THE UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY
When reading most twentieth- or twenty-first-century scores, trained musicians can hear them quite precisely in their “mind’s ear.” The exact instrumentation is given; the characteristics of the instruments are familiar; standard modern pitch and equal temperament are presupposed; tempo is prescribed by metronome markings; rhythm, phrasing, articulation and dynamics are clearly indicated; the realization of the few ornament signs is obvious; even the playing techniques and sound colors are accurately notated. Except in pieces that include aleatoric composition techniques or improvisation, performers do not have much room for adding individual accents or textual changes. This adherence to the written text is exactly what many composers wanted. Consequently, this kind of traditionally notated composition can be studied quite accurately from the score.
In earlier compositions, one easily notices that some notational parameters seem to be absent, whereas others have a less compelling or altogether different meaning that is dependent upon the time or place of composition. Their “correct” performance cannot be documented through personal acquaintance with the composer or his contemporaneous performers, nor by studying original sound recordings. This is the repertoire I shall address as “Early Music.” However, Early Music is not only a particular repertoire, but it is also understood as including Historically Informed Performance. In my eyes, this should not be a goal in itself. It is rather an attitude, a way of reading and rendering a score, striving for historical authenticity and at the same time taking up one’s full responsibility as a performer. It certainly does not consist of easy-to-learn fixed sets of rules.
We should bear in mind that in actual performance musicians were often required to add their own unique layer of interpretation, which could or even should be different each time the work was played. Without this essential and creative performer-provided contribution, the audience would hear an incomplete piece. Thus, studying an Early Music score according to present-day reading conventions, without mentally including the performer’s layer of interpretation, means studying an incomplete and thus different piece and coming to incomplete and thus different conclusions. This danger is encountered in musicology as well as in performance.
The fact that in Early Music there is no longer direct access to the composer’s original creative concept can lead to absolute arbitrariness and neglect of even the most obvious historical information about topics such as instrumentation, ornamentation, tempo, rubato, et cetera. The composition is then often used as a pretext for displaying the performers’ own ideas, emotions, and virtuosity. Regrettably, this also sometimes happens under the commercially successful label of “authentic Early Music on Historical Instruments.” The (mostly) non-specialist audience is generally not able to detect the degree of conscious or unconscious manipulation involved, and sure enough, the performance can be very captivating. Alternatively, the wealth of historical documentation about the performance of Early Music can be studied, integrated, and put into practice. Such performances need not be less captivating for being better informed. However, it will be immediately clear that we shall never know, for example, exactly how J. S. Bach played (on which day?). All we can aspire to do is to fall reasonably well within the limits of probability and good taste.
The great artistry, charisma, pedagogical authority, and commercial success of some Early Music performers can be dangerous as well. Audiences, colleagues, and students all too readily accept that these “stars” know all about Early Music, and so their performance is taken as a model to unthinkingly imitate. Needless to say, we thus create a new performance tradition that is based on the personal choice of some historical facts plus a strong dose of individual genius. In doing so, we remove ourselves one step away from the historical documentation itself. Students of these “stars” will tend to imitate them, rather than study the facts that shaped the teachers’ decision—and so it goes to the third generation and the students beyond. This evolution is clearly visible and audible. It is the price we pay for the success of Early Music in concerts, publications, and recordings, the price we pay for having Early Music courses in most major conservatories. I think this can never be completely avoided; imitation is, at least temporarily, a part of the artistic learning process, but I consider it the teacher’s task to leave this developmental stage as soon as possible.
These two problems, arbitrariness and alienation from the sources themselves, usually go hand in hand and can become fashion; indeed, some Early Music performers are proud to “emancipate” themselves from the sources. I would call this the “modern” Early Music tradition. Interestingly, in many cases this approach uses successful recipes of late-romantic performance practice, such as extended crescendos and diminuendos, upbeat phrasing, continuous vibrato, and modern rubato. Compositions are often subjected to re-instrumentation and arrangement in order to make them more “interesting” or to blow up their length. What I call the “Bolero effect” has become very popular. The formula is as follows: start with a percussion instrument solo, then add the bass, then one more voice, until everybody is playing, and, if desired, do the same in reverse order at the end. All these devices are easy to apply and do not require much specialized knowledge or technique. They benefit from being familiar or easy to understand for today’s average listener, which also explains the success of this kind of performance. In itself this is not a problem; every performer is free to do as he wishes. However, when these performances are being advertised under the false label of “authentic Early Music,” either explicitly or implicitly, I perceive this as some kind of intellectual and artistic fraud.
What might be an alternative? We cannot go back to the situation in the 1950s and 1960s, where one was virtually obliged to be self-taught, because formal instruction in Early Music was rarely available. I do not wish to turn the clock back, but rather desire to profit from the immense availability of information, which then needs to be taken seriously, studied, digested, and applied. There is also a need for diversification—the more we study the old sources, the more it becomes obvious that there is not a unique historical truth, valid for all times, places, styles, genres, and composers.
In my own teaching, I feel responsible for having my students focus on the historical source material itself: the scores, instruments, iconography, and treatises, rather than modern editions, replicas, translations, studies, and comments. Indeed, why should my students accept my interpretations of the historical material? Even with my best intentions, the information I hand them will be paraphrased, truncated, manipulated, chosen, neglected, or combined, and anyway subjected to my own biases, (in)capacities, experiences, blind spots, temperament, and taste. Students must be taught to view all information, be it from their music teachers or from musicology, with a critical eye and a healthy dose of skepticism. In my opinion, and not only in the field of Early Music, any teacher’s goal is to make himself superfluous and train his students to become autodidacts. As artists, teachers as well as students need to acquire and maintain their instrumental or vocal mastery and simultaneously become and stay well informed, and let these two areas of study fruitfully interact with each other. I realize this is not the fast and easy way, neither for students nor for teachers, but it is certainly most rewarding for both. The benefit will be for their audiences, who will not be fooled by the Emperor’s new clothes.
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MY WAY TOWARD RESEARCH
My passion for Early Music developed in the 1960s. I played the recorder in childhood and continue
