How did HIPP begin?

[pilamenon]

As someone who can't imagine being without HIPP now, I would be interested to hear from contributors with knowledge or memories of the earliest HIPP performers, and where and how it all started. And also where did it start for you personally?

My first HIPP purchase was the Symphonies No 100 and 104 by Haydn performed by the AAM under Christopher Hogwood about 1983/4.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It very much depends upon what you mean by HIPP. Do you include Toscanini because his desire to present music as close to the composer's score as possible? And JEG, who does not regard himself as a HIPP conductor. Or Roger Norrington, who reinvents history to suit his personal preferences.
Even Barbirolli resisted conducting Handel's Messiah in Manchester until he was satisfied that he was using an authentic score.
Boyd Neel's Decca recording of Handel's Water Music is regarded as old hat now in the HIPP world, but his use of one of the earliest editions, at a time when the work was known mainly through the Harty Suite, was HIPP pioneering in a big way.
But I suppose hearing the Basil Lamb edition of Messiah under Charles Mackerras was my first experience of serious HIPP.
The trouble with the entire HIPP industry is that is relies on intelligent guesswork. And, in the case of string vibrato, flying in the face of historical evidence, the practice having been in existence since Elizabethan times, and condemned by many writers since that time - nothing new here then.

[Bryn]

I had almost certainly heard some HIPP efforts on the Third Programme, but the first LPs of 'original instrument' recordings I got would have been bought around 1975. Orchesography in Cecil Court had a few discs of Mozart and Beethoven works on what was then the Harmonia Mundi/BASF label. I was particularly taken with some late Mozart fortepiano concertos played by Jorg Demus, and 2 discs of Paul Badura-Skoda (the 4th and the Triple concertos). These were with the Collegioum Aureum, which I soon learned were a sort of half-way house. They used original instruments but their playing was essentially based on modern techniques. Those discs were recorded n the early '70s, when Harnoncourt was considered to be close to the cutting edge of the movement. I remember being rather fond of his recordings of the Bach 'Cello Suites. I got them on CD last year. It's difficult to work out what I found so good about them, but they date from before Bylsma's recordings, let alone the likes of Badiarov.

You might find some useful bits and pieces relating to the early days of HIPP, here.

[rauschwerk]

It certainly began a lot more than 30 years ago, and indeed as far back as the 19th century. Arnold Dolmetsch (1858-1940) was a great pioneer. See the biographies of him and his family in Grove Online (use your library barcode number to log in).

[MickyD]

Bryn and I must have been buying our first HIPP discoveries at around the same time! Those Collegium Aureum LPs were full of buried treasure for me - it was a very exciting period of discovery in my late teens. As was the start of Christopher Hogwood's recordings with the AAM, I greedily awaited each new release and still have all of them in my collection. Then I discovered the wonderful Telefunken Das Alte Werke series, LPs which were always a bit tricky to get hold of in the provinces. I had no hope of finding the funds for the enormous Bach cantata series with Harnoncourt, but made up for that years later when I purchased the big CD re-release - I felt very smug getting it at last!

Even now I am still thrilled when any work receives the HIPP treatment for the first time - recently I was delighted when the Benvenue Fortepiano Trio brought out the Mendelssohn trios for the first time on period instruments.

[Vile Consort]

As rauschwerk says, the movement goes back a good century to Dolmetsch, but also to Albert Schweitzer, who by 1906 had already concluded that playing Bach on a romantic organ was something of a travesty.

[Bryn]

There again, Albert Schweitzer playing Bach was someting of a travesty in itself, was it not?

[pilamenon]

And, in the case of string vibrato, flying in the face of historical evidence, the practice having been in existence since Elizabethan times, and condemned by many writers since that time - nothing new here then.

But surely it's a case of how much vibrato is used, and when, rather than whether it should be used at all?

[Bryn]

Indeed. I continue to be amused at the way some clearly fail to listen to, for instance, Norrington directed performances. They see to only hear what he says about vibrato, and not what the Stuttgart string players actually do with the fingers of their left hands. They use vibrato, but not as a first resort or in conjunction with every bow stroke. There is also the fact that the proponents of finger wobbling fall back on citing famed solo virtuosi of earlier centuries in support of their liking for a general application of vibrato in the playing of a body of strings. There's a big difference between the use of a range of vibrato techniques by a soloist, and general application of vibrato within an orchestral string section. It's the latter that the likes of Norrington and many other contributors to the HIPP movement object to.

[ardcarp]

but also to Albert Schweitzer, who by 1906 had already concluded that playing Bach on a romantic organ was something of a travesty.

But, VC, have you heard any recordings of Schweitzer playing Bach? Slow and dull. Mind you, he was 20% closer to JSB's era than we are, so who is to say he wasn't right? Discuss.

I had to laugh this a.m. when Rob Cowan on Breakfast said of a Jenkins Fantasia played by Phantasm [something along the lines of] "what a wonderful authentic instrument performance". Er...how else would you play it, and on what?

[Vile Consort]

Indeed, Bryn and Adcarp - I remember listening to some of his recording with friends in my teens and we had a good laugh at the ponderousness of the playing even then. I am not claiming that Schweitzer was at the forefront of reviving baroque keyboard technique, but he had at least realised that the romantic organ wasn't the ideal instrument to play the baroque repertoire on, and had begun to think in HIPP terms at least in so far as getting music played on appropriate instruments.

[Richard Tarleton]

As someone who can't imagine being without HIPP now, I would be interested to hear from contributors with knowledge or memories of the earliest HIPP performers, and where and how it all started. And also where did it start for you personally?

My first HIPP purchase was the Symphonies No 100 and 104 by Haydn performed by the AAM under Christopher Hogwood about 1983/4.

My first exposure to HIPP was a performance of the St John Passion in Oxford in the late '60s by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis under August Wenzinger, complete with period instruments - according to my Oxford Disctionary of Music he was prof. of music at Basle from the 1930's. Basle seems to have been an important part of the story - Hopkinson Smith referred to his time there in his recent EMS interview with C Bott.

[Bryn]

Though they did not, as far as I recall, use 'original instrument', a few years before the HIPP movement really took off, I was very taken with Leslie Jones's Beethoven and Haydn performjances with the Little Orchestra of London. He tried to get back to the sort of orchestral proprotions the composers might have expected.

[Roehre]

Though the "original instruments"-recordings started to appear in the early/mid-1970s (the Harmonia Mundi Collegium Aureum recordings were my earopeners in Beethoven too btw), as early as the late 1950s something which may be considered the first real steps to HIP was the downsizing of the orchestras playing baroque music.

Though now a bit sniffed at, I Musici (Philips) and The Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields (Decca/Argo) were pioneers in that respect, and the straightforwardly downsized size of the orchestras used by Karl Richter (Archiv/DGG) and Münchinger (Decca) fall within this development too.

For earlier music, the Deller consort (Vanguard e.g.) were pioneers those years, effectively showing that countertenors' parts could perfectly be sung without the use of castrates e.g . Musica Reservata (Philips) did something similar .

[Stunsworth]

Anyone remember the David Munrow tv programs? I'd guess from the late 60s/early 70s.

I saw the AAM at the Free Trade Hall sometime in the 70s. Even to my untutored ears the playing seemed rather rough. I suppose they got better over time. I still have a 'sampler' LP that I bought at the concert.