Anybody here remember the radio program that the late and much-lamented Peter Schickele did? He called it "Schickele Mix", and he'd use an electronic keyboard to demonstrate. "Here it is on the Authentic Instrument", he'd say. I loved that. What Dave has to say brings to mind the old Landowska quote (apocryphal, perhaps): "You play Bach YOUR way, and I'll play Bach HIS way". To which I'd say (in my head), "Lady, you got a lotta chutzpah to make a statement like that." (I think Bach is indestructible. You could play much of his music on a a a bunch of ocarinas, and if you bring musicianship to it, it's fine and fun.)
Even if it were simply the distinction between aesthetics and history, period-instrument performances would allow us to experience historical dissatisfaction, if nothing else. But as pointed out, they don’t always even do that. And, yes, given the lack of accounting for personal subjective taste, one is at liberty to prefer either the freeze-dried version or the realization of an ideal. I often enjoy both.
Dave, have you ever considered doing a video about the best HIP performances (as part of the Essentials or the 10 recordings featuring the best playing ever series)? I, for one, would be really interested in that one. Maybe as a starter for a series on schools of interpretation (as in the French style of orchestral playing, or the Russian schools of piano and violin playing, etc)? In any case, always looking forward to whatever comes from your ever creative mind!
My favorite early music groups are La Petite Bande under Sigiswald Kuijken, and the Linde Consort. In both cases their Bach and their Haydn Symphonies are absolutely delightful, both for the excellent interpretations and for the beautiful ensemble sound.
I sort of agree but only up to a point. Look, I think these HIP people did fantastic work in the baroque repertoire, but also in Haydn and Mozart, even Beethoven and Schubert. We should be grateful to them for letting us hear things that had been over and over again done in a similar way, whatever the results. Yes the crunchiness has helped. Where I might part company with you a bit here is on the futurological aspect, as others have commented. Composers are not necessarily envisaging an ideal future, they are doing what they do in their job! Sometimes maybe badly by writing things that can’t be played at the time (eg Schumann’s Concertstuck). You’re usually so practical in your discussions, but the idea that composers are looking to the future and ever more perfect instrumentation and performances seems to me to be for the birds (or something to do with 19th century romanticism, German nationalism as you usually point out). I don’t think jobbing composers like Verdi or Rossini etc were preoccupied by the instruments of the future. So in the end it’s a nice try but it’s only partially convincing. All best.
I'm a little bit shocked by this, and particular by your reference to Verdi and Rossini as "jobbing composers." Rossini's scores are replete with highly detailed indications that hardly could have been realized by the musicians and conditions of his time, and he quit opera entirely because of that. Verdi's score indications reveal a sensitivity to dynamics that is entirely idealistic (something like 14 degrees of pianissimo!) . I really think your prejudice has gotten the better of you here. The study of musical texts reveals a great deal of what was going on in the composer's mind, and "idealism" is not limited to self-important German instrumental composers. It is a fundamental aspect of the compositional process--or at least it was at the time--and it distinguished what composers thought and did during the period in question from how they behave now.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I didn’t mean “jobbing” in a bad way at all Dave. I was thinking about music and time. Even if these composers you cite here wanted better instruments, it doesn’t mean that the instruments (or playing styles etc that we had in the mid 20th century) are what they expected. How could they be? I just meant composers doing their jobs for immanent performances, which is how they made their living (in these cases very successfully) and as you’re talking about money and period instruments, I think that’s fair enough as a comment. Take care, I’m moving and I’m certainly glad I don’t have to move as much as you did!
@@DavesClassicalGuide still doesn’t mean that what performance practice (concert conditions, type of instruments etc) was what they envisioned. How do you know musicians of the time couldn’t have realised these indications? Demanding, yes, impossible maybe we need more proof. In any case it doesn’t mean they were waiting for Szell or Ormandy or Beecham (much as I admire their more recent performance style)
Excellent perspective, and one of the most important as in many cases on this channel, on the famous problem of the "authenticity" argument, which is in fact one of the most persistent myths of the last 40 years in the music world. And what a delight it is for me to see that my own long-standing analysis of the problem matches that of David Hurwitz. As far as I'm concerned, I dated this permanent dissatisfaction of composers with the ways of making music in their own eras to the period of classicism as such. But in fact, this phenomenon concerns the entire history of music. Thank you for this reflection, which I think is fundamental.
