Research
Thomas
Guthrie recently undertook research at the University
of York towards a PHD in ornamentation in Early
Lieder. He was supervised by Peter Seymour and
funded by the AHRB.
In 2003 he gave a talk and recital (with Peter) at the National Centre for Early Music in York, on ornamentation in Die Schöne Müllerin. The text is given here. You can listen to extracts from this recital by visiting sounds page.
Talk on Ornamentation in Lieder,
followed by recital of Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin
with Peter Seymour (fortepiano), given at the National
Centre for Early Music in York on 3/5/03 as part of
A Celebration of Lieder.
Welcome - I'm very excited to see you all here - and
to be speaking to you today about the ornamentation
of Lieder... The fact that you've come at all is
in itself a jusification for what, with Peter's help,
I'm doing - because you've come to hear a performance
of Die schone Mull which is going to be different to
any you've heard before.. It's going to be different
because together we're going to attempt to ornament
it in a way that a singer of Schubert's own day might
have done. Now I'm not saying, that because we know
what a singer of Schubert's own day might have done
we have to do it in the same way. Indeed, part of the
reason we know they did ornament Lieder - the importance
and influence of Rhetoric - is also part of the reason
why we needn't ornament Lieder today: the performer's
job is to make the music work for whatever audience
he's performing to in whatever venue he's performing
in, and that has always been his job. That's
what Rhetoric teaches, and why in the Baroque period
and right up until the decline of rhetoric in the 1830s/1840s
the performer was expected to ornament the music he
was given to perform. Whether or not it's a good idea
or not is largely up to you! If you don't like it,
or more specifically, if it gets in the way of your
understanding of the text and your ability to be moved
by it (which is, when all's said and done, the point),
then we will have failed in our job, and we should
go back to the drawing board. What's exciting about
ornamentation in Lieder is that I believe it genuinely
enhances the experience of listening to this combination
of poetry and music. For me, it certainly enhances
the performing of it. Of course, that's one of the
extraordinary things about music - we can always find
new things, open our ears - through research and just
being open to the music itself, that reinvent the music
for new ears or just ourselves - and furthermore that's
what we want! The early music revolution of the last
forty or so years has shown that research can lead
to a whole new understanding of a period of music -
an awakening - which while it might not initially have
appealed has now transformed not just our understanding
but, I think, our taste too.
There are two areas of
discussion I want to introduce today that demonstrate
how we know they ornamented Lieder right through to
Schubert: a specific one, where we'll look at people's
actual responses to ornamentation in vocal music of
the period; and a general, contextual one, which is
the influence of a knowledge of Rhetoric on the performers
and composers of Lieder.
At first glance, much of the evidence points to a general dislike of ornamentation - and not just in Lieder. Listen to Schulz, one of the founders of the Second Berlin School of Lieder composers, writing in 1782:
"Only by a striking similarity between the musical and poetic tone of the song; by a melody whose progress never deviates from the text, a melody which moulds itself to the declamation and the metre of the words as a dress shapes itself to the body... does the song present an unforced, artless, familiar appearance, in a word, that of the folk song. And this must be the goal of the song composer if he wants to remain true to the only legitimate intention of making fine texts generally well known by means of this form of composition. Not the melodies, but by means of the melodies, the words of the good poet should receive increased attention through the agency of the song... Therefore all useless ornamentation in the melody or in the accompaniment, all padding by means of ritornellos and interludes, which draw attention away from the essentials to secondary matters, from the words to the music... are to be rejected as superfluities damaging to the song, indeed running directly counter to its proper intention." (Preface to Lieder im Volkston, 1782)
This echoes Gluck's famous preface to Alceste, of 1767:
"I sought to bring music back to its true function, that is, to support the poetry without a useless excess of ornaments. I have tried to do away with all the abuses against which good sense and reason have long cried out in vain... I sought a beautiful simplicity, and I have avoided making displays of difficulty at the expense of clarity."
