Recordings — Read — Marisa Gupta

This is an update on a post originally written for Yellow Barn, introducing my residency ‘Faithful to the Spirit’, exploring how recordings have shaped how we make and experience music. The residencies culminated in concerts putting my work as an Edison Visiting Fellow at the British Library into the practice of performance, alongside the wonderful violinist Maria Włoszczowska, violist Rosalind Ventris, cellist Jonathan Dormand, and double bassist Lizzie Burns.

Having learned Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 109 during my studies at the Royal Academy of Music, I played the piece at the time for a fellow student. Upon finishing, she marveled at my meticulous adherence to Beethoven’s detailed and sometimes perplexing indications. ‘You observe every indication in the score!’ she exclaimed. I feigned modesty but was, in fact, self-satisfied, having put the music first; above all capturing, as best as I could, Beethoven’s desires, passed down to us through his hallowed score. In hindsight I look back on the incident with amusement and slight chagrin at my deferential naivety and complacence, having misconstrued literal fidelity to the score for artistry and a historical respect for Beethoven’s music.

The second of a series of blogposts originally published by Yellow Barn, and updated here in 2020. Written in conjunction with my artists’ residencies there and entitled ‘Faithful to the Sprit’, the residencies put into practice my work as an Edison Visiting Fellow at the British Library, exploring how recordings changed how we make and experience music.

'The biggest problem with today's playing is that people want to sound smooth and nice; everything is ironed out flat,' Raphael Wallfisch, Strad magazine

Judging from reactions to this online, these words resonated with and provoked musicians in equal measure, suggesting an opportune moment to examine these sentiments more closely. Though the focus of our upcoming residency is not necessarily performance practice, it is impossible to deny the differences between the (by modern standards) eccentric performances heard on early recordings and today’s smoother approach. Scholarly studies of early recordings attest to the fact that attributes we might today view as idiosyncrasies were integral aspects of performance styles of the time; characteristics not just of performers, but of composers’ own views and performances. Whether we choose to adopt the playing styles or not, before dismissing them outright as distasteful or self-indulgent, it is worth giving these stylistic habits due consideration, in the same manner afforded to written treatises in earlier music.

Faithful to the letter or the spirit?

Playing Styles in the Age of Recording