The 'historically informed performance', 'period performance', or 'authentic performance' movement is an approach by musicians and scholars to research and perform works of
classical music in ways similar to how they may have been performed when they were originally written. The movement had its beginnings in the performance of
Medieval,
Renaissance, and
Baroque music, but subsequently came to incorporate the
Classical and even
Romantic eras as well. The two methods adopted by historically informed performance artists have been to use
period instruments and to utilise treatises and other written evidence to gain insight into 'performance practice', i.e. stylistic and technical considerations based on how the works may have been played in the period in which they were written.
Historically informed performance compared to traditional musical practice
Most historically informed performance artists advocate the practice as a way of achieving more artistically effective performances of older music. They feel that the gradual changes in the construction of instruments and in the training of musicians have produced instruments and styles that are optimal for (roughly) mid to late 19th-century music, but not for older work.
In the community of classical musicians, students have over the centuries learned ways of playing and interpreting music from their teachers and also from performances they hear. This results, to some degree, in stylistic accretion, as modes of performing developed by outstanding musicians are echoed through time in the performances of the younger musicians that they influenced. Thus, the way that music is performed is in part a function of the musical culture as it has evolved up to that time.
The historically informed performance movement emphasizes instead historical scholarship, covering both instruments and performance practice, in order to obtain a more direct view of original performance practices. Such scholarship is the work both of the performers themselves and of non-performing specialist scholars, usually working in universities.
Adherence to principles of historically informed performance is not an all-or-nothing matter. Many traditional musicians are deeply interested in what scholarship can tell us about how music was performed in the composer's time. Moreover, modern instruments can be played in ways that approximate what may have been achieved on instruments of the composer's era.
Early instruments
Many of the instruments of
early music disappeared from widespread use around the beginning of the
Classical era. Others continued in use, but greatly altered their sound quality and playing characteristics in the course of the 19th century. In either case, when older instruments, or reconstructed versions of them, are used, they are called 'original instruments,' "historical instruments," or 'period instruments'. The discussion below (see also
Organology) covers instruments that had to be revived entirely, followed by instruments whose earlier form was rediscovered. See also
List of period instruments.
Harpsichord
Among keyboard instruments, the most dramatic disappearance was that of the
harpsichord, which gradually went out of style during the second half of the 18th century. The
piano became more popular by such a degree that harpsichords were destroyed; indeed the Paris Conservatory is notorious for using harpsichords for firewood during Napoleonic times and the French Revolution.
[1] Composers such as
François Couperin,
Girolamo Frescobaldi, and
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for the harpsichord,
clavichord, and
organ, or sometimes for a generic "keyboard" (German ''Clavier''), but not the
piano, which was invented ca. 1700 and only widely adopted by about 1765. The music of these composers sounds very different, and requires a different interpretive approach, when played on the harpsichord instead of the piano. Notably, since every note on a harpsichord is equally loud, subtle variations of timing and articulation, as well a judicious use of
ornamentation, are employed to achieve an expressive harpsichord performance.
The harpsichord was re-introduced to the concert-going public in the first half of the 20th century by
Wanda Landowska. Since most useful knowledge of harpsichord construction had been lost by that time, Landowska needed to use a rather peculiar harpsichord, based on the modern grand piano, which was made for her by the
Pleyel company of Paris. In the view of many later listeners, the tone of this harpsichord was not very successful. From the
1950s on, harpsichord builders such as
Frank Hubbard,
William Dowd, and
Martin Skowroneck began to follow the procedures of the early harpsichord builders. Today, harpsichords in the style of the old makers are produced in workshops around the world.
Viol
The
viols (also known as
viola da gamba) are a family of bowed (and sometimes plucked) fretted stringed instruments which evolved from the Spanish plucked
Vihuela in the late 15th century. The bass viol roughly resembles a six-stringed, fretted cello — but it is in fact a bowed-guitar (a bowed, fretted, lute tuned (44344), vihuela/viola guitar, a ''vihuela de arco''). All viols were gut strung. Their voice is generally described as being more delicate, humming, and sweet, (compared to a cello, for example), noble and richly resonant in the lower registers, and often ''reedy'' (like an oboe or organ) in the upper range. Their reediness in tone can sometimes have in a certain ''nasal'' quality.
