For your blog post due Thursday, January 16 at 10 am, please
consider our class discussion as led by Prof. Plank from the afternoon on Wednesdayy,
January 15, and comment in 250-500 words on the following points:
· What did you know
about today’s subject before the listening and/or discussion session?
· What did you find
most surprising about today’s subject?
· What would you
like to know more about after experiencing today’s class?
Your post should be placed directly in the comments to this blog
entry, and is due at 10 am on Thursday, January 16.
Prior to this discussion, I learned that it takes work and time to accomplish what Beethoven was trying to convey through the score. Later composers, such as Wagner, tried to revise Beethoven's original manuscript as he thought he was making some “corrections”. Also learned from music history courses taken before, I knew that instrumentation in Beethoven’s time has some distinct differences compared to modern time. Based on the evolution of instruments and the perfection of people's understanding of music, musicians nowadays could interpret Beethoven’s music easier.
ReplyDeleteIt is intriguing when Prof. Plank made a statement that the study for performance is more for earlier music. I have never thought that way before, but it is reasonable since the older the music, the less instruction on the scores, and the more differences between instrumentation at different times. However, Prof. Plank also mentioned that this phenomenon does not apply to Beethoven completely. He quoted that some would say Beethoven is too genius that his music has gone beyond the influences brought by time, which means that whenever a musician sees Beethoven’s score, he will feel a kind of “familiarity”, and there will be not much resistance for him to understand the music. Still, different musicians have different interpretations. It is enjoyable when we went through the four different versions of the third symphony, and each of them has its unique character. For example, the first one is monumental and heavy, with rather slow tempo, while the second one is more fluent and dignified. The most surprising fact for me is that in the second version, the orchestra is using more classical instruments, which makes the pitch slightly higher, and the atmosphere of the music has been totally changed. It is also fascinating when Prof. Plank shows us the subtle change in timbre and pitch for classical wind instruments. Compares to the modern winds, their have more difficulties in unifying their sounds, which actually make the ensemble full of changes and colors.
After the discussion, there’s a question always lingering in my head: what is the boundary between the freedom of performing and the rewriting? We can say that the conductors have their own feelings and interpretation towards a composer’s works, but when they are trying to perform, how much freedom should they control in order to avoid over revising the original work?
Before today's class, I was already familiar with the sounds and structures of historical instruments, I'd heard both historically informed and "timeless genius" performances of Beethoven's symphonies, and had read about problems with metronome markings like the one Professor Plank talked about. I also knew a bit about early orchestras - including the bit that the Mannheim orchestra were pioneers in unifying bowings.
ReplyDeleteDespite having taken some conducting courses, I'd never read about the history of conducting (besides the usual "it started with a guy banging a staff on the floor" and a general history of the profession from around the 1940's to the present). It's so surprising that the early conductors faced the audience and that their movements could be so demonstrative. At least now I know that that type of conducting - with the primary goal being to show what's happening in the music - has early historical roots. Nowadays, the ability to do this is only one of a complement of skills a good conductor might have. (Many conductors don't do much of it at all and still do just fine.) Strong technical skills - in pattern and cueing etc. - are also required.
I have been thinking about long line vs. small gestures/details a lot recently. I'd always thought of long line as "old school" (it tends to prevail in the earliest recordings I listen to) and small details as "new school" (and frequently found in modern performances severely lacking in long phrasing - to the point where there's no sense of direction and it sounds like self-indulgence rather than music.) I knew that metrical hierarchy is important for performing especially Baroque and Classical music, but I hadn't connected this idea with small gestural phrasing. Something clicked into place for me with this new connection, and I want to think on it a lot more. Perhaps I'm not as opposed to "new school" (which may in fact be very old school) interpretation as I thought!
I knew a fair amount about historical instruments before today’s class, both from Professor Jimenez’s lecture and from the music history class I took last semester on the history of musical instruments. I’m fairly familiar with the natural horn’s history and logistics in terms of playing, and frequently keep historical performance in mind when I play Beethoven excerpts. Some of the things Professor Plank said about period instruments reminded me of Professor Jimenez’s lecture, most specifically when he talked about orchestration.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most interesting things Professor Plank mentioned in today’s class was the idea of historical performance being a sort of commodity. I didn’t realize until today’s class that historical performance wasn’t always a prevalent sphere of music, for lack of a better word. Professor Plank said that there was a wave of period Beethoven performances in the 1980s, which I thought was very interesting, even moreso when thought of in tandem with thinking about recordings of historical performances as a commodity.
