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