Messiah, John Butt & Dunedin Consort

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... if only Handel had known!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Handel)#/media/File:Messiah-titlepage.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Handel)

Doesn't the lack of definite article demonstrate what anbonna was aggrieved about (and with which I was agreeing)?

Historical evidence, here. Of course, we can't know that Handel didn't pronounce the title with a Lancastrian accent, and pronounced the definite article as a sort of glottal stop, because we weren't there and didn't hear him

[aeolium]

I think you're misunderstanding me here. I'm not opposed to the use of historical evidence and research about performance styles (and my comment about the 1791 Messiah performance was not intended to suggest anything about performance styles in Handel's time). And I'm all in favour of scholarship to correct errors in performing editions. All I'm suggesting is that there are necessary limitations to our understanding about how music was performed 300 years ago, and accordingly to allow flexibility in matters such as tempi, dynamics, even vibrato and portamento.

The smoking analogy you use is a false one. There is overwhelming scientific evidence about the effects of smoking. The research into historical performance styles is not scientific - it has to use texts and the most important evidence, the sounds themselves, is simply not available to us.

I suppose I am like ardcarp in that I hear some HIPP performances of Handel and think some sections sound simply too fast, too breathless, and vibrato is rarely heard (though a contemporary of Handel's, Geminiani, was far from opposed to the use of vibrato). I just wish there was more variety in the performance of his works.

[Richard Barrett]

No contemporary of ours has heard early 18th century music. But has anyone here actually looked at the scholarship about tempi in baroque music and earlier? There is plenty of it. For example much Baroque music - even church music such as Bach's cantatas - is based on dance-music models whose tempo was constrained by the steps originally used. Secondly the acoustic conditions in which performances took place can often be reconstructed even if surviving performance spaces of the time have more or less different acoustics now. Thirdly, phrasing in vocal music is constrained by lung capacity, and rapid passagework by articulative capacity - such a piece as the "Duo seraphim" from Monteverdi's Vespers can only be performed within a certain narrow range of tempi given these two parameters. Fourthly, there exist plenty of indications like andante which ought surely to be borne in mind given that people probably don't walk very much more quickly or slowly than they did three hundred years ago. An expert could marshal far more pieces of evidence than I can off the top of my head. All of the various pieces then complement each other to bring an overall picture into a considerable degree of focus, and more pieces are constantly being added. So the amount of "conjecture" is really not as large as some would make out, and is also shrinking.

[aeolium]

Fourthly, there exist plenty of indications like andante which ought surely to be borne in mind given that people probably don't walk very much more quickly or slowly than they did three hundred years ago.

Although there are considerable variations in the pace at which people walk even today. Why wouldn't the leisured classes of the early C18 have walked at a slower pace generally than we do now? After all, they had more time to expend and no hurry to reach their destination.

An expert could marshal far more pieces of evidence than I can off the top of my head. All of the various pieces then complement each other to bring an overall picture into a considerable degree of focus, and more pieces are constantly being added. So the amount of "conjecture" is really not as large as some would make out, and is also shrinking.

You mean that there will be even less flexibility in performance of these works than there is now. What a depressing prospect.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think you're misunderstanding me here.

I did wonder

All I'm suggesting is that there are necessary limitations to our understanding about how music was performed 300 years ago, and accordingly to allow flexibility in matters such as tempi, dynamics, even vibrato and portamento.

Indeed - but from the articles and journals I read, these limitations are understood and acknowledged by the scholars and performers themselves. It can be said confidently that the historic evidence demonstrates that performances of Baroque Music were swifter than many performances that reached recordings in the Twentieth Century, and that the wholesale unvaried vibrato that some of these recordings display are not appropriate to a performance that seeks to replicate what the composers would have expected to hear from good performers. (That "what" still allows/encourages a great variety of performance choice - greater than some of the more "reverential" performances on older recordings.)

The smoking analogy you use is a false one. There is overwhelming scientific evidence about the effects of smoking. The research into historical performance styles is not scientific - it has to use texts and the most important evidence, the sounds themselves, is simply not available to us.

But there is "overwhelming evidence" for some aspects of performance style from the 18th Century and earlier, and these are frequently overlooked by some performers and listeners antipathetic to researching historical sources - with the same sort of casual "Doctors? Pah!" dismissal to which I referred.

I suppose I am like ardcarp in that I hear some HIPP performances of Handel and think some sections sound simply too fast, too breathless, and vibrato is rarely heard (though a contemporary of Handel's, Geminiani, was far from opposed to the use of vibrato). I just wish there was more variety in the performance of his works.

OK - we do not (yet) have evidence that Handel got through the "Amen" chorus in under two (or over ten) minutes; the evidence from three people who heard him perform on to separate occasions in a hall with two clocks that were two minutes apart and he started when the chimes for nine o'clock were given on one and ended when they began on the other hasn't (yet) been uncovered. And, yes - I do think that some performances of some Baroque Music are a little faster than I would have preferred on the occasion that I heard them. But I disagree with your suggestion (I just wish there was more variety in the performance of his works) that all performances that use historical research are lacking in variety - the variety of Handel performances alone today is, to my delight, far greater than it was in performances on record from, say, the 1950s.

