The organ

[AdamSmith]

And yet comparison even with Koopman's extraordinary artistry may show why I find Chapuis to have reached certain heights that others in living memory just have not.

 

[whipped guy]

Okay, the two of you have used the acronym often enough for me to ask WTF is HIP? Google was no help. Historically informed performance? I was kinda expecting something to do with original instruments.

 

My current copy of the Messiah is a CD of the Academy of Ancient Music conducted by Hogwood, but the Harnoncourt version of "For Unto Us A Child Is Born" sounds suspiciously familiar. But I think the version the Hogwood replaced because I couldn't find a CD version of it was the Mackerras one.

 

DING DING DING!

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historically_informed_performance

 

At times the term HIP is used when discussing performances using modern instruments to emphasize the fact that certain HIP practices are used with modern instruments such as judicious or total non-use of vibrato, taking repeats in the da capo of minuets, a tendency for faster tempos in slow movements, etc. In some quarters it is emphatically not a compliment. As an example check out reviews by Donald Vroon in the American Record Guide who uses the term in a derogatory fashion! As an example Mr. Vroon prefers Sir Thomas Beecham's Haydn to that of virtually any modern conductor bemoaning the lack of warm vibrato (modern stringed instruments were designed to be played with a certain amount of vibrato in his book) as well a the tendency for swifter tempos in most modern performances.

[whipped guy]

Since I mentioned Donald Vroon who is the editor as well as a contributing reviewer at the American Record Guide, I need to mention his unique writing style. His reviews tend to be succinct and to the point. There is not one extraneous or unnecessary word, only the exact number of words required to get his message across. Here is an example of a complete review of a recording of Mozart Piano Concerti by Kristian Bezuidenhout and the Freiburgh Baroque Orchestra which was placed after a review of pianist Alfred Brendal in similar repertory.

 

After Brendel this is miserable. Squeaks and scrapes pretend to be an orchestra, and they have other PPP manerisms, like weird swelling in the middle of held notes. Listen to No. 12 in both recordings and let me know if you can honestly prefer this nonsense.

 

Note to @quoththeraven : PPP = Period Performance Practice not ppp = pianississimo!

 

With Mr. Vroon there is no doubt where he stands. If you like HIP performances this recording might be your cup of tea.

[+ honcho]

The wierd swelling in the middle of held notes comes as a normal consequence of using a baroque bow instead of a modern one. And then wind players are asked to emulate what the strings do naturally.

 

I got recruited for the baroque ensemble at school for this semester and was expected to do that (even as an oboe player),

and also not use any vibrato at all. (Despite the fact that the pricey counter-tenor they hired as a soloist used it judiciously as a vocal ornament).

[Nvr2Thick]

[AdamSmith]

BTW. One should, in best source-mode criticism (that term stolen from my native land of lit-crit), reveal one's influences.

 

Those are, in the case of my worship of Chapuis, that the organ faculty at Oberlin (my connection to which I will defer to a later discursus, except to mention that is where Duke poached Fenner Douglass from, with the Flentrop commission) generally considered Chapuis the organist's organist.

 

As Wallace Stevens was frequently viewed as 'the poet's poet.'

[AdamSmith]

I was saving this piece for you!!! . No way was I going to post it! Also the Charles Munch recording is the ideal choice! Kudos! First, Munch was Alsatian French and had the French repertory in his blood. In addition, the recording is a classic example of an RCA Living Stereo recording that was recorded in three channels to offer a better two channel stereo mix. There was no fiddling with dials and highlighting of instruments as later became the fashion. Just a simple three microphone setup. It's funny how the early simple techniques often seem to give the best results. It was considered an audiophile recording in its day and while not state of the art today it holds up quite well with its natural perspective. Plus, the engineers were working in Boston's Symphony Hall and were intimately familiar with its fine acoustics. Still, the key to success is Munch.

 

I recall as a child hearing that Munch's successor in Boston Erich Leinsdorf would give the BSO the Germsnic roots that were necessary for the meat of the classical repertory. However, at what price??? Nowadays there seems to be a blending of styles and the French rep seems to have suffered the most.

 

 

P.S. These MP3 files are really dreadful.

[whipped guy]

 

P.S. These MP3 files are really dreadful.

As are many MP3's!!! Of course it is said that 128 Kbps is sufficient, but I disagree. They start to sound decent at 192 and 256. When you get to 320 Kbps they are cooking, but there still is nothing like a WAVE file! For space issues using FLAC helps. Still ironically at times with a low bit rate they can sound decent as by some strange occurrence what is lost in the MP3 process somehow makes things sound better.

[+ honcho]

For space issues using FLAC helps.

Apple lossless sometimes manages to get recordings compressed into less than 50% of their original size loosing no information whatsoever. Don't know whether the windows media player supports it not owing any u-soft devices myself.

 

(It takes advantage of the fact that the left and right channels are highly coordinated and uses other compression techniques).

