Not only early music, this is an issue with art music in general, especially chamber music. The art-music status quo simply is unamplified, acoustic instruments. Astute hearers seem to tend to favor the ambience of a responsive hall (or at least believe they do).
Eugene > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of Guy Smith > Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 2:14 PM > To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; > [email protected] > Subject: [LUTE] Re: The End of the Golden Age > > One problem is that a lot of EM recordings are not done in a studio. They > are done in churches or what have you, which are not acoustically isolated > and are subject to things like traffic noise. I've got a copy of a > performing version of a Baltimore Consort piece which has "Traffic" > penciled > in towards the end. It was a note (by Ronn, I think) to splice in another > take there, because of traffic noise. > > Guy > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf > Of [email protected] > Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 11:04 AM > To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] > Subject: [LUTE] Re: The End of the Golden Age > > Hi Chris, > > > > Thanks for bearing with my lack of experience listening to recent EM > recordings. I'm intigued by what you say and will be doing more > listening. I think that the high cost of getting an orchestra into a > studio for recording has resulted in a good thing for later repetoire - > more recordings done live. Of course there is still editing, but if > the recording is made from only two or three performances, it is > necessarily limited. EM being done by smaller ensembles, I guess that > the studio is still the main recording venue. And perhaps, as you say, > the editing is overdone and leads to sterile performances. (Of > course, this 'over' use of editing predates digital, witness Glenn > Gould's recordings - which I still find thrilling). There is, too, the > problem that many of us don't have the opportunity to hear much EM > live. For us - other than our own playing - recordings are our only > reference for what the music sounds like. You - and other > professional performers - are not under that disadvantage. > > > > Ned > > -- > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
