El acercamiento a la música antigua.pdf

7/28/2019 El acercamiento a la msica antigua.pdf

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CHAPTER IThe Approach to Early Music

1. PREVIEW OF AN 'EARLY* STYLEDuring the fifteen years over which I was engaged on this book, ourattitude to early music and its interpretation underwent a remarkabletransformation. In 1948, the majority of musicians viewed music earlierthan J. S. Bach with considerable reservations, and remained scepticalof any necessity to interpret early music on its own terms, that is to sayon the instruments for which it was originally composed and in a stylerelated to that of its original performers. By 1963, the pleasure whichsixteenth to eighteenth century music (indeed in some cases mucholder music than this) can give us had been so widely demonstrated,together with the practicability and enjoyability of a determined ap-proach towards an authentic style, that there could no longer be anydoubt as to how the matter will end. It will come to be taken as muchfor granted that the best specimens of early music are worth performingwith all reasonable respect for their composers' intentions as it is alreadytaken for granted with regard to the nineteenth century. And why not?At the deep levels of human nature from which music speaks, J. S. Bachis not so much more different from us than Beethoven, nor is Monteverdiso much more different from us than J. S. Bach.Those who feel, mistakenly, that early music can be made more acces-

sible by deliberately modernising it have an undoubted liberty to do so;but there seems very little to be said for the inadvertent modernisationwhich results from not having gone sufficiently into the questions of factinvolved. Questions of interpretation must always revert finally to theinnate musicianship of the interpreters, but questions of fact can oftenbe decided by referring to surviving evidence, and their bearing oninterpretation can be very intimate. The purpose of this book is tocontribute to our understanding of early interpretation by assemblingand discussing some of the surviving evidence.There is a place for transcriptions which are a genuine marriage oftwo musical personalities across the generations : the product is a newand often interesting work. But in ordinary performance, music ofwhatever generation will sound more effective arid more moving whenwe make every reasonable attempt to present it under its original con-

ditions of performance. If we want to share in a composer's experience,25


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THE APPROACH TO EARLY MUSICwe have to carry out his intentions. If we find his experience somewhatstrange, we have to remember that it may be more rewarding to cometo terms with an unfamiliar experience than to recapitulate a familiarone in a less telling form. It may be more rewarding to make the mostof the unfamiliarity than to dilute that unfamiliarity in the doubtfulhope of adapting it to modern ears.Modern ears are no more than ordinary ears in a modern setting.Our response to music is fundamentally intuitive, and our humanfaculty of intuition can have changed very little during the longestperiod considered in this book. The fundamentals of interpretation arethe same for us as they were for Bach or Monteverdi, or indeed forJosquin or Perotin le Grand. We not only can but must rely on ourintuitive response to the expressive implications of early music. Butthis does not mean that we have nothing to learn which the music itselfcannot teach us. On the contrary, we have a great deal to learn.

It is unrealistic to think that we can give an adequate rendering ofany music in the absence of a detailed acquaintance with its relevantconventions. Musical notation is a wonderful invention, but it is notas wonderful as all that. We need a vast amount of traditional working-knowledge in order to bring even the most cunning and thorough ofthese notated marks on paper into living performance. With baroquemusic and earlier, the tradition has been much distorted and partlyforgotten; the marks may be cunning but we have to be still morecunning to know what some of them mean; while notation in generalwas of deliberate intention a great deal less thorough than we arenowadays accustomed to finding it.To recover something of what direct tradition can no longer conveyto us, our best and indeed almost our only recourse is to read whatthe actual contemporaries of the music had to say about it. Almostexactly half the words in the present book consist of quotations fromthe early authorities and other witnesses themselves, I do most earnestlycommend these quotations to the careful attention of the reader. It isnot only that they have an inherent authenticity with which no meresummary or discussion of them can compete; it is also that they conveyso much more than merely factual information. That they are unreliablein varying degrees, self-contradictory or contradictory with one anotherin many respects, and tiresomely repetitive in others I shall be the firstto admit. I almost feel inclined to suggest that this is just why they areso valuable. They add up to such a very human picture* They evokethe original atmosphere of interpretation more faithfully than anysystematically consistent account could do. The reality was neithersystematic nor consistent, and no amount of learned historical after-thought can make it so,

