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Music and Transfiguration

Ignorance is Bliss: Historically Informed or Not?

Yesterday, I heard part of a recording, from the 1950s I think, of Bach's Mass in B minor. As I understand it, this places the recording a couple of decades before historically informed performances became a big to-do in the music world. Compared to Robert Shaw's 1990 recording that I own, this older recording was strikingly fresh. Now, Shaw's recording is quite spectacular in its own way, and I'm not knocking it at all, but, as for me, I've never been a big fan of the historically informed performances. Now, it's obviously crucial to play the right ornaments and such in Baroque and Classical music, and tempos should be in their appropriate ranges, and with that I completely agree. However, if I had the choice of listening to a Mozart horn concerto on a modern horn with valves or a natural horn, I choose the former. After all, there is a reason instruments have been improved and perfected. The same goes for a Classical piano concerto performed on a modern piano versus a fortepiano. Another instance is Karajan's recordings of Beethoven's symphonies. They are all performed with two players to each of the wind parts. That makes a total of four flutes, four oboes, and so on. Now, that means the orchestra is double the size of any orchestra in Beethoven's time. However, the sound from Karajan's orchestra is so powerful it is more fitting for Beethoven's symphonies than if the orchestra was cut down to historically correct proportions. Now, I agree that it is interesting, from a purely intellectual perspective, to know what a piece of music would have sounded like at the time of composition. However, if I'm going to sit down and really enjoy a piece of music, I want to hear it with all the advantages that modern instruments have over the old ones. I want to hear it with no restrictions to its expression, save the boundaries of the performer's imagination.