I would argue an advantage to period instruments is all of these various instruments had different comparative volumes they were not just quieter. So if a violin was played with an oboe, or trumpet, the violin wouldn't be drowned out with 18th century instruments. I suggest that in a work where if you play with modern instruments the balance is all wrong, there still is some reason to play it with period instruments. But that's just my opinion.
Sorry, but I think that's complete nonsense. It's not the instruments that make the performance--the players do, and there's nothing earlier instruments can do in terms of dynamics and balances that modern players cannot do. It's simply a matter of training. Instruments do not play themselves.
Would anyone prefer an early acoustic recording made in the early 20th century to be played back on an authentic acoustic player of that period or would they prefer it to be played using modern electrical reproduction through a high quality amplifier and speakers?
I feel certain that no composer from the 17th century onwards up to the post WW1 era ever intended or imagined that their music should be played without expression and feeling, barring special effect exceptions. I remember when freeze-dried products, usually meats, first came on the market and were touted as light and easy to carry on hikes. But they were always intended to be reconstituted with the moisture, juice or water added back in before consumption. Never to be eaten in dry and dessicated form. Only with the arrival of the neoclassical movement was music written or imagined that would be deliberately expressionless and bonedry--an esthetic then applied in retrospect to earlier, expression rich musics. The natural reaction against Victorian bloated performances of Handel, for example, with thousands of choristers muddying and obliterating contrapuntal textures and Messiah performances that lasted four hours seems to have begun in the 1920s (Beecham's first 1920s Messiah renditions and 1927 recording were considered almost avant garde.) But the goal was to restore true feeling and expression to the music. The old sogginess was expelled, but the results were still juicy and vibrant.
I wonder what kind of sounds Mozart and Beethoven heard in their own heads when they were composing for the pianoforte. Maybe they were hearing a fuller, more rounded sound which the pianoforte wasn't up to?
I wonder what your opinion is of Ton Koopman. I have searched your past videos, and I couldn't find any that deal with that Dutch HIP conductor/keyboardist. Did you ever make any, and I just wasn't able to find it? Are you considering making one at some point?
To further the music/food analogy, the HIP movement is in-line with anti-GMOs, anti-chemical fertilizers and pesticides, anti-large-scale farming, anti-the technological developments needed to feed a growing and hungry world. It bespeaks a romantic longing for an idealized, pre-industrial past that was actually pretty miserable for most people. Everything is "natural," from its horns and its tuning to its farming, which was subject to all sorts of blights and rot and pests and crappy yields. The rich got their fill, the less rich not so much. To cite the title of a fun book by Otto Bettmann (of Bettmann Archive fame), "The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible!" Or as The Wife is fond of saying, "I have no nostalgia for any time before penicillin."
As much as I enjoy period instrument performances of most baroque music and earlier, I have to say that some of the best performances I have heard of Machaut were performed with saxophones! Also Dave, sometime I hope you will talk about Schoenberg's Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra based on Handel's Concerto Grosso No. 6; I just heard it for the first time today, and as my CD's liner notes mention, it's not the music that the horses were tugging the King's cart to!
@@DavesClassicalGuide Thanks Dave! Watched it and recommend everyone else does, too! I got a recording by Schwartz including Couperin arranged by Richard Strauss,
Composers were "always" future-oriented or for ideal instruments that didn't exist yet? What about compositions where we definitely know that it was crafted for entertainment at the king's bedtime, or for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost this year, or "we have a concert in 3 weeks and need the piece" (Saint-Saens's second piano concerto, for example)? My own compositions and arrangements have usually been for specific occasions where I know what instruments or singers will be participating, not for any ideal fantasy future. What about composers who worked in this way, where their imaginations and their skills went into delivering exactly what the patron or the situation expected? So, I don't buy your premise.
