Newsletter No. 1 - July 1999
A visit to Chateau de Béduer, France, and some thoughts about 'authenticity'
The morning of 25th July found me at London Gatwick airport, fighting my way through the
crowds at check-in to board a plane for Toulouse, 'the frying pan of France'. I had
been invited by Roy Brown, owner of the Chateau de Béduer, to perform a piano
recital in the Grand Salle there. Béduer is located in the Midi-Pyrenées
- to most of us that means the wonderful area mid-way between the Dordogne and the Lot.
The two-hour journey from Toulouse to Béduer took me past bright yellow fields of
sunflowers, ochre-coloured churches clinging to precipitous rock-faces and - as my
driver pointed out - a village called
Dear Reader,
which seemed an excellent omen for a concert which was to include the Busoni/Rhodes arrangement of the 'Goldberg Variations'. And the rest of the programme? Those of you who have heard me perform will guess that it was a little off the common track.
Arachne's Web: Julian Rhodeswith the Bach/Rhodes/Busoni to conclude.
Fantasia in C: William Byrd
Liebeslied: Robert Schumann, arr. Franz Liszt
Air from 'Satyagraha': Philip Glass
I'm very lucky that so many promoters are willing to expose their audiences on a regular basis to the typical Rhodes mixture of ancient and modern, worldly and other-worldly. As a performer it's fun to pit your wits against Liszt by conquering his 'Mazeppa' etude; and you feel a wonderful sense of historical continuity when playing a Chopin Ballade or Nocturne, and thereby treading in the footsteps of Pachmann, Cortot and Rubinstein. But as we move into the new millennium many performers are taking the opportunity to present to the public a previously unimaginable range of repertoire. The fruits of over 150 years of research and scholarship are laid before us in a veritable feast of music, and we stick to our tried and tested favourites at the risk of a jaded palate and a blunted appetite.
My Béduer concert was one of those events that a performer hopes for: a combination of a beautiful setting, an unhurried schedule, a good instrument (a Steinway B had been hired for the occasion) and a receptive audience. The Chateau is an inspiring building; as you sit in the courtyard you are surrounded by architecture dating from the 13th to the 15th centuries. Below you in the village a church bell slowly tolls for Vespers, and snatches of accordion music float up on the cool evening air. It's all so ridiculously beautiful that it seems like an advertising copywriter's idea of idyllic France.
How wonderful it is to play a concert that begins at 9 o'clock in the evening. You do some practise in the morning; after a leisurely lunch there's time for a long siesta. In the late afternoon you return to the scene of combat for another hour or so, and there's time for supper before the performance. When the concert begins you are replete, relaxed and ready. Hardly surprisingly, my Béduer concert went well, and was warmly received.
The concert has provoked me to again consider so-called 'authenticity' - for which read 'historically accurate performance practice'. Is the Bach/Busoni/Rhodes 'Goldberg Variations' a worse piece of music than Bach's original score? Is it a parody of Bach's intentions? In expanding the musical textures, is the work altered to its detriment? I'm reminded of words written by Frank Hubbard in his book 'Three Centuries of Harpsichord Building' (Cambridge, Mass., 1965):
Hubbard makes an intelligent and good case for the purist approach, but not, I think, a conclusive one.All art gains force and intensity by the compression of its matter by its means, the reduction of nature to order. It is precisely the statement of a sinuous and elusive musical line in the geometric terms of the harpsichord which provides the keyboard works of the baroque with their tension. More than any other style the baroque depends on the conflict of substance and medium. Carved into the rigid stones of its architecture we find the flowing lines of natural forms, on the static panels of its painting we feel the exuberance of motion, and upon hearing its music we sense the endless tension between the implied nuance of the line and the meticulous but rigid statement. To express every implication is to deflate the music utterly.
This sentence is really a summary of the baroque ethos. It brings to mind the wacky harpsichord toccatas of Michelangelo Rossi or Frescobaldi, and the madrigals of Gesulado. It is patently untrue when applied to the extremely "forceful and intense" works of Berlioz or Mahler, for example, which are anything but compressed either in their musical form or in the forces needed for their performance. Hubbard's dictum does not apply to "all art".All art gains force and intensity by the compression of its matter by its means, the reduction of nature to order.
Again, a good point as far as it goes. But it leaves out of the equation the clavichord, with its wide range of dynamic nuance - an instrument both popular and ubiquitous in Bach's circle. It also ignores the fact that Bach's violin and 'cello works consist of precisely the same "sinuous and elusive" musical lines as his keyboard works, yet do not suffer from performances which utilise the full dynamic range of 18th-century string instruments.It is precisely the statement of a sinuous and elusive musical line in the geometric terms of the harpsichord which provides the keyboard works of the baroque with their tension.
Hubbard is ignoring romantic art which, quite as much as the baroque, fits this criterion - such as the emotional weight of the Lieder repertoire, or the orchestral masses of sound in the piano works of Liszt.More than any other style the baroque depends on the conflict of substance and medium.
The last sentence is especially relevant to the Bach/Busoni/Rhodes Goldbergs, including as it does both the expanded textures of the score and the expressive range of the modern concert piano.Carved into the rigid stones of its architecture we find the flowing lines of natural forms, on the static panels of its painting we feel the exuberance of motion, and upon hearing its music we sense the endless tension between the implied nuance of the line and the meticulous but rigid statement. To express every implication is to deflate the music utterly.
Let's first consider the re-composition of the piece. It is interesting that Hubbard mentions the stone on which the flowing forms are carved, and the panels on which motion is depicted, but not the page on which the music is written. He refers only to the sound of the music, because the page itself is not a complete art-work; it is a lifeless thing which is re-animated only when the music is performed.
That rather depends upon the performance; even with the relatively static harpsichord, performers differ widely in the warmth and nuance they can extract from the instrument. "Meticulous" and "rigid" can only be applied to a single performance, for only in performance is there a "statement" of the music. Hubbard is confusing the role of the composer with that of the performer, and in speaking of the "meticulous but rigid statement" is himself making an interpretation....upon hearing its music we sense the endless tension between the implied nuance of the line and the meticulous but rigid statement.
Richard Taruskin (in 'Text and Act', Oxford 1995) has traced how early 20th-century ideals of performance - modernism - were responsible for the emotionally inhibited, respectful, characterless performances which came to be typical of the early-music movement. Hubbard reveals himself as a convinced modernist in his statement:
This is Hubbard's conclusion: we have seen that it based on a faulty chain of argument, and thus shown for what it is: a statement of preference rather than fact. You may love or hate Stokowski's orchestral arrangements of Bach, but I don't think you could claim that they deflate the music in any sense. In the end it depends on the sensitivity of the arranger and the performer; and on the preferences of the listener.To express every implication is to deflate the music utterly.
Best wishes,Julian Rhodes
Judge the Bach/Busoni/Rhodes 'Goldberg Variations' for yourself -
click here to visit the 'Julian Rhodes Live' CD page.
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