A Messiah to send Hippites rushing for the smelling salts ?

[Barbirollians]

From what I hear this is being issued as a Barbirolli Society Limited edition; only 500 are being made and there will be no further copies available after they're sold. I guess it'll be available off their website in the near future?

That is a bit of surprise as both Amazon and Presto are advertising it .

[Dave2002]

That is a bit of surprise as both Amazon and Presto are advertising it .

I have several Messiahs, though can't remember which they all are. I'm less bothered about whether the performances are HIPP but rather about whether they are good, and/or have "something to say".

Also, I think it's quite a good thing to hear live once in a while - perhaps less than one a year - say every 2-3 years, which is more frequent than some other works - (e.g Britten's Rape of Lucretia - which I have heard live twice over fifty or so years, and although I'd like to live for a long time more, I don't think I'll be hearing that one again .... Gives one a suggestion for a metric, I think.).

To visualnickmos I'd say "give it a go". It won't bite, and you may enjoy it. Personally though, I'd recommend starting at the HIPP end of things - say Pinnock or Hogwood. Beecham's is a riot.

Note also that a certain Amadeus Mozart (amongst others) tinkered with it. Mackerras recorded both an "original" and a Mozart version, I think. There are one or two places where I think Mozart does improve things (usually by adding in drums) - but overall I'd say stick with the "original". It's good to hear Mozart's version though, but Handel did not include clarinets - so be aware that WAM's version does smooth some things quite a bit, though gives impact to some parts.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I have several Messiahs, though can't remember which they all are. I'm less bothered about whether the performances are HIPP but rather about whether they are good, and/or have "something to say".

I couldn't have put it better myself.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Well - I'm more interested in the "somethings" Handel had to say than those of his performers, and I find that these are better communicated by those which use the instruments and performing practices of the composer's own time. The something that is being said is said with a more convincing accent, I increasingly feel.

[Dave2002]

Well - I'm more interested in the "somethings" Handel had to say than those of his performers, and I find that these are better communicated by those which use the instruments and performing practices of the composer's own time. The something that is being said is said with a more convincing accent, I increasingly feel.

What are you going to do? Join Dr Who in a Tardis, and try to get back to the 18th Century? Might pick up smallpox or something else nasty if you try.

[vinteuil]

What are you going to do? Join Dr Who in a Tardis, and try to get back to the 18th Century? Might pick up smallpox or something else nasty if you try.

... better, tho', to try to get back to the 18th century rather than trying to get back to the late-19th / early 20th century styles usually favoured by those who enjoy so-called 'modern instrument' performances...

[Richard Barrett]

What are you going to do? Join Dr Who in a Tardis, and try to get back to the 18th Century? Might pick up smallpox or something else nasty if you try.

Let's be clear about one thing: things like massive Messiahs are an 19th/early 20th century style of performance; HIP is the current state of "modern performance".

[Dave2002]

Let's be clear about one thing: things like massive Messiahs are an 19th/early 20th century style of performance; HIP is the current state of "modern performance".

Are we not agreed though that in practical terms it is impossible to get back to "what the composer intended ..??? .... by going back to the 18th Century".
Personally I tend, on average, to prefer a so called HIPP performance or recording to something else, but on the other hand I'd usually rather hear a first rate orchestra (large?) with a decent choir to a supposedly "authentic" group who may not have anything like the same techniques or style. The best HIPP groups are very good, but some of the others - as with most other things - could probably be left alone.

On a slightly different tack, and related to things I've been doing recently, some performances of music - for example by dedicated amateurs - are no doubt very rewarding for the performers, but arguably (much?) less so for the listeners. There was a time when many people sang, and many people would sing regularly in works such as Messiah. Some of them managed to reach quite high standards, and indeed that might have been how some of the large scale performances conducted by enthusiasts such as Malcolm Sargent worked so well. Large choirs tend to mask any deficiencies of individual singers in quite a strange way - something I've noticed in other contexts, such as amateur dramatic performances. Now that we can mostly all hear excellence in recordings and broadcasts this may mean that fewer people are actually engaging with musical performance, and thus missing out. I still have friends who enjoy singing, but I think in the UK they may be a shrinking minority now.

[ahinton]

Well - I'm more interested in the "somethings" Handel had to say than those of his performers, and I find that these are better communicated by those which use the instruments and performing practices of the composer's own time. The something that is being said is said with a more convincing accent, I increasingly feel.

Much as I take your point, what continues to rankle with me - or, perhaps rather more properly, risks undermining this principle up to a point - is that we can only listen to Messiah or other works of its time with 21st century ears that have gotten accustomed to listening to them in a far wider variety of guises (including HIPP) than would likely have been predicted by those composers or their contemporary listeners. We can replicate the circumstances in which such music was performed / listened to in its day only by using our imaginations as well as by sticking to reliable HIPP performances and, even then, to do so could be rather akin to implying that such music was intended only for its own time and not for performers and listeners many generations later - and who would advocate invoking the "museum-piece" mentality when approaching works from centirues ago?