A vast quantity of music for viols, both ensemble and solo, was written by composers of the
Renaissance and
Baroque eras, including:
Diego Ortiz,
Claudio Monteverdi,
William Byrd,
William Lawes,
Henry Purcell,
Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe,
J. S. Bach,
Georg Philipp Telemann,
Marin Marais,
Antoine Forqueray, and
Carl Frederick Abel.
Many composers wrote complex polyphonic part-music for
viol consort, ensembles of viols of different sizes (typically held vertically), playing early ''
chamber music'', arranged for trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, and more.
The viol family consists of these sized instruments, largest to smallest:
★ contrabass or
Violone (about the size of a modern
double bass)
★ bass viol (about the size of a
cello)
★ tenor viol (about the size of a
guitar)
★ alto viol (about the size of a
viola)
★ treble or decant viol (about the size of a
violin).
In England, slightly smaller specialized bass viols were developed, called
division viols, and
lyra-viols.
Viols were largely abandoned by the end of the 18th century, being overtaken by the
violin family.
Among the foremost modern players of the viols are:
Paolo Pandolfo,
Wieland Kuijken,
Jordi Savall,
John Hsu,
Vittorio Ghielmi, and
Guido Balestracci. There are many modern
viol consorts (ensembles of violists) including
Fretwork (music group).
Recorder
The
recorder is a wind instrument, made of wood. Its tone is similar to the flute, but it is played by blowing through the end, rather than by blowing across a soundhole. Like viols, recorders were made in multiple sizes (contra-bass, bass, tenor, alto, soprano, the tiny sopranino and the even smaller kleine sopranino or garklein).
Handel and
Telemann wrote solo sonatas for the recorder, and recorders were often played in consorts of mixed size, like viols. For a number of important modern exponents of the recorder, see
Recorder player.
Other instruments
Other instruments that ceased to be used around the same time as the harpsichord, viol, and recorder include the
lute, the
viola d'amore, and the
baryton. Instruments that lost currency rather earlier in musical history include the
cornett, the
shawm, the
rackett, the
krummhorn, the
theorbo, and the
hurdy-gurdy.
Developed instruments
Even the instruments on which classical music is ordinarily performed today have undergone many changes since the 18th century, both in how they are constructed and how they are played.
Stringed instruments (the
violin,
viola,
cello, and
double bass) were made with progressively longer necks and higher bridges, increasing string length and tension — though the latter has varied a lot depending on string thicknesses. The most prized stringed instruments of today, made by
Antonio Stradivari and by the
Guarneri family in 17th-18th century Italy, started out their careers as "early instruments". They were modified in the 19th century to achieve the more powerful romantic sound. (See
baroque violin)
From the heavy rigging of the early to mid
1800s, however, the tendency shifted to using lighter strings for an easier playing technique and more soloistic brilliance. From around
1900 until our times, the average string tension has been lighter than in most Baroque traditions except for 18th century France, but the longer strings and the more compact material (including, in our days, steel E strings) has led to a more brilliant and short-range penetrating tone with a greater acoustical emphasis on the even
overtones.
In modern string playing, a more or less constant
vibrato is the norm, with lack of vibrato used as a special expressive effect. In the 18th century, it was just the opposite, with vibrato serving as an ornament.
The
oboe likewise became more powerful in its sound. The baroque oboe was more pastoral or reedy in tone while the Classical oboe, which came to the fore c. 1780, was more silvery. A similar difference is found between the early and modern
bassoon.
The
flute of the 18th century was typically made of wood rather than metal, and likewise had a gentler but more woody tone.
Early brass instruments were less powerful, but more colorful (containing more
overtones) than their modern equivalents. The tonal difference is perhaps less than is found among the woodwinds and strings. However, the playing of early
trumpets and
horns was very different and indeed much more difficult, since versions of these instruments incorporating keys or valves were only invented around the end of the 18th century. The players of the earlier type of instrument had to use mostly just lip control to determine pitch; the early horns also had their pitch altered by the placement of the player's hand in the bell, a technique known as
hand-stopping.
