Original Instruments - or, as often seen on recordings, "On original instruments." This could possibly be true, if strings alone are used. For groups with winds, the phrase "on period instruments" would be more precise, as period instrument groups almost universally use copies of historical winds. There are difficulties in restoring historical winds to playing condition and keeping them in working order without destroying their value as antiques.
Period Instruments - original instruments and copies thereof.
Authentic Performance - "Authenticity" in the performance of old music is a term with intuitive appeal, but because of intellectual attacks it is out of favor ... more on this later.
Historically Informed Performance (HIP) - self-explanatory (I think ... if you disagree please comment). The somewhat unfortunate acronym is not intentionally smug (usually).
Early Music (EM) - often a synonym for use of period instruments or historical techniques. More date-focused usage always includes pre-Baroque music, but may omit the Baroque period. The Classical period (roughly coincident with Mozart and Beethoven) is more often omitted.
The preceding terms can often be used quite interchangeably.
Baroque - in music, roughly 1600 to 1750. One Internet wag was more precise, opining that the Baroque dawned on Jan 1, 1600 local time.
Classical - familiarly used to denote Western art music generally. The Classical era, though, is generally regarded as the period from 1760 to 1820, roughly the span from Haydn through Beethoven.
Baroque Orchestra - code word for a group using period instruments, larger than a chamber group, and with instrumentation generally suitable for many works from Biber (and earlier) to Bach. Why do so many Baroque orchestras eschew 17th C. music in favor of Mozart and Beethoven? That's a topic for a later post.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Monday, January 14, 2008
The Historical Mindset
Common sense tells us that a certain percentage of the period performance audience simply likes the different sounds they're hearing, though some are (also) responding to spirited (and technically excellent) performances, regardless of the media utilized.
But beyond that, is there a segment of Historically Informed Performance (HIP) fans looking for something else? Such as TRUTH? (I wanted the word "truth" to pulsate, in addition to the rainbow rendering, just to emphasize the irony, but blogspot has limits). There are intellectual difficulties (which we'll get into in later posts) in trying to arrive at "absolute truth" about music of the sufficiently-distant past. But right now I want to share an anecdote.
An aunt by marriage, let's call her N, and her daughter, both modern cellists, visited our house one day, and I gave them a little harpsichord demonstration. N asked, "Where did you get all those ornaments?" I delivered a brief stock spiel about (a) minor differences in 17th vs. 18th C. keyboard ornamentation, as well as regional variations, (b) how scores frequently omitted ornaments, but musicians of the time were expected to know standard ornaments and provide them appropriately, and (c) how the 18th C. French school went the other direction and expected their copious ornamentation to be played as written ... blah blah blah.
I concluded by offering to photocopy an extensive table of ornaments for N from an anthology of Howard Ferguson's. "No, that's all right," N demurred.
N did not have an historical mindset. This incuriosity is certainly not representative of all mainstream classical musicians (and I believe it is less and less typical, if only because historical practices are often needed for survival these days), but there are still the incurious among them. And N was (for she has since passed) a respected cello teacher, well trained in the mainstream tradition, and a member of a variety of symphony orchestras for most of her career.
Yet I could not begin to get her to drink the historical Kool-Aid. There's an old joke: The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't. I don't know if that's even funny, but I do know the world can be divided into those with the historical mindset, and those without.
But beyond that, is there a segment of Historically Informed Performance (HIP) fans looking for something else? Such as TRUTH? (I wanted the word "truth" to pulsate, in addition to the rainbow rendering, just to emphasize the irony, but blogspot has limits). There are intellectual difficulties (which we'll get into in later posts) in trying to arrive at "absolute truth" about music of the sufficiently-distant past. But right now I want to share an anecdote.
An aunt by marriage, let's call her N, and her daughter, both modern cellists, visited our house one day, and I gave them a little harpsichord demonstration. N asked, "Where did you get all those ornaments?" I delivered a brief stock spiel about (a) minor differences in 17th vs. 18th C. keyboard ornamentation, as well as regional variations, (b) how scores frequently omitted ornaments, but musicians of the time were expected to know standard ornaments and provide them appropriately, and (c) how the 18th C. French school went the other direction and expected their copious ornamentation to be played as written ... blah blah blah.
I concluded by offering to photocopy an extensive table of ornaments for N from an anthology of Howard Ferguson's. "No, that's all right," N demurred.
N did not have an historical mindset. This incuriosity is certainly not representative of all mainstream classical musicians (and I believe it is less and less typical, if only because historical practices are often needed for survival these days), but there are still the incurious among them. And N was (for she has since passed) a respected cello teacher, well trained in the mainstream tradition, and a member of a variety of symphony orchestras for most of her career.
Yet I could not begin to get her to drink the historical Kool-Aid. There's an old joke: The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don't. I don't know if that's even funny, but I do know the world can be divided into those with the historical mindset, and those without.
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