Category Archives: Performance practice

by | May 31, 2014 · 1:00 am

Vespro della Beata Vergine

Vespro della Beata Vergine Bärenreiter

In 2013 Bärenreiter issued a new Urtext edition of Monteverdi’s Vespro della Beata Vergine, one of the most beloved sacred works of the 17th century.

The volume originated in a graduate seminar at the University of North Texas under the direction of the Monteverdi specialist Hendrik Schulze, who served as the book’s editor.

The edition combines the latest in musicological research specifically with the needs of the performer in mind, making a modern interpretation of this 400-year-old work possible. This new research has led, for instance, to a divergent evaluation of the Lauda Jerusalem oriented towards performance practice, with numerous additional accidentals and a new interpretation of the melodic variants from the different part books.

Below, John Eliot Gardiner leads a full performance of the work. Go ahead, you deserve it.

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by | February 20, 2014 · 1:00 am

Peter Brook and Carmen

Carmen

The 1981 premiere of Peter Brook’s and Jean-Claude Carrière’s La tragédie de Carmen at the Opéra in Paris sparked considerable controversy over its focus on the bleaker, darker aspects of the story.

In their revision of Bizet’s Carmen, Brook and Carrière attempted to be truer to Prosper Mérimée’s 1845 novella, emphasizing the basic components of its tragedy: sorcery, sexuality, obsessive love, and death. They removed the comic elements from Bizet’s work, reasoning that the composer had been constrained by a theatrical medium that demanded the inclusion of comedy.

This according to The tragedy of Carmen: Georges Bizet and Peter Brook by William Manning D. Mouat, a dissertation accpted by the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1996.

Above and below, Zehava Gal in the title role.

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by | January 16, 2014 · 1:00 am

Marilyn Horne and ornamentation

In a 1993 interview, Marilyn Horne discussed her study of the few examples of Rossini’s written-out vocal ornaments.

“I knew that if I ornamented that much I would be highly criticized for it. And so I did just a little bit—and was highly criticized for that!”

“Oh yes, we couldn’t win. In the beginning, I fought those ‘ornament fights’. I had terrible battles about it, especially with Italian conductors, because they are still very much under the influence of Toscanini, who ‘cleaned up’ everything.”

“I remember one particular conductor, his name was Argeo Quadri, and he talked like this: ‘Ah, signora, non si puo cantarlo così.’ Finally I said to him ‘Maestro, I went to a medium last night’—his eyes got bigger and bigger—and I said ‘I talked to Rossini stesso, and he said “Vai, Marilyna, vai!”’ Quadri laughed. He didn’t know whether to take me seriously or not, but he said okay, you can do your ornaments.”

This according to “La Rossiniana: A conversation with Marilyn Horne” by Jeannie Williams (The opera quarterly IX/4 [summer 1993] pp. 64–91).

Today is Marilyn Horne’s 80th birthday! Below, the diva demonstrates.

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by | July 15, 2013 · 1:00 am

Julian Bream, autodidact

As a child, Bream first learned to play the guitar along with his father from “an extraordinary little book, and that was great fun.”

When he was around 11 Boris Perrot, the president of the Philharmonic Society of Guitarists, heard him and, duly impressed, offered to teach him. The boy was honored, but soon found that he disliked the outmoded technique that Perrot insisted on.

Bream stopped the lessons and never took another one; instead, “I watched how Segovia did it and made up my technique as I went along.”

“Actually, I think I must have been quite a little horror because I was very instinctive about things. I only did what I wanted to do. I didn’t care a damn what other people wanted me to do.”

This according to “Julian Bream at 60: An interview” by Gareth Walters (Guitar review 96 [winter 1994] pp. 2–15).

Today is Julian Bream’s 80th birthday! Above, the guitarist in 1947; below, his arrangement of Danza del molinero from Manuel de Falla’s El sombrero de tres picos.

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by | November 23, 2012 · 1:00 am

Library of Greek Musicology

In December 2011 the Laboratory of Greek Music at the Ionian University, Kerkyra (Corfu), launched the book series Ellinīkī Mousikologikī Vivliothīkī (Ελληνική Μουσικολογική Βιβλιοθήκη/Library of Greek Musicology) with a volume curated by Charīs Xanthoudakīs and Arīs Garoufalīs on the relationship between the great Greek conductor and composer Dīmītrīs Mītropoulos and the Athens conservatory Odeio Athinōn.

Mītropoulos studied at the Odeio Athinōn from 1910 to 1919. Returning from a period of study in Berlin in 1925, he served as conductor first of the orchestra of the other Athens conservatory, Ellīniko Odeio, then from 1927 to 1937 for his alma mater, where he also taught composition. He also created a combined orchestra from the two schools in a Syllogo Synafliōn (Club Concert) that achieved considerable glory in its brief existence, featuring guest appearances by Richard Strauss and Alfred Cortot and a 1933 performance of the “constructivist” Zavod (Iron Foundry) by Aleksandr Mosolov.

The book, O Dīmītrīs Mītropoulos kai to Odeio Athinōn: To chroniko kai ta tekmīria (Dīmītrīs Mītropoulos and the Odeio Athinōn: Chronicle and archival materials, ISBN 978-960-86801-8-0), consists of two parts: a biography of Mītropoulos, and a collection of 85 reproduced documents from the Odeio’s archives illustrating the narrative of the first part, including meeting minutes, personal correspondence, and texts of speeches, together with excerpts from the most recent scholarly studies of Mītropoulos’s life and works before his emigration to the United States and international fame.

Below, Mītropoulos rehearses and performs Liszt’s Faust symphony with the New York Philharmonic.

