When Musicology Trumps Musicianship
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 เม.ย. 2024
- Too many performers these days attempt to claim unique authority for their interpretations of specific works based on proprietary versions of the score; but preparing a new text does not guarantee either a more accurate or more affecting performance. Don't be fooled.
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I have always enjoyed Thomas Beecham's comment " A Musicologist is someone who can read music, but cannot hear it".
Wasn't it Klemperer who said musicologists know a great deal about ology and very little about music?
The same Thomas Beecham was once asked wether he had 'listened to any Stockhausen' to which he replied: 'No, but I have trodden in some'.
I was lucky enough to work on the Verdi and Rossini critical editions in Chicago in the 1990s. Those editions I think were some of the best produced, and had as a goal not just producing the best performable text but also explaining all variants in detailed critical notes so that the performers could make their own decisions about the best way to perform the work. It is true that musicologists sometimes lack musical intuition and make bad decisions when when coming up with a final version. On the other hand, since we never intended to perform the work ourselves we also never had any hidden agendas about the novelty of our version, we rather tried to come up with a version that the composer himself would have appreciated the most while explaining our decisions at every step.
Phillip Gossett really knew what he was doing, and in particular he understood that an edition that couldn't be used in practical performance situations was worthless.
The „A London Symphony“ business was another prominent example of making a business out of revisions.
Yep.
I believe it was W.C. Fields who said, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit." 🤣
A good example is Les contes d'Hoffmann. Musicologists have unearthed hundreds of new pages, and now the opera has become a bloated overlong work. And yet, when you hear the breezy "unauthentic" 1949 Cluytens recording, based on how the opera was performed at the Opéra Comique since Offenbach's death, it really works much, much better,.
Yes, it’s a mess! I worked on a production with a hybrid version. It was OK, but I would have preferred the originally published one. Mussorgsky’ s Boris Godunov is another one. I much prefer the Rimsky version. I don’t think Mussorgsky’s orchestration is at all effective, and it feels incomplete to me.
Cluytens's opera-comique Carmen is really exciting. As for Boris, the Rimsky version is OK, but it is often cut (compare the Dobrowen recording). The "original" is, ironically, often too complete, containing both the St. Basil scene and the Kromy Forest scene giving us the holy fool's lament twice unless the conductor has the sense to cut it from St. Basil's.
I spent one month comparing different versions of Les Contes d'Hoffmann following the differents editions (basically, Choudens / Oeser / Kaye & Keck, although some performances are hybrids of two editions) and at a certain point I felt lost in a labyrinth.
I came to the conclusion that the best was Bonynge's with Dame Joan Sutherland.
The Cluytens you name is really charming, with a lot of flavor ( unlike the Cluytens with Schwarzkopf, de los Angeles... which is a cold studio frankenstein monster).
Les Contes d'Hoffmann is probably the most philologically problematic of all operas, alongside Boris Godunov.
I've heard all of those "authentic" Hoffmanns that have kept Michael Kaye in clover all these years. I too have come to prefer the "Monte Catlo" version though the Nicklausse "violin" aria in the Antonia act is gorgeous. Putting the Venice act, the one Offenbach never finished and put in final form, after Antonia, which is by far the strongest musically and dramatically, because that was the original idea is pedantic and stupid.
We need fewer critical editions and more critical--and musical--thinking.
But critical editions are a great way of putting public domain music back in copyright. Follow the money.
@@nealkurz6503I also prefer the Rimsky/Glazunov Prince Igor to the more recent reworking based on more Borodin sketches.
Super interesting episode!
I like this type of video as much as the straight-up reviews.
Right on, Dave! With very high hopes, I recently watched a performance on You Tube of the "1874 edition" of "Carmen." My hopes were high because they were using the original dialogue instead of recitatives, the singers in all the main roles were excellent and French-speaking, and the orchestra was properly Opera Comique-sized. Alas, the "1874" edition, under the pretentious guise that subsequent changes were forced on Bizet by management, was vastly inferior to both of the 1875 editions we know so well (one with recitative and the other with dialogue, which I prefer). There was no Habanera! Instead, there was a vastly inferior, totally non-descript aria devoid of any "espagnolerie." The preludes to acts 2 and 4 were missing altogether! And the death scene, so powerful and concise in the Choudens edition, was way too long and much less dramatic than the one we know so well. Still waiting for your "reference recording" of "Carmen" (if there is one) and several other Bizet works. I suspect the name Thomas Beecham may come up.
Fritz Oeser really made a dog's breakfast out of Carmen though he did bring to light two valuable additions to the score, one involving the cigarette chorus and the other in the Act 2 confrontation between Carmen and Jose in which she mocks him. That irresponsiblly was cut by Guiraud after Bizet's death to suit his notions of a "nicer" Carmen.
I can't understand cutting the Habanera. That's not musicology, it's vandalism.
@@bbailey7818 I fully agree that there are parts of the Choudens edition that are vastly superior. Altogether, the best edition is the one Solti used on his recording, taking the best from both. Many other fine gems, though, in that Oeser edition, like the music directly preceding Escamillo's entrance.
Thanks a lot David for such an interesting topic with so many well balanced insights.