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THE APPROACH TO EARLY MUSICWhat we are trying to find out is not the exact interpretation such-

and-such a composer intended for such-and-such a passage. There isno such thing as an exact interpretation. No one, not even the composer,plays a passage in exactly the same way twice running. It would be amuch duller world if music would not tolerate more than one interpre-tation; we should miss the intensely personal contribution whichdifferent performers have to offer, or even the same performer when ina different mood. What we are trying to find out is partly the kind ofdetail which did not and should not depend on mood at all, and partlythe outside limits within which the performer's mood can suitablyoperate. We want him to illuminate different aspects of the music inaccordance with whatever is individual in his response to it; we do notwant him to impose his individuality on the much greater element inthe music which is common to us all, and to which there is fundamentallyonly one way of responding. We do not want him to go outside thestyle.

In the case of early music, this is tantamount to saying that we needto know, not exactly how the composer would have taken his music,but broadly how any good performer of his day might have taken it.That leaves a very wide field for personal taste and individuality; iteven opens the way to performances which I personally, or the reader,or any other given person might happen to dislike. But it does set aboundary to positive incongruities of style, because while a bad con-temporary performer might all too easily have committed them (andindeed there is plenty of evidence for this at all times and places), agood contemporary performer could not have done so, unless, ofcourse, the style in question was outside his experience even thoughcontemporary in time.

Every piece of music carries implications with regard to performancewhich can be differently interpreted: but not beyond certain limits,because so soon as those limits are overstepped we feel a contradictionbetween the

styleof the music and the style of the interpretation. Wemay not, it is true, feel this contradiction explicitly; we may feel vaguely

uneasy without knowing quite what is wrong or what to do about it;or we may notice nothing wrong, and merely fail to be moved by themusic as in a more understanding performance it could be moving us.But whether we are directly aware of it or not, there will still besomething missing which need not be missing,A performer contemporary with the music had opportunities forbecoming familiar with the style which we are denied at this distanceof time. A single satisfactory sound-recording might tell us more aboutbaroque methods of performance than all our painstaking researches;but we have not got that recording, and must do the best we can

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THE APPROACH TO EARLY MUSICwithout it. The best we can do is to start from such contemporaryevidence as does survive.

This does not imply idealising the contemporary performers, who sofar as we can make out must have been much worse than ourselves insome branches of the art, much better in other branches, and perhapsas an overall average very much the same. It is simply that whateverelse may or may not have been wrong with a contemporary perform-ance, under ordinary circumstances it would at least have been withinthe style, whereas under ordinary circumstances a modern performance,whatever its other merits, is likely to be partly at odds with the style.It is only fair to add that extraordinary circumstances, in which somespecialised knowledge has been successfully brought to bear, arebecoming so much more frequent nowadays that we may in a fewyears time be able to regard this favourable situation as no longer theexception but the rule. I wrote these words in 1963.There were in 1963, and to some extent always will be, limits to the

authenticity we can hope to achieve. Anyone specialising in the inter-pretation of early music needs not only a sufficiently scholarly graspbut sufficient competence and experience as a practising musician. Hemust be able to get inside the problems as they actually come up inrehearsal; he must be able to envisage solutions which can come offin performance. His scholarship can only be helpful if it is used music-ally ; yet at the same time it can only be used musically if he has plentyof it. He must be in a position to weigh one piece of evidence againstanother. An isolated statement, out of context and perhaps untypical,can lead to devastatingly unmusical results; and that after all is the lastthing we want our scholarship to end in. We are trying to be authenticnot because there is anything sacrosanct in historical reproduction, butbecause our best chance of matching the interpretation to the musiclies in matching it to the original intentions. We are trying to be betterscholars in order to make better music.

