1 Orchestral Vibrato, Historical Context, and The

Orchestral Vibrato, Historical Context, and the Evidence of the Printed Page Introduction There is a fraud being foisted on the music-loving public today by certain members of the “historically informed performance practice” lunatic fringe (let us call them the HIPPLF for short). This consists of the notion that the modern orchestral “continuous vibrato,” a misnomer for reasons to be considered shortly, was a post-War invention that composers of the late Romantic period would have found alien, and in fact did not call for in their scores. Proponents of this theory would have us believe that prior to World War II, vibrato in orchestral string sections was a scarce commodity, and then all of a sudden, the same players, conductors, and composers who lived in vibrato-less bliss decided to apply the technique with a trowel. Stated this way, the foolishness of this point of view ought to be self-evident, if only because of its utter lack of grounding in the reality of how people behave and the pace at which historical change logically occurs. It has arisen out of the fact that certain early music specialist conductors have broken into the mainstream, and now lead conventional symphony orchestras. Some simply loathe vibrato, but lack the personal courage to come out and say, “I like it this way.” Instead, they seek historical justification for their peculiar prejudices, and such is the state of affairs in the world of the performing arts today that it is in the interests of players, managers, and audiences to indulge these fantasies. One result of this lamentable trend has been the creation of HIPPLF member Roger Norrington’s “Stuttgart sound.” His hypothesis, succinctly articulated in the notes to his recording of Mahler’s First Symphony, states categorically that, “Brahms, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Mahler, and Berg never heard an orchestra with vibrato; it simply wasn’t a part of their experience.” Needless to say, this assertion is purely rhetorical, designed to shock rather than to enlighten. Norrington is a fundamentalist. Accordingly, his position is a matter of blind faith, and not one of reason supported by actual evidence. I am not suggesting that Norrington isn’t aware of the historical record; but his use of it, and that of the HIPPLF generally, is selective, biased, lacking in context, and opportunistic. As an example of the latter, consider the notion of an orchestra’s unique “sound.” This has a highly respectable historical precedent, to the extent a conductor can be credited with creating it, as a career-enhancing device. After all, the more personal and artist- specific the ensemble sonority, the theoretically “greater” and more compelling must be its leader’s interpretive personality. Remember the “Philadelphia Sound” under Stokowski, or the “Berlin Sound” under Karajan. Both of these phenomena were based primarily on the conductor’s treatment of the orchestral string section, and both were noteworthy for their ensemble virtuosity and fullness of tone. 1 Conductors as different in interpretive philosophy as Celibidache and Mravinsky also cultivated a very distinctive timbral profile, working with the same orchestras over many years. However, unlike Norrington, neither Stokowski nor Karajan ever claimed that what they were doing was “right” in a historical sense, and they never needed to. The results that they obtained spoke for themselves. Seeking interpretive validation in the allegedly objective findings of scholarly research into performance practice is a uniquely modern phenomenon and, I would suggest, a dangerous precedent. It means that an interpretation is only as legitimate as the research on which it depends, and as we shall see, what sometimes passes for scholarship on the vibrato issue is, to put it mildly, pitiful. Indeed, the very existence of the rich “Philadelphia Sound,” a product of the early 20th century, is the first piece of hard evidence that reveals the anti-vibrato historical perspective as nonsense. Stokowski’s approach to string sonority was not that of a violinist, but rather than of an organist. This is significant. It reveals that the ultimate determinant of orchestral string tone may not in fact be string pedagogy at all. One of the weakest elements of the anti-vibrato argument arises from the unwillingness to consider all of the factors acting on the way musicians produce sound--and in particular to look at the music itself. The HIPPLF would have us believe that pedagogical treatises, and a few other miscellaneous statements and violinist memoirs, constitute all of the evidence that we have about when orchestral vibrato was actually used. This approach ignores the most important and critical evidence of all: that of the scores. You may wonder why this rich font of information has been neglected. In this area, as in so many others regarding the vibrato question, the HIPPLF is guilty of unpardonably rigid thinking. The period