And, of course, thanks in no small degree to the scholars, there are many, many more performances of many more of his works now than there has ever been; even in his own time.

[aeolium]

But I disagree with your suggestion (I just wish there was more variety in the performance of his works) that all performances that use historical research are lacking in variety - the variety of Handel performances alone today is, to my delight, far greater than it was in performances on record from, say, the 1950s.

And, of course, thanks in no small degree to the scholars, there are many, many more performances of many more of his works now than there has ever been; even in his own time.

On the latter point, I completely agree with you, and what riches have been uncovered!

Re the variety of performances, I'm not so sure. I agree that it's far better than in the 1950s, but there are recordings like those of Charles Mackerras in the 1970s and Hickox in the 1990s that are convincing without the conventions of performance style that we're familiar with today. Anyway, at least recordings can supplement the variety that there is in today's performances.

[Richard Barrett]

You mean that there will be even less flexibility in performance of these works than there is now.

No, actually I mean quite the opposite. Something that's increasingly clear is that there would be very considerable differences between the way the same music would be played in different regions (and between the instruments it would be played on). So, as Reinhard Goebel pointed out already in the 1980s, while it's attested that "French overtures" were played with exaggeratedly dotted rhythms in France, there's no evidence that they would be played that way elsewhere, for example in the case of JS Bach's "orchestral" suites. There would have been much less standardisation than there is now. The implications of this have hrardly begun to be taken seriously by performers, who (like many composers!) often feel constrained by audience expectations in a way that scholars don't. OVPP performance of Bach's vocal-ensemble music is a case in point.

[Nick Armstrong]

This was a 'reconstruction' of Messiah, by John Butt, as it might have been first performed in Dublin. Some of the numbers are changed (in length and in pitch) but all was largely familiar. The performance style was 'of today' i.e. small band (no oboe) fast tempi and thin, straight, string sound....

I enjoyed it very much, but a strange thing is happening to me in my old age! I don't want to return to the stodgy tempi and textures of yesteryear, but I wish someone would conjecture that in Handel's day things might not have been quite so slick and quick.

Against the background of that post, ardy, and the ensuing discussion, you and others on this thread may be interested to read a comment by young harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani on facebook today (no indication of which performance generated his reaction... not necessarily the one in this concert/broadcast)

[mercia]

strangely 'For unto us a child is born' and 'And the glory of the Lord' seemed to be taken slower than in a lot of performances but a later chorus, I think it was 'All we like sheep' was so fast it nearly crashed. There must surely be some finite point where it is impossible for a singer to articulate those semiquavers.

[underthecountertenor]

Against the background of that post, ardy, and the ensuing discussion, you and others on this thread may be interested to read a comment by young harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani on facebook today (no indication of which performance generated his reaction... not necessarily the one in this concert/broadcast)

I love Mahan's 'new iconoclasm'.

[underthecountertenor]

- a bugbear of my own. (I wonder idly how a performance from Sage, Gateshead would have been announced?)

'Welcome to this performance of THE Messiah from Sage, Gateshead, given by THE John THE Butt and Dunedin THE Consort' (I expect).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

'Welcome to this performance of THE Messiah from Sage, Gateshead, given by THE John THE Butt and Dunedin THE Consort' (I expect).

And this popular beat combo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_The

now known simply as .

[vinteuil]

... apart from the fact that Handel called the work 'Messiah', what is the objection to those who refer to it as the 'Messiah'? We say 'the B minor Mass', 'the Unfinished' etc.

And why did Handel call it 'Messiah' rather than 'The Messiah' anyway? Surely 'messiah' is an adjectival participle, 'anointed'. Jesus the anointed, Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah. Surely 'The Anointed' as the title of a work wd be preferable to 'Anointed' tout court ?

Grateful for elucidation here...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... apart from the fact that Handel called the work 'Messiah', what is the objection to those who refer to it as the 'Messiah'? We say 'the B minor Mass', 'the Unfinished' etc.
And why did Handel call it 'Messiah' rather than 'The Messiah' anyway? Surely 'messiah' is an adjectival participle, 'anointed'. Jesus the anointed, Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Messiah. Surely 'The Anointed' as the title of a work wd be preferable to 'Anointed' tout court ?
Grateful for elucidation here...

When I asked this same question over forty years ago, I was informed that Handel would have regarded as blasphemy any suggestion that the work itself was "The Messiah"; that the definite article could only refer to the person of Christ himself (or "Himself", according to taste).

Bach and Schubert did not call those works "The B minor Mass" or "The Unfinished Symphony", of course (although Schubert might very well have called his work "The B minor Symphony"). A closer parallel is with Wagner's Gotterdammerung or Leoncavello's Pagliacci.

[mercia]

probably one for pedants paradise

"last week we performed Bach's B Minor Mass" - as opposed to someone else's B minor mass, or Bach's Mass in another key

"last week we performed the B minor Mass" - yes we all know whose B minor mass you mean

"last week we performed The Messiah" - that work by that composer which I don't have to spell out to you

"last week we performed Handel's Messiah" - as opposed to Fred Bloggs's Messiah