Ultimately it is our personal responsibility as performing musiciansto make historical authenticity a living thing. It seems unlikely that weshall ever make so close a match that it would deceive any visitingseventeenth-century or eighteenth-century ghost into thinking that hewas listening to a performance of his own day; but at least we may hopethat he would recognise the general style and enjoy the music. Wemay hope to be, not ideally, but reasonably authentic.As a corollary to being as authentic as we reasonably can, I thinkwe should accept the fact that under modem conditions of performancesome aspects of authenticity are more important than others, and thatit is worth letting the less important aspects go by the board providedwe can get the more important aspects established. It is, for example,

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THE APPROACH TO EARLYworth a great deal to get really good performers who are willing toco-operate to the best of their ability, but who may have neither thetime nor the temperament to undergo a prolonged training In earlystyle. On the other hand, performers who are not willing to co-operateto the best of their ability with regard to the essential points of styleare unsuitable for the purpose.Some modern musicians, again, seem to have a greater naturalaffinity with the stylistic requirements of early music than others. Inany more or less permanent chamber ensemble or other organisationwhich wants to give special attention to early music, it Is wisest tochoose members with as much of this natural affinity as possible, andthen to concentrate and go on concentrating on essentials, with asmany inessentials added as the circumstances of the case permit. Thesame considerations apply to performers brought together only for aparticular performance or series of performances, except that thenecessity to concentrate on essentials is then still more obviouslypressing.The question as to what are the essentials can only be answered inconcrete detail, as this book proceeds. But it is perhaps worth askinghere whether there can in principle be any such thing as might bedescribed as an 'early' style of interpretation. If we press that questiontoo hard, it is plain that the answer must be 'no' ; but in very looseterms, it may be possible to give a more positive reply. The contem-porary quotations of which this book so largely consists have the effectof building up cumulatively a picture of our predecessors in theirmusic-rooms and auditoriums, not as stiff historical figures but as veryhuman beings with all our own human diversity of tastes and abilities.Behind all this diversity, however, we see also what is still more illumi-nating: a certain common denominator of tacit assumptions andhabitual attitudes which may give us our first and most generalindications of such an 'early' style of interpretation.

I have fallen back on this non-committal word 'early' whenever I havewanted to leave my chronological boundaries deliberately undefined. Iam mainly though not by any means exclusively concerned in this bookwith baroque music, i.e. approximately from Monteverdi to J. S. Bach.There is diversity enough here on any showing; but we find throughouta general disposition to join the composer and the performer in a moreequal partnership than our present custom is. Even when the two werenot, as they so frequently were, one and the same person, the performerwas expected to make the music his own with much less respect for thewritten text and much more reliance on spontaneous expression andimprovisation than we should normally expect now except in dancemusic. It was not that composers were lazier or performers were

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THE APPROACH TO EARLY MUSICprouder, but that both parties set an overriding value on the freshnessand immediacy which are among the most positive results of such anattitude. They valued spontaneity.To recapture this sense of spontaneity is the most important singlefactor in our search for an adequately authentic rendering. Trills andappoggiaturas ; conventions of rhythm, tempo and dynamics; smallforces and original instrumentation: such matters are valuable con-tributions to the style; but they are not the style. The whole is greaterthan the parts.The style most widely appropriate to baroque music is less massivebut more incisive than that in which my generation grew up. It is vividyet relaxed; glowing yet transparent. It sparkles and it dances, alivewith natural ease and unforced conviction. It charms like a smile, andit cuts like a knife. The less we inflate it the stronger it sounds. Eventhe best baroque music can be made ponderous by overweighting it,but its true nature is as volatile as its performers can possibly conceiveof it in their most impulsive moods.Contrary to some modern opinion, there is nothing unimpulsive, and

nothing dry, about an authentic rendering of early music. That suchan opinion should have arisen was understandable and valuable earlierin the twentieth century when the most pressing necessity was to escapefrom the incongruous influence of post-Wagnerian weight, sonorityand smoothness. But this escape has now virtually been accomplished,and our present danger is not too little austerity but too much. Weare in some danger of depriving early music of the sheer animal vitalitywhich carries all genuine musical performance along as nature alwaysneeds to carry along and underwrite the achievements of culture.There is a magnificence of storm and stress which is part of Wagner'smusical language. But there is also a poise and a crispness and acrystalline translucency shared by composers as unlike in other respectsas Monteverdi and Vivaldi, as Purcell and Couperin, as Bach andHandel. This baroque brand of eloquence is not less impassioned thanthe romantic variety. To match up to the baroque intentions in ourinterpretation does not, as is sometimes mistakenly suggested, meanrenouncing all our warmest feelings and all our richest colourings oftone. It does mean applying them appropriately to the matter in hand,keeping the style sharply etched and the mood unaffected and direct.It does mean reconciling the complementary requirements of passionand of serenity.

