I've heard a bit about this topic before: how the modern way of listening to classical music does not bear much resemblance to how it was performed in the days the work was created.
This review of a book on the topic gives a bit more background:
There was a whole tradition of "concert improvisation." The young Franz Liszt would improvise on themes offered by concert-goers to such effect that his listeners were left in a state of delirium. Audiences in the 19th century, themselves less rigidly bound than audiences today, got into the spirit by voicing their enthusiasm when a passage moved them -- interrupting with applause or shouts and sometimes demanding, mid-concert, a reprise. They applauded between movements as well.Much of the blame for the stifling formality of performance today is, apparently, the fault of a prominent later figure in music:
Mr. Hamilton shows how much of our present performing etiquette derives from Felix Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, whose antipathy to interpretative license (and to Liszt, its exalted practitioner) bordered on the pathological. "It is inartistic, nay barbaric, to alter anything they [composers] have written, even by a single note," said Mendelssohn. His style demanded strict meter, the avoidance of expressive ritardandos, utter fidelity to the page and minimal pedal. No wonder, as Mr. Hamilton drily notes, that on the wall of the Leipzig Gewandhaus (where Mendelssohn played and conducted) was Seneca's apothegm: "Res severa est verum gaudium." That is: "True joy is a serious business."
Nah, it wasn't just Mendelsohn. Robert Schumann and Berlioz and a number of others exhorted accuracy and fidelity to the score. It's understandable, because they were working in a time when orchestras kept growing and instruments kept being developed. The trouble was, a lot of musicians didn't actually have the skill, ability or talent to deal with these changes, so you got town or city orchestras that were more frequently dischordant than otherwise. (There's an early send up of a municipal band in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony - the joke is that they keep playing the wrong notes.) Schumann as a critic lambasted musicians who experimented without first learning the rules. Berlioz worked as a conductor for a number of orchestras and so grew to be rather cranky about musicians who made mistakes. Mendehlson's intemperance was perhaps understandable as well, since he worked hard to revive the music of J.S. Bach and others, and to present it in an authentic way which brought the beauties of Bach to a new audience. And there's not much obvious scope for improvisation in many of the works that we see as romantic - the early symphonies, the grand late operas by Wagner or Verdi.
ReplyDeleteObviously, there was also flamboyant soloists, like Lizst, Paganini and Chopin, and there was a chamber tradition as well (starting with Schubert) where one imagines there would have been much greater scope for improvisation.
More serious, I imagine, than the work of people like Berlioz or Lizst, would have been the impact of the twentieth century - the rise of record technology, the rapid change in social structures due to technology and growing economies, and, above all, the two world wars, which saw 'the best of a generation' killed off, twice, in a period of less than thirty years.
Tim, this would seem to be a topic of special interest to you, but you never mention music on your blog. You have hidden depths.
ReplyDeleteStudied piano and music to a postgraduate level. Not something that I'm actively pursuing at the moment (I was always too lazy to get one of those interesting performance jobs, and not creative - not creative in the musical way, at least - enough to get a composition job. All the other jobs are dull research and academic and teaching things.)
ReplyDeleteStill, I like to show off occasionally. And yeah, it's a fascinating subject.
I do think that if you listen to the playing rather than just talk about it, you can feel the difference. I was listening to Paderewski (http://www.classical.com/permalink/recording/2147504787/) and then Brendel of all people playing the Chopin Polonaise (http://www.classical.com/permalink/recording/2147490583/) and the difference is incredible. I do think that the teaching has become so professional, that to measure students teachers test to see how 'personal' a student can make the music even whilst keeping to the original Urtext editition and observing every marking. They do not mean to level all the playing, they just want to minimise the leeway for personality to spill out. Brendel did not go on playing Chopin after his youth, but Paderewski did and edited his complete works. It goes to show how personality is what counts - and Brendel's was ultimately best in different repertoire.
ReplyDeleteWould Brendel have developed differently a century earlier? Even 50 years earlier? Certainly. The whole meaning of piano was a demand for inspiration because there was little radio and certainly no screen based entertainment. So the piano had a place in peoples' minds which it will never re-capture. Alas.