Testing the Traditions of Early Music : Roger Norrington brings his London Classical Players to the Southland as the authenticity movement faces new questions

Early music isn’t what it used to be. For one thing, the music--once generally thought of as Bach or older--is not so early any more. Relative arrivistes such as Berlioz and even Brahms have fallen into the fold. It seems less dogmatic now, and more exciting.

It is also big business, with groups such as the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque, and the Hanover Band and London Classical Players from England becoming popular successes as well as critics’ darlings. Such groups are proliferating rapidly, and the local contingent, the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, is busily expanding its reach, programming Haydn and Mozart now.

But above all, it is “authentic,” a term intended to suggest faithful recreation of original performances, though now debased through media and advertising hype to a vague buzzword. Recent years have seen a proliferation of self-conscious commentary, from inner-circle symposia, through new journals and books (“Authenticity in Music,” “Authenticity and Early Music”) to mass market articles in national magazines and newspapers, devoted to what amounts to a cultural identity crisis.

Authenticity is still a common goal, but which compromises in pursuit of it are acceptable is an issue, and not everybody in the movement is happy under that label. The claim to authenticity, besides being hopelessly utopian and begging any number of questions, carries holier-than-thou connotations, suggesting that mainstream or modern instrument performances of the favored repertory are corrupt.

Thomas Forrest Kelly, president of Early Music America, worried about the preachy aspect of the movement in a recent editorial.

“We use names that set us apart in one way or another from the center of musical life,” he wrote, “even now when the musical mainstream sometimes seems to embrace us: ‘early music’ (as opposed to real music?), ‘historical performance’ (set apart somehow from musical performance?), ‘authentic instruments’ (as opposed to musical instruments?).”

Although often identified in terms such as “a leading advocate of the authenticity movement,” another dissenter is none less than Roger Norrington, respected within the movement and popularly acclaimed to the point of Grammy nominations.

“I think ‘authenticity’ is a kind of dangerous word,” Norrington says. “There is no one right way of performing music, though there are a lot of wrong ways.”

Instead, the 56-year-old English conductor prefers to speak simply of a movement of “greater historical awareness. There was a performing tradition, but traditions change in time. It’s really a matter of getting the right information for a particular performance.”

What that involves, he says, is literally everything that can affect the performance, mentioning specifically instruments, the seating arrangement, bowing and articulation, and tempo.

“Every aspect of playing style is up for reconsideration,” he says.

The results, in Norrington’s case, are well documented on record. For local audiences, however, the first live chances to hear him and his London Classical Players--an orchestra playing period instruments or replicas--come Saturday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, courtesy of the Orange County Philharmonic Society, and next Sunday at the Music Center, sponsored by the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Norrington’s program in Costa Mesa lists Beethoven’s “Egmont” Overture, Schubert’s Symphony No. 4 and Mendelssohn’s “Scottish” Symphony, No. 3. In Los Angeles he replaces the Mendelssohn with Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4.

Norrington says he also reevaluates the emotional and psychological subtext of period music in light of what people of the time--the composer, critics, other performers--said about the music.

On Beethoven’s symphonies he says, “I used to play them all very seriously-- ernst Musik. The Fourth Symphony is a piece which now I think is extremely humorous.”

Humor is another symptom of the revolution that has come over the previously rather dour and dowdy musical archeology. Where prior generations found the question of what--if anything--music communicated irrelevant at best, now analysts dissect melodic phrases and harmonic syntax to discover how the composer manipulates the listening ear, on behalf of various psychological theories of perception.

At the risk of a gross oversimplification, consider a new take on the old conundrum about the tree which falls far from any human ears. Is there a sound?

Of course. Sound may be described in purely physical terms, which do not depend on human experience. The unheard tree is not silent any more than the unseen tree is invisible, except to the most egocentric sophists.

But change the situation slightly. Instead of the falling tree, a remote radio comes on, playing Bach, Boulez, the Beatles, whatever. Is there music?

No. Sound, yes--the physical artifact is still there--but music requires a human context.