Related article: Dimitri Mitropoulos (1896–1960)

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by | September 10, 2012 · 1:00 am

Basse danse with attitude II

The letters of Andrea Calmo, a 16th-century Venetian actor and playwright who wrote of having been taught the bassadanza by wolves, highlight how dance was regarded by a member of the middle classes in Venice.

As well as having a general appreciation of dance, which he saw as an enjoyable and moral activity, Calmo was knowledgeable about dance specifics and accurate in his use of dance terminology; in fact, his knowledge of dance practices was extensive enough to enable him to use specific dance references as a tool in creating the humor in his letters.

In a letter wooing a fine dancer, Calmo’s praises include the following:

“Now you can perform well the salti a torno, performing capriole, dancing on only one foot for half and hour, and moving the other foot so quickly it is as if your feet were tickling.”

“Alas, that to go behind, in front, those riprese, those clever steps and turns on joined feet, and all with mesura, with design and grace, in addition to the beautiful, grand, well-rounded and well-proportioned bosom.”

This according to “Learning the bassadanza from a wolf: Andrea Calmo and dance” by Jennifer Nevile (Dance research: The journal of the Society for Dance Research XXX/1 [2012] pp. 80–97). Above, Ball in Venice in Honor of Foreign Visitors, c.1580 (Italian School). Below, bassadanza with attitude!

Related article: Basse danse with attitude I

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by | July 16, 2012 · 1:00 am

Beethoven does the details

The increasing range of Beethoven’s performance indications paralleled the growing depth of expression in his music. While his predecessors had been content with four basic tempos—adagio, andante, allegro, and presto—he began to add qualifiers, indications of gradual tempo change, and descriptive words and phrases in German.

Still unsatisfied, he began to rely on metronome markings, although he stressed that they only provide a point of departure for a performance in which “feeling also has its beat, which cannot wholly be conveyed by a number”.

He started to favor graphic treatments of crescendo and diminuendo, ensuring dynamic shapes that would not necessarily be intuited by the performer. He used sforzando in structural as well as expressive ways, and expanded volume markings beyond the range from pp to ff.

His pedaling indications usually reinforce harmonic contexts, though sometimes they cause harmonic areas to overlap; this might explain why some of Beethoven’s contemporaries complained that his pedaling resulted in a confused sound. His articulation markings often reinforce motivic structure and development.

All of these performance indications are most fully understood in the context of the particular instrument he was using at the time.

This according to “Interpreting Beethoven’s markings: A preliminary survey of the piano sonatas” by Tallis Barker (The music review LV/3 [August 1994] pp. 169–182). Below, Sviatoslav Richter demonstrates his approach to Beethoven’s performance indications.

More posts about Beethoven are here.

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by | March 15, 2012 · 1:00 am

Improvised vocal fugues

Sethus Calvisius (1556–1615), one of the very small number of specialists in the improvised vocal fugue, provided a discussion of the practice in his Melopoiia (1592), illustrated with 21 notated examples of fugæ extemporaneæ—tricinia, or two-part canons, over a cantus firmus.

These pieces were improvised as a third voice sang the cantus firmus, with the two improvising voices entering a minim or semibreve apart; the first of the two singers was effectively the composer. Analysis of Calvisius’s works shows that his mastery of the technique was complete, and he was capable of creating canonic improvisations of surprising originality.

This according to “Harmonia fvgata extemporanea: Fugenimprovisation nach Calvisius und den Italienern” by Olivier Trachier, an essay included in Tempus musicae–tempus mundi: Untersuchungen zu Seth Calvisius (Hildesheim: Georg Olms 2008, pp. 77–102). Below, the Dresdner Kreuzchor performs Calvisius’s Freut euch und jubilieret.

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by | December 1, 2011 · 1:00 am

Jimmie Rodgers and semiotics

 

Jimmie Rodgers’s recordings present nearly all of the yodel types used by hillbilly singers, including nonsense-syllable strands, breaking voice registers while singing words, and brief falsetto grace-note descents into his natural voice. His yodels contain influences from both African American (falsetto upward leap at the end of words) and European (word-breaking) traditions.

Home tropes evoke themes of home, family, regret, return, or nostalgia; subdominant tropes represent carefree cheerfulness; blues tropes conjure masculine braggadocio themes.

Rodgers applies grace notes according to the pathos of the lyrics, and his hummed or moaned yodels are toned down for mainstream appeal. He was a carrier of tradition—his yodels connect to ragtime and blues, as well as to nineteenth-century European yodels, song types, and decorative devices.

This according to “Jimmie Rodgers and the semiosis of the hillbilly yodel” by Timothy Wise (The musical quarterly XCIII/1 [spring 2010] pp. 6–44).

Below, the Yodeling Brakeman offers a semiotic exegesis on the letter T.

Related article: Romy Lowdermilk redux

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by | November 26, 2011 · 1:00 am

Berlioz’s aborted premiere

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, which was first performed on 5 December 1830, was originally slated for a concert on 20 May of that year. Musicologists have been trying to piece together the circumstances of the cancelled premiere, but until now two factors have eluded them: the size of the orchestra and the number of rehearsals that were held.

Recently discovered documents shed light on both questions. A prior advertisement from the performance venue called for a specific number of additional string players, settling the first question.

Also, the 1830 register of the Gand instrument firm has been found to include entries for several string instruments rented to one “Mr Berlioz” on 18 and 22 May, establishing these as the dates of the two rehearsals that the work received.

Taken together, these sources indicate that the aborted premiere would have included at least 22 violins, 10 violas, 9 or 10 violoncellos, and four or five double basses.

Below, Charles Munch conducts the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1962 for Marche au supplice, the work’s fourth movement.

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