Proms 2018

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I went to the Comedy Store a few years ago and we were told not to laugh at the end of each joke, but to wait to the conclusion of the performance. Happily, we were all very social people with plenty of self control and no urge to seek attention, so it worked a treat.

But was it funny?

[MrGongGong]

You are confounding your personal opinion with fact. I consider assertions of "attention-seeking" in this context as pure snobbery. That's is my opinion.

[Richard Barrett]

Any sort of break? Including between songs in a song cycle?

I can't remember the last time I attended a performance of a song cycle or what I or anyone else did between songs. I just think people often make too much of a fuss about this issue.

[french frank]

No problem. The performance in question supposedly followed HIPP, i.e. Historically Informed Performance Practice. In such circumstances, audience responses in line with historical practice are to be expected. As you know, I also reckon, supposedly HIPP opera productions should pay due attention to custume and production values of the period of the work's compostion. At least, where opera is concerned, audience responses tend to equate more to historical tradition.

I meant what your reference was to a spade. I do understand that in some cases it refers to 'digging oneself deeper into a hole (of one's own making) but your reply merely makes a further point to reinforce your argument, and which you could have made earlier without reference to spades. I would then have pursued your argument about how far you would like HIPP performances to go in line with audience behaviour at that time. I might also point out that HIPP is taken by most people to refer to the performance of the music and it is an idiosyncrasy to make it refer to audience behaviour too.

[Richard Tarleton]

No problem. The performance in question supposedly followed HIPP, i.e. Historically Informed Performance Practice. In such circumstances, audience responses in line with historical practice are to be expected.

Bryn, come off it. HIPP practitioners can play according to HIPP practice - instruments, pitch, repeats, ornamentation, etc., whatever, but we can't listen with 18thC ears, or responses, because we're hearing something completely different. Our responses are conditioned by the fact we're listening 300 years later, in the light of what's come since, in the light of knowing the music in an entirely different way, through broadcasts and recordings. Handel's audiences were responding to something new, that they were hearing for the first and possibly only time. The audience can't un-know what it knows how, to respond in the way it would have done then.

To take an extreme example, which you'll probably say is ridiculous (why?), what if the Jockey Club went back to heckling Tannhauser at the Paris Opera? It was accepted as normal then. It would be quite HIPP if they did.

[ahinton]

Bryn, come off it. HIPP practitioners can play according to HIPP practice - instruments, pitch, repeats, ornamentation, etc., whatever, but we can't listen with 18thC ears, or responses, because we're hearing something completely different. Our responses are conditioned by the fact we're listening 300 years later, in the light of what's come since, in the light of knowing the music in an entirely different way, through broadcasts and recordings. Handel's audiences were responding to something new, that they were hearing for the first and possibly only time. The audience can't un-know what it knows how, to respond in the way it would have done then.

To take an extreme example, which you'll probably say is ridiculous (why?), what if the Jockey Club went back to heckling Tannhauser at the Paris Opera? It was accepted as normal then. It would be quite HIPP if they did.

Apart from the last bit, this is very much along the lines of what I remember Robert Simpson opining on such issues; I recall him observing that we cannot listen to Bach's music as his ointemporaries would have done because we've heard Xenakis (and I somehow doubt that he made frequent references to Xenakis).

I think that what tends sometimes to get forgotten in the cut-and-thrust of HIPP discussion is the importance of the "H" therein. It might also be worth remembering that, since those who performed music in the ways that they did in, say, the 18th century might have had scant regard for (and/or knowledge of) the performance traditions of the 15th and 16th centuries, "HIPP", despite its intent, is very much a late 20th and 21st century phenomenon and needs to be regarded as such. That's not in any sense to seek to dismiss it, of course - but one has only to think, for example, that, whilst Chopin, Liszt and Alkan wrote for the piano in the days when Érards and Pleyels held sway, Chopin never lived to experience the early Bösendorfer / Steinway era (whereas Liszt and Alkan did), so we cannot expect to know what he might have felt about the performance of his music in the mid-1880s and whether it might have changed in any ways as a consequence of design and manufacturing developments in the world of his instrument.

[Bryn]

. . . I might also point out that HIPP is taken by most people to refer to the performance of the music and it is an idiosyncrasy to make it refer to audience behaviour too.

Firstly, "most people" have never heard of HIPP, let alone take it to relate purely to those actually playing the music. Just consider the approach HIPP luminaries such as Norrington, JEG, Robert Levin, et al towards applause between moevemts. Any idiosyncracy might more appositely be attributed to those objecting to such demonstrations of approbation.

[Bryn]

Bryn, come off it. HIPP practitioners can play according to HIPP practice - instruments, pitch, repeats, ornamentation, etc., whatever, but we can't listen with 18thC ears, or responses, because we're hearing something completely different. Our responses are conditioned by the fact we're listening 300 years later, in the light of what's come since, in the light of knowing the music in an entirely different way, through broadcasts and recordings. Handel's audiences were responding to something new, that they were hearing for the first and possibly only time. The audience can't un-know what it knows how, to respond in the way it would have done then.

