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| Gerard Lesne |
Reflections
on the Occasion of Goldberg’s 50th Issue
Goldberg’s
50th issue provides an excellent opportunity to take stock of the early music world within the context of the ten-year period
covered by those fifty beautifully produced editions. As one who has been involved with Goldberg since its first issue, it
might be appropriate to start by celebrating the positive contribution made by the magazine to encourage a greater understanding
and appreciation of the many facets of what we loosely term “early music”.
It was the important objective of Goldberg’s founder that it should employ language that would be understandable to
the generally interested reader, not scholars, whose interests were already covered by excellent specialist magazines. That
it has largely done so has surely been a major contribution to the success of Goldberg, which in this aspect alone remains
unique. It is also unique in two other respects. The first is the self-evident juxtaposition of text and fine art, a feature
responsible for the aesthetic pleasure to be gained simply from handling a copy of Goldberg. The other, the international
nature of Goldberg, is perhaps less immediately obvious, but is reflected in the wide variety of writers drawn from differing
cultures. This has given rise to a healthy disparity of approaches to, for example, CD reviewing. It is therefore perhaps
to be regretted that the strong showing of French writers featured in earlier issues is today rather less prominent, particularly
given the current strength of the French early music scene.
That
disparity, which tends to divide along lines of northern Europe and the USA, and the Latin races, is reflected in what is
arguably the single most significant development in early music during the past decade: the new internationalism that has
resulted from the vast strides made particularly in Italy, in Spain and – above all – in Latin America, opening
up new vistas and repertoires that add immeasurably to our knowledge and understanding of the music of the past. Along with
this broadening of the repertoire have come new ideas on performance, often challenging the hegemony enjoyed by northern Europe
during the first thirty or so years of the early music revival. At best, particularly in music of the Italian baroque, this
has resulted in performances that exude lively, colourful vitality and passion, with playing that glows with a warmth, luminosity
and rhythmic life. At worst, it has led to a highly mannered style of performance in which gross exaggeration of tempo and
dynamic extremes at times threatens to engulf the music in a tide of near brutality in quicker movements and an alien sentimentality
in slower music, robbing it of all semblance of eloquence.
The
wide diversity of performing styles – currently far wider than in the mainstream symphonic tradition – today challenges
the perceptions of both artist and writer, constantly calling on us to re-assess our own stance. It is surely another sign of the rude health of early music movement that it can accept that serious questions
about performance practice remain to be asked and debated. We are fortunate to have in our midst acute minds such as those
of Richard Taruskin and Bruce Haynes, men prepared to challenge and rudely reawaken our sometimes cosy world. In particular,
Haynes’ recent The End of Early Music should be obligatory reading for anyone seriously involved with early
music, as performer, writer or interested reader. Some of my own concerns were articulated in Goldberg 42 (p.12), so here
I’d like to throw into the ring, as it were, a further topic that is to me one of the most fundamental problems facing
early music, the thorny question of opera production. The perverse staging of early opera (or indeed any opera) is not exactly
a new subject, but it is one that I’d like to take from the specific angle of the conductors to whom I’ve spoken
on the topic in the course of many interviews undertaken for Goldberg. It is a source of constant amazement to find that so
many conductors who take considerable trouble to ensure their players are utilising the right instruments, bowing them correctly
and generally playing in what in broad terms we recognise as a historically informed way are happy to go into the opera house
to direct ill-conceived, historically ignorant productions. It is as if the very act of entering an opera house brings conductors
under the influence of an Alcina, casting a malign spell and inducing an act of collective amnesia that makes them forget
all the rigour they otherwise bring to music making. There seem to be nearly as many reasons advanced as to why they do so
as there are days in the year: “The public would not stand for a historical production”; “So long as it
is imaginative [!] and relevant I have no problem with up-dated productions” and so on and so forth. All such arguments
appear to me a supine acknowledgment of the status of the ubiquitous, all-powerful, self-serving directors who today plague
the opera houses of the world. Where is the conductor who will stand up and say, “No more. Enough is enough”?
This
and the following article first appeared in Goldberg Early Music Magazine and is reproduced by permission.
