Unfaithful to the Score?

[Gauk]

Well, tempo and dynamics are both essentially the phrasing of a performance, whereas the instrumentation is part of the text of the piece. Metronome markings are like stage directions in a play. Directors often modify a playwright's precise stage directions, but this doesn't stop it being the same play. But major directions like entrances and exits have to be observed; equally, a conductor may have their own idea about precidely how fast andante moderato should be taken, but it won't be the same as allegro vivace. Changing the scoring of a piece, though, is like giving the lines from one character in a play to a different one.

In the case of a painting, the performer is the same as the viewer. You interpret the Mona Lisa in the act of seeing it.

[bulleid_pacific]

@Gauk:  You make some valid points and as I said before, I'm playing devil's advocate because I'd hate to live in a world where all performances were the same - that's why I have multiple recordings of many works - even unsung ones like the Raff symphonies.

Nevertheless, people *do* touch up the scoring in performances and I'm a bit uneasy about that.  I suspect that sometimes the orchestration of a particular work doesn't sound very successful to modern conductors because modern symphony orchestra instruments (especially brass) are very different indeed to their predecessors of 150 years ago... I'm not a big fan of HIP but the criticisms of Schumann's orchestration (for example) which have persisted for many years don't seem to me to carry so much weight when contemporary instruments are used.  Still, Mahler was a bit of an orchestration expert and he clearly didn't think Schumann had made the best of his material.....

[Gauk]

Bruckner 7 - cymbal crash or not in the slow movement? I prefer not, but it is harder to bring the moment off without it.

[mbhaub]

I always feel sorry the for the poor percussionist who has to sit through all that music to play only one single note in the whole thing. One cymbal crash that is a remarkable show of chutzpah, grossly out of place, and completely disrespectful of the composer is the one Szell adds to the last movement of the Tchaikovsky 5th. If it weren't for that dumb move I would rank that recording near the top of the heap.

[TerraEpon]

Bringing up Tchaikovsky "for a single moment" is an interesting case. It's VERY common for a very quiet bassoon part to be played on bass clarinet instead -- and there's no bass clarinet otherwise. I actually was at a concert where they did this, and the bass clarinetist (who happened to be my teacher, not that it matters...) did indeed sit there the whole symphony just for that one short passage.
Is playing a part on an instrument to get the dynamic right more important than keeping the instrumentation right? In this case, most people seem to believe it is.

[Josh]

My experience with the music of Sibelius ranges from dislike to near-hatred. Now, I try never to mention what I dislike on this or any other message board, because nobody enjoys that (including me). In this case, though, I have something specific in mind. And that is the ending to the Symphony #7 by Sibelius. While I don't like the vast majority of that work, but the very ending is incredible to me. I love it. And I recommend going to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._7_(Sibelius)#Tempo_I_.28bb._522-525.29

and checking out the two clips. One is the formerly-popular addition of a blaring trumpet to the end, compared to the original score of the composer.  And this - even though I don't like Sibelus - is what springs to my mind instantly upon checking out this thread. The Ormandy/Philadelphia Orchestra version is an atrocity, in my opinion. The Wikipedia caption with the excerpt says: "Eugene Ormandy decided to boost the violin melody with a trumpet in this 1962 studio recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Ormandy also adds a crescendo and a fermata to the final chord, something many conductors do in an attempt to make Sibelius's stark ending sound more conventional." Well, if Ormandy were still living and I met him, I'd have some very sharp questions to ask about this abhorrent near-destruction of the very core and value of Sibelius' actual writing here to conclude his final surviving symphony.  Who the hell did he think he was?

But once you go back earlier chronologically in compositions, it just gets worse. It gets so much worse that I won't even get into describing my feelings on it directly.  I append here my open letter to a famous conductor, lamenting what I call "Mahlerized Mozart".  Not that I'm saying Mahler had anything to do with it, just that most mid/late 20th century conductors employed orchestras that were suitable for Mahler symphonies, and used them to perform, say, a Joseph Haydn symphony.