I'm not surprised. Your not operating on the same frequency as they were. Spohr detested having his music played for aristocratic entertainment. Sure, there were always going to be people who wrote stuff for local conditions and were perfectly satisfied, and that is exactly why we ignore their music now, by and large.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Couperin, Marais, Lully, and their colleagues wrote music specifically for the king's bedtime and court entertainment. JS Bach and his colleagues and sons wrote thousands of hours of compositions for specific Sundays. Saint-Saens, Mozart, and some others threw their concertos together just in time. Haydn wrote about 125 baryton trios for a specific prince. These are not lightweight composers whose music we ignore. These were working musicians doing their jobs. And we dig up and listen to these obscure pieces because we like the people who made them, and because the pieces are well-crafted enough to be worth hearing and enjoying.
@@bradleylehman4327 I don't think that composing for specific occasions such as the king's bedtime or some other particular need, necessarily means that composers like Couperin or Lully were not looking for better or newer sound, ensemble, or techniques. I interpreted what Dave was saying to mean something like the urge towards innovation - the imaginative, creative impulse. It seems to me that the creative impulse can be seen as forward looking. Every occasion can be an opportunity to create something new, something fresh, something that motivates technical innovation, the need or desire for louder sounds, different timbres, etc. A composer might imagine a certain kind of sound for the particular occasion, though limited by the instruments and forces at hand. This does not necessarily mean the composer doesn't long for something different, something better than what is at hand.
@bradleylehman4327 Conversely, Haydn and Mozart were delighted to work with the much larger forces available to them in Paris or Mannheim. In Paris, Haydn had 40 violins and ten double basses. At the opera, before the end of the 18th century the or orchestra grew enormously. There's no evidence I've read that Haydn or Mozart demanded the size be reduced.
@@bbailey7818Symphonies written by Haydn and Mozart for smaller forces...often sound better when played by smaller forces. There's a reason why Classical Period works were often played by chamber orchestras even before HIP caught on. Some works do sound better with larger forces, especially those that were written for larger forces like the Paris Symphonies or The Seasons.
Sometimes I like the scruffy, lean sounds of the period instrument movement. Other times - particularly with the pianoforte I can’t imagine what the artists are thinking. Whether acoustic instruments are continuing to evolve, though, is an interesting question! Have they reached the pinnacle of development? Or do they simply provide enough? Perhaps 10 different kinds of clarinets are enough 😎? I wonder how many new acoustic instruments or versions of acoustic instruments were introduced in the 20th century…
Seems like you’re a sugar high with this episode. I have two flutes one modern and one baroque (one key). Yes, modern is easier to play but I prefer the sound/timbre of the baroque version. When I listen to music from say, the baroque period, there is a “soul” when performed using historical instruments, pitches, etc. It is something sensed and not something dictated in some textbook. Music at that time was composed for the instruments as they existed with tones, capabilities/limitations, skills. I am not so sure composers would thoroughly enjoy pieces performed on today’s instruments. They might even consider rewriting compositions to be better suited when played on such.
One of my favorite stories about the absurdity of the period-instrument movement concerns the so-called "Bach bow." A painter of Bach's time produced a really badly screwed-up painting of what purported to be one of Bach's ensembles in which the cello bow was wretchedly and inaccurately depicted. A number of people in the period-instruments crowd seized on this and decided it represented what cello bows looked like in Bach's time. So they tried to re-create the "Bach bow" and found that it made Bach's suites for solo cello even harder to play than they are with normal equipment.
Possibly funny story: Recently, I purchased the Kuijken/OAE recording of the Paris Symphonies because it was cheap, and I regretted it. Shabby playing, square performances with very little of Haydn's wit, and worst of all AN ADDED HARPSICHORD CONTINUO.
Who is possibly the most boring, irritating but well known conductor around today? Answer: Roger Norrington. A “period performance style” (i.e. minimal vibrato) specialist, what a surprise. 😂😂
Hi Dave, I have a question regarding historically informed performance, which I, as a 17-year old studying conducting, would be very interested to hear your answer to. You often say that one of the main reasons that historically informed performance caught on is because it is cheaper for orchestras to performer with smaller forces, so do you think it is even possible for a conductor today to get same size orchestras that great conductors of the 20th century had when playing works from classical period?