Ignoring the passion in early music is a mere escape into fantasiesof unbroken serenity in some past golden age: fantasies just as com-fortable and illusory as our by now untenable and discarded Victorianfantasies of unbroken progress. There has never been an age of

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THE APPROACH TO EARLY MUSICunqualified serenity or unqualified passion; these are two extremes ofhuman experience which the art of living consists in more or lesssuccessfully reconciling. And the art of music, like the plastic andliterary arts, very largely consists in showing how they can be reconciled.

It is this reconciliation of opposites achieved by the composer in Msmusic which it is so necessary for our interpretation to carry faithfullyinto effect. All great music achieves it, but not all in the same way.The differences do not lie simply along chronological divisions. It ispersonality rather than period which separates the other-worldliness ofPalestrina from the earthy immediacy of Monteverdi, the rich homeli-ness of Haydn from the profound lucidity of Mozart, the lyricism ofSchubert from the indomitability of Beethoven. There are extravertslike Vivaldi or Handel and introverts like Purcell or J. S. Bach in anyage. Brahms and Wagner and Debussy are all of the nineteenth century;Stravinsky and Schoenberg and Vaughan-Williams and Bartok are allof the twentieth. Their solutions to the equation are various in theextreme; but not the elements in the equation. Pain and joy, sufferingand delight, adversity and triumph, and more particularly the bitter-sweet triumph of accepting adversity as part of our human lot: theseare the ingredients, and we all mix them differently according to ourmanner of experience.

Nevertheless there are some styles which seem able to balance themup better than others. What we call the baroque period of music hadsuch a style, and the remarkable hold which this period has nowgained on our affections is certainly not due to its having run awayfrom one end of our human paradox by divorcing passion from serenityor keeping music unemotional. Not even Stravinsky (least of allStravinsky) does this, although he seems to think he does. The holdwhich baroque music has gained over our affections is due precisely tothe fact that its most typical composers, from the supreme case ofJ. S. Bach downwards, had each in their degree the secret of not onlybalancing the passion and serenity, but balancing them at a high levelof intensity. Bach's music is very passionate and very serene, not incrude alternation, but as an integrated whole. If ever there was a caseof transcending the opposites in a reconciliation which is more thanthe sum of its parts, that case is Bach's music. This is the measure ofour problem in doing justice to him with our interpretation.Because the question of how emotional our interpretation of earlymusic ought to be is a primary question which takes precedence evenover the more complex question of how to apply the right kind ofemotion in the right kind of way, I have collected a variety of evidencebearing on it. This is followed by a few further quotations to remindus of the tranquility which is the complementary aspect. I have then

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THE APPROACH TO EARLY MUSICbeen able to find one or two In which the reconciliation of the paradox,normally so unconsciously achieved, has to some extent broken throughinto conscious description. I believe the reader may find a comparisonofthese passages helpful in establishing the underlying mood which is ourbest starting-point. (For fuller bibliographical detail see Bibliography.)

2. THE ELEMENT OF PASSION IN EARLY MUSIC(1) Charles Butler, Principles of Musik, London, 1636, p. 109, citing

the fifth-century St. Augustine:*O how I wept at thyHymns and Songs, being vehemently moved withdie voices of thy sweet-sounding Church. Those Voices did pierce mine

ears, and thy truth distilled into mine heart; and thereby was inflamed inme a love of Piety: the tears trickled down, and with them I was inhappy case/

(2) William Prynne, Histriomastix, London, 1633, Ch. XX, citing thetwelfth-century Bishop Ethelred:

