Histories in sound: Disseminating medieval music

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1 Histories in sound: Disseminating medieval music Timothy Day British Library Sound Archive, London Gwendolyn Tietze Department of Music, King's College London Hannah Vlček NMC Recordings Ltd, London In: R. Parncutt, A. Kessler & F. Zimmer (Eds.) Proceedings of the Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM04) Graz/Austria, April, Background in study of recordings The History of Music in Sound (HMS), produced by His Master s Voice (HMV), was an attempt to create a recorded historical anthology in the 1950s. From the 1930s, similar projects had been undertaken. They provided a platform for musicologists and pioneering performers keen to educate the public. Background in historiography Although modern editions of medieval polyphony became available in the early twentieth century, musicologists struggled to make medieval music accessible. Published music histories had limited success in making this repertoire more familiar, but recordings presented new opportunities to bring its sound to life. Background in manuscript studies and performance practice Very little fourteenth-century polyphony appeared in the recorded anthologies, despite the availability of at least some scholarly editions; evidently this repertoire presented a challenge to performers as well as listeners. Aims To assess the reception of HMS in the context of other recorded music histories To explore the place of study of recordings within historiography To examine aspects of performance and reception of fourteenth-century polyphony Main contribution Musicologists were involved closely with HMS, which originated in a BBC radio series. They saw themselves as informing public taste; choosing works to represent vast and largely unknown areas of musical history on record gave them a powerful voice. On the principle that "music must be heard to be fully appreciated" (Hughes & Abraham 1960, vii), HMS was intended to accompany the New Oxford History of Music. Unlike most of its predecessors, HMS included examples of 14 th -century polyphony. Performance standards varied considerably; whilst these anthologies could introduce the medieval repertoire to the general listener, they did not always keep pace with developments in performance practice. HMS attracted mixed reviews, both for its sometimes variable artistic and recording standards, and its comparatively narrow selection of works, which by the 1950s appeared dated. Implications Whilst HMS could change tastes, for example by introducing the general listener to fourteenth-century polyphony, its recordings also reflect changes in the performance of early music in the 1950s and 60s. Finally, HMS also forms part of the history of recording technologies. 1. INTRODUCTION Originating in a BBC radio series, The History of Music in Sound (HMS) was issued by His Master s Voice (HMV) in 10 volumes between 1953 and Nineteen hours of music were published on 78rpm shellac discs with explanatory booklets containing substantial music examples and texts. 1 On the principle that "music must be heard to be fully appreciated", 2 the HMS was intended to accompany the New Oxford History of Music (NOHM), published The recordings were meant for use by students as 1

2 well as by the interested public. HMS illustrates the dissemination of high art and involvement in popularisation of previously unknown repertoire by musicologists. HMS was an attempt to create a recorded historical anthology. From the 1930s, similar projects had been undertaken by Columbia, Parlophone, and the Anthologie Sonore, among others: The early music explosion was sparked by the small, independent record companies that proliferated just before and after the war, especially in the United States, 3 and these led the way for larger organisations such as HMS s co-operation between HMV and the BBC. 2. HISTORY OF MUSIC IN SOUND From the outset, HMS had an academic approach: 80-page explanatory booklets were issued with the 78s which also contained substantial music examples in modern notation though often trans-posed as well as texts and translations for all vocal works. 4 The recordings were intended for use by the general public, as well as by students of music, in the belief that ripening acquaintance with this music will lead them to a new world of enjoyment ; 5 they provided illustrations in sound 6 which were particularly welcome in the case of medieval music. While most of HMS s predecessors had skirted around 14 th -century polyphony, concentrating on earlier monophony and 15 th - century song, HMS included ars nova song, and even an excerpt from Machaut's Mass. However, performance standards varied considerably, and HMS attracted mixed reviews. 3. ANTHOLOGIES ON RECORD Columbia History of Music for Eye & Ear Dates: Compiled by: Percy A Scholes (UK), booklet notes from Oxford University Press Format: 78s; 5 volumes of 8 discs each Repertoire: from plainchant to Varèse Artists: included Richard Terry, members of the Dolmetsch family, St George's Singers Attitude: Educational, though not rigorously academic. Parlophone 2000 Years of Music Dates: Compiled by: Curt Sachs Format: 12 78rpm discs Repertoire: From Ancient Greek to Baroque Artists: Sachs s Berlin colleagues from music academies including Erwin Bodky, Carl Thiel, Hermann Halbig and the musicologist H.J. Moser. Some of the recordings have been described as "exceedingly tedious listening". 7 Attitude: Didactic. Like HMS, compiled in connection with radio broadcasts. 8 Smaller in scope than Columbia History. Pathé-Marconi Anthologie sonore Dates: s (eventually on LP) Compiled by: Curt Sachs again (plus Agostini, Raugel) Format: 78s, in no particular order of issue. Eventually reissued on LP with works in chronological order. Repertoire: vast, and noticeably more wide-ranging than the other anthologies Artists: Included Safford Cape s Pro Music Antiqua Ensemble, and the Paraphonistes de St Jean-de- Matines, a choir set up by Guillaume de Van (the American-born William Devan) Attitude: Made a point of artistic quality in its publicity: "No single artistic licence of any description". Incidentally, Pathé had first thought of making music anthologies on record in 1904, when an anthology of chant was discussed but not undertaken. 9 L'oiseau lyre (music publisher, then record label of the same name) Dates: ; became affiliated with Decca from

