Both innovators - Harnoncourt and Boulez

Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Pierre Boulez  each in their own different ways, transformed  performance practice, and, indeed, the whole way music is approached in modern Europe.  It wasn't simply a question of repertoire. Both conducted Janáček and Bruckner, for example, but drawing comparison between their recordings is just plain stupid. Good conductors find something to say about the music they engage with. That's why we keep listening, again and again, learning from the different approaches of conductors who care enough about the music to keep uncovering what lies within.   Even within the worlds of "modern" and "historically informed", the range of difference between conductors (and composers) is so great as to make direct comparison irrelevant.

To appreciate the links between Boulez and Harnoncourt, we need to escape the straitjackets of terminology and focus instead on the deeper philosophy that motivated both conductors.

Both began their careers in an era when technology changed the market for serious music.  Within a very short time, the recording industry reshaped public perceptions.  Music became a standardized "consumer product", where what counted was how things were sold. Any product designed for the mass market has to appeal to the maximum possible audience. This changes the balance from creative development to "what the buyer expects".  Not the same thing.

Harnoncourt reacted against this by rethinking instruments and the physicality of sound.  Historically informed practice gets a bad reputation because many assume that it's fetish. But as someone said, "We don't eat baroque food". We can't be as baroque people were, so perfect authenticity just isn't possible.  But we can rethink and learn.  It's a myth that smaller ensembles are somehow "weaker". Consider the audacity and adventure of the Renaissance, of the Age of Discoveries, of the Reformation and Counter-Reformastion, and of Louis XIV, whose vision wasn't fettered by petty concerns.  The dominance of 19th century industrial-era values are not the only way to go. In fact, the Romantic Revolution and the changes that followed was far more radical than some realize.  History doesn't stay frozen. Neither Harnoncourt nor Boulez were rebelling per se, but processing the concepts of innovation that have always been behind genuine creativity. It's significant that both Harnoncourt and Boulez were hated by some in their profession precisely because they didn't play the game.Hence the nasty myths that circulate about them being "dangerous".

Ironically, the use of period instruments is a red herring.  It's not so much what you're playing with, as why.  What really counts is fidelity to the composer and what might have been behind his work. Modern music played on modern  instruments reflects this fundamental fidelity.

Coming of age during the war, when performances were limited, and recordings relatively rare, Boulez went back to source, learning directly from scores.  Like Harnoncourt, he was thinking afresh.  The silly myths about him as demon do not  tally with reality. He was exceptionally erudite, with a strong grounding in philosophy, literature and music history and knew the music of the past, even if he didn't conduct or record much. It was enough for him that others were doing that. Intellectually inquisitive, he liked exploring fairly uncharted territory, hence his fascination with Debussy, Schoenberg, Stravinsky and the twentieth century.  Hans Rosbaud knew what he was doing when he persuaded Boulez to start a second career as conductor. Boulez saw himself primarily as a composer, and said that shaped the way he conducted.  Because he had such respect , he was not an "interventionist" nor imposing his ego.  All performance involves interpretation, but interpretation should be based on reasoned understanding.  Boulez's passions were white hot, all the more intense because he didn't do things for show. 

What Harnoncourt and Boulez had in common was a fundamental respect for music, and for the composers they conducted.  Both had uncompromising integrity. Neither courted the popular market. To them, the idea of music as "consumer product" was anathema.  Instead they cultivated excellence, pursuing the highest possible standards. It's not for nothing both created their own orchestras, amd frequently worked with smaller ensembles where every individual musician was part of the creative process. And they weren't alone. Think Claudio Abbado, with whom Boulez worked closely, and of William Christie, who shared Harnoncourt's values but with a very different style. Strong personalities with distinctive styles but not corporate market-driven egotists.  Perhaps that's why there's such variety in modern European music. Maybe not as much as could be, since ultimately the business has to deal with economic and social realities. But without people like Harnoncourt, Boulez and those with their lively, open minds, we'd be a whole lot worse off.