'Whence hath the Church so many Organs and Musicall Instruments?To what purpose, I pray you, is that terrible blowing ofBelloes, expressingrather the crakes of Thunder, than die sweetnesse of a voyce? To whatpurpose serves that contraction and inflection ofthe voyce? This man singsa base, that a small meane, another a treble, a fourth divides and cutsasunder, as it were, certaine middle notes. One while the voyce is strained,anon it is remitted, now it is dashed, and then againe it is inlarged with alowder sound. Sometimes, which is a shame to speake, it is enforced intoa horse's neighings; sometimes, die masculine vigour being laid aside, itis sharpened into the shrilnesse of a woman's voyce; now and then it iswrithed, and retorted with a certaine artificiallcircumvolution. Sometimesthou may'st see a man with an open mouth, not to sing, but, as it were,to breathe out his last gaspe, by shutting in his breath, and by a certaineridiculous interception ofhis voyce, as it were to threaten silence, and nowagain to imitate the agonies ofa dying man, or the extasies ofsuch as suffer/

(3) Baldassare Castiglione, The Courtyer, Venice, 1528, transl. SirThomas Hoby, London, 1561, Everyman ed. 1928, p. 61 :'Marke me musicke, wherein are harmonies sometime of a base soundand slow, and otherwhile verie quicke and ofnew devises, yet doe they allrecreate a man, but for sundrie causes, as amanmay perceive in the mannerof singing that Bido useth, which is so artificall, cunning, vehement,

stirred, and such sundrie melodies, that the spirites of the hearers move alland are inflamed, and so listing, a man would weene they were lift up intoheaven.And no lesse doth our Marchetto Cara move in his singing, butwith a more soft harmony, that by a delectable way and full ofmourning32


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THE APPROACH TO EARLYsweetcnes maketh tender and percetli the mind, and sweetly imprintethin it a passion full of great delite/

(4) Myles Coverdale, Goostly Psalmes, London, [? 1539], preface'Unto the Christen reader* :*Yfyonge men also that have the gyfte of syngynge, toke theyr pleasure

in soch wholsome balettes ... it were a token, both that they felt somesparks ofGods love in theyr hertes, and that they also had some love untohym, for truly as we love, so synge we: and where our affeccyon is,thence conuneth our myrth and joye . . .*

(5) Charles Butler, Principles of Musik, London, 1636, p. 92:'[Good composing is impossible] unless the Author, at the time of

Composing, be transported as it were with some Musical fury; so thathimself scarce knoweth what he doth, nor can presently give a reason forhis doing.'

(6) Samuel Pepys, Diary, 27 Feb., 1667/8:'That which did please me beyond any thing in the whole world was

the wind-musick when the angel comes down, which is so sweet that itravished me, and indeed, in a word, did wrap up my soul so that it mademe really sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife;that neither then, nor all the evening going home, and at home, I was ableto think of any thing, but remained all night transported.'

(7) Angelo Berardi, Ragionamenti Musicali, Bologna, 1681, p. 87:'Music is the ruler of the passions of the soul.'(8) Frangois Raguenet, Comparison between the French and Italian

Music, 1702? transl. ? J. E. Galliard, 1709, ed. O. Strunk, Mus. Quart.,XXXII, 3, July, 1946, p. 422:

'[Music is] transport, enchantment and extasy of pleasure . . .'[Translator's f.n. 9 p. 419:] 1 never met with any man that suffered hispassions to hurry him away so much whilst he was playing on the violin

as the famous Arcangelo Corelli, whose eyes will sometimes turn as redas fire; his countenance will be distorted, his eyeballs roll as in an agony,and he gives in so much to what he is doing that he doth not look like thesame man/

(9) Dr. Charles Burney, Present State ofMusic in Germany, London,1773, II, p. 269:

'[C.P.E. Bach at the clavichord] grew so animated and possessed, that henot only played, but looked like one inspired. His eyes were fixed, hisunderlip fell, and drops of effervescence distilled from his countenance.

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THE APPROACH TO EARLY MUSICHe said, If he were to be set to work frequently, in this manner, he shouldgrow young again.'

