Messiah, John Butt & Dunedin Consort

[ardcarp]

On R3 last night (Tuesday, recorded) at St Jonn's, Smith Square.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07b2hsx

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.
Alto arias were taken by two very fine contraltos (Meg Bragle and Esther Brazil) which is a departure from our current norm.

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. Come one that person! There's a PhD waiting for you.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Scholars will be making such conjectures all the time, ardy - the PhD comes only when the evidence is found to support them.

[DracoM]

I agree - bracing performance, made one think and LISTEN, quite liked change of pitch, and it was great to hear instrumental textures and inner singing parts so well.

[aeolium]

I wish someone would conjecture that in Handel's day things might not have been quite so slick and quick.

I think it's perfectly valid to conjecture that, because much of today's performance practice of Handel works is based on conjecture. We simply don't know what the performances sounded like, how quick the tempi were (or how much variation there was from performance to performance), or the amount of vibrato, or portamento. We know quite a lot about the numbers of players in a performance, and the nature of instruments used, but there is still a great deal that is not known and never will be known. I think this ought always to be remembered when discussing "authentic" performance styles.

[jean]

...We know quite a lot about the numbers of players in a performance...

It seems to me not unreasonable to connect the vast choruses that became standard in the C19 with the painfully slow speeds that I remember from my childhood a bit later.

[VodkaDilc]

I think it's perfectly valid to conjecture that, because much of today's performance practice of Handel works is based on conjecture. We simply don't know what the performances sounded like, how quick the tempi were (or how much variation there was from performance to performance), or the amount of vibrato, or portamento. We know quite a lot about the numbers of players in a performance, and the nature of instruments used, but there is still a great deal that is not known and never will be known. I think this ought always to be remembered when discussing "authentic" performance styles.

Great works surely work in a whole variety of performance styles. A quick look at my CD collection shows that I have four versions, all equally enjoyable in their very different ways: Sargent, 1946; Hogwood, 1980; Butt, 2006; Bernius, 2009. I continue to enjoy them all.

I was sorry to miss the radio performance; I wonder if Butt's ideas have changed since making the CD.

[aeolium]

It seems to me not unreasonable to connect the vast choruses that became standard in the C19 with the painfully slow speeds that I remember from my childhood a bit later.

Maybe, but I don't think there's an inevitable link. And large choruses - in England at any rate - predate the C19. It was at a 1791 performance of Messiah with a large chorus (by today's standards) that Haydn was supposed to have dropped to his knees and exclaimed "he is the master of us all!"

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think it's perfectly valid to conjecture that, because much of today's performance practice of Handel works is based on conjecture. We simply don't know what the performances sounded like, how quick the tempi were (or how much variation there was from performance to performance), or the amount of vibrato, or portamento. We know quite a lot about the numbers of players in a performance, and the nature of instruments used, but there is still a great deal that is not known and never will be known. I think this ought always to be remembered when discussing "authentic" performance styles.

Do you believe that it is not? And do you know of any serious scholarship that is founded just on "conjecture" - that is, without evidence that a careful researcher has discovered and had tested by other colleagues? "We" may "simply not know" precise matters of tempo, but the best scholarship demonstrates that these were much swifter than became standard with large choral societies in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. The degree of vibrato and portamenti is open to interpretation, but the fact that performers before the late 19th Century didn't use the techniques with the type of unvaried uniformity that became the norm then is something that good scholarship has demonstrated.

The best scholarship reveals facts, and discredits poor scholarship. I think that this is something that ought always to be remembered when discussing the relationship between research and conjecture.

[aeolium]

The best scholarship reveals facts, and discredits poor scholarship. I think that this is something that ought always to be remembered when discussing the relationship between research and conjecture.

I don't believe that the best scholarship about the performance styles of three centuries ago can reveal "facts" about such essentially variable characteristics as the tempi of performances, particularly given that the tempo indications are in themselves highly imprecise. Research can come to informed conclusions but these are not the same as facts, and to accept such conclusions as facts I think is highly restrictive.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't believe that the best scholarship about the performance styles of three centuries ago can reveal "facts" about such essentially variable characteristics as the tempi of performances, particularly given that the tempo indications are in themselves highly imprecise. Research can come to informed conclusions but these are not the same as facts, and to accept such conclusions as facts I think is highly restrictive.