Anthony Halstead is widely considered to be among the finest modern exponents of the "natural horn". The earlier
trombone of course offered manual pitch control, as did its similar predecessor the
sackbut.
The effect of these instruments in their original form is particularly
noticeable when they play together in
orchestras, since not only
do the musical lines sound different, but their relationship to one
another is altered by the difference in relative volume (wind
instruments generally being louder relative to the strings). A number
of historically informed performance orchestras have achieved a broad following.
For the
piano, the difference between 18th century and modern versions is probably greater than for any other instrument; for discussion of these differences and their consequences for performance, see
Piano history and musical performance. The construction of replica 18th century pianos came somewhat after the revival of the baroque harpsichord, but used many of the same skills, since early pianos resembled harpsichords in their construction. Leading modern-day performers on the early piano or ''
fortepiano'' include
Malcolm Bilson,
Robert D. Levin, and
Melvyn Tan.
Singing
The human voice is a biological given, but can be trained in different
ways. Singers in historically informed performances typically aim at a
less loud tone, usually with less vibrato. It is
feasible for the singer not to sing so loud, since the instruments
playing at the same time are softer. Listeners to early music seldom
complain that the singers are "shrieking" or "barking"– though of
course this does not exclude the possibility that quite different
vocal problems might be present. A few of the singers
who have contributed to the historically informed performance movement are
Emma Kirkby,
Julianne Baird,
Nigel Rogers, and
David Thomas.
Historically informed performances sometimes use male singers, called
countertenors, to sing alto parts. Although it is often a vexed question how often this was done in early performance, a number of countertenors have won acclaim for their purity of tone, vocal agility, and interpretive skill. Modern countertenor singing was pioneered by
Alfred Deller, and leading contemporary performers include
David Daniels,
Derek Lee Ragin,
Andreas Scholl,
Michael Chance,
Drew Minter,
Daniel Taylor, and
Brian Asawa.
Compositions intended to be sung by
castrati present a problem. Modern substitutions employ female sopranos or high countertenors (known as
sopranistas), but neither of those seems to capture the true effect of the castrato sound. The 1994 movie
Farinelli Il Castrato, about an 18th-century castrato, used digital effects to create the voice by mixing the sound of a countertenor with a soprano singer.
The use of
boy sopranos, or 'trebles', in certain music (for example the church music of
Johann Sebastian Bach), while historically authentic, is not often done because of the belief that boys cannot put the emotional understanding into the music that adult female sopranos do. Voices broke at a later age in the 18th century, so boys as old as 16 or 17 could sometimes still sing soprano parts. Boy sopranos in choirs are not uncommon, even in traditional performances, but the use of boy sopranos as soloists is rare. Most notably, much of the music of Bach that
Nikolaus Harnoncourt and
Gustav Leonhardt recorded made use of boy sopranos even for the solo parts.
Recovering early performance practices
Both pedagogical works and the correspondence of musicians from past centuries play an important role in recovering information about early performance practice. Representative of the works from which valuable information has been obtained are the following:
★ ''
Syntagma musicum'' (1614-1620) by
Michael Praetorius
★ ''Traité de l'Harmonie Universelle'' (1627) by
Marin Mersenne
★ ''Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen'' ("A treatise of instruction in playing the transverse flute," 1752) by
Johann Joachim Quantz
★ ''Versuch über das wahre Art das Klavier zu spielen'' ("An essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments," 1753-1762) by
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
★ ''Versuch einer grundliche Violinschule'' ("An essay on the fundamental principles of violin playing," 1756) by
Leopold Mozart
Among the letters of musicians, those of
Mozart are notable for their liveliness and insight, and from them considerable information about performances of his work is obtained. In the case of
Haydn and
Beethoven we have the advantage that they became very famous–in fact, venerated–in their own lifetimes, and many people with whom they conversed attempted to remember and write down their words.