Quite a few conductors from the first half of the 20th century invariably used reduced forces when playing Haydn and Mozart. Though apparently Furtwangler removed double basses when switching from Bach to Bruckner!
The only way to make an accurate HIP of the early 1800 is to hire 10 musicians from the local pub, 3 of them still drunk, 2 with syphilis, and make them play the piece on the go with no conductor at all
You got it when you said they charge you twice as much..... HIP uses fewer players and smaller voices commanding lower fees and they DON'T pass the savings on to you. The usual scam. The Haagen Dasz scam. 0:01
@@2leftfield so do I! It's my favorite! Maybe you don't know the story. Originally,,HD was just an ordinary low priced product, but it didn't catch on. Consultants were hired and they said rebrand it as an exotic luxury item and jack the price way up. Voila, Haagen Dasz.
Anybody here remember the radio program that the late and much-lamented Peter Schickele did? He called it "Schickele Mix", and he'd use an electronic keyboard to demonstrate. "Here it is on the Authentic Instrument", he'd say. I loved that. What Dave has to say brings to mind the old Landowska quote (apocryphal, perhaps): "You play Bach YOUR way, and I'll play Bach HIS way". To which I'd say (in my head), "Lady, you got a lotta chutzpah to make a statement like that." (I think Bach is indestructible. You could play much of his music on a a a bunch of ocarinas, and if you bring musicianship to it, it's fine and fun.)
Even if it were simply the distinction between aesthetics and history, period-instrument performances would allow us to experience historical dissatisfaction, if nothing else. But as pointed out, they don’t always even do that. And, yes, given the lack of accounting for personal subjective taste, one is at liberty to prefer either the freeze-dried version or the realization of an ideal. I often enjoy both.
So do I. Crisp and crunchy works quite well in some repertoire.
There are many HIP that I absolutely treasure. I grew up on this practice so it's become standard to me, in a sense.
Dave, have you ever considered doing a video about the best HIP performances (as part of the Essentials or the 10 recordings featuring the best playing ever series)? I, for one, would be really interested in that one. Maybe as a starter for a series on schools of interpretation (as in the French style of orchestral playing, or the Russian schools of piano and violin playing, etc)? In any case, always looking forward to whatever comes from your ever creative mind!
I'll think about it!
Thanks for the suggestion. I can and will do "10 Unambiguously Great Historically Informed Performances."
To be fair, Dave does include period instrument recordings in his recommended lists when he actually thinks they deserve it. Thanks, Dave!
My favorite early music groups are La Petite Bande under Sigiswald Kuijken, and the Linde Consort. In both cases their Bach and their Haydn Symphonies are absolutely delightful, both for the excellent interpretations and for the beautiful ensemble sound.
I find Kuijken to be pretty grey and dreary most of the time, especially in Haydn.
I sort of agree but only up to a point. Look, I think these HIP people did fantastic work in the baroque repertoire, but also in Haydn and Mozart, even Beethoven and Schubert. We should be grateful to them for letting us hear things that had been over and over again done in a similar way, whatever the results. Yes the crunchiness has helped. Where I might part company with you a bit here is on the futurological aspect, as others have commented. Composers are not necessarily envisaging an ideal future, they are doing what they do in their job! Sometimes maybe badly by writing things that can’t be played at the time (eg Schumann’s Concertstuck). You’re usually so practical in your discussions, but the idea that composers are looking to the future and ever more perfect instrumentation and performances seems to me to be for the birds (or something to do with 19th century romanticism, German nationalism as you usually point out). I don’t think jobbing composers like Verdi or Rossini etc were preoccupied by the instruments of the future. So in the end it’s a nice try but it’s only partially convincing. All best.
