6 ms·

> As interest in the early music movement has grown, performers and musicologists have increasingly turned to period instruments, smaller ensembles, and faster

> As interest in the early music movement has grown, performers and musicologists have increasingly turned to period instruments, smaller ensembles, and faster tempos to try to more faithfully recreate the music of the past. This is misleading. The interest in baroque music grew strongly in the 50s. The turn toward period instruments, smaller ensembles, and faster tempos appeared at the end of the 60s, and was steadily established in the 70s with great leaders like Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. There have been little changes over the past 30 years. This looks like a fun but futile project. Though I strongly relate to the desire to know more about Bach's music. As Émile Cioran wrote, "Bach's music is the only argument proving that the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure".

throw0101a 6y ago
> Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure. Without Bach, God would be a complete second-rate figure. * Emil Cioran, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7427027 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7427027 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran
- spindle 6y ago
  And Gil Shaham on Bach (70-second video): https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=n6d6JEZCObg https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=n6d6JEZCObg
- teilo 6y ago
  A close friend of mine did his doctorate on Emil Cioran: https://www.amazon.com/Emil-Cioran-cr%C3%ADtica-progreso-hist%C3%B3rico/dp/1722723491 https://www.amazon.com/Emil-Cioran-cr%C3%ADtica-progreso-his... https://www.amazon.com/Emil-Cioran-Criticism-Historical-Progress/dp/0648499626 https://www.amazon.com/Emil-Cioran-Criticism-Historical-Prog...
rrmm 6y ago
The hard part is I don't think we hear harmony the same way. The way we hear music, what makes sense about music, is a function of the music we've listened to in our culture as we have matured. I don't think we can really ever cross that gap. And it's probably not a bad thing. We have a much broader palette of sounds and harmony to draw from. Early music especially had a much different theory of harmony.
- rrmm 6y ago
  Probably the same thing can be said about shakespeare as well. We just have a very wildly different context than its contemporaneous viewers. And our culture and language as it is now is hugely influenced by all of shakespeare's works that we probably miss a lot of what could have been novel and interesting about it.
- dharma1 6y ago
  This is interesting - I think going backwards in time, different musical harmonic/sound conventions still make "sense" to us. Like you could be listening do music from nearly any period of time from the past 500+ years and it would broadly "make sense" to the listener, even if you weren't directly exposed to it before (with the exception of perhaps experimental 20th century atonal classical music, or microtonal music from other cultures). But I'm not sure it works the other way around - if you took a 17th century person and played music from the last 50-100 years to them - Michael Jackson, bossa nova, Debussy, Smashing Pumpkins, whatever - they probably wouldn't "get it".
  - rrmm 6y ago
    Some stuff based on pentatonic scales (blues) would probably make sense. From what I recall it's almost universal in different cultures. Bobby Mcferrin has a fun demo about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk But yeah I bet some jazz would be baffling. I wonder how fast it'd take people to get into it. You could probably find some indigneous populations to work with.
    - 6y ago
tom_mellior 6y ago
> The turn toward period instruments, smaller ensembles, and faster tempos appeared at the end of the 60s, and was steadily established in the 70s with great leaders like Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Is Harnoncourt generally associated with fast tempos? I thought the opposite. His recording of Händel's Messiah runs to 141 minutes (according to Amazon, I don't have my copy here). Almost all other performances I've come across try to squeeze it into two hours. I much prefer Harnoncourt's slower tempo. Though he might have treated other pieces differently.
- alessivs 6y ago
  > Is Harnoncourt generally associated with fast tempos? Historically informed performance feeds on research on the place, time, established practices, theoretical treatises, instrument construction limitations, interpretative styles, etc. where the music took place. The approach to interpretation is revised upon new discovery. Faster tempi (than romantically-inclined interpretations) are sometimes incidental outcomes, and not exclusive to Harnoncourt. One ingredient for the observation, is at the time Harnoncourt was making strides in the 1950s, conductors were reading tempo markings of old music as if the metronome had already been invented (it is an early 1800s invention). Many famous pieces marked adagio, andante, largo, lento, (denoting a slow tempo) were performed comparatively faster than the romantic readings, as such markings were used quite liberally. Another ingredient is that Harnoncourt had a unique reading of orchestral classical pieces that emphasized tempo and dynamic contrast (e.g. Mozart piano concerti, Beethoven symphonies), which may lead to perceive sections were played faster than usual. And I don't think those traits were set on stone in his idearium. If he were alive today, my impression is he would revise his decades-old reading of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers, perhaps with slower tempo, applying transpositions in the Magnificat, and refraining from doubling strings and brass in the Dixit Dominus. That is to say, it's not really about tempo, or any specific performance feature, though that's all that may come to our ears, or that we may be able to understand without extensive music knowledge.
- masswerk 6y ago
  Someone I would have associated more easily with faster tempi is Trevor Pinnock. However, there are some rather fast interpretations by Harnoncourt (maybe more likely of Händel than Bach)
Bud 6y ago
Professional period-performance singer here: Definitely not true that "there have been little changes over the past 30 years"; both the scholarly understanding of performance practice, and the performances themselves, have radically advanced and matured since 1990.
- idoubtit 6y ago
  I did not mean to say nothing has changed, but, as a naive listener, the interpretation of baroque music, and especially Bach's cantata, is not radically different now from what it was in the 1990s. Bach's cantatas under Karl Richter are totally different from Gustav Leonhardt recordings just 10 or 20 years later. Add 20 years to get around 1990, and Philippe Herreweghe, Masaaki Suzuki or Christophe Coin bring some obvious changes. For each of them I can't notice deep changes in their more recent recordings. But I admit that I can't name any conductor for Bach's cantatas that has started conducting in the 21st century. I don't think I have any recording like this. Recommandations are welcomed.