This concept of music, though seldom explicitly stated, underlies many of the current changes, whether in contemporary composition or the performance of old music in period styles. The basic change is from an abstract approach to music as an objective phenomenon to one of music as a subjective experience.

In music, at least, this is perhaps the most fundamental distinction between the modern and the postmodern. It is no coincidence that the multigenerational, historical diversity of period performances has become popular at a time when contemporary composition is marked by so many eclectic, multicultural influences.

Some critics see the lack of a common, dominant style as a sign of cultural insecurity, a broader manifestation of the identity crisis within the authenticity movement. The observable effects, however, are not those of timid vacillation, but rather renewed vigor and purpose.

At any rate, all of this is good news for audiences. Composers are actively courting listeners, and the emphasis in early music has shifted from the reconstruction of historical exhibits to creative music-making.

Which is just as well, since the audience has always been the unacknowledged random factor throwing off the most exacting calculations of historical authenticity. No matter how faithful to the original objective conditions a performance may be, it is going to be heard in an entirely different context. The experience of Beethoven by someone who has heard Brahms and Brubeck cannot be the same as it was for Beethoven’s contemporaries.

The physical environment in which the music is heard is also far different from that of earlier days.

“We much prefer to play in small halls,” Norrington acknowledges, such as the 1,000 seat Queen Elizabeth Hall, the London Classical Players’ regular home. He notes, however, that the orchestra did play the 8,000 seat Royal Albert Hall, recently, and says that in such venues they do not try to do anything differently than usual.

“The most important thing is to give an exciting performance,” Norrington says. “I use the historical material to inform the performance. We have to be creative.”

This undogmatic approach is quite characteristic of much current scholarship, as well. Even the tables of ornaments and charts of tempo indications so dear to the hearts of academic quantifiers, are no longer to be considered rigid prescriptions, we have been told in iconoclastic essays.

One result is that the sectarian stigmas of specialists versus generalists, modernists versus antiquarians, are no longer quite so strong. Norrington began his career as a non-specialist singer and violinist, and still moves easily between period instrument bands and modern orchestras.

“I’ve always been on both sides of the fence,” he laughs. “I just have a double life.”

This summer, for example, he led the San Francisco Symphony in its Beethoven Festival, culminating in a three-day exploration of the Missa Solemnis through concerts and lectures, including Norrington’s own guided tour of the work at the dress rehearsal.

In March, Norrington will return to the Music Center for three concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, featuring Beethoven’s Second Symphony and Berlioz’ “Symphonie fantastique.”

“There will be slight changes,” he predicts for those performances. “We might use wooden sticks for the timpani, for example, or alter the layout. The thing is to be as true to the piece as possible.”

There are other signs of ecumenical rapprochement these days, between the “authentic” and the mainstream. Kelly, in his editorial, points out that symphony orchestras, after all, are period-instrument ensembles themselves, compared with truly modern electronic instruments.

Symphony orchestras have already largely conceded the Baroque repertory to the period bands, and venture Classical-era works only in severely reduced instrumental configurations. Downsizing is also the rule in Beethoven and Schubert.

Where--if ever--will it end? Norrington’s own career has brought him steadily forward in history, from “Messiah” and the Bach Passions in the late ‘70s, to Berlioz and, most recently, Brahms.

“We’ve just recorded Brahms First Symphony and the ‘Haydn’ Variations,” Norrington says. “On modern instruments, but without vibrato, with gut strings, and all the tempo information we could get.”

Norrington has his eye on some early Wagner and Bruckner as well, but adds, “We’ve nearly reached our limits.” He thinks his methods could produce interesting results with Mahler, too, but past that point the performing traditions are largely unbroken.

The Brahms results should be characteristically brisk, considering that Norrington marvels over a report from Brahms’ colleague and conductor Hans von Bulow that the symphony was played in under 37 minutes. The paradoxical results of returning to the original way of playing a piece, as exemplified by Norrington’s Beethoven and Berlioz, are that the piece becomes new, not old.

Norrington relates the period-performance movement and what he does to some unlikely bedfellows. “It goes along with the Greens, and nouvelle cuisine. We try to go back to the original elements, and not cover them up with mystery and sauces. You just have to be creative.”