3 Overseen by: Louise Hanson-Dyer, Australian patroness/ philanthropist living in Paris. Compiled with advice from L oiseau lyre editors including Thurston Dart, EH Fellowes Repertoire: Some overlap with the repertoire published by L oiseau lyre, e.g. Lully, Clérambault, Couperin, but also both early (Montpellier Codex) and contemporary (Georges Auric) Artists: Included Dart, Fellowes, Anthony Lewis Attitude: Democratic: Hanson-Dyer had ideals of social improvement and education through the arts. Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion Dates: from late 1940s Instigated by: Deutsche Grammophon (DG) Repertoire: Archiv took a historical overview, dividing the period into 12 sections Artists: Included Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Karl Richter but also American harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick Attitude: Set up postwar by DG in part for marketing reasons, 10 in order to free the label from any unwanted nationalistic associations by concentrating on earlier repertoire HMV's History of Music in Sound Compiled by: Prof Gerald Abrahams, to accompany NOHM Dates: Format: 10 volumes, 229 sides of 78s Repertoire: From Byzantine to modern, i.e Artists: Included (for medieval & renaissance repertoire) Safford Cape s Pro Music Antiqua Ensemble, Brompton Oratory Choir, Alfred Deller Attitude: Academic (see below, 5b) 4. ARTISTS & REPERTOIRE OF HMS a) Repertoire The French ars nova repertoire in HMS is limited: Machaut s rondeau Ma fin est ma commencement; an excerpt from his Mass; and two very widely distributed songs, the anonymous Se je chant mains, and the apparently anonymous Le Moulin de Paris in fact an unattributed version of the (presumably Parisian) Pierre de Molins Amis tout dous. There is a roughly equal number of Trecento songs from Landini, Giovanni da Cascia, and Anon. This choice somewhat obvious by today s standards represents the recording industry s early ventures into a complex and potentially alienating repertoire. It is no surprise, in an English anthology, to find a substantial number of English medieval pieces: anonymous works including Angelus ad virginem and Deo gratia, Anglia are joined by works from Byttering, Dunstable and later composers. The only previous anthology to give comparable attention to the French 14 th - century repertoire was the Anthologie Sonore: surprisingly wide-ranging in its early music, it included not only 3 Machaut songs and an excerpt of the Mass perhaps a nationalistic emphasis in this French enterprise? but also Trecento polyphony (by Francesco Landini, Jacopo da Bologna, Ghirardello da Firenze) and, unusually, a virelai by Matteo da Perugia. b) Artists Unsurprisingly, HMS tended to use Britishbased artists, such as Frederick Fuller (in the trouvère songs in Vol II), and the Brompton Oratory and Bodley Singers in fact the list of performers was described as having a parochial look 11 but also included the ubiquitous Safford Cape. A small but significant number of the original recordings issued on 78s were replaced on the LP reissues, 12 since some of the performances now sounded dated and in a few cases, substandard in comparison with current performance practice. Denis Stevens, for example, wrote of Vol II (Early Medieval Music up to 1300), Its defects are due largely to an unimaginative and sometimes incorrect interpretation of performance practice HMS IN CONTEXT a) Historiography Since the beginning of the 20 th century, musicologists, critics and performers had grappled with the problem of introducing the 3

