Prom 9 (20.7.12): Beethoven Cycle – Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It seems to me that the answer is to allow all types of performance from HIPP to fully 'updated' ones.

I am certainly no expert but remember rehearsals where Beecham or Sargent would explain to the orchestra
that if old so-and so- were alive today he would have added trombones, not scored that passage thus,etc. Sacrilege or legitimate tinkering ??

Sacrilege.
Trombones are amongs the oldest of instruments, available to Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart when they were alive. Had they been appropriate (as in Don Giovanni, so-and-so could easily have added them.
Such suggestions always sound as silly (or as legitimate) to me as if someone had said "if old so-and-so were alive today, he'd've added Kazoos, Steel Pans and a Stylophone."

And surely the composers of the past wanted as large an orchestra as they could muster for their new work.

Not necessarily, sals: just as Haydn didn't necessarily want a String Orchestra to play the Lark Quartet. Composers (the ones worth devoting ones life and attention to, at any rate) write sublime Music specifically for, and appropriate to the ensembles available to them - Bach wrote his Orchestral works for an ensemble we consider to be Chamber-like in size: and they sound wonderful because of this - fleet of foot, and transparent in texture: Bach knew what he was on about. They sound fine played by larger ensembles, but compromises with these features have to be made. Mozart may (or not) have wanted to get his hands on the orchestra Alpie mentions above, but, whilst he had the players he had, he wrote superbly for them. Anybody adding Clarinets to the Jupiter or Trombones to the g minor, or an extra Flute to the Piano Concertos ... well! <splutterjowlsemoticon>!

[Hornspieler]

It seems to me that the answer is to allow all types of performance from HIPP to fully 'updated' ones.

I am certainly no expert but remember rehearsals where Beecham or Sargent would explain to the orchestra
that if old so-and so- were alive today he would have added trombones, not scored that passage thus,etc. Sacrilege or legitimate tinkering ??

And surely the composers of the past wanted as large an orchestra as they could muster for their new work.

That's very interesting Sally, because the Royal Academy of Music has the entire collection of the Henry Wood Library and when this music appeared on our desks, there were many insertions for the horns to double up mainly the bassoon parts.

For instance, in the fifth symphony, where the bassoons are given the same four bars as the horns have played, but in a different key (not available on the valveless horn of the day without changing crooks) HW has inserted those notes into the horn parts. Similarly, I recall, with the Coriolan overture and Leonora No 3, to reinforce or add what LvB would probably have written, to continue a phrase if a valved horn was available.

This is an instance where I think it is right to stick with what LvB wrote.

Whatever next? Beethoven's 10th symphony, realised by some nerd from sketches found in a basement in Bonn?

Don't attempt to re-compose Beethoven. He's already decomposed by now.


HS

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Whatever next? Beethoven's 10th symphony, realised by some nerd from sketches found in a basement in Bonn?

Don't attempt to re-compose Beethoven. He's already decomposed by now.

HS

There have already been two recordings of the first movement of Beethoven's 10th, realised by Dr Barry Cooper. I like it.

[salymap]

Sacrilege.
Trombones are amongs the oldest of instruments, available to Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart when they were alive. Had they been appropriate (as in Don Giovanni, so-and-so could easily have added them.
Such suggestions always sound as silly (or as legitimate) to me as if someone had said "if old so-and-so

were alive today, he'd've added Kazoos, Steel Pans and a Stylophone."


Not necessarily, sals: just as Haydn didn't necessarily want a String Orchestra to play the Lark Quartet. Composers (the ones worth devoting ones life and attention to, at any rate) write sublime Music specifically for, and appropriate to the ensembles available to them - Bach wrote his Orchestral works for an ensemble we consider to be Chamber-like in size: and they sound wonderful because of this - fleet of foot, and transparent in texture: Bach knew what he was on about. They sound fine played by larger ensembles, but compromises with these features have to be made. Mozart may (or not) have wanted to get his hands on the orchestra Alpie mentions above, but, whilst he had the players he had, he wrote superbly for them. Anybody adding Clarinets to the Jupiter or Trombones to the g minor, or an extra Flute to the Piano Concertos ... well! <splutterjowlsemoticon>!

Fernie,I wasn't suggesting that composers wished to turn a quartet into a full orchestra,just the extra strings and doubling and adding to the woodwind and brass that goes on,or did.

What about Handel's Messiah. Should Prout and earlier, Mozart additions/editions be scrapped?

I'm going to sit in the garden.

[vinteuil]

What about Handel's Messiah. Should Prout and earlier, Mozart additions/editions be scrapped?

