Unfaithful to the Score?

[eschiss1]

About the question of whether Beethoven was a bad orchestrator, a, or b, or...

I gather that with modern instruments, some changes still have to be made precisely because they are modern instruments. Beethoven was a rather good orchestrator (except for a few passages writing for non-existent low Cs in his double-basses, etc.)- writing for early-19th-century instruments, which were different in sufficiently important ways from ours (even enough so a century ago that Forsyth, I think, remarked on this and similar topics in his book on Orchestration several times.)

[JimL]

I believe that Beethoven knew exactly what he intended in his orchestration.  Substituting horns for the bassoons in the recap of the 5th Symphony (I) is grossly misrepresenting what Beethoven intended.  I don't buy the "horns would have to be re-crooked" argument for a nanosecond.  First of all, in the passage in question the key doesn't even change!  The horns have been playing in C (minor or major - it makes no difference!) for several measures already, and none of the notes they play (G, C, D, G) would be affected by any crook changes that could be made.  Also, I refer you to several passages in other works, e.g. the 4th PC where one instrument plays a tune or motive in the exposition but is replaced by another in the reprise.

[eschiss1]

"Some changes probably do have to be made" - I think this probably true - is quite consistent with "Many of the changes actually made are meretricious" - which I don't doubt.

(My main rule in these things has been "does it work?" - e.g. (very much e.g.) as I keep saying, I have no idea what Ogdon does in his performance for BBC of Medtner's Night Wind sonata that allows him to bring it in at 26 minutes- 4 minutes less than any other performance I've heard - but at the same time the performance is more compelling, exciting, and makes more sense somehow (oh, so that's what Medtner's doing right there- a sort of varied stretto?...) than any performance I've heard, so whatever it is, he's forgiven. Posthumously (well, since the pianist is dead...) applauded, even, by me.)

[mbhaub]

Now here's something I rarely see mentioned: timpanists changing the notes. In the old days, changing a pitch was time consuming and the pitches the tubs were set at had to be used throughout a work or movement. Hence, in many scores, there are "wrong" notes in the timpani; notes that are not in the prevailing key or harmony. But nothing could be done because you couldn't change pitches rapidly with any accuracy. This went on at least through Wagner. Then came pedal timpani where the player can easily change pitches very quickly - and quite accurately. So now many players fix the notes in question to be in agreement with the rest of the harmony. Bad idea? I don't think so, although honestly most listeners would never notice. I know a timpanist who incurred the wrath of a conductor for tweaking the timp parts in Overture to Rienzi. But here's a case of unfaithfulness that I wholeheartedly approve.

[eschiss1]

(And it's a real sign of how much instruments change over the years - to me - ... to have looked at a score of a now-not-that-modern-a-work (Bartok concerto pno. 2) while listening to it, back early in my college years, and - I remember being amazed that a timpanist could be asked to change pitch so quickly... ... erm. Carry on)

Out-of-tune timpani - or timpani which only seem out of tune for some reason or other (bad recording quality?... ...)- can - not hurt, exactly, my ears aren't that literally sensitive, but - well, the overtones can clash rather. (I'm assuming that Schoenberg is basically more or less right in his overtone-based physical explanation of relative harmonic consonance and dissonance.)

[Delicious Manager]

Many years ago I had a brief discussion with Lorin Maazel after he did the 6th with Cleveland and I asked him about why he used the bass clarinet. He gave the usual explanation, but was more concerned about timbre than dynamics. I argued that bassoon was the proper instrument because it gives closure to the exposition: the bassoon begins it, so it should end it. I was quite pleased to hear on his Cleveland recording on cd that came out just a few years later that he used the bassoon Not that he took my advice.

This is not a valid explanation. It suggests that Tchaikovsky didn't know about the bass clarinet, but he had used it several times before writing the Pathétique (eg The Nutrcracker, Manfred and Voyevoda). Therefore, the composer would have used the bass clarinet if that it what he wanted, surely.

[eschiss1]

there's a recording of the Night Wind sonata that's more to the point than the one I mentioned- one of the Berezovsky performances on YouTube (divided in 3 videos), which is rather a good and memorable performance but marred by very large - I'd say inexplicable - cuts (including the big fugato in the "finale" toward the end, among other things...

[mariusberg]

Someone forgot to mention Beecham/Goossens Messiah! As a listener I find the 1959 re-orchestration of Messiah to convey the same message as Händel's original version (or Mozart's re-orchestration, for that matter), I just find it a bit louder, updated and over-the-top, not unlike his original outdoor version of Music for the Royal Fireworks.

Is Beecham/Goossens still Händel? I mean yes, just capital letter Händel suited for post-romantic era ears.

[semloh]

I agree, mariusberg. After all, it certainly can't be mistaken for anything other than Handel's Messiah! I feel the same way about the big orchestral versions of the Fireworks and Water Music.... not that I don't appreciate the more 'authentic' small scale originals. 

(Interesting as this thread has become, I am not sure quite how it relates to UCs!  )

[Alan Howe]

(Interesting as this thread has become, I am not sure quite how it relates to UCs!  )

It doesn't, Colin. But the horse has bolted...

[Gauk]

It could ... conductors might feel more justified in taking a hatched to a little-known work in ways that they would not to something mainstream. As the thread has shown, there are plenty of cases of mainstream composers getting re-orchestrated, but would Stokowski have made such cuts in Beethoven 3 as he did in Gliere 3? And witness the butchery performed on Raff 3 in that old Vox recording, which I'm still angry about.

[eschiss1]

Well, maybe the better-known a work gets, the more its fans, who don't want to settle for cut (and badly, unmusicianly-cut) versions, the more pressure to hear it complete and done well, becomes real and not just the opinions of some ignorable minority. So maybe it's the other way around. Witness the history of Boris Godunov over the years, recently with a complete recording of both versions of the opera _separately_ (as against the version most often played before that, a conflation that makes no dramatic sense, and before that... etc.)

[mbhaub]

And witness the butchery performed on Raff 3 in that old Vox recording, which I'm still angry about.

I wish I had kept a copy of a magazine that reported on the recording session for that Vox recording. But I recall the conductor Richard Kapp commenting that some of the orchestra players were angry and even hostile about having to play this "bad" music. And when he announced the big cut in the finale, some players applauded - get this dreck over with asap! They should've kept quiet: at least on record, the Recklinghausen orchestra was one of the worst sounding groups out there.

[Richard Moss]

A week or so ago I downloaded (from e-music) Draeseke's Sym 3 (a NAXOS 'historical' recording).  When doing a bit of Googling to try and find out some background to this music, I found a comment that it had been severely cut compared to the original score. 

No mention of this on the NAXOS website and now I'm wondering how much I've missed compared say to the CPO recording and whether  (i) that comment was true and (ii) does it make much difference anyway?.

Does anyone have experience of the two  versions??

Ah well - C'est la Vie -  or should that be c'est la (commercial) guerre??

Cheers

Richard

[Alan Howe]

Unless I've missed something, the recording is complete. Here's an investigation into it at the Felix Draeseke Webpages:
http://www.draeseke.org/discs/URLP7162.htm