09-28-2022, 07:36 PM
There are differences of quality in singing between singers. At one time the go-to singer was Enrico Caruso; more recently it was Luciano Pavarotti. Choosing between them is a matter of taste. Critical evaluations were similar during their lifetimes. The sound of a violin may change some over time, but it is safe to suggest that the sound quality of Itzhak Perlman's current violin will be much like that of Yehudi Menuhin for the simple reason that Perlman plays the violin that Yehudi Menuhin played. One great master of the violin can inherit or buy the violin of a predecessor. Nobody can buy or use the vocal cords of Enrico Caruso or Luciano Pavarotti.
Some of it is a matter of taste. Richard Wagner used to be for Germans and people informed by German culture. Wagner was not popular outside of the realm of Germanophile culture (by the way -- that includes plenty of German-speaking Jews who thought themselves Germans or little different from the highly-influential German Jews upon Jewish populations of central and eastern Europe. Nazism co-opted Wagner and sullied his reputation, but over 75 years classical music has become part of the lives of peoples far beyond the two or three main centers of classical music (Germany, Italy [largely opera] and Russia). The audience for classical music expanded into Britain for performance, with Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn overawing British audiences until Britons started to compose some of their own remarkable music. Sophisticated people worldwide are not slaves to the culture in which they are born, so the audience for classical music (including opera) includes the USA (since about 1900), Latin America, and the Far East.
OK... Israel... but the musical tastes in Israel are very conservative and for its educated people... very German.
India, the Muslim world, and sub-Saharan Africa are next. After that you are discussing extra-terrestrials as potential fans of classical music. Cats and dogs in musical houses do not count.
...Still, the training of opera singers and string or wind players remains much the same. Tastes change over time, and one can expect different musical tastes, however subtle, between audiences in Beijing and Boston. So?
Wagner is obvious for cultural problems. He was a Nazi favorite, and nobody wants to become a Nazi so that he can better appreciate Wagner. Take away the theatrical grandeur of Wagner or sanitize it so that it no longer suggests Nazism and it no longer has the majesty that it once had. The Nazis hijacked Wagner as they could not hijack Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, or Brahms -- and for obvious reasons they could not hijack Mendelssohn or Mahler. Wagner was old enough to have acceptance but not new enough to offend Nazi tastes.
A current craze in classical music is the attempt to rediscover "period performance" in which musicians attempt to rediscover old musical practices including intonation, tempos, instrumental vibrato, interpretations of note lengths, and the use of old-fashioned reeds and strings. One irony is that period performance often sounds less attractive than more modern practice. Imitating the lesser standards of performance is incompetent, as shown by the fact that conductors who conducted as early as the 1930's and into the 1950's (and often well beyond) never spoke of any "golden age" of orchestral play. Musical training is better and more rigorous than it used to be. Instruments often have richer sound, and they are designed to fully 'get' composers from Mozart onward. I cannot imagine a satisfying pianoforte performance of Schubert's piano sonatas; I can better imagine a fine performance of them on a Moog synthesizer (which is as un-genuine as is possible) than on some pianoforte from Schubert's time.
We could never in full conscience restore the audience to what it was. We may have some idea of what Monteverdi's Orfeo or J S Bach's cantatas sounded like, but we are far from the same audience. We would not want to return to his time complete with an economic order that practically everyone modern would find abominable. To experience Wagner in the Nazi style and most fully appreciate it one now would practically have to be a Nazi, which would be even more abominable. I once told a neo-Nazi on the web that if I had to choose as a German-American between becoming a Nazi or converting to Judaism that I would convert to Judaism because Judaism would require far fewer changes in my cultural and moral values. (My genealogical studies since then established that I am nearly half from what is basically the UK, for what that is worth). Like most Germans and German-Americans I hate Nazis for the disgrace that they attempted to impose upon our culture.
Some of it is a matter of taste. Richard Wagner used to be for Germans and people informed by German culture. Wagner was not popular outside of the realm of Germanophile culture (by the way -- that includes plenty of German-speaking Jews who thought themselves Germans or little different from the highly-influential German Jews upon Jewish populations of central and eastern Europe. Nazism co-opted Wagner and sullied his reputation, but over 75 years classical music has become part of the lives of peoples far beyond the two or three main centers of classical music (Germany, Italy [largely opera] and Russia). The audience for classical music expanded into Britain for performance, with Handel, Haydn, and Mendelssohn overawing British audiences until Britons started to compose some of their own remarkable music. Sophisticated people worldwide are not slaves to the culture in which they are born, so the audience for classical music (including opera) includes the USA (since about 1900), Latin America, and the Far East.
OK... Israel... but the musical tastes in Israel are very conservative and for its educated people... very German.
India, the Muslim world, and sub-Saharan Africa are next. After that you are discussing extra-terrestrials as potential fans of classical music. Cats and dogs in musical houses do not count.
...Still, the training of opera singers and string or wind players remains much the same. Tastes change over time, and one can expect different musical tastes, however subtle, between audiences in Beijing and Boston. So?
Wagner is obvious for cultural problems. He was a Nazi favorite, and nobody wants to become a Nazi so that he can better appreciate Wagner. Take away the theatrical grandeur of Wagner or sanitize it so that it no longer suggests Nazism and it no longer has the majesty that it once had. The Nazis hijacked Wagner as they could not hijack Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, or Brahms -- and for obvious reasons they could not hijack Mendelssohn or Mahler. Wagner was old enough to have acceptance but not new enough to offend Nazi tastes.
A current craze in classical music is the attempt to rediscover "period performance" in which musicians attempt to rediscover old musical practices including intonation, tempos, instrumental vibrato, interpretations of note lengths, and the use of old-fashioned reeds and strings. One irony is that period performance often sounds less attractive than more modern practice. Imitating the lesser standards of performance is incompetent, as shown by the fact that conductors who conducted as early as the 1930's and into the 1950's (and often well beyond) never spoke of any "golden age" of orchestral play. Musical training is better and more rigorous than it used to be. Instruments often have richer sound, and they are designed to fully 'get' composers from Mozart onward. I cannot imagine a satisfying pianoforte performance of Schubert's piano sonatas; I can better imagine a fine performance of them on a Moog synthesizer (which is as un-genuine as is possible) than on some pianoforte from Schubert's time.
We could never in full conscience restore the audience to what it was. We may have some idea of what Monteverdi's Orfeo or J S Bach's cantatas sounded like, but we are far from the same audience. We would not want to return to his time complete with an economic order that practically everyone modern would find abominable. To experience Wagner in the Nazi style and most fully appreciate it one now would practically have to be a Nazi, which would be even more abominable. I once told a neo-Nazi on the web that if I had to choose as a German-American between becoming a Nazi or converting to Judaism that I would convert to Judaism because Judaism would require far fewer changes in my cultural and moral values. (My genealogical studies since then established that I am nearly half from what is basically the UK, for what that is worth). Like most Germans and German-Americans I hate Nazis for the disgrace that they attempted to impose upon our culture.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.