At 9:13 PM +0200 9/8/07, Daniel Wolf wrote:
Having played a lot of early music and a lot of American experimental music in which a "no vibrato" instruction is common, I used to be very adamant about turning the vibrato off. However, I had a few experiences in Hungary and Romania with Roma violinists --
Am I correct to interpret that as what we might in the U.S. call Gypsy? It is not a pejorative term here, just a descriptive one.
who might reasonably be described as maintaining by aural transmission at least some aspects of historical performance practice -- that have changed my point of view considerably.
This was, in fact, one of the assumptions underlying the researches in both Eastern Europe and North Africa by Thomas Binkley and the other members of the Early Music Quartet: that folk musicians may have continued practices that have changed in more sophisticated styles in classical music. Binkley was not one to write articles or books, but said that his findings could be heard on their recordings, and they are awfully convincing.
Among these players, the use of vibrato is ubiquitous and is, typically, extremely wide and fast. In ensembles (the largest of which are, admitedly, recent innovations), there is essentially no coordination of vibrato style, but apparently a general expectation that it be used. A lack of vibrato would probably be heard as displaying inadequate technique, and although the best players are certainly capable of playing without it, the inherent competition between musicians would likely prevent them from using it frequently. The effect in an ensemble, especially when combined with completely uncoordinated bowing (going even further than Stokowski in this dimension), is a characteristically lively, indeed wild, sound.
And one which attracted Liszt, Brahms and Joachim, and fascinated Bartók and Kodály. But my question would be whether that performance tradition actually intersected the art music traditions of Europe, or whether it was an entirely separate tradition with no crossover. Specifically, were Roma violinists hired and valued in European orchestras as those orchestras developed? My impression is that they were not, and that the development was parallel but quite separate, much like some Eastern European styles of folk singing, which most Western voice teachers would claim will destroy the voices, but which obviously do not.
It is the sound of an ad hoc ensemble, playing a repertoire in which many aspects are transmitted aurally, including a large variety of affects and ornaments which are played _ex tempore_, and it is a sound unmediated by any set of formal aesthetic goals, a received sound.
Makes very good sense, and I'm sure that the players at Mannheim or those in Paris or, even today, those in the Vienna Phil felt the same way. But an aural received tradition in one population is not necessarily applicable to a different population. And my impression is that the Roma kept pretty much to themselves, for a variety of sociological reasons.
While I do not wish to go so far as to claim any direct connections between contemporary Roma musicians and the performance practices of centuries past, I do think that one can conclude that some of the aspects of performance practice are and were the inevitable results of the combination of aural transmission and ad hoc ensemble composition which are indeed shared features.
Here is where you appear to be relying on crossover, and I'm not sure that is valid.
When an 18th century treatise demands less use of vibrato, the best assumption one can make is that vibrato was not absent from the music, but rather was used so much that the writer felt compelled to comment on it.
There may be other, equally valid assumptions in that situation. (Although it is quite true that negative evidence is often quite illuminating historically, and indeed sometimes the ONLY available evidence.) For example, if the use of vibrato was unusual in ensembles, then using even a little bit might have led to demands to cease and desist. There's no question that it does blur the fine tuning of pure intervals that we assume was the goal in ensemble playing before vibrato became ubiquitous, and that the best modern baroque ensembles achieve. And there's also no question that without a chinrest, let alone a shoulder pad to give a two-point solid grip on the instrument, neither a modern continuous vibrato nor the wild Roma vibrato you describe is physically possible. Which I believe is why vibrato was considered a discrete ornament, and not something to use all the time. And also why Karl Flesch and other scale manuals advocated 3-octave scales that moved up the E string in small jumps (since the instrument was being pushed into the neck) but down the E string in large jumps (since the instrument had to be gripped with the jaw for each jump).
My father, who was born in 1907, was trained in the standard European techniques of the time, and was not taught to use a continuous vibrato. In fact, that was the period in which Fritz Kreisler introduced continuous vibrato in his solo recitals, and was roundly criticized for it. I, born in 1936, WAS taught to use continuous vibrato. So it seems to me that an hypothesis that MORE vibrato was used by baroque fiddlers than by later ones 1750-1850 is sadly lacking in solid evidence.
The question -- and this returns us inevitably to the main thread here -- remains: does one attempt to recreate the music in the performance style and quality that the composer would have received in her/his time and place, or does one attempt to get closer to the ideal performance imagined by the composer (or even a platonic ideal, perhaps even more than the composer imagined), or does one accept the changes (both additions and subtractions) that time and tradition accumulate in performance practice.
To which I would say that the answer is "yes"! We can take any of those approaches, or invent our own, and the musical results can be different but equally valid. I believe that the depth of opinion in our recent thread is focused simply on what can be shown to have been possible and perhaps even expected in Bach's lifetime, not in establishing that there is one true and holy way to perform his music. I just happen to prefer performances which are at least closer to what he might have had in mind. The one inescapable fact is that by the 1890s, when Arnold Dolmetsch started what grew into the early instrument and early music revival, received technique and received esthetics and received stylistics had drifted very far from those of the mid-18th century, and that even the instruments themselves were no longer the same instruments.
The exciting thing about music making today is that we can investigate these extremes as well as the entire spectrum of possibilities in between the extremes. When I am fortunate to work with younger players, I can see no advantage in taking one hardline or another with regard to vibrato, or any other skill. The essential issue is developing control over vibrato, the ability to turn it on or off and to control its speed, depth and dynamics, so that it can be used to best advantage in any given musical environment.
On which we are in complete agreement. We might differ, however, in whether different approaches are all equally valid for all music, or whether different approaches need to be taken to specific musical styles.
Thank you for a fascinating and provocative post, Daniel. John -- John R. Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