I'm a little bit shocked by this, and particular by your reference to Verdi and Rossini as "jobbing composers." Rossini's scores are replete with highly detailed indications that hardly could have been realized by the musicians and conditions of his time, and he quit opera entirely because of that. Verdi's score indications reveal a sensitivity to dynamics that is entirely idealistic (something like 14 degrees of pianissimo!) . I really think your prejudice has gotten the better of you here. The study of musical texts reveals a great deal of what was going on in the composer's mind, and "idealism" is not limited to self-important German instrumental composers. It is a fundamental aspect of the compositional process--or at least it was at the time--and it distinguished what composers thought and did during the period in question from how they behave now.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I didn’t mean “jobbing” in a bad way at all Dave. I was thinking about music and time. Even if these composers you cite here wanted better instruments, it doesn’t mean that the instruments (or playing styles etc that we had in the mid 20th century) are what they expected. How could they be? I just meant composers doing their jobs for immanent performances, which is how they made their living (in these cases very successfully) and as you’re talking about money and period instruments, I think that’s fair enough as a comment. Take care, I’m moving and I’m certainly glad I don’t have to move as much as you did!
@@DavesClassicalGuide still doesn’t mean that what performance practice (concert conditions, type of instruments etc) was what they envisioned. How do you know musicians of the time couldn’t have realised these indications? Demanding, yes, impossible maybe we need more proof. In any case it doesn’t mean they were waiting for Szell or Ormandy or Beecham (much as I admire their more recent performance style)
Excellent perspective, and one of the most important as in many cases on this channel, on the famous problem of the "authenticity" argument, which is in fact one of the most persistent myths of the last 40 years in the music world. And what a delight it is for me to see that my own long-standing analysis of the problem matches that of David Hurwitz. As far as I'm concerned, I dated this permanent dissatisfaction of composers with the ways of making music in their own eras to the period of classicism as such. But in fact, this phenomenon concerns the entire history of music. Thank you for this reflection, which I think is fundamental.
Very entertaining (at times, hilarious) and informative.
I bet Schubert et al would prefer to hear their music played on a modern Steinway (or even an upright Yamaha) than an Erard fortepiano.
I would argue an advantage to period instruments is all of these various instruments had different comparative volumes they were not just quieter. So if a violin was played with an oboe, or trumpet, the violin wouldn't be drowned out with 18th century instruments.
I suggest that in a work where if you play with modern instruments the balance is all wrong, there still is some reason to play it with period instruments. But that's just my opinion.
Sorry, but I think that's complete nonsense. It's not the instruments that make the performance--the players do, and there's nothing earlier instruments can do in terms of dynamics and balances that modern players cannot do. It's simply a matter of training. Instruments do not play themselves.
Would anyone prefer an early acoustic recording made in the early 20th century to be played back on an authentic acoustic player of that period or would they prefer it to be played using modern electrical reproduction through a high quality amplifier and speakers?
I feel certain that no composer from the 17th century onwards up to the post WW1 era ever intended or imagined that their music should be played without expression and feeling, barring special effect exceptions. I remember when freeze-dried products, usually meats, first came on the market and were touted as light and easy to carry on hikes. But they were always intended to be reconstituted with the moisture, juice or water added back in before consumption. Never to be eaten in dry and dessicated form. Only with the arrival of the neoclassical movement was music written or imagined that would be deliberately expressionless and bonedry--an esthetic then applied in retrospect to earlier, expression rich musics.
The natural reaction against Victorian bloated performances of Handel, for example, with thousands of choristers muddying and obliterating contrapuntal textures and Messiah performances that lasted four hours seems to have begun in the 1920s (Beecham's first 1920s Messiah renditions and 1927 recording were considered almost avant garde.) But the goal was to restore true feeling and expression to the music. The old sogginess was expelled, but the results were still juicy and vibrant.
That was a wonderful advertisement for freeze dried jolly balls! All jokes aside, wonderful talk!
Love your props-assisted Talks. The parallels speak volumes. Of freeze dried airiness, in this case!
I wonder what kind of sounds Mozart and Beethoven heard in their own heads when they were composing for the pianoforte. Maybe they were hearing a fuller, more rounded sound which the pianoforte wasn't up to?
Le quattro stagione - the freeze-dried version: Concerto No. 1 - 'L'inverno'; Concerto No. 2 - 'L'inverno'; Concerto No. 3 - 'L'inverno; and Concerto No. 4 - 'L'inverno'!
🎉HIP is absolutely a modern performance practice. You have nailed it to the wall and flogged it into submission!
You are hilarious Dave.
I wonder what your opinion is of Ton Koopman. I have searched your past videos, and I couldn't find any that deal with that Dutch HIP conductor/keyboardist. Did you ever make any, and I just wasn't able to find it? Are you considering making one at some point?
