bad" instrument or that any other
 instrument is better than it, but wheter Bach music is so good that it
 could be played in other instruments.
 
 I think it's not good to limitate the Bach keyboard music to
 hapsichord. It's like limitate playing Chopin music on the past century
 pianos. Chopin is **** REALLY MUCH BETTER **** played in a modern grand
 piano than in past century ones.

 GG isn't perhaps into the HIP flow, IMHO. He plays Bach on piano and he
 doesn't agree wih the point of playing Bach on hapsichord. Music is so
 good and player is so good that he is able to "make to speak" both the
 piano and the piece itself in a very different way, better for some and
 worse for others. Each time I listened to a Bach piece I had not
 listened before played by Bach, I had to look another time to the
 score, because it sounds so different!

 But I don't want to define myself being in favour of or against the HIP
 point of view. I think it depends strongly on the piece.
 
 In another discussion list, I told that in the case of Bach hapsichord
 concertos I don't agree with playing this piece on piano. I think it's
 horrendous listening this piece played in piano, it's artificial, not
 natural, forced. I prefer it definitely on the hapsichord. But in the
 oposite point of view, I prefer other Bach keyboard music definitely on
 piano. I don't like Chopin music in ancient pianos, I prefer it in
 modern piano. This means that I think that each piece has to be studied
 before deciding on which instrument should be played. The first choice
 is to play in the original instruments, but if music is more
 "universal" and is well suited to be played on other instruments, it
 would be a better choice to play it in another instrument. Toc&Fuge
 BWV565, "Wedge Fuge", BWV542, etc should be played on the organ, IMHO.
 I cannot imagine it played in piano or even in hapsichord. Can you
 imagine Chopin played in hapsichord?! Some pieces could work well, but
 majority don't.

 Of course, word "well suited" depends on the present time, cultural and
 personal influences that modifies our taste. Perhaps 50 year late,
 people in 2050 year will thought that Bach is clearly better in
 hapsichord than in piano, and that the best instrument is the
 sintesizer-computer-psichodelic-astonishing-futurist-sound-like
 instrument. Now we are right and then they will be right. All of it
 depends on our prejudices and our mind.

 Because I am a physic: "Everything is relative, nothing is absolute".
 Every judgement we could do will depends on the corollary, and
 previously established ideas we have. Then, none judegement will be
 right or wrong, it will depends on what we are comparing with.

 
 Then, wheter HIP or not HIP point of view is right, will depends on us.
 And for me it depends on the piece itself. If it's a simple piece
 composed for hapsichord, play it on hapsichord, if it's a so great and
 genial pliece it could be played in whatever instrument you like, play
 it on the instrument you like. I will play them in piano, perhaps
 because I am a piano student and my taste are biased to piano.



 Some reactions ?


 Ouch! finally it has been a long mail... Sorry.
		
		
			Xavier
		
N'cha ... Hoyo-yo ... cupi ... pipo ...
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Xavier Otazu-Porter

Departament d'Astronomia i Meteorologia
Facultat de Fisica
Universitat de Barcelona
Avgda. Diagonal 647
08028 Barcelona
SPAIN


xavier@fajnm1.am.ub.es
http://www.am.ub.es/~jorge/xavier/xavier.html

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