This kind of musicology, that reduces itself to restore drafts (one bar less in this finale, two repeats more in that scherzo) looks like a childish parody of true musicology, the one that gave us great versions of L'incoronazione di Poppea, Bach's Cantatas, Boris Godunov or Les Contes d'Hoffmann.
It is like the rococo phase of Toscanini's come scritto and the HIP: instead of Werktreue, Skizzentreue.
A pity that we are getting yet another version of the same stuff over and over again (but, hey, this time with a trombone in bar 166) instead of exploring less known or neglected repertoire.
Hey Dave,
what’s your opinion on Liszts Beethoven symphony transcriptions? A reference recording video on that topic would be great (Katsaris!).
All the best and thank you so much for your videos!
Love 'em, and you've already pointed out the reference recording.
Ever read Gould's faux reviews of his own recording of the 5th that he recorded? They're a hoot. He also did the 6th.
So many great points. The “behind the scenes” decisions by so many performers, ranging from finding and correcting errors and practical minor revisions, remains behind the scenes until it gets undue and exaggerated scrutiny, and then somehow everyone becomes an “expert”. Performers play from various editions, and that’s their business, but MOST of these make absolutely no difference to how the work is perceived and listened to. When’s the last time you heard performer X play a Beethoven piano sonata and thought “what a shame he didn’t use the Henle edition”? But these days, it’s become a whole business. Thanks Dave!
I've caught one or two errors in Henle.
It seems to me that those awarding unique authenticity to an historical approach are suppliers, rather than consumers. As you say, the quality of performance takes precedence over the authenticity of the work.
"Musicologize it!"--! Clever...
Great topic & well said 👍
I do appreciate musicology, but 1st class musicality/musicianship always comes first...it must!
Interesting and informative as usual. Maybe you have a session on that other bugaboo, REPEATS. 3rd mvt. of the Appassionata, one example. Lewenthal eschews the repeat, I think he said it impedes the headlong rush of the music. Many peformers do not, and those are the ones I'm used to. Ditto 1st mvt. Schubert's las Sonata.
I've discussed repeats many times.
Musicology is not your enemy. In fact, your views correspond to those of actual musicologists and have for decades now. Historical Performance people are not musicologists. The musicologist Richard Taruskin debated historical performance idiots back in the 80s and 90s (see his book Text and Act).
Richard esteemed hip performers - he had been one himself. His notion that hip represents a 'new' type of interpretation, vs the 'traditional' ways, which he considered 'historical', was often misunderstood by the older hip generations, who thought of hip as historical because they wanted to connect directly to historical sources.
@@steinwey RT was a gambist, but not a HIP guy. One of his most famous arguments was the claim that historically informed performance practice was not
"historically informed," but instead based on Stravinsky's own influential writings on performance and "execution" in the last chapter of the Poetique Musicale. He would revisit this theme in countless essays and set himself up as HIP's greatest enemy.
One case that has haunted me my whole professional life....and in which some musicological scholarship would really have helped is: Heifetz old recordings of the Bach Solo Sonatas and Partitas for violin.......It is evident that Heifetz really did not know or even have an interest in baroque dance forms and tempi......he was interested in virtuoso violin playing.....but one can hardly identify any of the dance forms (especially the ones not labeled as dances but are dance rhythms none the less) by his playing of them....and I first learned many of these movements based on the recording of Heifetz.....
I wasn\t wearing glasses aand read 'when Mussorgsky trumps musicianship''
You mentioned that everybody (except Gardiner, etc.) rightly ignore the original version of Mendelssohn's Italian symphony. Isn't it the other way around, though? It's his revised 1834 version that Gardiner put on disc, whereas everybody else plays the original 1833 version, since that's the one that was (posthumously) published.
Yes, I wasn't being that specific--just to point out one of those suckers gets ignored--but you are certainly right and thanks for clarifying. Sometimes I'm too casual!
@@DavesClassicalGuide Just wanted to make sure I didn't have it wrong!
May I suggest that such "improved" or "original" or otherwise different versions are simply attempts for musicologists & musicians to lay claim to fame. For works of the classics, where so much ink has been spilled and historical performances have been recorded, it may seem to up & coming stars that there is little room for them to come up with a noteworthy performance that stands out on merit; hence, they will opt for different.
More so, as our current "star" society buys whatever stands out.
IMO this will continue and grow as mediocrity seeks to ensure its place on the musical bandwagon. Quality, musicianship, authenticity, etc, are not the prime target; self-serving attention-grabbing is --
And it works to an extent - after all, here we are discussing it 😄
Dave, what is your opinion of Szell's changes to Schumann's symphonies? I read somewhere where Paul Paray, after hearing Cleveland perform a Schumann symphony, remarked that it was a great performance "but who wrote it?"
Paray exaggerated. Many conductors make changes to Schumann's orchestration. Szell's don't bother me.
How about that Schumann sonata where the pianist is told to go "as fast as posssible", ...then later, "faster"? What do we do with that?
Do exactly what he says.
by then you're warmed up enough to play even faster than you could at the beginning of the piece
take it "cum grano salis", the man broke his hands playing his own music.
Great essay, thanks! (And nice to be reminded that the monosyllable "Trump" needn't necessarily trigger one's gag reflex.)
It seems to me that most of these are not so much a case of musicology vs. musicality as they are of simply _bad_ musicology.