The organ

[+ quoththeraven]

I know I have a penchant for idol worship. But in service of how to improve one's own merely human mentational capacity.

Not to speak of the obsessiveness demonstrated in this thread. But I agree, sublime art - music particularly - elevates us above the everyday muck and mire of life.

[AdamSmith]

Not to speak of the obsessiveness demonstrated in this thread. But I agree, sublime art - music particularly - elevates us above the everyday muck and mire of life.

I think now that obsession is the only thing (my autocorrect offered thug to which the automatic Yes of course) that can lift us out of it.

[AdamSmith]

What Chapuis gives us here (a repost but sublimely worthy):

 

P.P.P.S. The organ there is approaching four centuries old. What maintenance it may have received went to keeping the pipes in tune.

 

Not often recognized is the organ builder's achievement in delivering a mechanism so immortal. It keeps on going, and going, and...

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

So by comparison, here the Valois CD:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNy6oClg784

 

The CD does reveal some clinically interesting sonic detail. But at the cost of a vivisection of the subject matter.

[whipped guy]

So by comparison, here the Valois CD:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNy6oClg784

 

The CD does reveal some clinically interesting sonic detail. But at the cost of a vivisection of the subject matter.

"Vivisection" is a good word to describe what I reference as "clinical" sound that seems detached from how sound waves with their various overtones would normally recact in an acoustic space. Of course in contrapuntal compositions such as a fugue it's good to have the clarity of each voice, but as you say at what cost... Furthermore it is usually associated with sound that is overly bright and fatiguing over the long haul. Ironically in a quick A vs. B comparison most people will initially prefer the brighter sound. However, long term it usually is just the opposite.

[AdamSmith]

[AdamSmith]

"Vivisection" is a good word to describe what I reference as "clinical" sound that seems detached from how sound waves with their various overtones would normally recact in an acoustic space. Of course in contrapuntal compositions such as a fugue it's good to have the clarity of each voice, but as you say at what cost... Furthermore it is usually associated with sound that is overly bright and fatiguing over the long haul. Ironically in a quick A vs. B comparison most people will initially prefer the brighter sound. However, long term it usually is just the opposite.

When the big Flentrop was installed in Duke Chapel, they had to paint the chapel's soft limestone interior with a hard transparent sealant to way step up the reverberance.

 

By contrast, the Busch-Reisinger Museum (it is an irritation I always feel was directed at me personally that they found a need to rename it Adolphus Busch Hall ) is by nature of its interior very hard stone construction, and small dimensions, an inherently highly reverberent space. Even almost -- wholly in line with EPB's enthusiasms -- too much so.

[whipped guy]

When the big Flentrop was installed in Duke Chapel, they had to paint the chapel's soft limestone interior with a hard transparent sealant to way step up the reverberance.

 

By contrast, the Busch-Reisinger Museum (it is an irritation I always feel was directed at me personally that they found a need to rename it Adolphus Busch Hall ) is by nature of its interior stone construction, and small dimensions, an inherently highly reverberent space. Even almost -- wholly in line with EPB's enthusiasms -- too much so.

Well I just got through playing the piano is a small room at the clubhouse at our complex here. It is only a small spinet, but the way the sound reverberates in the space is overbearing. I had my foot on the "una corda" (though technically not an "una corda" on a spinit) or "soft pedal" to try and not let things get overly overwhelming sound wise.

[gallahadesquire]

Well I just got through playing the piano is a small room at the clubhouse at our complex here. It is only a small spinet, but the way the sound reverberates in the space is overbearing. I had my foot on the "una corda" (though technically not an "una corda" on a spinit) or "soft pedal" to try and not let things get overly overwhelming sound wise.

 

Try earplugs next time.

[AdamSmith]

[whipped guy]

Nikolaus Harnoncourt always caused one to think about just about everything that he touched. Here true to form he proves to be devils advocate for an unconventional approach as he is a more than a bit slow, but he makes it work with light textures. In contrast and again on period instruments is a version that is more upbeat and almost a minute shorter. For the record even the infamous Mormon Tabernacle Choir was more animated in this piece compared to Harnoncourt!

 

[AdamSmith]

Nikolaus Harnoncourt always caused one to think about just about everything that he touched. Here true to form he proves to be devils advocate for an unconventional approach as he is a more than a bit slow, but he makes it work with light textures. In contrast and again on period instruments is a version that is more upbeat and almost a minute shorter. For the record even the infamous Mormon Tabernacle Choir was more animated in this piece compared to Harnoncourt!

 

As remarked before, my standard had long been the then-considered-HIP Mackerras recording with the English Chamber Orchestra. But that performance's insistent stridencies can eventually begin to wear somewhat on the ear and mind. It was not until hearing Harnoncourt here peel off that heavy wet sheepswool blanket and expose the delicate skeleton beneath that I saw why.

