Back in the 1950s, a young cellist from the Vienna Philharmonic started to research on the practice of how music was played in the baroque era. He put together a couple of fellow-instrumentalists and formed an ensemble called Concentus Musicus Wien. Because of better reviews on his performances than von Karajan was receiving, Karajan kicked him out of the orchestra. The rest is history.
For decades, we have now readjusted our ears and practices on how this so-called ancient music should be played; completely freed - or cleansed - from sticky romantic vibratos, specific tone-shaping as a result of a different bow construction and bowing techniques, materials being used, away with the grotesque symphonic orchestras, etc., etc. Great contributors, besides the aformentioned Nicolaus Harnoncourt, were of course people like Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Neville Marriner, Trevor Pinnock, Sir Roger Norrington, Gustav Leonhardt, Frans Brüggen, Ton Koopman, Anner Bylsma, the Kuijken brothers, Richard Egarr, and so on (in case I forgot someone, I do apologies). Performing ancient music is almost becoming half a century old and fully accepted - even though it has a slight taste of exclusivity:
My first encounters in Slovakia playing pre-romantic music (although not being per se an ancient-music-only fanatic myself at all) were, when conducting Mozart and Corelli. This was an eye-opener to me, which lead me to ponder a bit about the "Sense and Prejudice" (a word-play of the two famous novels by Jane Austen).
Let me commence first with the Prejudice bit; to let loose certain habits is sometimes a very hard way, and people have a natural tendency to be a bit easy-going ("lazy"), and thus rather remain a bit conservative. In Slovakia (and also the Czech Republic, which I would like to include here as well) it was for years the usual Russian school - virtuoso drill, harder, faster, ... where attention to phrasing or a bit of a more modest approach to a composer's piece was overridden by a military-type of battering. Political realities for a long time, limited contacts with Western developments, even though one might ask, can music be politicised, such that new influences were warded off? The answer is, yes. This has been the case. Even that ABBA-records were only sold on the black market or via relatives who lived in the West (could you ever have imagined, that the politburo could consider "Dancing Queen" as being subversive music?)
Since the Eastern bloc countries opened up the iron curtain after 1989, one should expect, that people, eagerly to inhale the freshness of new thoughts and would soon discover the newly (or at that time, already quite matured) acquired knowledge and trends on performing ancient music. Well,... people's conservatism can sometimes be very vehement.
To my greatest dread, while rehearsing a pianoconcerto by Mozart, the orchestra would play fortes as if it would be a Shostakovich-type 3 fff-fortissimo!, and even worse, playing it sometimes at the wrong place. Despite my repeated instructions, old habits lingered. At one rehearsal a violin player (quite a prominent one in fact) burst out at me in rage, calling it "another nonsenical Urtext-fad". The truth was in fact a bit different, since I did not even have an Urtext edition score in front of me, and the dynamics which I insisted upon, were based on pure logic: "How is the phrase developing? Where does the line end?" Calmly explaining to him, that his argument for the old style dynamics was not completely logical in the given passage, he fortunately withdrew (knowing his temper, it could have ended worse, since I tend to be at times a bit uncompromising, even though I am not dogmatic either). This was not the last incident, though.
What makes you frown a bit because of this situation is, that I do know, that even I was - as a young student - very sceptical, when at the Music Academy for the first time that it was compulsory (in the Netherlands - early 1980s) to attend 2 hours a week of baroque ensemble playing. At first almost adamant, I slowly started to feel the difference as a player and appreciating the different sound (I think, soon afterwards I was convinced, that a baroque sound is justifyable to be applied, instead of continuing in keeping the romantic sound. Despite my initial reservation, I began to enjoy it)
But 1989 is not just 2 or 3 years ago. Simple arithmetic led me to deduce that currently we live almost 19 years further down the timeline (to be exact 18 years and 5 months). Thus, after these 19 years, I am facing, surprisingly enough, prominent, skilled and intelligent musicians, who have still a strong prejudice against ... agains truth.
Now the Sense bit: Especially during baroque music, I have encountered as one of the greatest problems, to make musicians (sometimes senior conservatory students) stop playing heavy vibrato, and learning how to phrase. It's dead simple... First beat is heavy, second light, third a bit heavy and fourth the lightest. I was a like broken record, repeating this to them. The school simply disfigured their flexibility to change their playing or even hearing the nuances.
At a certain point I did indeed ask myself, why not just give up, and have them play it their way. Why bother with all the fuss? But then; being paid for a job as a conductor, it is not only my personal and subjective concept that I have to put into my interpretations, but also my professional duty to perform the music as it was written. When conducting Janáček, everyone would attack me for chosing a wrong tempo, for disobeying certain dynamics. So when playing e.g. Corelli or Vivaldi, why should I suddenly disregard the composers' intention and sound (since playing techniques were different at that time)? So my conclusion was: sorry, you have to learn to adjust. You don't like the bowing? Just get used to it!
Sadly enough, the number of people involved in good quality ancient music here you can count on one hand perhaps. Indeed great tribute should be given to Peter Zajíček's ensemble Musica Aeterna. The Bratislava Academy of Music has no money (read: is not allocating) to have a permanent staff to lecture on this subject as an integral part of its curriculum, only to either completely dispose of them or leaving a minimum as a two-weeks' external programme.
It's like an island. A musical island. And the isolated Robinson Crusoë has to survive on anything that he can find on it. But we are not on an island. Let's just face it: Every music student knows exactly how to download pdf files of music, or mp3 recordings. Why then, are recordings of the Marriners, Harnoncourts and Pinnocks so scarce???
Perhaps time to seriously scrutinise the schools and their teachers a bit closer.