[AdamSmith]

And yet comparison even with Koopman's extraordinary artistry may show why I find Chapuis to have reached certain heights that others in living memory just have not.

 

So I was chastised yesterday in another forum for quoting my own post. To my chastiser I conclude: fuck you & fuck off.

 

Re-listening to Koopman's 548, it just does not hold water. He here I think gives direct proof of my god H. Bloom's notions about not less than Freudian contests of power, ego and authority between artists in any given medium governing what they do aesthetically.

[whipped guy]

So I was chastised yesterday in another forum for quoting my own post. To my chastiser I conclude: fuck you & fuck off.

 

Re-listening to Koopman's 548, it just does not hold water. He here I think gives direct proof of my god H. Bloom's notions about not less than Freudian contests of power, ego and authority between artists in any given medium governing what they do aesthetically.

As someone who often quotes himself as well (after all one quotes good people when one quotes themselves) I concur with your "fuck you & fuck off" conclusion!

 

Plus, perhaps I have not read any of your posts that have used the "magic word" but it seems so refreshing to hear it come from you. It reminds me of the person I know who was a Jeopardy contestant and during the filming of the show something went awry and Alex Trebeck uttered said magic word. Even though the guy came in second he told me that it made the whole experience totally worthwhile.

[AdamSmith]

Plus, perhaps I have not read any of your posts that have used the "magic word" but it seems so refreshing to hear it come from you.

I probably don't use it nearly as often as I should.

 

Like nuclear weaponry, it seems to have greatest effect when use is reserved for special occasions.

[whipped guy]

I probably don't use it nearly as often as I should.

 

Like nuclear weaponry, it seems to have greatest effect when use is reserved for special occasions.

Totally agree! For the record, for every day commonplace frustrations I tend to use the earthy Italian dialect option. I likewise save the "F bomb" for those very "special occasions"!

[AdamSmith]

Re-listening to Koopman's 548, it just does not hold water. He here I think gives direct proof of my god H. Bloom's notions about not less than Freudian contests of power, ego and authority between artists in any given medium governing what they do aesthetically.

BTW, what I meant by this rather arcanely stated interpretation is that Koopman would certainly know Chapuis' recorded performance of this piece. (My Oberlin organ performance friend once said Chapuis is viewed in the profession as the "organist's organist." Much as my beloved Stevens is often termed a "poet's poet.")

 

Anyway, in trying to find some interpretive mode that would not sound like a copy of Chapuis, Koopman invented something strange and, on first hearing, rather interesting. But on subsequent listenings, to me, it really had nothing to do with the music as written.

[whipped guy]

BTW, what I meant by this rather arcanely stated interpretation is that Koopman would certainly know Chapuis' recorded performance of this piece. (My Oberlin organ performance friend once said Chapuis is viewed in the profession as the "organist's organist." Much as my beloved Stevens is often termed a "poet's poet.")

 

Anyway, in trying to find some interpretive mode that would not sound like a copy of Chapuis, Koopman invented something strange and, on first hearing, rather interesting. But on subsequent listenings, to me, it really had nothing to do with the music as written.

It's interesting to compare different approaches to compositions. There is a Haydn Keyboard Sonata that I have been playing for years and I have always played the e-minor trio section of the central minuet in a very delicate manner and even used the soft pedal to emphasize the contrast. I was listening to a performance by a very young student on YouTube the other day and he ripped into that trio section as if it were late Beethoven on steroids! It totally floored me at first, but a lightbulb that said Strum und Drung went off in my head and I felt foolish for never catching it! It completely transforms the piece into something different and actually fits better into the sonata's structure as a whole.

 

It will be intriguing to see if what sounded "strange" and "interesting" on first hearing will wear well on repeated playing. So far I'm convinced that it works, but I'm curious to see if I change my mind.

[AdamSmith]

Further PS about 548: It is a devil to perform. Without the just-right instrument, registered just right, in the right performance space, it dissolves into inchoate blobs of shifting sound. Even at that, I have heard performers on the Duke Flentrop -- an ideal machine in an ideal space for the piece -- entirely lose control over it.

 

It needs an imaginative span that is just not very common. Not to mention superhuman keyboard and finger technique: not for nothing is the fugue nicknamed the "Wedge."

[whipped guy]

Further PS about 548: It is a devil to perform. Without the just-right instrument, registered just right, in the right performance space, it dissolves into inchoate blobs of shifting sound. Even at that, I have heard performers on the Duke Flentrop -- an ideal machine in an ideal space for the piece -- entirely lose control over it.

 

It needs an imaginative span that is just not very common. Not to mention superhuman keyboard and finge technique: not for nothing is the fugue nicknamed the "Wedge."

Yes finger technique, the exact space required, assuring that there are no inchoate (I had to look that one up!) blobs of shifting around, and never loosing control are definity all part of the perfect wedge... Yes, it takes much practice to get a wedgie just right!!!