4 general public to medieval music. On paper, with only printed musical examples, and more textual description than actual music, this often proved a difficult task. Recordings, however, could give an idea of the sound of medieval music, bringing this repertoire (and its related musicological research) to life. Robertson described the recordings of HMS as provid[ing] a panorama in sound ; 14 this was especially welcome in the case of medieval music, which, even in the 1950s, was not frequently performed or broadcast. HMS thus contributed to a new stage of corpus-building through recordings following the initial building stage, of printed editions by scholars: foremost among these were Wolf and Ludwig (for 14 th -century repertoire), Stainer (Canonici Codex), Barclay Squire (Old Hall MS), Coussemaker (Montpellier Codex) and Aubry (Bamberg Codex). b) Musicologists and HMS Musicologists were involved in compiling all the recorded anthologies under discussion here; and the BBC and HMV recruited some of the UK s most important scholars and broadcasters for the HMS project. The general editor for both HMS and NOHM was Gerald Abrahams, the former director of the BBC Gramophone Department, and Professor at Liverpool University. Other academics involved were Dom Anselm Hughes, Egon Wellesz (Oxford University) and Jack Westrup; while on the BBC side were Denis Stevens planner and producer for the BBC Music Department from and Alec Robertson, broadcaster and chief producer of music talks on the Home and Third Programmes after the war. 15 Also on board was a representative of the ministry of education, John Horton. HMS thus provided an insight into a new intertwining of performance and scholarship. 16 c) Educating the Public HMS had a distinctly educational angle, having originated in a BBC radio series on the Third Programme: this was The History in Sound of European Music, (begun in 1948 but discontinued in 1950), in which music was performed live in the studio, introduced by Alec Robertson. 17 The BBC had already a track record of promoting music appreciation, most notably through Walford Davies weekly talks, Music and the Ordinary Listener ; and from 1959 Robertson travelled the UK with his record recitals promoted by EMI presenting excerpts from HMS in public lectures. His intention was teach his audience where to begin in the pursuit of the knowledge to be gained from these records ripening acquaintance will lead them to a new world of enjoyment ; 18 and the general public undoubtedly needed such an introduction to the medieval repertoire. HMS was intended to accompany NOHM, Vols II (1954) and III (1960) of which dealt with medieval music. These volumes were edited by Dom Anselm Hughes, who engaged an international team of musicologists, including Wellesz, Anglès, Handschin, Bukofzer, Ficker, Van den Borren and Rokseth to discuss the medieval period and the Renaissance. Gilbert Reaney and Leonard Ellinwood contributed the chapters on the French Ars nova and the Italian Trecento respectively. However, the innovative plan to provide illustrations in sound 19 to accompany this scholarly history of music did not go entirely smoothly: the two series soon fell out of sync, with only the first two volumes of NOHM published by the time of HMS s completion in In fact, there is little connection between the two: while the works recorded in HMS are listed in the footnotes of NOHM, these notes appear to have been added independently, rather than by the chapter s author, since the recorded works are almost never those discussed in detail nor are notated examples of the recorded pieces given in NOHM. By contrast, the handbooks published with the volumes included texts (with translations), a commentary, and the notated music either for the whole piece or part of it; they gave the listener the opportunity of learning all about the music without necessitating the purchase of NOHM. d) Critical reception of HMS Critics generally took the view that HMS was of greater educational than aesthetic value: its principal audience was thought to be students at school or university, although there are some attractive discs for the general buyer ; 20 and the ordinary listener might at least enjoy some of the pieces of 4