To take an extreme example, which you'll probably say is ridiculous (why?), what if the Jockey Club went back to heckling Tannhauser at the Paris Opera? It was accepted as normal then. It would be quite HIPP if they did.

Re. your final paragraph, I might well join them. By the way, has the claque entirely disappeared from opera performances in Italy? I think not, despite the efforts of a good few conductors to discourage such manifestations.

[french frank]

Firstly, "most people" have never heard of HIPP,

I think that is a bit of vigorous spadework. I didn't think it would be necessary to explain to you of all people that in the context it referred to 'most people who think about HIPP, meaning - to avoid any further misunderstanding - Historically Informed Performance Practice. Clearly, those who have never heard of HIPP would hold no opinion as to what it included or did not include).[/QUOTE]

Just consider the approach HIPP luminaries such as Norrington, JEG, Robert Levin, et al towards applause between moevemts.

Well, yes, that's four people. Norrington, while I acknowledge that he has given some extremely well received performances, I still regard as, personally, a slightly cranky contrarian, ever since his flagrant, albeit unsuccessful, attempts to get the television 'Maestro' title for Goldie when he was obviously battling against the other judges. That does not, I trust, detract from his existing reputation as a performer.

Rachel Podger is only one, but she does have the advantage of being the performer on that particular occasion in that particular piece of music.

[Richard Barrett]

On and on and on and on and on and on...

Can I ask: why are people so exercised about this issue?

[Bryn]

On and on and on and on and on and on...

Can I ask: why are people so exercised about this issue?

[Lat-Literal]

The Proms are especially susceptible to this phenomenon because many on its fringes think of them all as the Last Night of the Proms which clearly encourages audience participation. Certain kinds of early music are susceptible to it - those in which audiences detect an overlap or similarity with folk music where audience participation is often encouraged. One might have thought that rock music was a sphere in which anything goes but I am in no doubt that all the flags carried by Glastonbury audiences are a take on a combination of the Proms, royal occasions, national events and football more than based on knowledge of the Womad flags, from its very beginnings artistic, or historical banners at the Durham Miners' Gala.

Broadly, this is a topic which becomes increasingly relevant because of the changing nature of the relationship between the media and its audience. Social media has made home audiences interactive so they now expect to participate elsewhere in any performance. That participation does not necessarily mean equality - greater applause in more places and holding mobile phones aloft to take pictures are hardly a performance in themselves. While they can be a distraction to others, ostensibly the governance remains with those on the stage and the hubbub is a pretence of involvement in the name of entertainment. The teacher at the front putting his finger to his lips is unlikely to effect more than temporary change, given the social power connotations, but the advancing of listening concepts might well do. The problem wouldn't arise if everyone was, on occasions, engaged in birdwatching.

As religion, the organic family and especially the cliché "respect for authority" dissolve, we shouldn't underestimate the rise in hero worshipping. This comes with the potential for acute criticism too whereas in the, quote, old days it would all have been more measured. It places more of a burden on the performers than it does on whatever it is that they are producing so that the interactive reaction is to some extent based on an idea. An idea of whether they and hence we "won the competition" to do better than has supposedly ever been achieved. That is a pity in some ways. The ability of the content to move can be lost. Music should be able to rise above those notions. When they are there, those heights are not easily accessed. But if you are in a multi-storey car park in Peckham for Adams as some were a while ago, what do you want? More connection with likeminded others or a sense of being taken away?

[vinteuil]

On and on and on and on and on and on...

Can I ask: why are people so exercised about this issue?

...

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...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Apart frfom the last biut, this is very much along the lines of what I remember Robert Simpson opining on such issues; I recall him observing that we cannot listen to Bach's music as his cintemporaries would have done because we've heard Xenakis (and I somehow doubt that he made frequent references to Xenakis).

This often gets mentioned in such discussions as if Simpson's was a wise, profound insight and the last word on the matter - whereas it's actually a feebly thought-through statement. We cannot read Chaucer or Shakespeare as their contemporaries would have done because we've read Beckett - that doesn't mean we have versions of Chaucer or Shakespeare in modern English and think them somehow preferable to the originals. We can't look at paintings by Rembrandt or Giotto as their contemporaries would have done, because we've seen Francis Bacon - that doesn't mean we use acrylics or emulsion when those earlier paintings need restoration.

No - Chopin never lived to hear the Moog Synthesizer, so we don't know what he might have felt about having his Music played on one (or what Rembrandt might have felt about Acrylics - or felt tipped pens for that matter). But we DO know that he could not possibly have conceived of the Music that he wrote on instruments that didn't exist at the time he wrote it - and, if (big "if" for some people more than others) we respect the composers' aural and timbral imaginations, then we cannot but wish to hear their Music played on the instruments that we know they did have experience of.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Can I ask: why are people so exercised about this issue?

Because it's annoying and unnecessary.