Dear Mr. Leonard Bernstein

The way you and your orchestra just recorded that Beethoven Symphony #8... there are two possibilities:

A) Beethoven was a bad orchestrator
B) You and your modern, huge orchestra are wrong for this, and doing it wrong

Now, having heard Gardiner with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, I now am convinced Beethoven was not the bad orchestrator that all the famous conductors/orchestras of the 20th century had me convinced he was. So I'm going to go with Option B. I honestly thought, for years, based on the performances and recordings I heard of Beethoven orchestral works, that Beethoven was a BAD ORCHESTRATOR. And, if what I heard was accurate to what Beethoven wrote, and he wrote for the orchestras I was hearing, then yes, I stand by that: he would have been a bad orchestrator.

PS: Mr. Bernstein, absolutely love your Strauss disc from the Sony set of "The Royal Edition". I think you earned a spot in Heaven for that alone, so I won't curse you to the underworld for your evil destruction of J. Haydn, W.Mozart, Beethoven, &c.  But never, ever do it again.  You won't?  Well, all right then, much appreciated, we'll get along fine. Stay to the LATE 19th century, or into the 20th, and I've not so much problem with you or your large orchestras (complete with timpani with padded sticks... Beethoven would have probably changed his writing if he'd had those in mind! Especially perhaps in the 6th symphony which you butchered to the point of nearly making me vomit while employing your orchestra with 856 First Violins, 845 Second Violins, 375 oboes, 296 flutes... sorry, I'd better stop here).

[bulleid_pacific]

What do we think about the tuba in the Largo of the New World symphony?  The tuba player has to turn up for roughly 14 ppp notes IIRC, may have nothing else to play in the entire gig, doubles the bass trombone at the octave throughout and doesn't blend well with trombone tone.  Should (s)he be dispensed with? 

[Alan Howe]

No. Just make sure he's awake by ensuring that the piece is played as though it's never been heard before. Try Cambreling's performance for an idea of how this might be achieved...

[mbhaub]

Bringing up Tchaikovsky "for a single moment" is an interesting case. It's VERY common for a very quiet bassoon part to be played on bass clarinet instead -- and there's no bass clarinet otherwise. I actually was at a concert where they did this, and the bass clarinetist (who happened to be my teacher, not that it matters...) did indeed sit there the whole symphony just for that one short passage.

Poor guy! Every time I've played that symphony and the conductor wants the bass clarinet instead of bassoon it's the 2nd clarinet player who switches to bass clarinet for that one measure. And everytime I've played the Pathetique it was as a percussionist. You sit and sit just to play cymbals or bass drum in the third movement - but what a part!

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.

[Mark Thomas]

What, no mention of "Haub, Martin" in the Maazel autobiography? Shame on him!

[Gauk]

Bernard Levin once wrote a very tongue-in-cheek article in which he suggested that the Musician's Union should take a hand and insist on equal work for all players. If Bruckner was so unkind to write one note for the triangle in 40 mins, the poor trianglist should be allowed a little cadenza every so often to give him something to do.

[mbhaub]

I've been the sole percussionist for many concerts where all I have to play is triangle. Dvorak 9th, Brahms 4th, Liszt PC 1, and others. I do feel guilty that I get paid the same as a section player, who play thousands of more notes (violins). My Grover triangle kit cost me 100 USD compared to ridiculously expensive instruments the rest of the gang plays. My triangle fit is a jacket pocket, something only the piccolo player can do. I get to leave early or come in late. I get to read lots of books. And I still get paid the same. What a scam!

[TerraEpon]

Yeah but playing the triangle IS harder than it looks....so there's that.

[Gauk]

You have more counting to do ...

[chill319]

On this topic, I commend Busoni's "The Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music" to forum members. Nothing is the "last word" on this topic, and the work of I.A. Richards -- later than Busoni -- is crucial, but Busoni's thoughts have stayed with me as vital expressions of something lived and experienced by a genius.