Notes of protest

Excerpt from the book "End of ancient music"

The book of the great musicologist Bruce Haines, written in 2007, had an effect exactly the opposite of the name: ancient music received a new life impulse due to the development of authentic performance techniques. We publish an excerpt about how the attitude to the musical interpretation of composer ideas in the XVII - XIX centuries changed.

Starting from February 24, 2022, we were all in the face of the advancing barbarism, violence and lies. In this situation, it is extremely important to preserve at least the remnants of culture and support the values ​​of humanism - including for the sake of the future of Russia. Therefore, the editorial office of Gorky will continue to talk about books, reminding our readers that the world remains in the world and fiction.

Bruce Haines. The end of ancient music. M.: Hell Marginum Press, 2023. Translation from English Philip Nodel . Content

Style against interpretation

The idea that the notes contains hidden or implied information about execution, which is not clearly recorded, is radically different from the modern idea of ​​“interpretation”. At least from the interpretation that includes arbitrary intervention, the introduction of personal ideas into music or even (God forbid) improvisation. It is known that Beethoven arranged unpleasant scenes when the musicians dared to add a couple of trills to his music.

As the interpretation of Rifkin understood, the question he asked once clarifies. He asked: "How far the interpretation leads us away from the original, how legitimate is it?" The opposition of the “interpretation” of the “original” is very common in the 20th century, and I believe that this look is separated, if not everyone, then most performers playing in a close style. But what, one wonders, is considered the “original” of the musical work? He is probably related to the composer's plan. In this case, any personal contribution of the performer leads away from this plan. Thus, we separate the “interpretation” from “music” in the same way as mustard-from a hot dog: someone does not use mustard, and someone prefers their own music “without going to the undertaking”, without interpretation.

The position standing behind the “interpretation as mustard” perfectly formulated in 1810 E.T.A. Hoffmann in the passage, which I brought in the previous chapter:

A real artist <...> neglects the desire to somehow expose his personality; All his work and ingenuity are only aimed at <...> to call for life all those beautiful, fertile paintings and phenomena that the master of magical power concluded in his brainchild.

It is possible to perceive the interests of the composer separately from the interests of the performer only with such a look at the historical performance, which suggests that the music is something separate from what the performer is doing, as if the performer can somehow damage the object called music, while the music acts his identity in execution (as the cake recipe gains its identity when the cake is removed from the oven).

According to the Oxford Encyclopedic Dictionary, the word "interpret" in the meaning of "reveal the meaning of the musical composition by execution" was included in "UNIMATION OF AND HEALTH" recently "; The first example dates from 1888. “Interpretation” may imply “liberties” or assumptions that are not based on obvious instructions; Or an arbitrary introduction of parts due to personal taste is not necessarily in order to reveal the plan and essence of the play. This is definitely something added to music, like mustard. Is it possible that the “interpretation” in the sense of unauthorized addition has existed only from romantic times? And before it was only what we saw above, a stylistic reading based on performing practice, the style of execution, tied to music, as in the Vienna Waltz?

Brown indicates that during the 19th century the performer stopped depending on the style and began to look for the author’s plan:

Changes in the attitude of these differences are very deep. The care of the Contractor resolutely shifted with the need to determine, based on general ideas about the correct style, which of many different ways to read the musical record, to the need to know first of all, first of all, the meaning and intentions hidden behind the symbols and instructions of the composer.

The irony is that in figures, jewelry and other expressive techniques in the 19th century, inappropriate intervention began to see, while in the 18th century they were not perceived as personal inserts, but rather as improvements that were part of the common language, expected and welcomed equal to the composer and listeners.

I do not want to say that the musicians of the era of rhetoric played like machine guns, without putting anything personal in their speeches. On the contrary, when things such as a dynamic nuance, the profile of notes, Rubato, agogic and the arrangement of notes in time, pauses, hierarchy of shares and accents are constantly heard in the game - they seem to open windows into the soul. It is quite difficult to do all this mechanically, remaining detached. But it should be said that a neutral run (when all the windows are closed and no one at home), personifying modern cramped style, would be practically impossible for a musician who thinks rhetorically.

In other words, surprisingly, much of what Rifkin and other historical musicians playing in a close style see unjustified self -will (that is, an arbitrary interpretation), musicians like me consider performing practice, general attributes of a historical style.

“We say Bach, we mean Teleman”: the composer’s plan to the era of romanticism

The imperative of the composer plan is based mainly on the status of the composer that has become established in the era of romanticism and at the same time the cult of genius. This installation is still unshakable, and to such an extent that Joseph Mertin in his wise book about historical music compares the "loyalty of musicians to the composer" with an oath of Hippocrates with doctors. Of course, this is an exaggeration.