I've said the same often enough (or perhaps too often!) in respect of the pioneering works of the piano luminaries of the first half of the 19th century and (in most cases) beyond - Chopin, Liszt and Alkan (and to a lesser extent Schumann), not to mention Beethoven's final contributions to piano literature; the prospect that each (at least at times) wrote in such a way as to imply the need for improvements in piano design in order better to accommodate the results of their imaginings. This is what makes it interesting to listen from time to time to those composers' major piano works on instruments of their own day with which they'd have been familiar by reason of having played them; it can almost enhance one's admiration and appreciation of those works when one realises the extent to which piano design development owes a debt to them. Without going into many examples, the sostenuto (middle) pedal (whose invention has been indirectly attributed to Liszt) is of little benefit to a piano whose overall sustaining power is of the kind to which Chopin had been accumstomed, the dense bass textures found in late Beethoven and to a greater extent in Alkan lack the tonal definition and clarity of a good modern instrument when played on early 19th century Érards and Pleyels whose actions were never intended to accommodate the kinds of coruscating bravura or vastly expanded dynamic range that characterised certain passages in Liszt and Alkan, yet it could be argued that those composers nevertheless wrote fearlessly for instruments that would only come to be developed later. It could also be argued (and I don't doubt that some HIPPsters might indeed do so) that to make such a statement is to confuse an assumption of creative prescience for one's own wishful thinking, but the music of those composers convinces me that such an argument seems to have rather less going for it than some HIPPsters might presume.

But to return to Handel. as jean points out, there's so much more of his work to get one's ears around than the overly performed, overrated and almost ubiquitous Messiah that, to me at least, occupies a place in his output (and an accumulated reputation) not dissimilar to that of Elijah in Mendelssohn's...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Let's be clear about one thing: things like massive Messiahs are an 19th/early 20th century style of performance; HIP is the current state of "modern performance".

- as I said, for those who were paying attention, "I find that these are better communicated by those which use the instruments and performing practices of the composer's own time [ie "better than" those which use instruments and performance practices of later periods, "I find" for my own satisfaction and enjoyment of the Music]. The something that is being said is said with a more convincing accent, I increasingly feel." So, I'll keep my Tardis ticket to go and visit Shakespeare (worth the risk of smallpox, I'd say) and "what I am going to do" is listen to 21st Century recordings (on digital equipment) and performances (in halls with central heating) which attempt to present the Music in ways that its composer might have recognized.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think my #25 also answers ahinton's #24 - and I would only further add that I only felt that Messiah was "overrated" in the homogenised large-scale performances that had become prevalent by the 1970s. HI recordings and performances instead revealed the work for me for what it really is: one of the greatest works of one of the greatest of all composers.

I certainly won't avoid Barbirolli's recording - it'll be an important historical document of a performing tradition, and interesting to hear how JB compares with Sargent and Boult.

[Dave2002]

- as I said, for those who were paying attention, "I find that these are better communicated by those which use the instruments and performing practices of the composer's own time [ie "better than" those which use instruments and performance practices of later periods, "I find" for my own satisfaction and enjoyment of the Music]. The something that is being said is said with a more convincing accent, I increasingly feel." So, I'll keep my Tardis ticket to go and visit Shakespeare (worth the risk of smallpox, I'd say) and "what I am going to do" is listen to 21st Century recordings (on digital equipment) and performances (in halls with central heating) which attempt to present the Music in ways that its composer might have recognized.

Of course if your Tardis could also transport electronic equipment, streamers, loudspeakers, iPads, headsets etc., you could astound Bach and Handel with what has happened to their music since.

They might approve ..... or not!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Of course if your Tardis could also transport electronic equipment, streamers, loudspeakers, iPads, headsets etc., you could astound Bach and Handel with what has happened to their music since.

They might approve ..... or not!

Indeed. As they might (or not) with Beecham, Munchinger, Vaughan Williams, Willcocks, Mengelberg, etc etc etc I suspect they'd be even more interested in how they could get their hands on some of the royalties accumulated over the centuries; what's the point of a Tardis otherwise?!

[Richard Barrett]

what the composer intended

It is in principle impossible to know "what the composer intended". On the other hand it is often possible to work out quite precisely what the composer did, especially in a piece like Messiah of which there are many well-documented 18th century performances, and use that (ie rather than a tradition that dates from the 19th century) as the basis for an interpretation. It's nothing to do with museums, but with making the music sound new by bearing in mind how it sounded when it was new.

[Conchis]

How many recordings of this do I have?

Klemperer
Davis
Marriner (Dublin live recording)
Hickox
Sargent

Klemperer's is by the least HIP and by far my favourite. In truth, I don't even like the work!