 

http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/topic_images/p1agmuderk191v7e13fdtvs12ap3.jpg

[AdamSmith]

Yes, it takes much practice to get a wedgie just right!!!

 

http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/topic_images/p1agmuderk191v7e13fdtvs12ap3.jpg

ROFL

[AdamSmith]

Adequate performance, a perfect example of the Pedantic (traditional German) approach to Bach performance. Actually I think it may be called a slightly different word which I can't recall just now, but Pedantic is what it means.

 

 

The other school is French. Can't recall the term of art for it right now either, but it's something pretty droll and laughing-at-ze-French, as I recall.

[AdamSmith]

So I was chastised yesterday in another forum for quoting my own post. To my chastiser I conclude: fuck you & fuck off.

 

Re-listening to Koopman's 548, it just does not hold water. He here I think gives direct proof of my god H. Bloom's notions about not less than Freudian contests of power, ego and authority between artists in any given medium governing what they do aesthetically.

In fact forcing one more listen, Koopman all but turns Bach into Wagner here.

[AdamSmith]

Somewhere above I termed the Valois CD transfers of Chapuis (from Telefunken vinyl) to be "vivisections" of the original sound. And said the vinyl sound was far closer to in-person organ performance sound than the CDs.

 

I just recalled one exception. To show us some point or other about sonic qualities (can't recall exactly what), Fenner had each of us in turn climb one of the maintenance ladders affixed to the Flentrop's back case, and stick our head through an open maintenance door and into the organ chamber.

 

Then he, seated at keyboard, blasted out some music on that division that our head was inside of.

 

THAT sound, I just realized, is what the Valois CD sound might be closest to.

[whipped guy]

Somewhere above I termed the Valois CD transfers of Chapuis (from Telefunken vinyl) to be "vivisections" of the original sound. And said the vinyl sound was far closer to in-person organ performance sound than the CDs.

 

I just recalled one exception. To show us some point or other about sonic qualities (can't recall exactly what), Fenner had each of us in turn climb one of the maintenance ladders affixed to the Flentrop's back case, and stick our head through an open maintenance door and into the organ chamber.

 

Then he, seated at keyboard, blasted out some music on that division that our head was inside of.

 

THAT sound, I just realized, is what the Valois CD sound might be closest to.

Years ago I was in a small rehearsal hall as an orchestra was rehearsing a recently composed composition by a local composer. It was the mid eighties when audiophiles were bemoaning the new digital medium and extolling the virtues of analog and vinyl. What I heard sounded like the harsh sound of an early digitally recorded CD. I could literally hear the bows of the stringed instruments scraping across the strings. It was your typical early digital metallic violin sound where even the sound of gut strings made one want to run out and buy earplugs. So perhaps digital is more accurate, or in the early days the microphone placement picked up more than musical sounds?!?! Or the recordings were masteted according to principles that did not jive well with the digital medium...

 

In any event, the sound of a full orchestra in a small room was quite overpowering and nothing compared to the sound of an orchestra in a larger hall where the sound would bounce off what sould probably be a much kinder acoustic environment.

[AdamSmith]

Recalling scaling those ladders several different times to inspect up close one or another aspect of the instrument set in train the thought of how physically demanding is the whole task of organ performance.

 

Not just the considerable energy expended operating the often heavy key action of a big tracker with many stops pulled. And frequent vigorous pedal passages in most of the literature starting as soon as pedal mechanisms evolved past their early Spanish toe-stud origins meant for long-held pedal point only.

 

But also all the physical ministrations required to get the machine ready, well beyond just turning on the blower. Turning off interior lights the maintenance tech inevitably left on. Refilling the bowl of water into which the U-shaped rossignol pipe chirps if there is one of those. Locking or unlocking the "winkers" if the organ happens to possess these intermediate bellows (that let the wind supply toggle between the pre-Romantic situation where each rank competes audibly in pitch variation in robbing wind pressure from other ranks being played at the same time, vs the Romantic expectation of rock-steady unlimited wind for any number of ranks).

 

All of which typically require multiple trips up and down those case-back ladders.

 

And the organist is entreated please not to spill water all down the instrument when refilling the rossignol reservoir, typically located up in the very topmost division of course. In the Duke organ you have to scale the first ladder, step onto a platform running the width of the instrument about halfway up its total height, then climb a second ladder that takes you to within not very many yards of the Chapel ceiling to reach that stop.

 

http://database.organsociety.org/photos/NC/Durham.DukeUniversi.1976FlentropOr.20130913.132537.jpg

 

Thank goodness my acrophobia had not yet begun to emerge. Today I could manage the first ladder but no way that second one.

[AdamSmith]

Nice piece on the Chapel organs.

 

https://today.duke.edu/2015/04/how-organ-makes-music

[+ sync]

In the Duke organ you have to scale the first ladder, step onto a platform running the width of the instrument about halfway up its total height, then climb a second ladder that takes you to within not very many yards of the Chapel ceiling to reach that stop.

 

I'm out!