Rob Howe wrote:
>Just in case anyone's interested, there is a transcript of Marcel Peres
>in interview at the following site:
>
> <http://www.princeton.edu/~mlislib/peres.html>
>
>Although it typically doesn't reveal very much of what we are interested
>in here...
Thank you for sending this!
It was very good to read this -- especially the following passage:
* * * * * * *
These [Corsican] singers bring first, an art of ornamentation in polyphony,
secondly, a different way of approaching the music, since they're used to
working only by ear. I love working with them. I think it's now an open
field. **It doesn't mean that the sound is that of the fourteenth
century,** but it's something different from the standard tradition that
we're used to hearing nowadays. Very quickly we go back into our usual
routine, preconceptions. We are so used to hearing these English singers
doing very good musical things, like the Hilliard Ensemble, Gothic Voices -
it's a preconception of vocal production that works, but it's not at all
sure that this was the sound of the middle ages. It's important to break the
preconceptions. The way to perform this music was a hearing way - we're much
too linked to the scores, now. When you look a the scores from the
fourteenth century, there are plenty of errors. That means the singers were
not really reading, they were correcting the mistakes by ear. Working with
singers who are used to working by ear brings you a new approach to this
repertoire, even if it's more tedious.
In musicology, like in the sciences we must have experiments. Too many
people are looking for the truth. The truth is not possible, but we can try
to see our preconceptions and go further in our reflections. All the
performances you can hear are only what the musicians have been able to
imagine about the aesthetic of the music they are doing. That's why it is so
important to get as much information as we can about a specific time, always
bearing in mind that what we present is only the fruit of our imagination.
* * * * * * *
I wish I had read this before (or shortly after) I heard that Machaut
concert in New York (where audience members were actually shooting each
other looks of appalled disbelief).
(I'll give Peres and his singers credit, though. There were perhaps two
coughs from the audience during the entire concert -- an extraordinary
achievement for a fall or winter concert in New York.)
My favorites of Peres' records are those of later chant -- in particular the
18th-century chant from Auxerre and from Paris. That is a sadly
under-explored area of the chant repertory. (I'd like to hear some concerts
or records of Zelenka or Haydn masses in liturgical context!)
Matthew Westphal
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