Pleaseuse the labels below to read my numerous posts on Harnoncourt, Boulez , baroque and modern music

Vindicated at Salzburg: Harnoncourt's magnificent Mozart 2012

Why is it "news" that Karajan hated Harnoncourt's guts? Surprise, surprise. Harnoncourt stood for everything Karajan wasn't.  The thought of Bernstein and Harnoncourt, well...;.   Harnoncourt, like most truly original personages,  didn't need anyone else to prove himself.  HERE is a link to Harnoncourt's magnificent Salzburg Mozart concert in 2012 : "Litaniae de venerabili altaris sacramento KV 243 et la Messe longue en do majeur KV 262. Les solistes Sylvia Schwartz (soprano), Elisabeth von Magnus (mezzo-soprano), Jeremy Ovenden (ténor) et Florian Boesch (bariton) ont été accompagnés par le Arnold Schoenberg Chor et l'Ensemble für Alte Musik d'Harnoncourt, le Concentus Musicus de Wien." Total vindication !  Please also see my piece Nikolaus Harnoncourt : his true significance.   Harnoncourt and those of his mindset - even with very different repertoires -  transformed modern ideas on performance practice  and made European music what it is today.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt - his true significance

Nikolaus Harnoncourt has died, weeks after posting a hand-written farewell note on his website, a personal touch which shows the measure of the man (Read it here). Harnoncourt's values.transformed the whole way in which music is approached.  His insights into the spirit of the baroque illuminate approaches to repertoire far beyond his own areas of expertise - respect for the composer and period, respect for individuality and well-informed experimentation. Note, well-informed and  disciplined, not self-indulgence for the sake of ego. Harnoncourt connected the adventurous spirit of the baroque to modern music making, connecting European performance practice to its fundamental roots. He wasn't the only one to do so, but it's no exaggeration to say that, without him,  European music wouldn't be what it is. I've written quite a bit about the way baroque values apply to new music - there are connections between baroque values and Boulez!

It's highly significant that the start of his career coincided with the boom in commercial recording, where music was packaged and made available as consumer product, reaching audiences who didn't necessarily have musical grounding but were shaped by what they bought. In principle, that's no bad thing, but consider the values of the Cold War - conformity, fear of the unknown, dependence on the trappings of success. Hence the taste for "classics", for "interventionist" interpretation, for big, flashy orchestras.    Harnoncourt's interest in the baroque stemmed from reappraising the past, when live performance connected players and audience, when music was made in nice surroundings, but where the emphasis was on serious listening.

Harnoncourt made his own instruments, not just because he was a sculptor but also because he wanted to understand the physicality of sound and how each instrument has an individual voice. He studied original manuscript  scores to get a better idea of how music might have sounded to a composer.  The idea that historically-informed performance is wimpy and weedy is nonsense.  "(We) don't eat baroque food!" he said, meaning that no-one can truly replicate the baroque mindset. "I'm not a warden in a museum".  What mattered were principles - clarity, discipline, integrity.   Maybe even the idea that maybe we don't know everything and need to keep learning.

HERE is a link to a documentary made for Harnoncourt's 80th birthday. At first, it might seem  it hasn't much to do with music, but persist. Its real title is "A Journey into the self". What we see is a portrait of the man and the motivations behind what he did.  Hence, no dogmas, no formulae.

See also my "Harnoncourt against the safe and bland"  which has a link to a BBC interview which is still live.

Personal message from Nikolaus Harnoncourt

With this brief but personal note to his "Liebe Publikum", Nikolaus Harnoncourt has announced his retirement at the age of 86.  The note kind of sums up Harnoncourt's direct and personal way of doing things.

In his own quiet way, Harnoncourt transformed music, not just period performance. When he began conducting in the early post-war years,  he became aghast at the fashion for safe and bland performances. Concentus Musicus Wien began as a group of musicians playing for their own pleasure. They had to copy manuscripts by hand, and track down authentic instruments to experiment with, some of which were bought with private funds. This "band of renegades " as was described in an interview (READ MORE HERE and listen to the interview HERE), (Link is still live after nearly 4 years) were exploring new approaches to repertoire, informed by what a composer might have heard. " I tried to understand what a composer meant".

Douglas Boyd - Garsington Opera at Wormsley

 “Aim for excellence”, says Douglas Boyd, new Artistic Director of Garsington Opera at Wormsley, “and the audience will follow you”.
Wise words. With the spectacular new Pavilion, Garsington Opera is on the verge of great new things. Read the FULL INTERVIEW here in Opera Today. 

