Light-hearted HIPP

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Before the hackles rise, this is just a bit of fun.

HIPP means Historically Informed Performance Practice (at least I think it does).

Yet it causes as much argument/debate as any other topic on the forum. Why? Because the evidence is skimpy.

Indeed, it could be argued that for Roger Norrington, HIPP should mean Historically Inaccurate Performance Practice, on the ground that he reinvents history to justify what he likes to do. ("The VPO didn't use vibrato until after WWII"; and "Elgar's orchestras didn't use vibrato in 1908".) The aforementioned knight would be better to interpret "HIPP" as "How I Prefer Playing", instead of trying to justify it in other ways. But no doubt he will carry on using his powers of suggestion for his forthcoming Proms Mahler performance.

It's odd to think that there was so much vibrato around in Leopold Mozart's time that he tried to put a stop to it.

Do you remember Christopher Hogwood's pioneering Proms performance of Handel's Messiah? Happily, we can no longer say "Hogwood's Intonation is Particularly Poor". But it was then.

When scholarship is put ahead of musicianship - "I want to play it accurately", it could be "Harnoncourt Is Pen-Pushing".

In those Mozart and Haydn symphony performances/recordings made in recent years, we have the unscored extra instrument that the composers never said they wanted: Harpsichord Is Plodding Perpetually.

[Tapiola]

I like it, Eine Alpensinfonie

Back to Norrington, perhaps HIPP might also denote His Interpretations P*ss Poor...?

[doversoul1]

Highly Interesting Profound Performance (I would say this, wouldn’t I?)

[vinteuil]

we have known for quite a time that alpensinfonie prefers historically un-informed, or historically wrongly-informed, performances.

[Roehre]

we have known for quite a time that alpensinfonie prefers historically un-informed, or historically wrongly-informed, performances.

So what? I do think HIPP does contribute to understanding music in a different way, I like that interpretation of Alpensinfonie's.

[Bryn]

I understand that several here are engaged in supervision students' dissertations on matters musical and musicological. I wonder if any of them have had the patience to plough through David Hurwitz's Orchestral Vibrato, Historical Context, and the Evidence of the Printed Page. Were such a text to be submitted to them by one of their students, what sort of grade would they consider awarding it?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

we have known for quite a time that alpensinfonie prefers historically un-informed, or historically wrongly-informed, performances.

Guilty as charge, your honour, but totally unrepentant.

But then again, I stick to my claim that many of the claims made by the HIPPos are spurious or exaggerated. It's commonplace for Mozart's works to be played on Breakfast in recordings without vibrato. We don't have the faintest idea whether Mozart would have liked or expected it to be played in this way, but it might have pleased his dad. The truth is that we are all largely "uninformed", but it's OK to speculate, but not to dictate.

[Bryn]

So who's dictating, other than the likes of Hurwitz?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

You are right. "Dictate" was the wrong word. I was looking for a a term to mean "making dogmatic unsubstantiated claims".

[Bryn]

Ah, well that again would be Hurwitz and his ilk.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

http://www.classicstoday.com/vibrato3/Part9.pdf

It takes courage to go against the flow.

[Bryn]

Against the flow? All he offers, once you discover that his 'evidence' is full of holes, is bluster and name-calling. Have you actually tried employing the sort of ubiquitous upper string vibrato that Norrington et al deplore, without the use of a chin rest, for instance? Have you actually listened to the fairly extensive range of pre-1920s recordings of orchestral playing? Given that vibrato helps to project the sound of string instrument, one would expect to hear a massive amount of vibrato in such early recordings, but apart from mechanical wow and flutter, very little vibrato is to has heard in those recordings. It is the amateur percussionist David Hurwitz who is the fraudster here, not those he calls the "lunatic fringe".

Oh, and if you actually listened to the Mahler last night, did you not hear the vibrato used in the solo string episodes? It was pretty difficult to miss it. That said, I did get the feeling that the orchestra was struggling so hard to avoid ubiquitous vibrato that many of the portamenti ended up sounding rather too studied and contrived in their execution, (you will of course know how finickity Norrington is about observing Mahler's notation of portamenti and like articulations).

[Flosshilde]

You are right. "Dictate" was the wrong word. I was looking for a a term to mean "making dogmatic unsubstantiated claims".

& that would those who claim, without a shadow of doubt, that Bach would have preferred his music played on a Bechstein grand, rather than a harpsichord (& ignore the probability that, had such an instrument existed when Bach was composing, he would have written different music, to take the instruments specific qualities into account).

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

& that would those who claim, without a shadow of doubt, that Bach would have preferred his music played on a Bechstein grand, rather than a harpsichord (& ignore the probability that, had such an instrument existed when Bach was composing, he would have written different music, to take the instruments specific qualities into account).

People who say that do open themselves to ridicule. Even I, as a VW fan, have to admit that.

[Flosshilde]

How about Hugely Improved Performances, Period. (with apologies for the Americanism)