I find his baroque stuff OK (Bach and the like) and anything later pretty awful.
To further the music/food analogy, the HIP movement is in-line with anti-GMOs, anti-chemical fertilizers and pesticides, anti-large-scale farming, anti-the technological developments needed to feed a growing and hungry world. It bespeaks a romantic longing for an idealized, pre-industrial past that was actually pretty miserable for most people. Everything is "natural," from its horns and its tuning to its farming, which was subject to all sorts of blights and rot and pests and crappy yields. The rich got their fill, the less rich not so much. To cite the title of a fun book by Otto Bettmann (of Bettmann Archive fame), "The Good Old Days: They Were Terrible!" Or as The Wife is fond of saying, "I have no nostalgia for any time before penicillin."
It's toilet paper and deodorant for me.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Can't disagree.
Nice analogy. Perhaps can extend further: GMO, pesticides etc has led to terrible tasting food, depleted soil, human disease.
As much as I enjoy period instrument performances of most baroque music and earlier, I have to say that some of the best performances I have heard of Machaut were performed with saxophones! Also Dave, sometime I hope you will talk about Schoenberg's Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra based on Handel's Concerto Grosso No. 6; I just heard it for the first time today, and as my CD's liner notes mention, it's not the music that the horses were tugging the King's cart to!
I have talked about it. The video is in the Schoenberg playlist: ruclips.net/video/C9ZvfuBnurM/видео.html
@@DavesClassicalGuide Thanks Dave! Watched it and recommend everyone else does, too! I got a recording by Schwartz including Couperin arranged by Richard Strauss,
Composers were "always" future-oriented or for ideal instruments that didn't exist yet? What about compositions where we definitely know that it was crafted for entertainment at the king's bedtime, or for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost this year, or "we have a concert in 3 weeks and need the piece" (Saint-Saens's second piano concerto, for example)?
My own compositions and arrangements have usually been for specific occasions where I know what instruments or singers will be participating, not for any ideal fantasy future. What about composers who worked in this way, where their imaginations and their skills went into delivering exactly what the patron or the situation expected?
So, I don't buy your premise.
I'm not surprised. Your not operating on the same frequency as they were. Spohr detested having his music played for aristocratic entertainment. Sure, there were always going to be people who wrote stuff for local conditions and were perfectly satisfied, and that is exactly why we ignore their music now, by and large.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Couperin, Marais, Lully, and their colleagues wrote music specifically for the king's bedtime and court entertainment. JS Bach and his colleagues and sons wrote thousands of hours of compositions for specific Sundays. Saint-Saens, Mozart, and some others threw their concertos together just in time. Haydn wrote about 125 baryton trios for a specific prince.
These are not lightweight composers whose music we ignore. These were working musicians doing their jobs. And we dig up and listen to these obscure pieces because we like the people who made them, and because the pieces are well-crafted enough to be worth hearing and enjoying.
@@bradleylehman4327 I don't think that composing for specific occasions such as the king's bedtime or some other particular need, necessarily means that composers like Couperin or Lully were not looking for better or newer sound, ensemble, or techniques. I interpreted what Dave was saying to mean something like the urge towards innovation - the imaginative, creative impulse. It seems to me that the creative impulse can be seen as forward looking. Every occasion can be an opportunity to create something new, something fresh, something that motivates technical innovation, the need or desire for louder sounds, different timbres, etc. A composer might imagine a certain kind of sound for the particular occasion, though limited by the instruments and forces at hand. This does not necessarily mean the composer doesn't long for something different, something better than what is at hand.
@bradleylehman4327 Conversely, Haydn and Mozart were delighted to work with the much larger forces available to them in Paris or Mannheim. In Paris, Haydn had 40 violins and ten double basses. At the opera, before the end of the 18th century the or orchestra grew enormously. There's no evidence I've read that Haydn or Mozart demanded the size be reduced.
@@bbailey7818Symphonies written by Haydn and Mozart for smaller forces...often sound better when played by smaller forces. There's a reason why Classical Period works were often played by chamber orchestras even before HIP caught on.
