[First published in Broad Street Review, 2 Jan 2014, as “The sound of the music“]
The Theorbo Player, Antiveduto Gramatica, 1615
Having composed more than a few works for early instruments, totaling a couple hours of music, including Vespers (for Renaissance instruments), The Nobility of Women (Baroque), Red-tail and Hummingbird (mix of early and modern), and others, I’m probably one of the bigger fans of historically informed performance practice. I’ve defended it in Broad Street Review a half-dozen times, and I was happy to read Tom Purdom’s recent lauding of early instruments in BSR (Do I hear a harpsichord?, December 3, 2013).
Each instrument, early or modern, has a unique sound that cannot be duplicated by any other. Trombones are not better sackbuts, for instance, I wrote here, and that applies to all modern/early comparisons.
With apologies to South Pacific, there is nothing like a shawm.
It comes down to composer intent. Simply, what does the composer want the music to sound like? Composers know, precisely. If we don’t (leaving aside improvisation), we’re not very good at what we do. We give over countless hours to sculpting sound as exactingly as we can.
So what did I say to the Aestas Consort in Chicago, who asked me to rewrite some of Vespers for other instruments? To rewrite that piece I spent months composing, shaping, and adjusting to the exact requirements of a 16th-century instrumentarium? To go from shawms, sackbuts, early harp, and theorbo to string sextet with harpsichord?
“Absolutely,” is what I said.
That’s how quickly I tossed composer intent out the window.
Some nuance, though, if you will. Composers do, after all, want their music to be heard, so we like to say “Yes” as often as we can, or as often as our schedules permit. There’s the story of the woman who called up John Cage. She asked him, “Are you John Cage?”
“Yes, I am,” he answered.
Apparently wanting to be very sure that she had the right John Cage, that this was the John Cage and no other John Cage, she pressed with one more question. “Are you John Cage, the percussion composer?” Now, he could have said, “Well, I’ve used many more instruments than percussion during my career…” but what he did say was this:
“Yes, I am.”
My quick agreement to revisiting the opening hymn of Vespers, “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” (“How Fair the Bright and Morning Star”), papered over some real issues. I’d have to grapple with volume, voicings, phrasings, and more. But I did say “Yes,” and without very much thought or worry about it.
Part of my optimism came from the fact that I’d done this before. I’d rearranged “Psalm 113” from Vespers for piano. “Piano!” I whispered guiltily to my friends in Piffaro, the Renaissance Band, who had commissioned Vespers. But mostly I simply relished the challenge of changing it, to see if I could. Composers love solving problems. To make it work, I had to banish from my ears all those sounds I had crafted, and come up with entirely new ones. I had no interest in reshaping Renaissance sounds. I had to throw them out and start over, with the same music. That was the challenge, but it was no different from Ravel moving Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition from piano to orchestra.
So I ripped open “Wie schön” and rewrote lines. From early to modern, from winds and brass to strings, it was all done over. The soft pressings of the theorbo (a long-necked bass lute) and early harp, those translucent curtains fluttering in the late afternoon sun, I set aside for the scuttering-in-the-shadows harpsichord. Gone were the squiring portents of the double-reed shawms; gone, too, the ripe, plummy brass. In their place were elegant strings, from bright violins to puckish violas, ruddy cello, and the tide-moving double bass.
If I’ve made it work, there will be no better ensemble and no worse. They will be apples and oranges, or the sweet tang of fruit compared to a soup stock begun in butter-sautéed onions. Each will serve its purpose.
“Composer intent” is the grail behind every performance-practice discussion. It is a valid consideration in trying to discern how something ought to be played. I know from experience how music grows out of the instruments themselves, out of the sounds composers spend so much time trying to assemble rightly and idiomatically. All the thought processes—all those millions of decisions we make consciously and subconsciously—lock the music into a form that cannot be shaken, not without irreparable damage.
Until we change our minds.
“Absolutely,” is what I said.
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