Whuzzat? Some more description:One of the bonniest postconcert mots ever to reach my ears was uttered after a performance by a touring English early-music group, by the leader of one of its best-known American counterparts. 'They're one of the best straight groups I've heard," he said. After his listeners had recovered from the apparent sexual innuendo, he continued: "It's like this: There are the straight players and the crooked players. I can respect the straight players, but my heart is with the crooked players."Richard Taruskin. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (Kindle Locations 4032-4034). Kindle Edition.
Straight players have significant strengths and virtues. At their best (and they come, just like crooked players, both good and bad, and in various shapes and sizes), they display really solid and reliable all-purpose purpose technique at the service of a very scrupulous musicianship, and they work very hard at ensemble. You can sit back and relax with them, confident that every jot and tittle will be perfectly executed and in place.
Richard Taruskin. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (Kindle Locations 4035-4038). Kindle Edition.Crooked players are harder to define:
most performances of early music - of any music - consist of matching the nearest template to the music at hand. But the crooked performers ... are forever bending the templates out of shape, struggling against ingrained habit in quest of a really exact, and therefore authentic, rendering of what it is that makes this piece this piece and not that one. Struggles do not make for relaxed listening.
Richard Taruskin. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (Kindle Locations 4056-4058). Kindle Edition.This helps me to understand things about how I always approached music. I am, I confess, a bit of a crooked performer. I was always struggling to find the heart of the music, to wring out the last bit of expression, to find the unique nature of each piece. But at the same time I was always wondering why I could never achieve the technical perfection of someone like John Williams. Once he decides how a piece is to be played, and resolves the technical problems, he will play the piece exactly the same every time. That was something that I just couldn't do. Partly that was because I did not quite have the same technical command, but it was also very much because the exact repetition of one version of the piece every time, while it does make the job easier, seemed to me to be to be just wrong. It elevates the surface over the depths. Another quote from the Taruskin essay:
And how true that is! The world is always going to prefer Lang Lang to Sokolov. Taruskin's example of the archetypical "straight" performer is, as he terms him, the "profoundly uninteresting" Christopher Hogwood.the really big reputations in any field of musical endeavor are always likeliest to be made by straight musicians. Only an unchallenging approach can ever be popular.Richard Taruskin. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (Kindle Locations 4059-4060). Kindle Edition.
The business side of the music world is always on the side of the profoundly uninteresting and easily marketable which is likely one reason why classical music is having such difficulties today. It is only in places where there is a deep well of educated and sophisticated listeners that classical music is still thriving.
I mentioned John Williams above as an exemplary "straight" performer on guitar. The exemplary "crooked" guitarist is Leo Brouwer whose recordings from the 1970s, particularly his highly ornamented Scarlatti recordings, are the model of "crooked" performance. I played some for the very accomplished and very straight guitarist Manuel Barrueco and all he said was that they were "sloppy." Well, sort of! Also brilliant. Here is the Sonata in E major, K. 206:
This is why I love the early music group L'Arpeggiata. Sometimes they make what I consider horrid, even catastrophic stylistic choices. But they get it right at least as often, and when they do they are 10x more interesting to listen to than, say, the Academy of Ancient Music (not to pick on Hogwood). I've been to some quite enjoyable AAM concerts, but the L'Arpeggiata concerts I've been to were just astounding. Such vitality.
ReplyDeleteI too like Brouwer's recordings of Scarlatti. Perhaps the 'crooked' apporach works well for the coarser, wilder soundworld of Scarlatti -- but does the 'straighter' approach work better for, say, Bach? And what about some modern music. Is there a crooked or straight way to play Norgard or Gubaidulina?
Saying that, one of my favourite 'crooked' performances (indeed one my favourite recordings, full stop) Charles Ives's songs. The chap singing, Ted Puffer, as far as I know never recorded anything else. It's an extraordinary voice, so raw and, yes, I suppose 'crooked'. I never miss an opportunity to mention it.
https://youtu.be/fkMq4xPTVYo
Thanks so much for your comment Steven! Now I am eager to hear Ted Puffer singing Ives.
ReplyDeleteIsn't this sort of the reason for classical music's disfavor and popular music's favor with current audiences? I mean that the personality is the thing in most popular music while the effacing technique is the thing in classical music.
ReplyDeleteBut I think Early Music concerts are more like pop music so I don't think this straight crooked continuum really applies with other classical genres or eras. What I mean is that like pop music people go to an Early Music concert not knowing or likely caring what particular works/songs they are going to play. Also there is more latitude and improvisation in how they play the Early music just as there is more latitude in pop concerts.
To take you vs John Williams you are both playing the exact notes and you both are playing standard compositions that the public specifically goes to see and is familiar with. If you were playing some more popular solo instrument I think your approach might have found a significant audience too. When a field shrinks the fringes are wiped out first. But external bravura is more engaging for a onetime event given the variable knowledge and social dynamics of a mass audience.
FWIW I think The Early Music Studio led by Thomas Binkley was the quintessential crooked EM performer group. I feel they were better at earlier repertoire before 1450 than later 15th and 16th C repertoire precisely because there is more ambiguity about the earlier music performance. Also those earlier works are more likely to be monophonic or spare polyphonic in nature allowing more interpretation and improvisation.
I think you have a point, though pop music can be performed in just as profoundly uninteresting a way as classical. Some music, like Scarlatti, seems to encourage a more crooked approach. I think my career might have gone better if I had understood the difference between the straight and the crooked early on. I would have spent less time trying to be John Williams and more time being myself!
ReplyDeleteIt's a sad fact that much of life is spent doing the right things wrong and that includes trying to be someone else even for positive reasons. I am not sure you would have found enough success even sticking with your approach given the shrinkage of the field. Only artists with fringe instruments having recording contracts were going to survive the downsizing of classical music. I think you were wise to exit. Fortunately I never had the slightest inclination to be a performing musician and went into science.
ReplyDeleteYou are probably right. I noticed the audience shrinkage and the disappearance of recitals early in my career and it just got worse and worse. A talented young guitarist today has almost no chance of making a decent living.
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