About 'Historically Informed Performance'

This text needs a short presentation. I wrote it in a conversation I had with a friend: he was defending Harnoncourt's approach, and I said Harnoncourt's claim to historicity was just a way of promoting himself, as he did not really know a lot about ancient music. The discussion turned into Leonhardt's claim that he does not interpret music, he just plays it as it was played. The following is my answer.

If we take the organ as an example, something that has always struck me is that when I listen or play an organ before restoration it sounds as if asthmatic. The wind is very problematic. It is unsteady, the instrument often sounds out of tune even when it is not, very dense polyphony with the full organ means horrible wobbling of the sound and every time you use a stop above the 4 foot you will get trembling, as if a very old man is trying to sing. In truth, it is unacceptable by most people.

The fluework is seldom even in speech: some pipes ‘chiff’, others sometimes ‘ping’, and yet others just buzz a little before the note.
The reeds are very often uneven. In some organs I simply refuse to use them, because a melody sounds ridiculous when some notes are shouted and others whispered independently of ‘good’ (beat, beginning of phrase) or ‘bad’ notes (off beat).
The keyboards are often hard to play. Not because they are uneven (they are, that is natural in old instruments) but because they were built in a way that makes it impossible to play with a great deal of control: sometimes everything is suspended and the keyboard actually sways and trembles if you strike it with any amount of force. The keys, when made of bone, are difficult to play because one cannot very well slide the fingertips; often it is impossible to put one’s fingers between two sharps. The result is hard playing, somewhat chopped. You are expected to get used to the keyboard, but even if you do, it will have serious effects on how you play.

My reaction was, at the beginning: were the builders, organist and so on, of the time unable to hear?? Later I came to the conclusion that they did not mind. They were used to things not working properly. We find ourselves in more or less the situation of someone used to drive a new 21st century car, having to suddenly switch to a 1950 car. It feels weak, brutal and powerless at the same time, in fact, an incompetently planned car. Yet, many people found it faultless when it came out. Using the parallel and un-mixing the metaphor, the 50ies car and the old baroque organ seem faulty to us, used to different and better made products; but they were, back then, the cutting edge of perfection.

When restoring, organ builders react just like me: they don’t like the sound. They say that is because the bellows are weak. Then they say possibly the toe holes (the admission holes through which the wind enters the tube) were narrowed, or that the upper lips have been cut. In a very old pipe there are always changes made a long time ago, so it is impossible to know when they were done (unless a great deal of very expensive work is done) so the restorers are free to say what they like and modify the sound according to their taste. The only thing they cannot really change is the keyboard, but it is polished and made to work fine.

After restoration the organ is almost always smoother, the wind is steadier, the mechanics a little more robust and overall playing up to modern standards is easier. The organist is pleased, the concert and church goers are pleased, the curate is pleased, and only the more stubborn people that have actually played the organ claim that it is no longer the same instrument and that a lot of character has been lost.

Using the metaphor again, the problem, as I see it, is that we are the product of 20th Century precision. No one would have a Morris minor if he or she could afford a Ford Fiesta: it is so much easier to drive and so much more confortable. And after all one uses a car to go from here to there. And one uses an organ or a trumpet to play this or that.

In a limited way, I made the experiment myself. For the last year I kept my harpsichord tuned to mean tone. Many – indeed most – of Bach’s fugues and even many suite movements are unplayable in such a tuning (temperament). E major, c # minor and many others are painful, horrible. So I restricted myself to 16th and 17th Century music.
The problem is that I sometimes like to play Bach. I cannot really forget that I like it. And the beauty of the pure thirds (that is what Tones’ trumpeter friend mentioned) cannot really substitute for it.
So recently I tuned it in modern temperament. It is horrible for someone used to the pure thirds, but it is playable. And the beauty of some of Bach’s fugues makes up for the lack of the mellow harmony of mean tone temperament played in c major, d minor or major, g minor and the tension of e minor and f minor (if one can withstand the harshness). In short: I cannot forget that I like Bach; neither can I forget that I like French harpsichords, even if they were made in the late 18th Century and I am playing 16th Century music with them.

So playing according to really well researched criteria is a non-compromising, difficult, and frustrating affair. We may want to know how it was done, but we cannot really express ourselves through the media available. Compromises must be reached and, while historically informed one must always see one's interpretations as renderings, translations, as it were, to modern listeners (above all, ourselves).

Consequently, I believe that HIP performance belongs in the Museum. As I said, it would be important to have more HI available to actual musicians, but sadly once their formative years are over, most of them cease to study. Perhaps that is necessary: they are, after all, seeking to express themselves and are not academics. Thus a HIP leader like Leonhardt makes quite a lot of historical blunders (the ‘Mietkes’, over dotting, even keyboard changes in Froberger’s Tombeau, and so on). He is convincing because he developed into a great musician, but that would happen whether his harpsichords were right or wrong. They are wrong. So were Walcha’s. Both are brilliant musicians. And, for that matter, so was Wilhelm Kempff when playing Bach in the piano (which paradoxically restricts the emotions one can actually portray when playing harpsichord music while opening a wide range of other expressive possibilities even staying within the spirit of the music – just listen to Kempff's Nun komm).

I really think forgetting HIP is necessary to actually play well: one is playing how one feels the music; one cannot pretend to feel it according to the brains of people from three or four hundred years ago. Bach probably thought witches were to be burned or drowned, Jews to be evil, God to be all powerful, the devil really alive and acting. How could we possibly mimic that after being taught to be modern Europeans? All that and much more (locks that worked improperly, boots that leaked, beer that was sometimes almost undrinkable, lice in the bed, foul smell, young children that were likely to die, teeth that fell and were irreplaceable and so on) is certain to have affected the way he saw the world: it was not perfect, it was crude, harsh and brutal. How could we even begin to immagine how it felt to be alive and able to play in the 17th or 18th Centuries, let alone how they played back then?

That brings me to an even more serious question: we do not listen to the same notes, either: how can we really appreciate a dissonance in Bach after knowing Mahler? How spurious HIP seems in all this context!

Playing is ALWAYS a matter of interpretation. When I consider, say the WTC, by Walcha, Gilbert, Leonhardt, Koopman, Kempff, Gould or Goulda I use the only true criterium I can honestly defend: my taste, that of a historically more or less informed european born after the war and educated in the respect of science, culture and life. In this light it matters very little that the harpsichord is wrong or even if the piano is used. Some interpretations are obviously flawed (Gould, Goulda, even Koopman) but that is because they actually go against the overall structure of the music (how do I know this? I posted at length about it. If you want I will redirect). But apart from that, the importance of historical considerations in details is very small.