Some documents suggest that contemporary performances of early orchestral music were of lower quality than might be expected. For example, a letter from Haydn (Oct. 17, 1789) says:
:''Now I would humbly ask you to tell the princely
Kapellmeister there that these three symphonies [
90-92 ] because of their many particular effects, should be rehearsed at least once, carefully and with special concentration, before they are performed.''
implying of course that symphonies were often performed with no rehearsal at all. Likewise, there is testimony that the task of keeping early instruments in tune was difficult and perhaps also neglected. One critic wrote in 1684:
:''At the beginning of the concerts, we observe the accuracy of the chords ... some time after, the instruments make a din; the music is for our ears no longer anything but a confused noise.''
Interpreting musical notation
One area in which scholarly interpretation is important is in interpreting the musical notation of the past, which becomes progressively less explicit as one goes back in time. Some familiar difficult items are as follows:
★ Early composers apparently often wrote
dotted rhythms (where the first of two notes is three times the length of the second) to mean instead a time ratio of 2 + 1, in a context where
triplets are present elsewhere in the musical line. The opening line of the last movement of
J. S. Bach's
Brandenburg Concerto #5 is a good example.
★ In a
French overture, it is often held that dotted notation was meant to indicate
double dotting; that is, a duration ratio of 7 to 1 instead of 3 to 1. A well-known example is the overture to
Handel's ''
Messiah'', often played in the double-dotted manner by historically informed performance specialists.
★ Particularly in French
Baroque music, music written in even rhythm is sometimes performed rather as if the notes were
dotted or in
triplets, in a practice known as
notes inégales and similar to the
swing feel of
jazz.
★ What is written as an
appoggiatura is often meant to be longer or shorter than the notated length. This convention is pervasive in Mozart's music.
★ In
Renaissance music,
musica ficta are employed; these are
accidentals (sharps and flats) not written in the score, but rather inferred using the performer's judgment or via rules laid down by theorists.
★ Lastly, the notes of earlier music cannot generally be interpreted as designating the same pitch that they do today, since concert pitch has frequently changed. For discussion, see
History of pitch standards in Western music.
Mechanical music
Some information about how music sounded in the past can be obtained from contemporary mechanical instruments. For instance, the Dutch museum
Van Speelklok tot Pierement owns an 18th century mechanical organ of which the music programme was composed and supervised by
Joseph Haydn.
Linguistic issues
An additional relevant area of scholarship is the determination of how the languages of sung music were pronounced at the time of first performance. Such information can help in establishing rhymes and in aligning the syllables to the musical notes (underlay). The disciplines of
historical linguistics and
philology play the primary role here. Some early music performers prefer to sing using the old pronunciations, feeling that the notes sound better when sung to their original syllables.
Issues of pronunciation even carry over to church
Latin, the language in which a huge amount of early music was written. The reason is that Latin was customarily pronounced using the speech sounds and patterns of the local vernacular language; see
Latin regional pronunciation.
Tuning
Twelve tone
equal temperament is the predominant tuning today, but was not so in the past. For many periods tuning may have depended upon region, varied by composer, with some composers even preferring different tunings at different times in their lives. However, it is often hard to determine exactly what these tunings were.
Historically informed performances of Baroque music are usually in "chamber pitch" (tuned about a semitone down compared to modern concert pitch; see
historical pitch standards).
Issues in historically informed performance
The perceived esthetic benefits of historically informed performance vary with what kind of music is being played. In rough terms, they can be characterized as follows.
★ Historically informed performance is argued to achieve greater transparency of musical texture. The instruments have a less powerful tone, so that the playing of one note interferes less with the hearing of simultaneous or neighboring notes.
★ In orchestral performances, contrast in volume levels is typically increased: the contributions of the brass instruments and timpani stand out more, since the difference in volume level between brass and strings is somewhat greater than with modern instruments.
★ Greater transparency and greater contrast in volume levels lend themselves, in turn, to greater rhythmic energy.
★ Many listeners appreciate the timbre of authentic instruments, finding it more beautiful and filled with character than what is heard from modern instruments. The same could be said of the human voice, when it is not required to compete with modern instruments in power.
Variety of opinion
Opinions on the historically informed performance movement vary widely, from very strong support to very strong opposition.
