How old is HIPP ?

[vinteuil]

My recollection is that it was the early to mid-70s, if only because a beflared David Munrow seemed to be everywhere. However, he's no doubt regarded as old hat now. Isn't it characteristic of HIP(P) that the revolution devours its own children?

I don't think that's quite fair. I've been interested in "early music" since the 1960s, and was professionally concerned with the early music world from 1997 to 2008. What I found among my colleagues was a lot of interest in and respect for the fore-runners - from way back, the 19th century Dutch and French scholars through to the whole Dolmetsch - Woodhouse - Landowska period and on to the great flowering of, yes, Munrow, the Basle School, Leonhardt, and on to the newer generations. Of course we sometimes looked back at our predecessors and found them wanting, because each new generation discovers new things - but we always had affection and deep respect for what they had done.

[Serial_Apologist]

Pardon my intrusion, but I wanted to thank all contributers here for what is proving to be a most interesting and informative thread on a subject I previously knew next to nothing about.

S-A

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Isn't it characteristic of HIP(P) that the revolution devours its own children?

No. I refer the respected member to the last paragraph of my last sermon:

With each generation, newer research leads to different ideas and inspires new ways of performing familiar Music and restoring to the repertoire Composers neglected by earlier notions of a set "Canon" of composers, against whom all others are neglegible. Ideas constantly evolve; it is exciting and passionate just following latest interpretations. And, as with all Artistic practice, whilst some of it sounds "quaint", at its best it has given us some of the most life-enhancing, joyous and deeply moving experiences of the Music to be encountered.

Kuijken no more "devours" Leonhardt (in the sense I think you intended!) than Rattle "devours" Karajan; or Karajan, Fürtwängler; or Fürtwängler, Nikisch; or Nikisch, Bülow; or Bülow ... well, you get my drift?

[Richard Tarleton]

My first HIPP experience was circa 1969 - St John Passion in the Sheldonian by the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Wenzinger.

An important footnote to HIPP in this country belongs to Diana Poulton, pioneer and scholar of the lute, who studied with Dolmetsch 1922-5 and gave her first live lute performance on the BBC in 1926. She was elected Chairman of the new Lute Society in 1956, and wrote the definitive book on Dowland, as well as producing the first authoritive edition of Dowland's lute works, with Basil Lam, in 1972. She became the RCM's first Professor of Lute in 1971 (Jakob Lindberg studied with her) and published her Tutor for the Renaissance Lute in 1991. I first heard of her in 1973, when Julian Bream gave an all-Dowland recital at the QEH. The recital was partly to celebrate publication of the complete edition, and the programme contained a note by her.

[MickyD]

In fact, we must go back even further than the late eighteenth century for the origins of the HIPP movement: the original Academy of Ancient Music was founded in London, England in 1726 for the purpose of studying and performing "old" music — defined initially as anything composed at least a century earlier. This soon grew to include more contemporary composers, including William Croft, Michael Christian Festing, Maurice Greene, Bernard Gates, Giovanni Bononcini, Senesino, Nicola Haym, Francesco Geminiani, Pier Francesco Tosi, John Ernest Galliard, Charles Dieupart, Jean-Baptiste Loeillet and Giuseppe Riva. Handel was never a member, although the society studied and performed his music as well as their own, and that of other composers of the day. Directors of the organization included Johann Christoph Pepusch (from 1735 onwards), Benjamin Cooke and Samuel Arnold (from 1789 onwards).

[Chris Newman]

I first came across "early music" in the early 60s when I was still a schoolboy. The Horsham Musical Society held its concerts in the hall of my school. They held monthly chamber concerts with the likes of the Allegri and Amadeus Quartets, Philip Challis, Peter Katin and Louis Kentner (pianists), and the fascinating sounds of the Dolmetsch Ensemble (who were led by Carl D and apparently gave their services free; they lived "up the road" at Haslemere) and The Deller Consort (tenor Wilfred Brown was an alumni of the school). It was these latter two ensembles that whetted my appetite for the more acidic sounds of yester year (although the Allegri's Shostakovich rivalled them).

In 1966 I heard a radio plug (I think it was on Music Magazine) for a concert by the Manitoba Medieval Consort at Aldeburgh which was repeated in Broadcasting House. I was amazed at the sound of strange things like shawms, sackbuts, nakers and tin whistles. I applied to the BBC Ticket Unit who said a ticket would be waiting at the door. In the audience were some faces who in future became familiar to us: John Becket and Michael Morrow of Musica Reservata and a young David Munrow.

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/emc/manitoba-university-consort

The following year I heard these pioneers at the new Purcell Room and it was not long before the Early Music Consort and Musica Reservata or their players were at the Proms and to be seen lurking in bands along with JEG and Raymond Leppard. In those days ensembles were very lushly orchestrated and the atmosphere of these concerts was more akin to folk or jazz bashes. Performance wise, it could be argued that Leppard's Monteverdi rivalled the sound world of Respighi. However, the likes of Becket, Leppard and Munrow took British performance a long way forward.

[Ferretfancy]

Back in about 1950 at school, we had a teacher who was an enthusiast for the music of John Bull, a composer who is still not heard much even today. He invited the Dolmetsch family to come and give a lecture demonstration in the school hall. Our choir was really rather good in anthems by Tallis and we had already performed Byrd's 5 part Mass, but the instruments were complete unknowns.
I don't know how authentic the Dolmetsch family would seem today, but they were a revelation at the time, even if we did find some of the noises rather funny. I remember that it was all very straight faced, very sandals and beards, and the men were just as bad, but I can still picture the event in my mind's eye.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I don't know how authentic the Dolmetsch family would seem today, but they were a revelation at the time, even if we did find some of the noises rather funny. I remember that it was all very straight faced, very sandals and beards, and the men were just as bad, but I can still picture the event in my mind's eye.