(10) C. H. Biainville, VEsprit de I9Art Musical, Geneva, 1754, p. 14:*A musician falls into inspiration at the moment when he least thinks of

it; his imagination is fired, his heart swells, his blood pulses rapidlywithout his volition; a luminous cloud surrounds him, he is transportedinto a vast space; it is that which has reality, all his senses lend him theirmutual aid, and are transformed piece by piece into passion, the imagewhich he desires to paint; it all comes pressing upon him, he guides andselects. Exalted above himself, he traces, without knowing it, the beautieswhich he scarcely understands : like a second Pythian, he falls into a frenzy,he speaks the language ofthe Gods; he is drained at last, the forces fail him;he returns to himself . . /

(11) [J. Mainwaring] Memoirs of. . . Handel, London, 1760, p. 52:'The audience was so enchanted with this performance, that a strangerwho should have seen the manner in which they were affected, would

have imagined they had all been distracted.'

3. THE ELEMENT OF SERENITY IN EARLY MUSIC(12) Richard Allison, Howres Recreation in Musicke, London, 1606,

foreword, citing the early sixteenth-century founder of the Reformation:'Musicke, saith he [Martin Luther] to Divels we know is hateful and

intolerable, and I plainely thinke, neither am I ashamed to averr it, thatnext Theologie, there is no Arte comparable with Musicke: for it alonenext to Theologie doth affect that, which otherwise only Theologie canperforate, that is a quiet and a cheareful minde/

(13) Thomas Sternhold, Psalter, London, 1560, title-page:'Very mete to be used of all sorts of people privately for their godly

solace and comfort, laiying aparte all ungodly songues and ballades whichtende only to the nourishing of vice, and corrupting of youth . . /(14) John Milton, Of Education, London, 1644, ed. of 1836, p. 162:'The solemn and divine harmonies of Music . . . have a great powerover dispositions and manners, to smoothe and make them gentle from

rustic harshness and distempered passions.'(15) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de Musique, Paris, 1768,

s.v* 'Imitation' :'Night, sleep, solitude and silence are among the great pictures ofmusic.'

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THE APPROACH TO EARLY MUSIC4. RECONCILING THE PASSION WITH THE SERENITY

(16) Sir Thomas Browne, Rellgio MedicL London, 1542, Everymaned., p. 79:

"It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect ail harmony, and surethere is musick even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupidstrikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a musickwhere ever there is a harmony, order or proportion . . .'Whosoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; whichmakes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaimagainst all Church-Musick. For my self, not only from my obedience, butmy particular Genius, I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and Tavern-Musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deepfit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer.There is something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers: it is anHieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole World, and creaturesof God; such a melody to the ear, as the whole World, well understood,would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit ofthat harmonywhich intellectually sounds in the ears of God.'

(17) Thomas Mace, Mustek's Monument, London, 1676, p. 19:'But when That Vast-Conchording-Unity of the whole Congregational-

Chorus, came (as I may say) Thundering in, even so, as it made the veryGround shake under us; (Oh the unutterable ravishing Soul's delight!) In thewhich I was so transported, and wrapt up into High Contemplations, thatthere was no room left in my whole Man, viz. Body, Soul and Spirit, forany thing below Divine and Heavenly Raptures . . .

[p. 118] *. . . Musick speaks so transcendently, and Communicates ItsNotions so Intelligibly to the Internal, Intellectual, and IncomprehensibleFaculties of the Soul; so far beyond &&. Language of Words, that I confess,and most solemnly affirm, I have been more Sensibly, Fervently, andZealously Captivated, and drawn into Divine Raptures, and Contemplations,by Those Unexpressible, Rhetorical, Uncontroulable Persuasions, and Instruc-tions of Musicks Divine Language, than ever yet I have been, by the bestVerbal Rhetorick, that came from any Mans Mouth, either in Pulpit, orelsewhere.

'Those Influences, which come along with It, may aptly be compar'd,to Emanations, Communications, or Distillations, of some Sweet, andHeavenly Genius, or Spirit; Mystically, and Unapprehensibly (yet Effectually)Dispossessing the Soul, and Mind, of All Irregular Disturbing, and UnquietMotions; and Stills, and Fills It, with Quietness, Joy, and Peace; AbsoluteTranquillity, and Unexpressible Satisfaction.'

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