"Excellence is an ideal he learned from his earliest days as a musician, playing the oboe in Claudio Abbado’s European Community Youth Orchestra and later in the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. “Abbado has an absolutely enormous influence on me”, he adds, explaining how Abbado’s ideals shape his vision"...

“Abbado instilled into us right from the start that excellence is a fundamental to strive for. It’s not a given. Although we were young, we played each concert as if our lives depended on it. So my mantra is “dedication and energy”. When you aim for the highest possible level of excellence, then you start with a fighting chance”.

The new season at Garsington Opera at Wormsley starts on 7th June with Mozart Die Entführung aus dem Serail. This will be followed by Giacomo Rossini’s Maometto Secondo in its first full performance in this country. Garsington Opera is famous for Rossini specialities. This will be the twelfth new Rossini production staged here since 1994.  Maometto Secondo is particularly interesting, especially in modern times. Read more here. The main summer Festival concludes with Englebert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel.

For more details, please see the Garsington Opera at Wormsley website.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt against the bland and safe

Nikolaus Harnoncourt doesn't do small talk, so the idea of him giving an interview to the normally vacuous BBC Radio 3 Music Matters seemed a contradiction. But a reader who listened wrote me, praising the interview highly. Listen because it's a real interview, where Harnoncourt is talking in depth and saying controversial things from the heart. He opens out because the interviewer, Suzy Klein, is intelligent.  When you have subjects like Harnoncourt, you don't do sloppy technique. Klein is good, and Harnoncourt responds. This is the sort of thing BBC Radio 3 should be doing if it's to maintain its credibilty.

Harnoncourt talks about his early life in a way that informs what he went on to do. He wanted to be a sculptor. Though he became a musician, that feeling for wood and organic shapes informed his musicianship. Later he would work with ancient instruments that had been locked away in monasteries since their suppression under Joseph II. Instruments have individual voices, and as a string player himself, Harnoncourt appreciated the sounds they "wanted to produce".  Harnoncourt's fascination with period instruments stems from this respect for individuality. He hates dogma. Historicism for its own sake is out, too. He prefers working with musicians who don't specialize. "They don't eat baroque food!" he says, meaning that no-one can truly replicate the baroque mindset. "I'm not a warden in a museum". The great works of history "have no time, the works of Leonardo da Vinci, of the Greek sculptors, of Mozart, they have no time,  they are always up to date and never old". What we learn from period practice is a more sensitive way of listening to instruments and to music.

Harnoncourt speaks about orchestral traditions. In the past, Viennese orchestras were dominated by Czech players. "It was said that only Czechs could play horns properly", he says, "and string players were Hungarian, who knew the gypsy style". In Harnoncourt's youth, American money and American orchestras swept in. "I hated the sound of American orchestras, " he says, where every note is polished and correct. Of George Szell, with whom he worked, he says "He should be happy that I didn't kill him...  there was not one minute of music making", Harnoncourt mimics Otto Klemperer's disdain""Szell? Look at him".  "But he was a kind of god and all the American orchestras tried to imitate him". "Americans are so afraid of making cracks on tones that they shorten their instruments so they will not crack. But that's not music, it is security. For me, security and beauty are not compatible, at all. When you seek beauty you have to go to the rim of catastrophe". If one of his musicians "cracks" because he risks everything to get beauty and fails, "then I thank him for the failure. If you seek security you should find another profession".

So safe, bland and international doesn't appeal to Harnoncourt. Concentus Musicus Wien began as a group of musicians playing for their own pleasure. They had to copy manuscripts by hand, and track down authentic instrumenst to experiment with, some of which were bought with private funds. This "band of renegades " as Suzy Klein describes them, were exploring new approaches to repertoire, informed by what a composer might have heard. " I tried to understand what a composer meant". True artists, like Casals, Busch and even Alfred Deller weren't afraid to make stylistic mistakes if they expressed the true spirit of the music. Erich Kleiber, "the real Kleiber" as Harnoncourt calls him, was so good that if "I had more real musicians like that I would not have left the orchestra". Harnoncourt dismisses the idea of conductors as superheroes ("Karajan had to fight politically to keep his 'von'")  and doesn't like the term Maestro, which he personally reserves for his hairdresser. For him, the composer is god.

Listen to the interview HERE til Sunday. It puts the controversy of HIP versus non-HIP into perspective.  Please also see another voice of common sense "Is Sir Colin more HIP than he lets on?"