Sounds like the sort of thing parodied by Kingsley Amis in Lucky Jim?

[Ferretfancy]

Sounds like the sort of thing parodied by Kingsley Amis in Lucky Jim?

Absolutely! Incidentally, there used to be a splendid viola da gamba player called Ambrose Gauntlet, I think that's a case of what New Scointist call nominative determinism!

[JFLL]

No. I refer the respected member to the last paragraph of my last sermon:

With each generation, newer research leads to different ideas and inspires new ways of performing familiar Music and restoring to the repertoire Composers neglected by earlier notions of a set "Canon" of composers, against whom all others are neglegible. Ideas constantly evolve; it is exciting and passionate just following latest interpretations. And, as with all Artistic practice, whilst some of it sounds "quaint", at its best it has given us some of the most life-enhancing, joyous and deeply moving experiences of the Music to be encountered.

Kuijken no more "devours" Leonhardt (in the sense I think you intended!) than Rattle "devours" Karajan; or Karajan, Fürtwängler; or Fürtwängler, Nikisch; or Nikisch, Bülow; or Bülow ... well, you get my drift?

Well, I see your point, but weren't the conductors you mention in the second part of your last sentence working in more or less the same tradition, whereas HIPP is 'revolutionary' in the sense that it is quasi-ideologically inspired – to arrive at a more 'authentic' rather than a 'better' performance, so that earlier practioners can be deemed on non-aesthetic grounds (historical accuracy) to fall short of a desired ideal?

[doversoul1]

Well, I see your point, but weren't the conductors you mention in the second part of your last sentence working in more or less the same tradition, whereas HIPP is 'revolutionary' in the sense that it is quasi-ideologically inspired – to arrive at a more 'authentic' rather than a 'better' performance, so that earlier practioners can be deemed on non-aesthetic grounds (historical accuracy) to fall short of a desired ideal?

I am only a fan and not an expert but I am almost sure that performers in early music (or HIPP) today regard those who came before them as a building block, a stepping stone, and something that, without their works, they (the current performers) would not be here. And I don’t think any performers today believe there is any one ‘desired ideal’. They all offer different views and ways of performing.

[ed] what I meant to say was, I don’t think performers in early music/HIPP are aiming at achieving some truth that exists externally. After all, how the music actually sounded when Bach first conducted his work cannot be proved physically, or can you?

[JFLL]

I am only a fan and not an expert but I am almost sure that performers in early music (or HIPP) today regard those who came before them as a building block, a stepping stone, and something that, without their works, they (the current performers) would not be here. And I don’t think any performers today believe there is any one ‘desired ideal’. They all offer different views and ways of performing.

Attitudes now may be on the whole more liberal, but certainly at times there has been a kind of missionary zeal about the HIPP movement, sometimes rather off-putting to the unconverted.

[jean]

I associate it with the early 1970s, too.

Certainly there was 'Early Music' before that, but women's voices, especially, didn't sound right until singers like Emma Kirkby came along. I seem to remember that April Cantelo's voice never fitted the rest of the Deller Connsort too well, but I may be misremembering.

She's not credited here, but I assume she's the top line:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKIySHHAT70

[Barbirollians]

I am glad the HIPPsters are around and I have many performances particularly of orchestral music that I much prefer in HIPP ( Britten's Brandenburgs and Menuhin's Water Music retain honourable mentions ) . In vocal works however some recordings sound terribly emotionally emaciated to me . Give me Ferrier and Boult in those Bach and Handel arias any day for all their anachronisms .

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Well, I see your point, but weren't the conductors you mention in the second part of your last sentence working in more or less the same tradition, whereas HIPP is 'revolutionary' in the sense that it is quasi-ideologically inspired – to arrive at a more 'authentic' rather than a 'better' performance, so that earlier practioners can be deemed on non-aesthetic grounds (historical accuracy) to fall short of a desired ideal?

Hmm. I would suggest "evolutionary" rather than "revolutionary" and that to achieve a performance that is closer to that which the composer imagined is to achieve a "better" performance - but "better" than whom is another question.

There's also the needs of the recording companies, who, in order to sell discs, will over-emphasize the "revolutionary" aspects of a performance, editing comments to make it sound as if this recording (and only this) is what the composer expected. The performers themselves are usually more circumspect, and engage with each other to re-appraise their own approaches to a work, or to the Music of an era. It is often a case of learning from each other, trying out ideas, rejecting or modifying things that are unsuccessful, building upon those which work - Music-making, in other words.

But these are human beings, and some comments can sound (and are meant to sound) provokative: Norrington has an (un)fortunate knack of making statements that polarise responses. But most are closer to Andrew Parrott, who, in conversation with Brian Robins put it this way:

AP: Reverting to your question about a "golden age", I think in some ways it was, but it is often said that standards were then low and now they are high. In matters of technical execution, it is true there are now more people who achieve high standards, but the best musicians of that era were musically not only on the same level and in some cases further ahead, but also technically equal more often than we tend to think. Partly the perception is that we have learnt to listen differently and people will produce a bad recording from 30 years ago and claim it proves their point. But find a good recording from the same period and it sounds as if it was made yesterday.



BR: I’m delighted to hear you make that point, because one is constantly coming up against the notion that the standard of period instrument playing today is so much superior. If you actually take the trouble to go back to the best of that era it soon becomes clear that is manifestly untrue.