But, do you accept that it is a fact that (to pick an example that I adore listening to) Ferrier/Boult's tempi in He Was Despised are much slower than those the composer would have expected? If not, upon what evidence do you base your rejection, and how do you refute the findings of scholars who have spent years researching matters of tempo in 18th Century Music?

[anbonnanbui]

Enjoyed performance immensely- very refreshing - my only problem is that the announcer did not know the name of the work - maybe I am stuffy but the definite article is normally used to refer to Jesus.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... my only problem is that the announcer did not know the name of the work - maybe I am stuffy but the definite article is normally used to refer to Jesus.

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

[aeolium]

But, do you accept that it is a fact that (to pick an example that I adore listening to) Ferrier/Boult's tempi in He Was Despised are much slower than those the composer would have expected? If not, upon what evidence do you base your rejection, and how do you refute the findings of scholars who have spent years researching matters of tempo in 18th Century Music?

I don't know what tempo the composer would have expected here? Does anyone? Do you listen to The Messiah referencing the tempi of each of its arias and choruses with established research? Does anyone?

Whatever research the scholars have done into matters of tempo in early C18 performance, not one of them has heard any C18 performance, so there must be a fair degree of uncertainty about their conclusions.

I am always puzzled by the confidence with which assertions are made about styles of performance no one living has ever heard, whereas it is thought perfectly acceptable to depart from the style shown in recordings we have of early C20 music conducted by the composers themselves. It's as if we think we know more about how people performed music the older it is, though perhaps it is more that conclusions are harder to refute.

[vinteuil]

Enjoyed performance immensely- very refreshing - my only problem is that the announcer did not know the name of the work - maybe I am stuffy but the definite article is normally used to refer to Jesus.

... if only Handel had known!

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

.

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

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't know what tempo the composer would have expected here? Does anyone? Do you listen to The Messiah referencing the tempi of each of its arias and choruses with established research? Does anyone?

Well - yes I do, in a way; as does everyone who finds a performance "too fast" or "too slow" for their expectations/preferences, don't they? Aren't comments on the Forum about (for example) being played "at 400mph" meant to show disapproval of such research-based performance?

Whatever research the scholars have done into matters of tempo in early C18 performance, not one of them has heard any C18 performance, so there must be a fair degree of uncertainty about their conclusions.

Must there? Really? (I suppose that would rely on a definition of "fair" in the "degree of uncertainty".)

I am always puzzled by the confidence with which assertions are made about styles of performance no one living has ever heard, whereas it is thought perfectly acceptable to depart from the style shown in recordings we have of early C20 music conducted by the composers themselves. It's as if we think we know more about how people performed music the older it is, though perhaps it is more that conclusions are harder to refute.

Norrington aside, is there anyone who performs/comments upon both Handel and Strauss in the scholastic way that we are considering here? And when scholars collect a corpus of information which shows that composers expected certain pieces to be performed at a faster (or slower) tempo than has become accepted practice, isn't it right to have a "fair degree of certainty" that the scholars have presented evidence that is "harder to refute"?

I am frequently puzzled by those who use historical evidence (performance styles in the 1790s, recordings from the 1920s) to demonstrate the "uncertainty" of "conclusions" drawn from using historical evidence. It reminds me of someone lighting their 40th fag before breakfast muttering "Doctors! What do they know? My uncle Joe smoked eighty an hour and lived 'til he was 127," - in that it misunderstands the nature and purpose of such scholarship, distrusts its motives, and attributes to it at best a "confidence" at worst an "arrogance" which is never there in the scholarship itself (as opposed to the Press Releases which surrounds the presentation of such scholarship).

Research exists and flourishes because historical evidence is discovered and scrutinised - and supported and/or refuted. For example - the edition of the Water Music with the "Presto" marking for the Aria; instantly demonstrated, by other scholars, to be a conjecture on the editor's part, with no supporting evidence. Nobody takes this suggestion seriously: poor scholarship provided it, good scholarship chucked it out. All good scholarship - and not just in Music - is based upon presenting facts that have been meticulously researched and submitting them to the critical eyes and ears of other scholars, performers and informed listeners. This is something that has always been remembered when discussing performance styles that attempt to replicate as far as possible the sort of sounds that a composer would have expected to hear. Everybody knows that, next year, new research might well turn up that throws what we've discovered into a new, very different light. Until then, that is what the evidence suggests didn't happen; this is what the evidence suggests did - and this is what the Music sounds like as a result.