Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE The Conductor's Mind
- PART TWO The Conductor's Skills
- PART THREE The Conductor's Hands
- PART FOUR The Conductor and the Musicians
- PART FIVE The Conductor and the Instruments
- PART SIX The Conductor, the Composer, and the Score
- 30 Composers
- 31 Learning Scores, Interpretation
- 32 Marking Parts
- 33 Performance Practice
- 34 Shape and Structure
- 35 Tempo and Metronome
- PART SEVEN The Conductor and the Audience
- PART EIGHT The Conductor and “the Business”
- PART NINE Inside the Conductor
- Suggested Reading
- Musical Example Credits
- A Note on the Illustrations
- Index of Conductors
33 - Performance Practice
from PART SIX - The Conductor, the Composer, and the Score
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- PART ONE The Conductor's Mind
- PART TWO The Conductor's Skills
- PART THREE The Conductor's Hands
- PART FOUR The Conductor and the Musicians
- PART FIVE The Conductor and the Instruments
- PART SIX The Conductor, the Composer, and the Score
- 30 Composers
- 31 Learning Scores, Interpretation
- 32 Marking Parts
- 33 Performance Practice
- 34 Shape and Structure
- 35 Tempo and Metronome
- PART SEVEN The Conductor and the Audience
- PART EIGHT The Conductor and “the Business”
- PART NINE Inside the Conductor
- Suggested Reading
- Musical Example Credits
- A Note on the Illustrations
- Index of Conductors
Summary
Time was running out at a rehearsal of a Monteverdi work conducted by Denis Arnold, professor of music at Oxford University. One of the wind players suddenly started agonizing about how to play a passage as the composer would have wanted it; he tried a few ways, none of them pleasing to the ear. Finally Arnold, an authority on Monteverdi's music, lost patience: “Look here, we don't know exactly how Monteverdi wanted it to sound. But we do know one thing: he did not want it to sound bloody awful.”
During the twentieth century, musicians began to wonder if they were missing something essential by playing older music in a modern style on modern instruments. After all, most orchestras' repertory spans about three hundred years. My professor at Cambridge, Thurston Dart, painstakingly researched Baroque performance practice. Along with many of the world's greatest scholars and performers, he explored conventions of playing, pitch, tempo, style, and the sound of the instruments. Today, there's a general interest in “performance practice.” Musicians gain insight and inspiration from knowing how a piece sounded at its first performance. In different degrees, this knowledge influences the style they adopt for themselves.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Inside Conducting , pp. 174 - 184Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013