Peter Wilton wrote:

>Of course, he doesn't always make a "Greek Orthodox" sound, does
>he?  The Cistercian Chant record, for example, sounds reasonably
>"conventional", and in fact much more conventional than Ensemble
>Gilles Binchois usually does.  (Though I assume that EGB would be
>considered "historically informed" by more people?)  What exactly is
>the nature of Peres' departure from authenticity/HIP?  A few vocal
>ornamentations not in the neumes in Old Roman chant?

Well, just to cite one of Peres' more notorious departures, the use of
Corsican ornaments and vocal timbre in Machaut's Messe de Nostre Dame...



>But if they do, that is merely because HIP has become the convention, and
>19th century musical conventions have come under attack not only in
>early, but also in popular and 20th century "classical" musics (e.g
>Taruskin's comments).  If the music "sounds better that way" to the
>people on this list, that cannot be for any absolute reason.

Hence my use of the word "preference".

>Personally, I
>wish people would encourage themselves to be more open in their
>tastes.  We may live in an age of musical pluralism, but in the case of
>many people it often seems to be a pluralism of remarkably closed
>groups.  John Potter's recent book points out that when Rossini first
>heard the "modern classical voice", he hated it.  Potter goes on to
>suggest that the HIP early music voice and the classical voice are both
>variants of each other, and that "early" singing would have sounded
>much more ordinary and text oriented, rather than oriented towards
>melodic line (amongst other differences).

In secular (e.g., trobador/trouvere) repertory that seems very credible; in
Renaissance polyphony (and even more melismatic styles of plainchant) it
seems less so.

>As for "sounding better",
>when I came to make a choice for the purchase of a S. Matthew
>Passion, I decided it would be refreshing to go for a large orchestra and
>chorus with soloists of the Shirley-Quirk/Pears era.  I'm very pleased
>with it!


I think Beecham's Messiah is a blast!  But I would not want it to be the
only Messiah on my record shelf, and I would not represent it as anything
other than Beecham's *arrangement* of Handel (along the lines of
Bach/Stokowski).

Matthew Westphal
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