:

... no, they should be celebrated rather than scrapped. And they should be performed. But as "Prout's version of Handel" and "Mozart's re-working of Handel" (which is very interesting: and which - of course - shd be performed in a HIPP manner appropriate to Mozart rather than Handel... )

all good stuff

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

just the extra strings and doubling and adding to the woodwind and brass that goes on,or did.

Again, not necessarily, sals. Haydn's Paris Symphonies were written for an orchestra with a personnel of about sixty players which included Clarinet players, but he didn't use these players in any of the Symphonies. The Hall in which they were performed didn't need doublings - though maybe doublings are necessary in large 19th & 20th Century Concert Halls.

What about Handel's Messiah. Should Prout and earlier, Mozart additions/editions be scrapped?

Vinty's answered this as I would wish to, but with an eloquence I can equal only in my dreams!

I'm going to sit in the garden.

What a good idea!

[aeolium]

Although playing Mozart's arrangement of Handel's Messiah with modern instruments is doing no more than was the intention behind the original arrangement - to enable it to be updated for contemporary audiences.

I love the old Archiv Mackerras recording, his first - I haven't heard the later one with the RPO.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Although playing Mozart's arrangement of Handel's Messiah with modern instruments is doing no more than was the intention behind the original arrangement - to enable it to be updated for contemporary audiences.

Do you think Messiah needs "updating for contemporary audiences", aeoli?

[vinteuil]

Although playing Mozart's arrangement of Handel's Messiah with modern instruments is doing no more than was the intention behind the original arrangement - to enable it to be updated for contemporary audiences.

.

ah, but if we wish it to be "updated for contemporary audiences" we should be using, in your words, "modern instruments" - presumably various electro-acoustic devices, drum'n'bass, beat box and the like.

I am not sure why for a "contemporary audience" we shd be using the orchestral forces of the late nineteenth century (which is perhaps what "modern instruments" are for the non-HIPP - or at least, these are the forces which 'non HIPP' people seem to like so much... )

[aeolium]

I wasn't suggesting playing Mozart's arrangement with fundamentally different instruments from the ones he scored the work for, merely that as Mozart used the instruments he was familiar with (but different from those Handel would have known) there doesn't seem anything untoward in using modern violins, strings etc.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

ah, but if we wish it to be "updated for contemporary audiences" we should be using, in your words, "modern instruments" - presumably various electro-acoustic devices, drum'n'bass, beat box and the like.

Hmm. That's a bit extreme, but I'm sure it was meant to be. But here we slide back to the controversial argument that the modern instruments in question are improved versions of the older ones.





I'll just run for cover in my nuclear bunker.

[salymap]

That's very interesting Sally, because the Royal Academy of Music has the entire collection of the Henry Wood Library and when this music appeared on our desks, there were many insertions for the horns to double up mainly the bassoon parts.

For instance, in the fifth symphony, where the bassoons are given the same four bars as the horns have played, but in a different key (not available on the valveless horn of the day without changing crooks) HW has inserted those notes into the horn parts. Similarly, I recall, with the Coriolan overture and Leonora No 3, to reinforce or add what LvB would probably have written, to continue a phrase if a valved horn was available.

This is an instance where I think it is right to stick with what LvB wrote.

Whatever next? Beethoven's 10th symphony, realised by some nerd from sketches found in a basement in Bonn?

Don't attempt to re-compose Beethoven. He's already decomposed by now.


HS

Yes HS, Henry Wood altered the scores as much as the two later conductors I mentioned. And didn't he edit or arrange many works, then published under the name Klenovsky, or something similar when a foreign name was more likely to be accepted.?

[antongould]

Yes HS, Henry Wood altered the scores as much as the two later conductors I mentioned. And didn't he edit or arrange many works, then published under the name Klenovsky, or something similar when a foreign name was more likely to be accepted.?

Wiki says only one Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor - but yes it received rave reviews much to HW's amusement.

[jayne lee wilson]

I am sorry that you doubt my trustworthiness ( perhaps on the basis that I intensely dislike the Spring Symphony - go and listen to his performance on YT yourself . It impresses me more as a sporting than an artistic event

Oh dear Bb, my remark was intended as gently ironic humour at fhg's and Bryn's expense (the purchase of CDs - enthused about by them - being at my expense), not a dismissal of your own response! This is what happens when one is restricted to a tired or bleary evening or late-night scanning of recent discussions. Sorry, I should have noticed the ambiguity, at the least.

Feel free to feel glum in the middle of the "Spring"! Not difficult in GB...

[Barbirollians]

Sorry Jayne - I thought your comment was directed at me but I had presumed it was tongue in cheek !

I am being thrilled all over again by Audite's 2009 release of live Fricsay Mozart so much so that I shall order Britten's own recording of the Spring Symphony and give it another chance .