Some works do sound better with larger forces, especially those that were written for larger forces like the Paris Symphonies or The Seasons.
Sometimes I like the scruffy, lean sounds of the period instrument movement. Other times - particularly with the pianoforte I can’t imagine what the artists are thinking. Whether acoustic instruments are continuing to evolve, though, is an interesting question! Have they reached the pinnacle of development? Or do they simply provide enough? Perhaps 10 different kinds of clarinets are enough 😎? I wonder how many new acoustic instruments or versions of acoustic instruments were introduced in the 20th century…
Harry Partch?
Seems like you’re a sugar high with this episode.
I have two flutes one modern and one baroque (one key). Yes, modern is easier to play but I prefer the sound/timbre of the baroque version. When I listen to music from say, the baroque period, there is a “soul” when performed using historical instruments, pitches, etc. It is something sensed and not something dictated in some textbook. Music at that time was composed for the instruments as they existed with tones, capabilities/limitations, skills.
I am not so sure composers would thoroughly enjoy pieces performed on today’s instruments. They might even consider rewriting compositions to be better suited when played on such.
One of my favorite stories about the absurdity of the period-instrument movement concerns the so-called "Bach bow." A painter of Bach's time produced a really badly screwed-up painting of what purported to be one of Bach's ensembles in which the cello bow was wretchedly and inaccurately depicted. A number of people in the period-instruments crowd seized on this and decided it represented what cello bows looked like in Bach's time. So they tried to re-create the "Bach bow" and found that it made Bach's suites for solo cello even harder to play than they are with normal equipment.
Possibly funny story: Recently, I purchased the Kuijken/OAE recording of the Paris Symphonies because it was cheap, and I regretted it. Shabby playing, square performances with very little of Haydn's wit, and worst of all AN ADDED HARPSICHORD CONTINUO.
I know. It's terrible.
Who is possibly the most boring, irritating but well known conductor around today? Answer: Roger Norrington. A “period performance style” (i.e. minimal vibrato) specialist, what a surprise. 😂😂
@@itsagasgasgasI call him Roger Borrington and I really like period instrument performances
@@itsagasgasgas yeah I get a bit tired about the anti norrington comments on here, give him a break and he was only one part of these things.
@@murraylow4523 I agree, it has made me stop watching the channel for a while in the past. Some of Norrington's recording I really treasure.
@@loganfruchtman953This Gardiner & Bruggen fan agrees.
@@patrickhackett7881 Yes! Top 5 period conductors are Bruggen, Gardiner, Hogwood, Pinnock and Harnoncourt!
Hi Dave, I have a question regarding historically informed performance, which I, as a 17-year old studying conducting, would be very interested to hear your answer to. You often say that one of the main reasons that historically informed performance caught on is because it is cheaper for orchestras to performer with smaller forces, so do you think it is even possible for a conductor today to get same size orchestras that great conductors of the 20th century had when playing works from classical period?
Sure it's possible. They do it all the time.
Quite a few conductors from the first half of the 20th century invariably used reduced forces when playing Haydn and Mozart. Though apparently Furtwangler removed double basses when switching from Bach to Bruckner!
The only way to make an accurate HIP of the early 1800 is to hire 10 musicians from the local pub, 3 of them still drunk, 2 with syphilis, and make them play the piece on the go with no conductor at all
Didn't Tovey say something like an authentic period performance of Bach would require spanking naughty choirboys in the vestry?
BRAVO!
You got it when you said they charge you twice as much..... HIP uses fewer players and smaller voices commanding lower fees and they DON'T pass the savings on to you. The usual scam. The Haagen Dasz scam. 0:01
Wait a minute, I LIKE Haagen Dasz ice cream quite a lot..... 🙂
@@2leftfield so do I! It's my favorite!
Maybe you don't know the story. Originally,,HD was just an ordinary low priced product, but it didn't catch on. Consultants were hired and they said rebrand it as an exotic luxury item and jack the price way up. Voila, Haagen Dasz.
And branding it with exotic Danish sounding name - because no one hates the Danes - for a product initially hatched in the Bronx.
@@silvershield2342 Dano-Humgarian, or is it Finno-Hungarian?