performance movement began with the study of Baroque music, and has been advancing the time-frame of its mandate ever since. Baroque scores are very sparsely marked; composers expected performers to improvise and add ornamentation liberally, according to certain stylistic parameters. Useful information on how best to realize a given piece thus will be found outside of the score itself, in a distinct body of material that describes general style in performance. This mentality has carried over to the treatment of 19th century music, even though by this time most composers were quite detailed in their requirements, and expected interpreters to remain relatively faithful to the printed text. The scores may not tell us what individual players did on any given day, but they certainly tell us what the composers wanted and expected them to do, which is without question the next best thing. Furthermore, many of the so-called “discoveries” of the historical performance movement are only news because of the some very striking feats of collective amnesia on the part of the performing arts community, a function of its need to find ever new ways to justify playing the same repertoire over and over. For example, way back in 1965, Leonard Bernstein did a televised “Young People’s Concert” broadcast called “The Sound of an Orchestra.” It begins with the Largo of Haydn’s 88th Symphony played in an exaggerated Romantic manner. Bernstein then proceeds to describe exactly why the performance was hideous, and one of the principle reasons is the excessive vibrato, of a kind more appropriate to much later music. Indeed, 2 Bernstein waxes quite eloquently on the subject. And yet, to hear the HIPPLF talk, you would think that the idea of minimal vibrato in music of the Baroque and Classical periods was their discovery. Obviously, it was not. The point of this demonstration, and those that follow in Bernstein’s talk, is to show that the modern symphony orchestra, not to mention the conductor who leads it, must be able to master a variety of interpretive styles and aesthetics, depending of the music actually being played. Understanding the proper idiom, and being able to move freely from one to another over several centuries of repertoire, is one of the acid tests of good musicianship. The “non-vibrato fits all” theory enunciated by the HIPPLF constitutes nothing less than an affront to history, to a centuries-old performance tradition, and to the reality of what fine musicians have always known and done. It is a travesty of logic, scholarship, artistic responsibility, and taste. In attempting to address these various issues, then, my intention in writing this essay is five-fold: First, to follow the evidence trail wherever it legitimately leads. I propose to examine this evidence in detail--with the proviso that this discussion can only touch on a small fraction of the available sources--secure in the belief that a substantial body of dispositive information is in fact available to those interested in looking for it. You will learn that the printed page actually tells us quite a bit about orchestral vibrato—the how, when, and why of its use from the early 19th century to the present; Second, to demonstrate that the use of string vibrato in orchestral music (especially) is understood to be inherent in a consistently employed expressive terminology centuries old. This isn’t a matter of oral tradition or speculation, but a fact routinely embodied and clearly notated in the printed scores themselves, and even supported by the same pedagogical treatises used to substantiate the anti-vibrato position; Third, to explore the historical relationship of vocal music to purely instrumental performance, and based on this aesthetic viewpoint--which remains the foundation and goal of instrumental technique to this day--to suggest the likelihood that a vibrato- enriched, “blank canvas” orchestral string texture existed at a comparatively early date. Accordingly, taking the pedantic position to eliminate vibrato to the extent possible in performance not only violates the clear intent of the composers and the spirit of their music, it results in emotionally neutered, expressively inhibited interpretations; Fourth, to emphasize the distinctions between solo and orchestral practice, and in particular to establish that (a) the term “continuous vibrato,” as defined in terms of solo playing and then applied to orchestral music is sheer nonsense, and (b) that the use of the actual term “vibrato” in orchestral music is necessary not because the “blank canvas” variety is not already in place, but because a large group cannot approximate the expressive immediacy of a solo voice without practice and cooperation, and so must be told specifically when and where to do so; 3 Fifth, to set the bar as high as possible in challenging those who seek to rewrite history in order to indulge their musical whims, prejudices, or other personal agendas.

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