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An
expert who knows all the musicological niceties and all about instrumental
bowing - is faced with countless questions that cannot be answered even
alter the Most meticulous examination of the source materials. How did
the organ concertos by George Frideric Handel sound when the master himself
sot at the organ te entertain his audiences during the intermissions of
his large-scale oratorios with his astonishing improvisations ta an orchestral
accompaniment? What did it sound like when François Couperin sketched
his harpsichord portraits in the presence of illustrious circles of aristocrats?
Above all, however, how binding was the written musical text for the performers?
Did they allow themselves spontaneous alterations beyond the various and
variously documented ornaments, and thereby really tend every new performance
a new face?
An
abundance of written information survives from the centuries of early music,
but it con never reproduce the actual sounds. What could, however, stimulate
our imagination would be some sort of associative backward transfer a acoustical
documents - especially those that transmit ta us each respective composer
in the context of his own creations. This is undoubtedly the reason for
the special attraction that emanates from even the earliest historical
recordings. When Paul Hindemith conducts Hindemith or Duke Ellington plays
Duke Ellington, not only is the music truly authentic: the listener also
experiences, especially in the case of jazz, how the melodic and harmonic
framework was filled out by the composer. This should remind us that Handel
himself also frequently dispensed with writing down the organ part since
he too often decided on the spur of the moment what the musical occasion
demanded.
Every
comparison is inadequate in some way. Nevertheless, even taking into account
all the differences in cultural, geographical, and historical background,
one cannot help recognizing that the Argentinian Astor Piazzolla is a kind
of a twentieth-century baroque figure. This
view is supported not only by the huge amount of music that the composer
and bandoneon virtuoso wrote in the course of his life for all conceivable
combinations and purposes: it is also evident in the number of arrangements
other performers made of his works in order to adapt them to their respective
instruments. But even these arrangements are hardly more than circumstantial
evidence.
The
baroque character of Piazzolla and his work becomes unmistakable when we
realise that for him there was obviously no distinction between 'serious'
and 'popular music - and this despite the fact that he had enjoyed a thorough
classical training in New York, Buenos Aires, and Paris which would have
been enough to pave his way to success in the world of classical music.
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