Old music for new by Christopher Hogwood

‘Historical’ has almost become a dirty word — at least as far as music is concerned. Will it, one wonders, go the same way down the semantic waste-pipe as stoned, gay, fantastic, grass, hip and pot ? After a particularly excruciating performance of a Bach cantata with ‘original’ instruments last year, an eminent German critic turned to his speechless companions, radiant with enthusiasm, exclaiming ‘Ach, And so it would have been,’ and proceeded to write the event up as ‘an historical performance.’ An American scholar of distinction recently wrote that ‘there is nothing drearier than ‘historical’ performances that lack musical conviction and imagination:’ surely it is simpler to leave out the word ‘historical’ and express a general distaste for dreary performances rather than snipe at the current trend towards cleaning the picture of music.

‘Historical’ has become for us what ‘Gothick’ might have been for our great-grandparents. They, no doubt, found Rembrandt’s Night Watch a painting overflowing with Gothick atmosphere and imagination. Pity, therefore that on cleaning, it has turned out to be a day-time scene, bearing no relation to the tenebrous imitations it spawned in the last century, but adding much to our knowledge of Rembrandt as a recorder of civic grandeur. In this case it is the encrustation of faded varnish and dirt that is ‘historical’ — the new picture is ‘original’.

Recently in music ‘historical’ has become as apologia for much painful vivisection performed by ill-qualified surgeons before a paying audience, an affront to our sensibilites which in non-artistic spheres would be illegal. Musical performance is exploratory, not experimental: uplifting, not therapeutic. It consists of an act of faith on the part of the composer (alive or dead) that performers will with conviction recreate the nuances of sound and expression that made up his original intention — a social contract implicit in all the interpretative arts. Were a Matisse on the closing of the gallery doors to dissolve into a small pot of primary colors, leaving a blank canvas on the wall plus the painter’s recipe for the reconstitution of his work, how rigorously we would adhere to his instructions. How painstakingly we would reassemble the statue of David from a heap of marble dust. And if we had had this opportunity in the plastic arts, of course, we would never have stopped short at Venus de Milo’s arms (or would we? — think of those amputated Figaros and Traviatas.)

Music has potential advantages which we should not despise simply because the act of recreation brings it into closer contact than usual with the fads and fashions of presentation. The greater danger, however, is that the live performer can effect introductions between artists of the past which the non-interpretative artist could never conceive. To hang a Rubens beside a Whistler will not alter the mode of expression of either of those gentlemen. But to perform Bach with the resources, reactions and expectations of Tchaikovsky will certainly alter the former (the reverse situation, mercifully not yet with us, might be even more bizarre.)

Dr Johnson’s creed as a literary editor has taken too long to influence musical circles, and when it has, the victims have been accused of contracting musicology. ‘Nothing shall be imposed... without notice of the alteration; nor shall conjecture be wantonly or unnecessarily indulged.’ This is fine for the production of a text, for the resolution of historical quandaries and for the exposing of as much source material as the active musical builder requires for his present manner of construction. But in the arts, a clock without a face does not tell the time, no matter how exquisitely the mechanism has been fashioned. And it is in giving breath to mute documents, proposing an historical sensation as a living actuality that the ‘unscientific’ element of the performer can rouse such strong feelings today.

Just as the 19th-century composer frequently found he was his own best interpreter, so the 20th-century musical archaeologist should, and does defend his own theories in practice. With the two facets combined, there need be no complaints of the ‘unquestioned primacy accorded intellectual activity over artistic’ in ‘authentic performance practice.’

I quote these last three words with trepidation, since, as I suggested at the outset, too many general complaints are marshalled under the semantic umbrella of the ‘historical’ approach. Each generation knits its own baroque, just as it knits its own Shakespeare. We have farily recently knitted our own Renaissance and Middle Ages in a variety of florid patterns. While purl is almost always preferred to plain, the resulting garment often will not fit the body it was supposedly measured from. When, several years ago, the Early Music Consort was invited to supply incidental music to accompany a filmed life of Henry VIII, it seemed a natural opportunity to include some music by the monarch himself. After playing through a few sample peices to the directors of the venture, it was decided that such repertoire could not be used because it ‘didn’t sound in period’. It seems that, on the open market at least, Jacobean music must wed Tudor monarchs, just as, in most civilized media, Vivaldi must hold the hand of Bernini. And yet so accustomed have we grown to this chronological displacement that when history is synchronized, we greet with disbelief the news that Handel wrote oratorios while Haydn was producing divertimenti; or, more disconcerting still, that Haydn actually sang at Vivaldi’s funeral.

