“To wonderfullye move, stir, pearce, and enflame the hearers myndes”

[Magnificat]

In Bruce Haynes’ thought-provoking, persuasive, and thoroughly entertaining book “The End of Early Music“, he devotes a chapter to a comparison of Baroque Expression and Romantic Expression. Appropriately, Haynes begins his discussion with a quote from “La Musica” speaking in the prologue of Monteverdi’s Orfeo:

“With sweet accents I can make every restless heart peaceful and inflame the coolest minds, now with anger, now with love.”

In reading Haynes’ revealing discussion of Rhetoric, Declamation, and “Affekt”, as understood before the Enlightenment, I am struck anew that the goal of the musician in the performance of Baroque music is to engender emotions in the audience – not merely to “express” those emotions. The composer provides a blueprint, a menu, and the musicians and the audience share the experience. The performer of this music is tasked not merely with transmitting nothing more and nothing less than what the artist-composer wrote on the page, as Toscanni would say, “Com’ è scritto”. Rather as C.P.E. Bach observed,

“[M]usicians cannot move others unless they themselves are moved; it is essential that musicians be able to put themselves in each Affection they wish to rouse in their audience, for it is in showing their own emotion that they awaken sympathy.”

At least for pre-Romantic music.

The notion of the performer as a transparent “vessel” through which the composer’s work is channeled to the audience strikes me as a thoroughly 19th century concept. Surely, the circumstances in which we perform are heavily influenced by 19th century aesthetics (the very notion of “aesthetics” as we normally think of it begins with Kant) and the audiences we perform for are, of course, neither 17th nor 19th century audiences, which creates a lot of other interesting issues, but with Baroque music at least, the goal would not seem to be to offer some idealized “work” as conceived by a composer for an audience to reflect on, admire, and contemplate – that’s what you do with a Beethoven symphony or a Strauss tone poem.

The rest of the article is Here

Thoughts?

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Magnificat

Thoughts?

It still happens: the marrying of emotion between players and audience. I saw Dudamel and the SBYO in London in April and took this photo a few minutes after the concert:






Their eyes were still shining as the clutched the jackets thrown to them by the players. You only have to watch the SBYO for five seconds to see the players' emotions are in play. The idea of them being cold, rigorous, detached 'interpreters' - like judges interpreting a statute - is absurd.

The audience notices their engagement and, lubricated by the music, sends emotion straight back at them. A virtuous circle of sympathy is then complete as each side feeds off the emotions of the other. That's why their concerts are slightly like prayer meetings.

But the SBYO is unusual - an international youth orchestra with all the El Sistema/Chavez/Venezuelan/Marxist/Anti-American politics bolted on. They're wild, controversial and not typical.

Isn't it more a class problem than one flowing from Kantian aesthetics? In the 19th and 20th centuries the middle class paid for and then colonised the great concert halls. They wanted, not unnaturally, music made and performed in their image: cautious, respectable, not too arousing in case their daughters became over-excited.

That's very different from what Quantz, CPE Bach and Burney describe in the 18th century. Which was, essentially, the European upper class behaving badly and thoroughly enjoying themselves! A good German, British or American bourgeois would have been horrified.

They still would. I can point you to tremendous rows on the London Proms message board about whether or not to clap between movements. The good English bourgeois in 2009 still gets grumpy about it. He wants his music to be safe. Which is ironic: he becomes excited in his efforts to prevent others becoming excited!

OK, this is only a film but there are plenty of contemporary accounts suggesting the general atmosphere is well represented. The sense of excitement is similar to a modern SBYO concert:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndke7ZOwFY4"]YouTube - Farinelli Il Castrato - Ombra fedele anch'io (R. Broschi)[/ame]

[nahatsu]

Absolutely awesome post....
Incredible photo as well...
And the concept of the tool of communication and how it weaves in with emotion and player / audience... incredibly real.

Thanks.

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by nahatsu

Absolutely awesome post....
Incredible photo as well...
And the concept of the tool of communication and how it weaves in with emotion and player / audience... incredibly real.

Thanks.

Hmmmm. We'll see. I suspect Magnificat knows a lot more about the pre-19th century audience than I do, so I may have to eat my words.

But you're right, it's a wonderful photo. The SBYO has that effect on people.....

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_El7qwib0dc"]YouTube - Orquesta Juvenil Simón Bolívar de Venezuela - BBC Proms 2007[/ame]

[Magnificat]

Thanks for the very thoughtful responses. My sister in law was a guest teacher for El Sistemo a few years back (she's a pianist, but she was there as a Feldenkreis practitioner) and she was very enthusiastic (not quite like the girls in the photos, but close!)

In another life I am a legendary Radiohead fan and one of the reasons I enjoy those concerts (beyond the sheer virtuosity and consistent commitment of the performances) is the communication that exists between the band and the fans. I suppose all fans are commited and I don't go to many other rock concerts so it may be the same, but the intensity of the connection is electric.

Concert protocol certainly does inhibit many and keeps lots of potential "fans" from ever experiencing classical music. The Domus ethos, however impractical and idealistic their organizational approach, was aimed directly at this problem and to a remarkable degree they succeeded in breaking down many of these barriers. I think also of Tashi performing at the Village Vanguard, etc. and the current mission of ClassicalRevolution. There's hope.

I would suggest that, like so many aspects of music nd performance practice, the advent of recordings has had a huge impact on the expectations of modern audiences. First of all, many concert goers expect edited and mastered perfection from live performances and secondly they expect the concert experience to match the secluded experience of listening on their home entertainment system or noise canceling headphones. Music has never been the same since the LP.