I'm not sure what you mean by that, but to the extent you imply that his
performances are based on musicology, for what it's worth he denies being
a musicologist.

 Herreweghe offers a radical interpretation of the Christian
: drama. Gone is the agony and grief suggested by "Come ye daughters, share my
: mourning ... he himself his cross is bearing" and in its place a jaunty
: opening chorus reflecting the joy of the liberating crucifixion. Jesus will,
: after all, rise again in three days bringing victory - and in the meantime
: the demons are happy. Purged of all negative emotions, this performance can
: be safely recommended for children everywhere.

Jauntiness is in the ear of the beholder, of course.  I wonder what you
make of Scherchen and Koussevitzky, who take a mere extra 10 and 30
seconds respectively over the opening chorus.

: It is NOT the tempo in itself, but the "pulse", the TACTUS [thank you,
: Max], the phrasing.

I dare say, but the original poster didn't explain.  And as I suggested,
it doesn't sound the least bit jaunty to me.

Sounds jaunty to me. I'll take Klemperer - I'm in no hurry.

Dave

Francis:

Matthew Westphal

  As you know all too well -- in the period-performance
renditions, the tempo for the opening tends to be faster,
causing some listeners reared on the Klemperer to be very put
out by its seeming shallowness and lack of a feeling of
emotional loss.

  Here's my own summary of the defense for the newer (to us)
approach (much discussed through the years on various forums).

  The opening, when we read the text carefully, has as much to
do with the marketplace as it does a funeral.  It's not so
much 'dance' - as some complain - (though baroque music just
tends to be based on dance) but the pulse of life, and here we
have people who are seeing Jesus marched through the streets but
who have no idea why, nor who he is.  What?  Who? is the
continuing voiced question.  The movement of daily life is the
focus, interrupted by these interjections, as people going about
their normal day wonder what is going on.

  In other words, the opening-scene/play is performed as if we are
back there, in the present, living/re-living that Passion-story,
rather than only remembering the ending of that story or even
noting it in advance though we sure have plenty of clues.

  So, rather than the lament we're used to hearing from
Klemperer (which I love), we're hearing something more like a
play -- the movement of notes now based on the other part of the
text of Bach's composition.  I think this is certainly a valid
interpretation of the music, even if what we're used to is valid
also, in another way - the Klemperer a lamentation based on what
we know is ahead, even if the people exclaiming 'Who? What?'
have no idea and at this point in the re-enacted Passion don't
care that much.

  My own preferred performance of the opening to the St. Matthew
would combine both approaches, as both are found in the music.
All in minor, and in one of the most beautiful series of
progressions we'll ever hear, we're told that behind the hurly
burly and the bzzz about who that is and what is happening, is a
universal horror story of what man will to our best and how
easily we can do it.

  So, I guess what I would like in another version is a somewhat
less leaden tempo, using instead the tension of the lines but
not short-shrifting the underlying sorrow of the storyteller,
while we also hear the sounds of ordinary life, of innocence and
curiosity, of people not yet touched by what is happening.

  - A

On 2 May 2000, Andrys D Basten wrote:

You presented well your case, but I simply don't believe that that is a
winning case.

1) Those rhetoric questions (part of the musical antiphonal concept
"staged" by Bach in Matthaus) cannot be undamagingly isolated from the
entire conception of the piece, or, if that's too much, from the initial
piece. How can one isolate the questions you are talking about from their
answers? How could one obscure that the CROSS appears from the first piece
(Holz zum Kreuze selber tragen!)? Then the concept of "innocent God's
lamb" (i.e. *sacrificial* Holy "Lamb"), already present in the fourth
verse, refers directly and painfully to the incoming scriptural facts.

2) The rhetoric questions of the choir may be: an oratoric pretext for
giving *the answers*; an (antique Greek tragedy choir-like) comment, which
may *seem* detached from the point of view of the "action", but it is very
much part of the dramatic web.

3) A la rigueur, the antiphonal concept present even in the first piece
may be imagined as to aggregate already the conflict between the two
"future" (in theatrical time) concepts of "human agglomeration"--cruel and
gregarious vs. communitarian and compassionate.