In order fully to examine what these two are getting at, we need among other things to look at what is meant by ornamentation. An ornament is something 'added' to structure. In music, it may be specified or unspecified by the composer. It consists on the one hand of notes - mordents, trills, turns, appoggiaturas etc - and on the other of extra-notational expressive devices - dynamics, rubato, portamento, physical gesture and so on. This is already an important thing to understand: an ornament is not just an added note or series of notes. Even this sentence I've just spoken I've 'ornamented' by changes in pitch, in emphasis and possibly by gesture (demonstrate). And why? To what purpose? Well, primarily in order to help clarify my intention, my meaning, what it is I'm trying to get across. Rather than flatly delivering my text, I'm using various techniques to enhance what it is I'm trying to say. And as a result of clarifying what it is I'm trying to get across, I hope too to persuade you, please you and in the end just be relatively interesting. Listen to what CPE Bach writes in 1753:
"no one at all doubts the necessity of ornaments; they are indispensable: they connect notes; they enliven them; they give them where necessary a special emphasis and weight; they make them agreeable and arouse as a consequence a special attention; they help to make the content clear; whether this is sad or joyful or otherwise constituted as it may be, in such manner they always contribute to it their own (share); they afford a considerable part of the occasion and material for true performance."
Bach makes a useful list of the positive attributes of ornamentation: special emphasis and weight; agreeableness; clarification. But it is this last I want to highlight as the most critical character of a successful ornament. As a bare room is 'clarified' as to it's purpose by the 'ornaments' in it, as for instance a bathroom would have a sink and a bath, whereas a kitchen would have a sink and a cooker, elements additional to the essential structure of the room, so music has it's true purpose clarified by ornamentation. And therefore it is UNsuccessful ornamentation against which Schulz and Gluck are railing in their respective manifestos. Schulz we notice is careful to use the words 'useless ornamentation', and Gluck the phrase 'a useless excess of ornaments'. Indeed the very fact of their complaint is proof of the expectation of a certain amount of free ornamentation. A useful or good ornament, as CPE Bach says, is essential: it clarifies, while a bad one distracts, obfuscates, in Schulz's words "draws attention away from the essentials to secondary matters, from the words to the music" - or worse presumably, from the music to the performers themselves. As such it must most diligently be avoided. Hear what was said in 1776 of the Hannoverian court musician Steffani:
"He disliked those
luxuriant singers who had not the sense enough to see
the folly of sacrificing to the idle vanity of displaying
their extent, or power of voice, not merely the air,
but frequently the very harmony of an author's compositions".
(reported by John Hawkins (1776) and
quoted by Donington R. in The Interpretation of
Early Music, p156).
But there is a vitally important point that Schulz is making, beyond the general call for a simple, folk-like approach to song making, and that is that the TEXT is paramount. He says "Not the melodies, but by means of the melodies, the words of the good poet should receive increased attention through the agency of the song... " This, he adds, is its 'proper intention'. The very purpose of a song is to show up the text in its best light. In a sense, he is saying that a successful song composition is one in which the melody and the accompaniment are 'ornament' to the text. The music clarifies the words. This is a big step, perhaps most of all for us performers. In the light of that understanding, we can see that for the performer to ornament the written score is only an extension of what the composer is already doing in the song. But what rules should he follow, what guidelines, how can he be sure that he is not being one of those luxuriant singers that Steffani is referring to?
This is our opportunity to move to a more general look
at the question of ornamentation in Lieder - that is
to say, to a look at the importance of Rhetoric.
Rhetoric - that rather vague word - was a pillar of
the educational system in Athens, from the 5th century
BC on. With the rise of humanism during the cinquecento,
1450-1550, came a reawakening of interest in Classics,
in the Ancient Greeks' philosophy and literature, and
this rediscovery formed the backbone of university
education right up until the reformation of the universities
in the 1830s and 1840s (if you ever wondered at the
number of Schubert's songs on classical themes - there's
your answer). This backbone was the Trivium - Logic,
Grammar and Rhetoric, and the particular one we're
interested in today is Rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art
of public speech making. It came to have an influence
over all forms of expression - architecture, art, music,
as well as speech making. It became a science of expression.