throw0101a 6y ago

> Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the Universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure. Without Bach, God would be a complete second-rate figure. * Emil Cioran, https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7427027 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7427027 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran

spindle 6y ago
And Gil Shaham on Bach (70-second video): https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=n6d6JEZCObg https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=n6d6JEZCObg
teilo 6y ago
A close friend of mine did his doctorate on Emil Cioran: https://www.amazon.com/Emil-Cioran-cr%C3%ADtica-progreso-hist%C3%B3rico/dp/1722723491 https://www.amazon.com/Emil-Cioran-cr%C3%ADtica-progreso-his... https://www.amazon.com/Emil-Cioran-Criticism-Historical-Progress/dp/0648499626 https://www.amazon.com/Emil-Cioran-Criticism-Historical-Prog...

rrmm 6y ago

The hard part is I don't think we hear harmony the same way. The way we hear music, what makes sense about music, is a function of the music we've listened to in our culture as we have matured. I don't think we can really ever cross that gap. And it's probably not a bad thing. We have a much broader palette of sounds and harmony to draw from. Early music especially had a much different theory of harmony.

rrmm 6y ago
Probably the same thing can be said about shakespeare as well. We just have a very wildly different context than its contemporaneous viewers. And our culture and language as it is now is hugely influenced by all of shakespeare's works that we probably miss a lot of what could have been novel and interesting about it.
dharma1 6y ago
This is interesting - I think going backwards in time, different musical harmonic/sound conventions still make "sense" to us. Like you could be listening do music from nearly any period of time from the past 500+ years and it would broadly "make sense" to the listener, even if you weren't directly exposed to it before (with the exception of perhaps experimental 20th century atonal classical music, or microtonal music from other cultures). But I'm not sure it works the other way around - if you took a 17th century person and played music from the last 50-100 years to them - Michael Jackson, bossa nova, Debussy, Smashing Pumpkins, whatever - they probably wouldn't "get it".
- rrmm 6y ago
  Some stuff based on pentatonic scales (blues) would probably make sense. From what I recall it's almost universal in different cultures. Bobby Mcferrin has a fun demo about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk But yeah I bet some jazz would be baffling. I wonder how fast it'd take people to get into it. You could probably find some indigneous populations to work with.
  - 6y ago

tom_mellior 6y ago

> The turn toward period instruments, smaller ensembles, and faster tempos appeared at the end of the 60s, and was steadily established in the 70s with great leaders like Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Is Harnoncourt generally associated with fast tempos? I thought the opposite. His recording of Händel's Messiah runs to 141 minutes (according to Amazon, I don't have my copy here). Almost all other performances I've come across try to squeeze it into two hours. I much prefer Harnoncourt's slower tempo. Though he might have treated other pieces differently.

alessivs 6y ago
> Is Harnoncourt generally associated with fast tempos? Historically informed performance feeds on research on the place, time, established practices, theoretical treatises, instrument construction limitations, interpretative styles, etc. where the music took place. The approach to interpretation is revised upon new discovery. Faster tempi (than romantically-inclined interpretations) are sometimes incidental outcomes, and not exclusive to Harnoncourt. One ingredient for the observation, is at the time Harnoncourt was making strides in the 1950s, conductors were reading tempo markings of old music as if the metronome had already been invented (it is an early 1800s invention). Many famous pieces marked adagio, andante, largo, lento, (denoting a slow tempo) were performed comparatively faster than the romantic readings, as such markings were used quite liberally. Another ingredient is that Harnoncourt had a unique reading of orchestral classical pieces that emphasized tempo and dynamic contrast (e.g. Mozart piano concerti, Beethoven symphonies), which may lead to perceive sections were played faster than usual. And I don't think those traits were set on stone in his idearium. If he were alive today, my impression is he would revise his decades-old reading of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers, perhaps with slower tempo, applying transpositions in the Magnificat, and refraining from doubling strings and brass in the Dixit Dominus. That is to say, it's not really about tempo, or any specific performance feature, though that's all that may come to our ears, or that we may be able to understand without extensive music knowledge.
masswerk 6y ago
Someone I would have associated more easily with faster tempi is Trevor Pinnock. However, there are some rather fast interpretations by Harnoncourt (maybe more likely of Händel than Bach)

Bud 6y ago

Professional period-performance singer here: Definitely not true that "there have been little changes over the past 30 years"; both the scholarly understanding of performance practice, and the performances themselves, have radically advanced and matured since 1990.

idoubtit 6y ago
I did not mean to say nothing has changed, but, as a naive listener, the interpretation of baroque music, and especially Bach's cantata, is not radically different now from what it was in the 1990s. Bach's cantatas under Karl Richter are totally different from Gustav Leonhardt recordings just 10 or 20 years later. Add 20 years to get around 1990, and Philippe Herreweghe, Masaaki Suzuki or Christophe Coin bring some obvious changes. For each of them I can't notice deep changes in their more recent recordings. But I admit that I can't name any conductor for Bach's cantatas that has started conducting in the 21st century. I don't think I have any recording like this. Recommandations are welcomed.