A generally skeptical but moderated position has been taken by
Charles Rosen, a distinguished traditional classical musician and
author on music. One criticism Rosen has made is that the spread of
the historically informed performance movement has depended very heavily on the
recording industry. This results from two factors. First, the lower volume of authentic performance instruments means they tend to be ineffective in large modern concert halls, so that live performance is difficult to sustain financially. Second, the unstable intonation and lesser reliability of early instruments means that a high-quality performance is most easily obtained in the
recording studio, where multiple takes can be spliced together to iron out mistakes, and it is possible to interrupt the music frequently to retune the instruments. A musical culture based predominantly on recordings is arguably an impoverished one, given that most listeners respond more intensely to a live performance than to a recording.
"The study of old instruments and historic performance practice has taught us a great deal, but the main point, the impact of harmony, has been ignored." (Daniel Barenboim)
American musicologist and conductor of Renaissance choral music, Richard Taruskin, discusses some flaws in the case for historically informed performance in his treatise Text and Act.
Overdependence on scholarship can result in dry and uncompelling performances, as the role of interpretation is diminished.
Also, some listeners who enjoy
absolute pitch are disturbed by fact that historically informed performances often use a lower pitch than traditional performances (415Hz vs 440Hz). And some players and ensembles adopt yet another pitch like 390Hz for early baroque music or 430Hz to play Mozart's or Beethoven's music, which makes the whole situation even more confusing for those people.
There are many listeners who enjoy both historically informed performances and traditional performances. Such listeners might, for instance, enjoy
Malcolm Bilson's vivid and stylish authentic performances of
Haydn's piano sonatas on a replica 18th century piano, but also enjoy
Vladimir Horowitz's interestingly idiosyncratic (and quite heavily pedaled) performances of the same works on a modern concert grand.. Nicolas Harnoncourt has conducted the Consentus Musicus of Vienna for over 50 years, and he combines historical awareness with a highly individual approach.
See also
★
Early music
★
List of early music ensembles
★
List of period instruments
References
1. http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/10982.html
Bibliography
★
Arnold Dolmetsch, ''The Interpretation of the Music of the 17th and 18th Centuries Revealed by Contemporary Evidence'', London: Novello, 1915. The book that started it all.
★
Thurston Dart. ''The Interpretation of Music''. London: Hutchinson and Co, 1954.
★
Robert Donington. ''The Interpretation of Early Music'', London: Faber and Faber, 1963. Covered much the same ground as Dolmetsch, but updated by 50 years of further discovery.
★
Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (1997). "The good, the bad and the boring", ''Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music''. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816540-4.
★ ''Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making'' by Frank Hubbard (1965; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-88845-6) is a classic tale of scholarly detective work, both with old instruments and old written sources, that led to the rediscovery of how the old harpsichords were built.
★
Andrew Parrott. ''The Essential Bach Choir''. The Boydell Press, 2000. ISBN 0-85115-786-6. An analysis of how the musicians available to Bach in Leipzig were likely to have been used in practice.
★
Charles Rosen's discussion of historically informed performance may be found in Chapter 12 of his book ''Critical Entertainments'' (2000; Cambridge: Harvard University Press; ISBN 0-674-00684-4). This chapter contains the full version of the quotation above concerning tuning, which is from the French critic
Charles de Saint-Evremond.
★ The quotation above from Joseph Haydn about the necessity of at least one rehearsal is taken from p. 145 of Rosen's book ''The Classical Style'' (2nd ed., 1997; New York: Norton; ISBN 0-393-31712-9).
★
Paul Badura-Skoda. ''Interpreting Bach at the Keyboard''. (English Translation) Oxford University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-19-816576-5. Challenges many ideas that have been taken as granted since Dolmetsch.
★ Nicholas Kenyon (editor). ''Authenticity and Early Music'', Oxford University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-19-816152-2. The proceedings of a symposium in which various different approaches to "authenticity" were criticised - essential reading.
External links
★
Early Baroque Violin Practice (1520-1650)
★
The Unofficial Countertenor Home Page
★
A Guide to Medieval and Renaissance Instruments
★
Period instrument performers and groups listed on The Open Music Project
★
Dilemmas in Trying to Present Old Works of Art 'Authentically'
★
Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers (book by Bernard Sherman; Oxford University Press, 1997)
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