Its influence on music was both compositional - Sonata
form for example is a rhetorical device - and importantly
in performance. But while the compositional aspect
of Rhetoric is important in Lieder, it is one particular
performative aspect that I want to draw your attention
to, and while it may seem rather obvious, I think it's
rather enlightening, in that it explains a shift in
the composer-performer relationship which in turn explains
why we are reluctant to ornament our Lieder today.
The point is this - speech making is the art of composing
AND performing the written word - sometimes, in the
case of extempore speaking, as its name suggests, at
the same time. Lieder composers, while they may have
played the accompaniment to their songs, rarely sang
them (Schubert crooning through Winterreise
to his friends may have been an exception - is that
why they didn't like it!?; Loewe also is known to have
sung and played his ballads). So, and this hasn't changed,
there is a necessary trust between composer and performer:
it is up to the performer to deliver what the composer
has written. What has changed is that now, composers
and performers are not alike versed in the art of Rhetoric
- and then they were. Rhetoric is as clear on the rules
of delivery as it is on the rules of composition. Therefore
it's clear that a composer could rely on an educated
performer to follow certain rules - and these rules
included licence for the delivery to change according
to the audience, the building, even the personality
of the performer. (demonstrate?) There was a system
at play, a system that no longer informs us. The composer
EXPECTED his performer to fulfil his part of the Rhetorical
bargain. In short, and bearing in mind our specific
definition of the word, he expected him to 'ornament'.
Well we're here to listen to die Schone Mullerin, and I want to spend the last few minutes telling you a bit about the ornamentation we are going to try out in our performance today. One of the first things Peter introduced me too, apart from an extraordinarily wide repertoire of jokes, was an edition of this cycle from 1830, only 6 years after it was composed. It makes extraordinary reading. It's like a cover version of the original - 'Yesterday', as performed by the Bee Gees, only in this case, DSM as performed by a singer called Johann Michael Vogl. Who was Vogl? For 28 years, he was a member of Vienna Court Opera Company. He was a Big Fish. His roles at the Hofopera included Orestes (Iphigenie en Tauride) - seen in 1813 by an impressed Schubert, Count (Nozze di Fig), Micheli (Cherubini's Les deux Journees), Pizarro in revised version of Fidelio (1814). He was clearly an impressive singer. And in the best and possibly worst sense he patronised Schubert - on the one hand his interest in Schubert's songs was undoubtedly helpful to Schubert's standing, and on the other he thought he knew best how Schubert should write. At any rate they formed a close partnership, and performed together regularly. He gave the first public performance of many of Schubert's songs, including the Erlking, and interestingly was a song composer himself. His notebooks show his reworkings of some Schubert songs - here is Rhetoric in action - as well as some of his own.
Spaun (1864): "there
are only a few persons still living who enjoyed the
experience of hearing Vogl sing, but those few will
never forget the impression he made. They have not
heard anything like it since".
Schubert (1825): "the manner in
which V sings and I accompany, the way in which we
seem, at such a moment, to become one, is something
quite new and unheard of for these people".
Schubert also said that he wished Vogl would do a little LESS of his own composing when performing his songs - which is interesting both because it implies again a licence to do SOME, and also because a look at the versions that have survived of his ornaments, including DSM, do show extraordinary deviations from the text. Let's look at some...
(demonstrate Das Wandern).
(explain why these ornaments are successful ones)
(conclude by urging
audience and self to approach this performance as any
other - by being open to this moving story of the young
man etc... Then we can see both whether the ornamentation
is of the successful sort, and how it enhances and
brings to life the experience of listening to these
lieder.)