After today’s class, I’m curious to know more about different recordings of the Beethoven symphonies that exist, and how they employ different choices relating to historical performance and intent. We listened to four very different recordings of the beginning of Symphony No. 3 today, and I also recall that a few days ago we talked about one series of recordings in which the conductor tried to maintain all of the tempos that Beethoven originally wrote in his score. I’m interested in how historical information is present or absent in already existing recordings, and how it will take form this year during the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth.
I knew about the historically informed performance movement before Prof. Steven Plank’s lecture today. I also knew about the revival of interest in the performance of Bach’s keyboard works on harpsichord, led by the likes of Wanda Landowska and Gustav Leonhardt. However, I didn’t know that it took more time for this performance style to be applied to Beethoven’s works than other composers.
ReplyDeleteOverall, I loved Prof. Plank’s lecture on historically informed performance because he took a very hands-on approach to teaching. He didn’t only explain using theory or words, but he used recordings to engage the class in a fun way: he had us actively guess the style of performance (modern or historically authentic) and even the conductor and orchestra! My favorite part of his style is that he didn’t take sides or “bash” the modern, smooth approach, or the “frozen-in-time” historically correct performances. He went on to state that the smoother approach of the modern-style conductors (like Furtwangler) could also be thought of as historically informed in its own way.
I loved Prof. Plank’s in-depth discussion of the differences between a historically informed interpretation and a modern, “varnished” performance. Especially in orchestral playing, I couldn’t point out the fundamental differences in the two styles, except for the fact that the historically informed performances usually use period instruments. I found it surprising that the modern, grand approaches actually tend to focus on the long line more than rhythmic detail and small gestures. My preferences largely depend on the piece, but in the recordings that we listened to today of the Eroica, I preferred Furtwangler’s version. I like hearing interpretations with a clear long line, because it gives me a sense of impassioned intensity.
I would love to learn more about the traditions of rubato, or rhythmic freedom, in historically informed renditions and modern ones of Beethoven’s symphonies. As a listener, they both seem to have a similar degree of rubato, so I would like to know whether rubato is merely a choice of the conductor or determined by historically informed performance as well.
Prof. Plank’s lecture really piqued my interest on this topic, and I would love to listen to more performances on period instruments and perhaps play in them. In the future, I would like to perform in chamber groups on period instruments.
Historical performance is an important aspect of the living part of Beethoven’s symphonies, and so I’m happy that Professor Plank came today to speak about its implications and the way that it has manifest, not only in Beethoven’s works, but across classical music as a whole. Professor Plank pointed out that “historical performance” was originally – and I think even today this holds true – associated with pre-classical era music. This is something I agree with based on my previous experiences with the topic of historical performance. However, he did a great job pointing out that it doesn’t really matter what date that a piece was written or first performed. All dates are historical, and each is as historical as the next. What matters is that we are aware of the new perspective that comes from a “historical performance” on period instruments of a Beethoven symphony, for example. I agree with Professor Plank’s point.
ReplyDeleteI think that what most surprised me today was hearing the magnitude of difference between the recordings that were played for us. I didn’t realize that individual conductors’ visions were so effective in altering the production of the music. The historical instruments also, as in the second recording, created a huge difference in the sound of the same notated music! With that being said, these recordings give such a great window into the conductors’ perceptions of the piece itself. I think this has totally changed my opinion on the role of a conductor of an orchestra.
There isn’t anything in particular that I think I’d like to learn more about in the realm of historical performance. I feel that Professor Plank covered it well, and it will inform the rest of my listening and philosophizing about the Beethoven symphonies for the rest of the month.
I have taken a class from Professor Plank before, and have discussed many of the same topics brought up in today’s class. This past semester, we had discussed the value historical performance brings, and how that has changed over time. Though this was generally in the context of Baroque music, the same questions of a ‘moral imperative’ to be historically accurate in order to create an ‘authentic’ performance were still discussed. I had also learned about how historical performance is treated today, with the emphasis more on variety of perspectives, and how this aesthetic philosophy of period performance has become marketable.
ReplyDeleteEspecially given that a piece like the Eroica symphony has been played every year since its composition, it was especially interesting to hear how the performance practice has evolved, as well as how a recreation of a recording from the 1950s could also be considered historical performance. Professor Plank’s statement, “1950 is just as historical as 1805” stood out to me. It was shocking to hear different recordings and how the mood changed with each recording of the Eroica, between elegant and almost boisterously homogenous. I’d like to examine this idea further; how has our idea of a hero changed in the past 200 years, and how has that affected the performances of the Eroica symphony? Though there are no recordings, can we guess how the symphony would be performed based on the popular philosophy/aesthetics of the mid 19th century? How do we then account for the variety of performances in, for example, 2019?