MS
PS - just one last interesting detail: Going back to the first paragraph, where I mentioned Vienna and the later on mentioned Bratislava; From the Bratislava State Opera to the Viennese Staatsoper it's ONLY 67km!
For decades, we have now readjusted our ears and practices on how this so-called ancient music should be played; completely freed - or cleansed - from sticky romantic vibratos, specific tone-shaping as a result of a different bow construction and bowing techniques, materials being used, away with the grotesque symphonic orchestras, etc., etc. Great contributors, besides the aformentioned Nicolaus Harnoncourt, were of course people like Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Neville Marriner, Trevor Pinnock, Sir Roger Norrington, Gustav Leonhardt, Frans Brüggen, Ton Koopman, Anner Bylsma, the Kuijken brothers, Richard Egarr, and so on (in case I forgot someone, I do apologies). Performing ancient music is almost becoming half a century old and fully accepted - even though it has a slight taste of exclusivity:
My first encounters in Slovakia playing pre-romantic music (although not being per se an ancient-music-only fanatic myself at all) were, when conducting Mozart and Corelli. This was an eye-opener to me, which lead me to ponder a bit about the "Sense and Prejudice" (a word-play of the two famous novels by Jane Austen).
Let me commence first with the Prejudice bit; to let loose certain habits is sometimes a very hard way, and people have a natural tendency to be a bit easy-going ("lazy"), and thus rather remain a bit conservative. In Slovakia (and also the Czech Republic, which I would like to include here as well) it was for years the usual Russian school - virtuoso drill, harder, faster, ... where attention to phrasing or a bit of a more modest approach to a composer's piece was overridden by a military-type of battering. Political realities for a long time, limited contacts with Western developments, even though one might ask, can music be politicised, such that new influences were warded off? The answer is, yes. This has been the case. Even that ABBA-records were only sold on the black market or via relatives who lived in the West (could you ever have imagined, that the politburo could consider "Dancing Queen" as being subversive music?)
Since the Eastern bloc countries opened up the iron curtain after 1989, one should expect, that people, eagerly to inhale the freshness of new thoughts and would soon discover the newly (or at that time, already quite matured) acquired knowledge and trends on performing ancient music. Well,... people's conservatism can sometimes be very vehement.
To my greatest dread, while rehearsing a pianoconcerto by Mozart, the orchestra would play fortes as if it would be a Shostakovich-type 3 fff-fortissimo!, and even worse, playing it sometimes at the wrong place. Despite my repeated instructions, old habits lingered. At one rehearsal a violin player (quite a prominent one in fact) burst out at me in rage, calling it "another nonsenical Urtext-fad". The truth was in fact a bit different, since I did not even have an Urtext edition score in front of me, and the dynamics which I insisted upon, were based on pure logic: "How is the phrase developing? Where does the line end?" Calmly explaining to him, that his argument for the old style dynamics was not completely logical in the given passage, he fortunately withdrew (knowing his temper, it could have ended worse, since I tend to be at times a bit uncompromising, even though I am not dogmatic either). This was not the last incident, though.
What makes you frown a bit because of this situation is, that I do know, that even I was - as a young student - very sceptical, when at the Music Academy for the first time that it was compulsory (in the Netherlands - early 1980s) to attend 2 hours a week of baroque ensemble playing. At first almost adamant, I slowly started to feel the difference as a player and appreciating the different sound (I think, soon afterwards I was convinced, that a baroque sound is justifyable to be applied, instead of continuing in keeping the romantic sound. Despite my initial reservation, I began to enjoy it)
But 1989 is not just 2 or 3 years ago. Simple arithmetic led me to deduce that currently we live almost 19 years further down the timeline (to be exact 18 years and 5 months). Thus, after these 19 years, I am facing, surprisingly enough, prominent, skilled and intelligent musicians, who have still a strong prejudice against ... agains truth.
Now the Sense bit: Especially during baroque music, I have encountered as one of the greatest problems, to make musicians (sometimes senior conservatory students) stop playing heavy vibrato, and learning how to phrase. It's dead simple... First beat is heavy, second light, third a bit heavy and fourth the lightest. I was a like broken record, repeating this to them. The school simply disfigured their flexibility to change their playing or even hearing the nuances.
At a certain point I did indeed ask myself, why not just give up, and have them play it their way. Why bother with all the fuss? But then; being paid for a job as a conductor, it is not only my personal and subjective concept that I have to put into my interpretations, but also my professional duty to perform the music as it was written. When conducting Janáček, everyone would attack me for chosing a wrong tempo, for disobeying certain dynamics. So when playing e.g. Corelli or Vivaldi, why should I suddenly disregard the composers' intention and sound (since playing techniques were different at that time)? So my conclusion was: sorry, you have to learn to adjust. You don't like the bowing? Just get used to it!
Sadly enough, the number of people involved in good quality ancient music here you can count on one hand perhaps. Indeed great tribute should be given to Peter Zajíček's ensemble Musica Aeterna. The Bratislava Academy of Music has no money (read: is not allocating) to have a permanent staff to lecture on this subject as an integral part of its curriculum, only to either completely dispose of them or leaving a minimum as a two-weeks' external programme.
It's like an island. A musical island. And the isolated Robinson Crusoë has to survive on anything that he can find on it. But we are not on an island. Let's just face it: Every music student knows exactly how to download pdf files of music, or mp3 recordings. Why then, are recordings of the Marriners, Harnoncourts and Pinnocks so scarce???
Perhaps time to seriously scrutinise the schools and their teachers a bit closer.
MS
PS - just one last interesting detail: Going back to the first paragraph, where I mentioned Vienna and the later on mentioned Bratislava; From the Bratislava State Opera to the Viennese Staatsoper it's ONLY 67km!
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