Raff/Järvi Chandos vol. 2 - Symphony 5 etc.

[Mark Thomas]

That's a fascinating insight, Martin. Thank you. As for the issue of whether the Müller-Reuter "average concert timings" were indicative of cuts routinely being made in Lenore, well yes, you'd think so, except that he makes the point in his introduction to the book that all his timings are for "full" performances.  That said, amongst Raff's symphonies, not only is Lenore credited with being of 35 minutes duration, but In den Alpen is 33 minutes and Im Walde 31 minutes! The other symphonies are much more in line with modern practice and the gargantuan An das Vaterland (surely also a candidate for cuts if Lenore was) is clocked at 69 minutes, which seems about right. I just don't know.

[mbhaub]

This might be interesting, but require someone with more computer skills than I have. I know that there's a way of increasing the speed of a sound file without changing the pitch - but I don't know what software to use, much less how to use it. Take the first movement from cleanest sounding recording of Lenore, increase the speed by 40% or whatever it takes to get it to fit the 8 minute mark. What would it sound like? Not that anyone would do it like that (the slow sections would especially be wrong), but it would be interesting to hear nonetheless.

[Mark Thomas]

I have the software for the job, Martin, but to be honest I've never seen the point because it is just so manifestly wrong.

[Mark Thomas]

That said, for anyone interested here's a zip file with all four of Lenore's movements speeded up to match the timings given by Müller-Reuter in his Lexikon:

I.  8 mins  II. 9 mins  III. 7 mins   IV. 10 mins   Total: 35 mins

I have cheated slightly - the first movement is 8½ minutes long - I figured that Müller-Reuter rounded down!

[Alan Howe]

Wrong, wrong. Manifestly....

[Mark Thomas]

Oh, absolutely.

[mbhaub]

Alvin and the Chipmunks do Raff...

Some of the slower parts of I weren't as bad as I expected - the faster parts are nuts.

II loses everything

III is ridiculous. This is no march.

There HAD to be cuts. Maybe he meant "complete" in the sense of the Marco Polo Raff 3rd (or the Candide/Vox recording for that matter.)

It was fun to listen too, but just so very wrong. Although, The Ring...

[eschiss1]

Combining this and Walker's (and many others' that I've not read) discussions of traditions of (often actually fairly well-considered, not actually always particularly butcher-y in artistic quality) cuts in 19th-century music I find myself wondering how long a Raff symphony did last in actual typical (and typically cut) 19th-century performance during, and shortly after, Raff's lifetime (before the more recent desire on the part of some of us to have these works exactly as written- when such a beast can be well-defined, which is sometimes but not, of course, as often as would like- a mostly separate issue, maybe.)

[adriano]

To calm down this rather absurd craze in here about tempi and Metronome, let me tell you another story: In Arthur Honegger's Paris flat, there still stands his pyramid Metronome, which was given him by his mother when he was a student. Honegger's daughter told me once that it could be found out that its beat was slightly slower, in other words not corresponsing to reality. Honegger, however, did not care about this and carried on composing (and writing out) his tempi according to this Metronome.

[Mark Thomas]

I do agree that this speculation gets us nowhere, as do Müller-Reuter's timings. Yes, there had to be cuts, I agree, and we don't now what was cut (and where) and what wasn't.

[Alan Howe]

It may not get us anywhere - but at least we know that there's more to M-R's timings than meets the eye.

[Mark Thomas]

Or less than meets the ear, in Lenore's case!

[eschiss1]

The Ballad of Lenore's Timings?

[chill319]

Regarding the relativity of tempi: Other members may remember an interview with Karajan published when his third Beethoven cycle was released. K stated that after performances were put on tape he took dubs to his chalet in Switzerland to give them a critical listen. He expected to do some nit-picking but to his astonishment, it immediately became clear that ALL his tempi were too fast. Repeated listening only confirmed his reaction. Discouraged, he returned to Berlin. He talked to the DG engineers about what he had discovered and played them some samples to illustrate. Except that back in Berlin, the tempi sounded right. K hypothesized that some physical change -- perhaps in metabolism -- due to the significant change in elevation was responsible for his different experiences of tempi.

[Mark Thomas]

It gets a very positive review in this month's Gramophone.