5 early music which could not be heard anywhere else. That much of HMS Vols II-III was seen as worthy or educational, rather than good music in its own right, was to an extent down to the variable quality of some performances even prompting reviewers such as Noble to warn that for educational purposes these recordings should be used with caution. 21 He did however concede that the recorded repertory of medieval music is too small for us to be able to do without them 22 at least until better-informed and more musical performances could be committed to record. Denis Stevens, reviewing Vol II, was even less enthusiastic: In summing up, it must be admitted that many records in this set possess great musical potentialities, but owing to serious faults in the actual presentation of the music, they have been spoiled beyond repair TECHNOLOGY The circumstances of HMS were, of course, affected by technological developments in recording: for example, wartime developments in microphones; the need to find an alternative to shellac for discs resulting in the creation of vinyl; and the production of magnetic tape. Broadcasting technology was also advancing. Once the LP became available, consumers began to disparage 78s as being of too short a duration, and less convenient a medium CONCLUSION This investigation of HMS places recordings in their cultural and historical context, in order to understand why this particular repertoire was recorded by these particular artists, and what influences shaped their performing styles. While the sounds we hear provide no clear-cut answers, they can assist in the formulation of questions and fruitful lines of enquiry. What editions were used by these performers? How were they trained? What was their own knowledge of medieval music and of idiomatic performing styles? century because the notation permits greater interpretive licence; but they were not different in kind from changes discernible in recorded performance of Bach or Brahms. The study of recordings, of music in performance, makes clear the constant re-thinking to which all notated music is subjected. It also lays bare the extent to which our experience of music is dependent on a myriad of influences including the economic and the technological. HMS may lead us to consider medieval manuscripts and modern editions of them, the reasons for the substitution of shellac with vinyl and the results of this development to examine the economic reasons that led to the creation of this particular performing ensemble, and perceptions about mid 14 th - century Florence in mid 20 th -century England. This way of studying music in per-formance may lead to the consideration of the most fundamental considerations of all: who used this music, and what for, and what did it mean to them? 8. IMPLICATIONS For the study of recordings: The implications of this study include the writing of new kinds of music history: the musicologist will have to acquire knowledge of the components of shellac, matrix numbers, commercial markets, the history of musicology, the history of performance, and interweave elements of economic and social history. In this investigation of HMS, we place recordings in their cultural and historical context and unearth the motivations of producers and artists. We consider which repertoire and artists were recorded and try to reconstruct why they produce the particular sound they do. The changes in performance practice in medieval music were so dramatic in the 20 th 5

6 For the study of performance practice: Rapid developments in performance practice over this period were documented through recordings; the changing understanding of musica ficta, the question of voices versus instruments and others can be illuminated through the study of these recorded anthologies. For medieval historiography: The study of recordings is an interesting, valuable one for historiography in general, and for the study of the reception of medieval music in particular; it enables us to discover the sound ideals of scholars, performers and listeners at a particular point in time. For medieval music, these varied greatly across the 20 th century; a study of recordings in this context can thus greatly enrich our understanding of historiography. References Timothy Day: A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History (Yale University Press: London, 2000) Martin Elste: Bildungsware alte Musik: Curt Sachs als Schallplattenpädagoge, in Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis, 13 (1989), Harry Haskell: The Early Music Revival: A History (Thames & Hudson: London, 1988) Dom A. Hughes, ed.: New Oxford History of Music, Vol. 2: Early Medieval Music up to (OUP: London, 1954) Dom A. Hughes and G. Abraham, ed.: New Oxford History of Music, Vol. 3: Ars Nova and the Renaissance, (London, 1960) Jeremy Noble: review of HMS Vols 2-7, The Gramophone, December 1957 Alec Robertson, 'The History of Music in Sound', The Gramophone June 1953/ March 1961 Edward Sackville-West & Desmond Shawe-Taylor: The Record Guide (London, rev. ed. 1955) Denis Stevens: Gramophone Notes: The History of Music in Sound, 463-5, The Musical Times, Vol. 94, No. 1328, October 1953 Recordings Please note that for copyright reasons it has not been possible to include audio examples with these proceedings. The History of Music in Sound, Vol. III: Ars Nova and the Renaissance. His Master s Voice HMS 20-31, HLP 5-6, HLPS 7. Sacred and Secular Music of XII-XVII Centuries: Yves Tinayre/ Dvonch Ensemble, 70701D L Anthologie sonore: Vols 31-32, Machaut Mass (parts): Paraphonistes de St Jean & Brass Ensemble/ Guillaume de Van : Vol. 59, Anon: Se je chant mains/ P. de Molins: De ce que fols pense (Solo SATB, viols, dir. Safford Cape) : Vol. 67, Machaut: Quant Theseus (Pro Music Antqua Ensemble, dir. Safford Cape) Notes 1 Day 2000, 85 2 Hughes & Abraham 1960, vii 3 Haskell 1988, Sackville-West & Shawe-Taylor 1955, Robertson 1961, Noble 1957, Haskell 1988, 118 6

7 8 Elste 1989, Haskell 1988, Day 2000, Noble 1957, Ibid., Stevens 1953, Robertson 1961, Day 2000, Ibid., Robertson 1953, 3 18 Robertson 1961, Noble 1957, Sackville-West & Shawe-Taylor 1955, Noble 1957, Ibid. 23 Stevens 1953, Noble 1957, 286 7