Comparisons with the graphic arts may sound finely metaphorical, and many analogies crumble along with received principles at the first ring of the cash register. But whatever the commercial temptations, some things cannot change. We still have two ears, left and right. We would hesitate to reassemble the sections of a Memling altar triptych, putting aside both panels on the left; we would offer our ticket for resale if we discovered Concorde with two starboard wings and I would suggest that the reaction of Bach and Mozart would be similar if asked to attend a performance of their orchestral music with both the first and the second violin sections seated to the left of the conductor. Antiphony was an integral component of their composing techniques; question and answer was for them as basic as it was for the Psalmist. It is perverse and unfair that the very age that considers itself to have invented stereo should so persistently obliterate all evidence of it in the works of such masters, and describe attempts to reinstate the wishes of Bach and Mozart as ‘anachronisitc.’

Nature has placed a limit to the highest note that you can sing, even given the best sound-proofed bathroom. To insist that pitch should rise higher and higher, simply so that large orchestral sections of violins may sound the more and more brilliant, is to pose impossible problems for the voice, and to distort the balance and colours of the original (Rembrandt ‘imporved’ with fluorescent tints... ). Beethoven asked his choral basses in the Ninth Symphony to reach for the highest note that could be called pracitcable, a high F. Even the text ‘uberm Sternenzelt muss ein lieber Vater wohnen’ (Above in starry canopy, there must dwell a loving father) cannot justify the grotesque results when the passage is sung at present-day pitch which, in some countries, has risen almost a semitone above the one Beethoven knew, and is contining to rise.

Most composers intend the details of their compositions to be audible. The two flute parts of the ‘Qui Tollis’ in the B Minor Mass are the life-blood of that movement, yet even the most golden of modern flutes cannot rescue them when the chorus is six times the size Bach scored for. Conversely, Handel, faced with a similar problem, allocated two oboes to each line of his score; the fact that we persist in emplying only one to a part convicts us of inconsistency as well as insensitivity. And, reducing the problem to its most vulgar union woul dapprove the 18th-century solution of the inaudible harpsichord or lute, which was to employ two or more of them rather than the present reinforcement of one with an amplifier.

Even though Brahms might will be as affronted as Bach to hear what alterations have been made to his music, the prejudices which blind us to the needs of classical and pre-classical music derive essentially from the 19th-century symphony orchestra. A continuous legato from all players and a continuous vibrato from all singers is as good a way as any of closing the avenues to a feeling for 18th-century nuance and inflection, just as insistence on modern orchestra and choral numbers will upset 18th-century calculations. The fact that the last train leaves at 10:30 is no excuse for insulting Beethoven’s basic design by ignoring his express indication for repeats; the fact that Madame Zabaglione must sing Aida tomorrow should not reconcile us to her offering a foretaste of that role in her Monteverdi today.

True, we can never listen to early music with the ears of those who first heard it — but the same limitation does not prevent us using our other senses in the visual — and even edible arts. Nor can the argument that resources have ‘improved’ be invoked; this is flourescent paint again.

None of this mentions ‘original instruments’, nor ‘authentic voices’. The omission is deliberate, since they are no more than the out-riders of the crusade. The fact that they have scholar-performers in their midst minimizes, to me at least, the likelihood of their betraying the act of faith that accompanied the act of setting down music in notation in the first place. But the musical problem is one that recruits us all — listeners, editors, musicologists and performers; the banner under which we march is neither the neume, nor the one-keyed flute, but the Night Watch — before and after.

This article was originally published in 1988 in Upbeat, the newsletter of The Handel & Haydn Society in Boston.