So McCreesh's "instinctive feeling" trumps the evidence of Bach's 12
voice choir, plus his preference for a larger one?
RBH
Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
On 1/16/07, Raymond Horton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Rifkin got some attention with his project, and got the musical world
thinking
about smaller choirs, perhaps, but the one-on-a part B Minor Mass is
just silly.
Really?
Tell that to Paul McCreesh:
**snip**(from an interview Paul McCreesh gave on his one voice per
part performance of the the St Matthew passion)
I've always had an instinctive feeling that the fundamental hypothesis
Rifkin proposed was the right one. I had done these pieces [in the
past] with small choirs, as you would expect; I've just become more
hard-line. Really, the evidence seems to be just so overwhelming that
we've got to start rethinking the whole process.
What annoys me in some sense about the whole "Early Music" business is
that ... you know, I have no objection to people performing Bach with
a large orchestra-and-chorus or a small orchestra-and-chorus or
quartet of saxophones. It doesn't worry me in the slightest. It's when
people try and create spurious musicological arguments to justify
things that are basically just musical taste.
I understand the practical arguments: performing the St. Matthew
Passion with solo singers requires a certain type of voice; the
pragmatic demands of touring may prevent that approach. I also
acknowledge the argument that in large concert halls, it's harder to
bring that sort of thing off (although I don't think it's as hard as
people often make out).
http://www.andante.com/Article/article.cfm?id=18169
Kim Patrick Clow
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