In a previous post we saw how Wagner stated that he took twelve minutes to get through the Tannhäuser overture, and he ridiculed interpretation which dragged this out to as long as twenty minutes. Today, most conductors take more like fourteen minutes to get through it. Some conductors extend this out to around seventeen minutes. When Wagner conducted the Meistersinger overture he claims that he got through it in "a few seconds over 8 minutes". Most conductors today take around ten minutes to get through it, with one or two taking as long as eleven to twelve minutes.
Here is what Wagner wrote to Liszt concerning tempi in Lohengrin (Zurich, September 8th, 1850):
So much is certain: that the performance has caused fatigue by the length of its duration. I confess I was horrorstruck when I heard that the opera had lasted until close upon eleven at night. When I had finished the opera, I timed it exactly, and according to my calculation the first act would last not much over an hour, the second an hour and a quarter, the third again a little more than an hour, so that, counting the entr'actes, I calculated the duration of the opera from six o'clock to a quarter to ten at the latest. I should have been doubtful whether you had taken the tempi according to my calculation if musical friends, well acquainted with the opera, had not assured me particularly that you had taken the tempi throughout as they knew them from me, and now and then rather a little quicker than slower. I must therefore assume that the dragging took place where you, as conductor, lost your immediate power, viz., in the recitatives.
Somewhere along the way, during the twentieth century someone got the strange idea into their head that slow tempi are more "expressive", or Romantic. Performers then started to try to outdo each other in being more and more "expressive". Recordings from the start of the century attest to a quite different attitude, where faster tempi encouraged both a greater expressive urgency as well as a more fluent singing legato line. Wagner, who preferred that performers err on the side of being a little too fast, would have been "horrorstruck".
Here is an excellent example with Mengelberg conducting the Adagietto of the Mahler Fifth:
Notice the way the more fluid tempo actually gives it more expressive urgency and encourages an effortlessly flowing cantabile. Faster tempi allow more of the phrase to be played on a single "breath" of the bow, and permit phrase lengths to be longer, so that it brings out a better sense of connection between the notes. Harnoncourt says that in his younger days as a cellist, string players used to have to practice trying to spin out as much of the phrase as they could on a single breath of the bow. These days, players have no hesitancy to break the phrase up - but to avoid it sounding too choppy, you then have to slow the tempo down. In those days, there used to be a particularly strong emphasis on phrasing with the full length of the bow. Here is an interesting anecdote related by Fritz Busch about Arthur Nikisch (who as a violinist played under Wagner, Liszt, and Brahms):
Noticing an aged viola player… [Nikisch] cried out “Schulze, what are you doing here? I had no idea you had landed in this beautiful town! Do you remember how we played the Berg Symphony under Liszt in Magdeburg?” Schulze did remember and immediately resolved that with this conductor he would use the whole length of his bow instead of playing with only half, as was his custom with the usual conductors. By this time, the orchestra would have died for Nikisch.Now compare the Mengelberg (who takes 7:07) with Bernstein (who takes around 11:15), and you will see what I mean by the phrases becoming shorter at the slower tempi.
At this slow sostenuto, the strings are forced to take more breaths of the bow within the same passage length, resulting in shorter phrases, and the continuity of the lines overall becomes lost. As the phrases become brocken up any sense of a flowing cantabile is quickly lost. The slower tempo has a tranquillising effect on the music, which actually robs it of its intense expressive urgency. So in fact, Mengelberg's faster tempo makes the music more expressive, and more Romantic, rather than less so, as modern conventional wisdom would have it!
You will have probably also have noticed that there is also a lot of portamento in the string playing for Mengelberg. Part of the reason is that when your tempi are faster, it makes it doubly important to ensure a more flowing legato line, and a pronounced cantabile in the phrasing. Portamento helps to encourage both of these. Mahler would tell the orchestra that when two notes were separated by a wider interval, you have to slide to get there, so as to preserve the legato and to avoid the impression of accents on the notes. In modern string playing at slower tempi, the emphasis is on more a plushly vibrato laden smooth sostenuto.
Of course, the same thing can be said of wind playing, or singing. Compare, for example, the fluid tempo at which Enrico Caruso sings the Neapolitan folk song, O Sole Mio with Placido Domingo's more modern style at a slower tempo:
Notice how Caruso uses portamento subtly to preserve the flowing cantabile of the lines.
The trouble is that modern performers have become addicted to slow tempo - or more exactly to the idea that slower tempi are more expressive, communicative, or Romantic. As we have seen, in fact, the absolute opposite can be true.
Modern players are not really trained to play music of the nineteenth century at these fluid tempi. Their playing techniques are not suited to it. This is why, when conductors get modern orchestral musicians to play at a faster tempo it can sound rather brusk, because they fail to adjust their playing technique to adjust to a faster tempi. Instead they play as they do for a slower tempo only with everything speeded up. The end result is that it sounds too fast, with accents on notes that constantly disrupt the legato. Musicians at the start of the century were much better at playing music at faster tempi.
Now, you may be wondering, how this is relevant to Wagner? Here again, faster tempi are often found in early recordings with conductors such as Karl Muck, who learnt their Wagner from the likes of Felix Mottl, and who worked under the composer's direct supervision. Of course, there is also the example of the 1935 Bruno Walter recording:
Tempi are "fast", but effortless and totally natural with an emphasis on long phrase lengths of the sort that Wagner calls Melos or endless melody. The flow of the line is always along to flow lyrically and naturally.
No comments:
Post a Comment