 

And of course Harnoncourt is suggesting we consider whether his version here is closest to what performances in Handel's own time may have sounded like. Certainly most of the instruments available then were of the lighter-voiced character Harnoncourt draws forth than the industrial-strength noises in the Mackerras performance.

[whipped guy]

When I think of Harnoncourt and Handel I always think if his Water Music snd those braying horn trills. They don't sound like trills to me, they were meant to shock, make one think the piece in a new light, and make one wonder if this was a recreation of how it was actually done. From a scratchy old LP... beginning at 5:20.

 

 

I really doubt that this it really was done, but nobody who was there for the original water party was alive at the time the recording was made... so... Plus a trill ain't an easy thing to pull off with an old natural horn so why not?!?

 

A lot was done for the shock factor... and just to be different... and so it continues with some of the HIP perfirmances to this day, and especially with a lot of Italian groups. Gli italiani were the last to join the ranks of the HIP movement and it seems that they decided to make up for lost time by often being the most outrageous.

[AdamSmith]

Great points. Doubtless H. exaggerates somewhat to drive home the point, among others, of Look what recalcitrant, almost uncontrollable instruments they had to contend with. Valveless brasses threatening to erupt into shrieks whenever you enter into any least tricky passage. Keyboard instruments conversely from which not even Ludwig van's fearsome poundings could elicit much more than a muted tinkling. (How many pianofortes was he said to have used to destruction?) Etc.

[whipped guy]

What I have found interesting is that composers used the instruments that they composed for to their absolute limits. It is interesting to note how someone like Haydn planned his keyboard compositions to not go above the F that was the highest note on the classic Viennese fortepiano. However, when given the opportunity to write for an instrument that went up to a G (if I recall correctly) when he visited England in the 1790's he jumped at the opotprtunuty to do so.

 

If one looks at the Artur Schnabel Edition of Beethoven Sonatas he "corrects" things to use the notes that were not available at the time saying that if the keyboard were extended Ludwig would have used said notes. The same with some editions of Haydn's D major Piano Concerto which alter some passages to use the G and A that were not available!

[AdamSmith]

In tangential vein, Bach's ever-popular D minor toccata is not anything he regarded as of musical worth, but rather a piece he wrote to use whenever he was hired to stress-test and certify a new organ for its key action responsiveness and adequacy of wind supply.

[AdamSmith]

more than a bit slow,

P.S. One really must whisper that your remark all but summons up the ghost of Toscanini.

 

Harnoncourt here slightly abated the tempi used by Mackerras et al. Nothing more. But the change in affect & effect is disproportionately large.

 

To me, his approach nothing less than liberates a transcendent aesthetic achievement from a series of misinterpretations into a form that now I think infinitely better serves its message.

[whipped guy]

P.S. One really must whisper that your remark all but summons up the ghost of Toscanini.

 

Harnoncourt here slightly abated the tempi used by Mackerras et al. Nothing more. But the change in affect & effect is disproportionately large.

 

To me, his approach nothing less than liberates a transcendent aesthetic achievement from a series of misinterpretations into a form that now I nfinitely better serves its message.

 

Well this proves that Harnoncourt was the thinking man's conductor for better or worse!

 

Here is Mackerras... about 4:13 vs. about 4:49 for Harnoncourt so really Sir Charkes is significantly faster and closer to the around 4:00 timing of many others with today's tendency to speed up tempi in most 18th century music and I dare say much of 19th Century as well!

 

 

Incidentally I have found that I have a tendency to play 18th Century music and especially slow movements much faster that I did years ago. A case in point would be the second movement of Haydn's D major Keyboard Concerto. It's marked "Un poco adagio" , but the tendency nowadays is to emphasize the "un poco" so it comes out more like a "swift andante". I recently listened to a recording of Ton Koopman on period instruments from 30 or so years ago and he is absolutely lethargic (more a "molto adagio") but that's how I played it back then as well. Also, the second movement of Haydn's Keyboard Sonata Hob.XIV:19 which is marked "Andante" which nowadays is considered to be a "swift walk around the block" as opposed to a "leisurely stroll"!

[AdamSmith]

Certainly there has always been a productive tension among composers, instrument makers and performers alike, to both widen the frontiers and push the others to help. Cavaille-Coll was rather like Steve Jobs in realizing how to apply the new technologies of the day to give composers and performers possibilities unimagined until his penetrating eye spotted them.

 

Through the other end of the telescope, Beethoven's late quartets and especially the Grosse Fugue presented technical (not to add conceptual) challenges beyond reach of most any performers of the time, other than those few such as the Schuppanzigh who were somewhat used to these alien productions falling out of the sky with Beethoven's name on the cover page, and having to dig in through ungodly numbers of rehearsals to dig out what on earth might be in there.

[AdamSmith]

Very nice history of all the notable quartets with any connection to the Beethoven repertoire:

 

http://thebeethovenproject.com/the-early-performers-of-the-quartets-of-beethoven/