The "asking" crowd might be as well, perhaps, embodying the indifference,
the one that do not care about the divine message and messenger, thus
becoming the potential condemners of Jesus vs. the "answering" crowd may
be the conscious-become community unto faith.

4) Most important: the music itself. The tension created by the immensely
prolonged E pedal in the beginning, which bears the enormous "quiet
tumult" in the upper voices.

From a musical point of view, it is remarkable, in an 18th century piece,
written in a minor key, this continuation of such a pedal (and the
reiteration of it, later, on the dominant, presented as a *minor* chord as
well), as exceptional as the absence, on this pedal, of the dominant major
chord. We have, at least for part of the piece, only the [minor]
subdominant, the [minor as well!] dominant, and myriads of different
altered seventh and minor ninth chords, all of which objectively
contribute to build long-line tension, and not dancing-like staging of a
real (-only) people's being "surprised" and "informing" themselves
in the agora on "what's happening, folks?". Bach's use of harmony is so
masterful, that he makes the "lowest" (i.e. most "depressing") point of
his harmonic travaille to coincide with the words "auf unsre Schuld", the
psychological climax of the piece. Such words Bach, as a passionate
Christian, could not have intended to be said just as "un petit mot en
passant". He did mean them, ritually *and* literally.

5) Architecture: Bach was one of the greatest "organicists" in music, but
was as well the splendid architect we (perhaps better) know. The initial E
Minor piece is one of the two (or three, if we count the middle one, in E
Major, if memory serves) great pillars of the whole Matthaus-P,
corresponding to the final C Minor one.

Yes, between the beginning and the end, something "evolved" but something
remained "the same" as well, as in Christian theology Jesus' drama is
*concretely* "happening" all the time, 'till the end of history, but
Christ, as Son of God, transfigured figure beyond history, the "Word
that was in the beginning", Christ will exist before the beginning as he
existed after the end (pardon my wilfully contorted tenses).
Matthaus-Passion does "evolve" and does "become", but a tragic
wind blows powerfully from the first low E of this masterpiece, because
the knowledge of the tragic exit informs each temporally-"staged" Passion.  

(I always wondered if this beginning inspired Brahms in his own beginning,
on an F pedal, of the German Requiem).

I would also add that the choice of fast tempi is not the first and
foremost problem in the HIP versions I've heard. Actually I always found
the tempo adopted by Klemperer a bit slow, *in principle*, if, however,
perfectly justified by that particular master. Also the problems are not
necessarily the period instruments or the soloists or the choirs (which,
sometimes, especially the choirs I've heard, happen to be truly excellent)
but the conductor and his musical conceptions. Harnoncourt conducted
awfully SMP even with Concertgebouworkest. Some good soloists were
wasted, IMO, in terribly conducted recordings. If, in the opening mvt. of
SMP, the conductor's MAIN concern is rendering the 12/8 rhythm in an
um-pah-pah, um-pah-pah manner, this approach, combined with the fastish
tempo, gives an involuntarily funny and undeniably inappropriate waltz
spirit, obscuring in the same time the "urlinie" that grants organicity to
the music, as well as the radical harmonic events that should inform the
color and the phrasing of the poli-melodic texture. (A very simple example:
right in the beginning, there is a fundamental line,  e--f#-g#-a-b-c#-d#-e
line, hidden in the rich texture, and having a rhythm of its own,
compellingly irregular--[unwritten] dotted half-notes mixed with
quarter-notes. With Harnoncourt, the obstinacy of the dancing, invariable
rhythmicized ornamentation makes the grander line [that reflects the
harmonic progression] indistinguishable. Harnoncourt's use of staccato
also obnubilates, even in HIP terms, the cathedral resonance that makes
the staccato more a matter of eloquent declamation -- clearly *started*,
"attacked" sounds that reverberate freely afterwards, than a matter
of concrete, aural shortness, sounds being drastically cut). More some
other time.

Oh, I suspect I could guess....  Do you have any idea who his soloists
are?  If he uses that hellish countertenor who kills the music allotted to
him in the "Epiphany Mass" I won't be amused.

Re your long answer on the opening of the St. Matthew - I agree
re the importance of the long pedal point and all that it means,
but I still say that one can't then just ignore all the other
elements because one is fixed on the eternal meaning of it all
and wanting all that is happening expressed in only one way.