Of course, the concept of the artist’s intention already existed in the 18th century. In 1753, Charles Avison wrote in the "Experience of Musical Ecrabs":

While the composer has a musical expression, an attempt to express a certain passion, in the performer, it consists in retributing the proper composition, playing in taste and style, corresponding to the composer’s plan so accurately as to preserve and reveal the beauty of his work.

The Queen also speaks of the need to "understand the composer's intentions and fulfill his plan." Walls gives other examples.

However, it is more instructive to try to imagine what were the reasonable expectations of the musician who recorded his essay in the XVII or XVIII century. What (the so -called) correspondence did he expect? And the correspondence of what? Mattezon wrote in 1739:

Those who never found out what the composer wanted to hear their work will hardly play him well. Indeed, they often deprive the work of his true power and grace to such an extent that, having had a composer among the listeners, he would hardly recognize his own music.

The performer who “never found out what the composer wanted to hear his work,” would have to resort to common sense of the performing style. The style in this sense both then and today is a social category, the same as language and performing practice. This is not a private, individual taste; It is divided by a group of people. Of course, style is a wide category, it is more individuality, but includes many individual approaches.

Jeanne Bove writes about old recitation treatises:

Although they do not give us the opportunity to hear the real voices of the actors, they allow us to “understand” [“Entendre”] in the old sense of that era, that is, to comprehend in the same way how contemporaries did at that time. The treatises of the XVII and XVIII centuries convey the state of mind, cultural consciousness. In order to learn the basic principles of classical recitation, it is more important not so much to try to recreate one or more specific examples as to cover vocal poetics, part of which they are all.

Trying to reproduce the personal intentions of an individual composer is a romantic idea. Composers of the Baroque era did not expect this from anyone, even from contemporaries. For example, Bach recorded his music in order to convey it to others. He already knew how his music sounds, and he did not need to read his own score. Let us recall how Johann Hesner described Bach conducting:

If you could see him how he sings one voice and plays his party, while following all thirty or even forty musicians and returning to the rhythm and meter one nod, the other knocked with his foot, warning the third with his finger, giving the right note in one high voice, the other low and third in the middle register - completely alone, in the middle of the gang of all participants, and although he will fulfill the most complicated The party himself immediately notices when and where the error occurs, and holds everyone together.

The main goal of Bach when recording music was, without a doubt, to convey the work in the form in which it seemed to him, directly to his colleagues in such detail as to allow them to reproduce it in a recognizable form. Thus, his “plan” was carried out when the musician could fulfill his music in a way that he would recognize adequate performing practice.

For me, this phrase "adequate performing practice" is key. It can even serve as a preliminary definition of authenticity.

The romantic veil hides here a thin, but important difference. When Adorno fell upon authentic execution (“Bach says, implies Taleman”), he thought about Bach and Teleman of the mid -20th century. Bach in those days was still an revered (albeit prematurely) member of the circle of immortals, a genius in a romantic sense, in comparison with which the teenage was useful only as a symbol of mediocrity.

Now we know that during the time of Bach, the musicians perceived it differently: the status of Teleman was the exact opposite; He was considered the greatest musician of Germany. The post of a muzikdector in Leipzig to Bach was offered a telemana. By the standards of Bakhov’s time, Bach to play as Taleman could play him, it would hardly mean “reduce” him to the norms of the historical environment, as John Batt put it; Bachu himself would probably really like it - or at least would be interested in the interpretation of Teleman. In fact, the criticism of Adorno is very thin (and is completely romantic); HIP, trying to use the Bach time criteria as much as possible, really wants to hear how Bach’s music would sound if it were a “telemane”. It was precisely what united these composers - the general style that is most interested in the musicians of this direction, and not the difference between them as personalities (as romantic “artists”, in other words). What HIP offers is a way to enjoy both the teleman and Bach. We can say that the musicians of the historical style are “transparent” for the general style of the era, and not for the style of a particular composer.

The point is not that the thinking and goals of individual composers of the Baroque era do not matter for HIP. Knowledge of the generally accepted executive protocol at that time and in the place where Bach worked does not exclude the knowledge of what he himself wanted for his works. The angle of look is important here. Few musicians today prefer Teleman Bach, regardless of their stylistic position. But the originality of Bach is actually easier to see if you compare it with contemporaries, and not tearing it out of the context in which he created.

Thus, the focus of the movement is not a specific composer. Say, the details of the notations of an individual author, which may be difficult to understand, sometimes clarify if we know that other musicians at the same time and in the same place received them for granted. Thus, the author’s plan is turning from the personal file of an individual composer into a question of a performing style.