The Early Music World: No Room for Complacency
Placing a date on the
start of the early music “revival” with exactitude is a slippery business, but most people would probably opt
for the late 1960s as the period during which it first impinged on the consciousness. It was then that the early stirrings
of the idea that it was possible to recapture a historical method of performance employing the instruments of the time first
took root among such pioneers as Gustav Leonhardt and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. The following decade witnessed an extraordinary
expansion of the concept, an expansion that owes a large debt to a record industry eagerly seeking new repertoire. “Authenticity”
and “original instruments” became the new buzzwords. The new “early music movement” rapidly gained
strong supporters – and equally vigorous opponents. Later – much later in some cases – the groundwork established
by musicians in northern Europe started to bear fruit in more southerly European climes, first in France, then Spain and Italy.
Gradually, early music became the international phenomenon we at Goldberg now celebrate, although its reception in the United
States remains to this day ambivalent and sometimes conservative.
The foregoing précis would lead us
to suggest that early music has progressed from vibrant, questing childhood and adolescent certainty to confident, healthy
young adulthood. And so in many respects it has. Yet, it is my belief that, as is not uncommon, along with such an apparently
flourishing state there are concerns that need to be addressed, not the least of which is an overconfidence born of success.
Among the principal of these concerns is a lessening of the rigour that accompanied the work of many of those who found themselves
in the vanguard of the early music movement. As Leonhardt put it in his recent Goldberg interview: “I’ve detected
a certain attitude that says it is now easy to make money in the baroque world. You buy a cheap modern violin, put gut strings
on it and buy a sort-of old bow […] and off you go to perform, holding the violin squeezed up under the chin”.
The truth of Leonhardt’s observation is easily verified by observing the wide variety of positions and bowing techniques
adopted by violinists in many “period” instrument orchestras. Then there is the vexed question of singers, a problem
that has never been resolved and may even be getting worse. Gerard Lesne, one
of today’s most intelligent early music vocalists, articulated the problem succinctly in another Goldberg interview
(No. 30): "Let’s take vibrato, for instance. Frankly, what I hear sometimes tears my ears off. […] As far as voices
are concerned, things have definitely been going off track for the past ten years or so"[my italics]. There are,
too, other disturbing tendencies that have emerged in recent years. One particular concern is the unhealthy trend toward a
proprietorial attitude to one’s “own” national music. This appears to be particularly prevalent in Italy,
ignoring the fact that while Italy was undoubtedly the hub of innovation for much of the long period of musical history with
which we concern ourselves, music was also largely a trans-European art that crossed borders effortlessly.
All these, and such other unwelcome
recent developments as the obtrusive and sometimes gross over-elaboration of the role of the continuo are matters that concern,
or should concern, those of us who write about early music. Far too often they do not. Rather, the opposite is frequently
the case, with critics and reviewers only too ready to jump aboard the latest fashionable bandwagon. The reasons are not difficult
to determine. Outside academic circles, writing about music is largely a Cinderella activity, a poorly recompensed occupation
whose meagre financial rewards attract enthusiasts to its ranks rather than the truly informed expert in his or her field.
If this is true of general music writing, it applies particularly pertinently to early music journalism, too often a dangerously
cosy and incubated world inhabited by dilettantism. The lack of critical rigour resulting from an alarming ignorance of musical
history and understanding of performance practice manifests itself in the blandly expressed opinions and persistent celebration
of mediocrity that are a hallmark of too much writing on early music.
In praising Caesar rather than burying
him when he deserves to be buried, we provide no service to either performer or composer. The unjustified praise of music
by the latest obscure composer to be disinterred performs no service. Neither
does the uncritical reception of routine performances. Nor does passing over, either through ignorance or laziness, performance
practice solecisms. All do nothing more than contribute to the depressingly grey uniformity of opinion in the twenty-first
century. As critics, reviewers and article writers, all those of us who write on early music have a duty and purpose that
extends far beyond the simple endorsement of what is put before us. We need to be better informed, to be more discriminating,
but also to show the courage of our convictions more frequently. There will be times when we are wrong, occasions when we
offend or attract opprobrium. But we will at least be creating opportunities to make a more positive contribution to the performance
and appreciation of early music.
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