  A very important part of the Christian story IS that people
are not aware (within that religion's view) of "who" or "what"
Jesus was and it's not at all, as you infer, that they would
represent those who are "hostile" later to him but mainly those
who are AFFECTED by the life and death of the man but are not
aware of the grand mystery behind it.  They represent the
earthbound, the REASON for the death in the first place.  This
element, this other pulse of life, is just as important as the
other ones you describe well. It's part of the entire fabric,
the reason that particular life (and death) was needed.  It also
needs representation in the feel of the piece.  Like so much
music, this is about conflict, and should not be just a very
slow (some have said "lugubrious") movement.

 Still, I enjoy both approaches I've heard.  Still wondering if
I can hear something that expresses the whole a bit more.

 - Andrys

On 3 May 2000, Andrys D Basten wrote:

I think, speaking of "level", that there is the time that this entire line
of "dialogue" be buried, for good.

samir ghiocel golescu <gole...@students.uiuc.edu> schreef in berichtnieuws
Pine.GSO.4.10.10005031145540.1160-100...@ux4.cso.uiuc.edu...

Regards,

Hou Fang-Lin <f...@midway.uchicago.edu> schreef in berichtnieuws
4c_P4.52$x3.671@uchinews...

Regards,

This "SMP's No. 1 is a Siciliano and Sicilianos are necessarily not slow,
therefor SMP's No. 1 is necessarily not slow" is, IMHO, a false syllogism,
exposed as such within two species of fallacy: the historicist and the
collectivist. The historicist fallacy considers Bach's historic
inclusion to the "Baroque category" as preponderant in front of his
unique, historic *and trans-historic*, musical personality. The
collectivist fallacy tries to "keep Bach in line" with many of his
contemporaries, meritorious composers without a doubt, some of them more
than meritorious, but NOT "Bachs".

: I apologize, but IMO referring to that piece as "simply" being a
: siciliano, *having* to be as all sicilianos are "supposed" to be, is as
: little supportable as claiming that all symphonic "allegros" in sonata
: form have to be played as Haydn's Allegro from Symphony xx(x) are supposed
: to be played. The fact that *one* of the roots of certain forms or genres
: Bach used might be found in certain types of dance music does not mean at
: all, IMO, that the way BACH (not "Baroque Music in general", whatever that
: may be) used them *has* to oblige the parameters those forms of dance
: music evolved within, generally speaking. Not more so than Mahler's "minuets"
: "have" to be performed in the same way (tempos, inner tension etc.) as
: Haydn's minuets. Bach was as far from many of his contemporaries as Mahler
: from Haydn, in many aspects of his musical language. Give me, pray one
: other "Siciliano" that uses the very harmonic language Bach employed in
: composing his SMP beginning.

Well, finally we agree about *something* re the SMP....  (Just think how
deadly performances of Chopin's waltzes would be if they were merely to be
danced to.)

: This "SMP's No. 1 is a Siciliano and Sicilianos are necessarily not slow,
: therefor SMP's No. 1 is necessarily not slow" is, IMHO, a false syllogism,
: exposed as such within two species of fallacy: the historicist and the
: collectivist. The historicist fallacy considers Bach's historic
: inclusion to the "Baroque category" as preponderant in front of his
: unique, historic *and trans-historic*, musical personality. The
: collectivist fallacy tries to "keep Bach in line" with many of his
: contemporaries, meritorious composers without a doubt, some of them more
: than meritorious, but NOT "Bachs".

I'm not sure it's an example of either of those mistakes (I dare say one
could equally well argue that apparent sicilianos shouldn't be fast in
other composers' music in similar contexts).  There are two (at least)
different questions here: is Bach's music (un)like his contemporaries' in
important ways?; and is it likely that Bach's music was performed in much
the same way that other baroque music was played?  I think one can
simultaneously maintain without contradiction that his music in a
different class, that it was nevertheless played in the same general style
as other contemporary music but that this does not entail that we should
perform it in that way (to the extent we can ever know what that was), and
that merely to classify something as a siciliano (or waltz or minuet or
bouree etc.) is not, without more, to explain how it should be performed.