22/4/2018 Clive Brown, Part 1 — Jesse Irons

BAROQUE / MODERN VIOLINIST AND CRIER

Jess Iron
JOURNAL PERFORMANCES ABOUT C O N TA C T

Clive Brown, Part 1 Wha I Thi ?

According to Christopher Small,
March 27, 2015 / Jesse Irons
"musicking" is:

Before leaving for Europe, I corresponded with a all musical activity from composing
number of people I hoped to meet with. Or at to performing to listening to a
least attempted to correspond. Perhaps my pitch Walkman to singing in the shower -
wasn't convincing (Hi! I'm trying to learn about even cleaning up after a concert is a
historical performance styles! Can I come hang kind of musicking.
out with you?) or perhaps it was simply a busy
This journal is my attempt to become
time for many people, but my initial plan to
"musicker" by expanding my horizons as
split my time between London and Amsterdam
a musician - to educate myself through
was looking sketchier and sketchier as my
research, travel, mentors, maybe try
departure date approached. Enter... Clive Brown!
some composing, and maybe even clean
up after a concert.
Clive Brown is a
well-known figure in

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22/4/2018 Clive Brown, Part 1 — Jesse Irons

the academic world

of musicology and Affect Authenticity
historical Bruce
performance. He Haynes
wrote what is Canonism
probably the
definitive work on
concert review
Sex sells Elizabeth Blumenstock
Classical and
Glenn Gould mentor
Romantic performing
practice from 1750-1900. There's a picture of Recaps
that tome to the left. He's Professor of Applied Recordings
Musicology at Leeds and recently worked with Rhetoric
my friends in the Diderot Quartet, who put me
Romanticism
in touch with him. After determining that the
The End of
dates wouldn't line up to meet in the UK, he
mentioned that he would be spending the week
Early Music
in Antwerp giving lectures and coachings on travel
historical performance style. With that I started
looking into train tickets to Antwerp!
“What does not come from the heart
will not easily touch the heart.”
I ended up attending four of his lectures, sitting
— Quantz
in on a couple of his coachings, playing violin
for him, and even going out to dinner twice. He
was incredibly generous with his time. He was
RECENT POSTS
also incredibly passionate about his research
and the elements of historical style in classical
and romantic music that seem well-supported
by the evidence but that one rarely hears in CLIVE BROWN, PART 1
concert. For a "professor of applied musicology"
Mar 27, 2015
it's understandably frustrating to him that even
well-known performers with biographies filled
PASSACAGLIA AT
with claims as to their interest and knowledge
PURCELL ROOM, LONDON
of historical styles are ignoring some of the most
Mar 22, 2015
basic of his findings.

The crux of his argument that I observed THE INDIAN QUEEN AT

throughout the week was that, in contrast to
ENGLISH NATIONAL
baroque music, classical and romantic
OPERA, LONDON
Mar 18, 2015
performance practice represented a continuum,
strains of which exist in the earliest recordings.
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22/4/2018 Clive Brown, Part 1 — Jesse Irons

Some of these recordings were made by THE KING'S CONSORT AT

musicians who were famous as "exemplifying WIGMORE HALL, LONDON
the true Mozart style" and who were in many Mar 14, 2015
cases taught by associates of Mozart, Beethoven,
Mendelssohn, etc. When 19th century treatises RHETORIC IN THE
are read with the sound of these recordings in PERFORMANCE OF
our ears, we begin to realize that the foreign- BAROQUE MUSIC
seeming musical language of these recordings is Nov 22, 2014
very likely much closer to that of Mozart than
we might expect, or even hope!
ELIZABETH
BLUMENSTOCK
Why don't contemporary professional
Oct 28, 2014
ensembles use a style within earshot of an
Adelina Patti or a Marie Soldat-Roeger?
Probably because in many respects it would
ON PLAYING THE FLUTE:
CHAPTER 11
qualify as "bad" by the standards of the
Sep 11, 2014
modernist revolution: tempos would be very
unsteady, changing with dynamics and phrase
structure as well as with formal THE END OF EARLY
sections, portamento would be all over the place MUSIC: CHAPTER 2 (PART
in a way frequently criticized as indulgent and 2)
in questionable taste, and (most damning of all) Sep 6, 2014

ensemble would very frequently not be

"together" in the sense of being perfectly THE END OF EARLY
vertically-aligned in the score, as we are so used MUSIC: CHAPTER 2 (PART
to hearing. 1)
Sep 4, 2014

But what have we lost, with our modern

cleanliness and crisp articulation and almost THE END OF EARLY
quasi-baroque approach that most of today's MUSIC: CHAPTER 1
HIP ensembles have adopted? I'll just leave this Aug 30, 2014
here: Adelina Patti, the most celebrated soprano
of her day, singing Voi Che Sapete from
Marriage of Figaro.
 April 2018 
SU MO TU WE TH FR SA

Adelina Patti ~Voi Che Sapete~ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21

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22/4/2018 Clive Brown, Part 1 — Jesse Irons

22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30

Tags Clive Brown, Antwerp, Adelina Patti,

Classical, Romantic, Modernism, travel

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Passacaglia at Purcell ...

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Miles Golding
3 years ago · 0 Likes

Hi Jesse. I'm a violinist who's been

around a while and had a pretty wide
musical experience. I've been quite
deeply involved with period ensembles
since about 1977 and have done
considerable research. Some of my
colleagues just go with the flow and fit
in; I like to dig around, and make my
own decisions.

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22/4/2018 Clive Brown, Part 1 — Jesse Irons

Clive Brown has done some very wide

research and his book is full of useful
information. But have a think about this:

He makes a great thing about off-the-

string bowing being a late 19th Century
technique. Many players have
swallowed this, and some ensembles,
leaders, players fear that if they don't
play dotted/daggered notes on the string
in the upper half of the bow, even if
such a technique kills the resonance and
fails to achieve an "airiness" in the
sound, or results in poor ensemble
because the tempo is just too fast to
handle when executing that stroke, they
will be accused of being "modern".
Professor Brown happily quotes
Reichardt (Berlin 1776, Ueber die
Pflichten der Ripieno-violinisten) at a
point where he describes the action of
simple quavers on the string, but he fails
to mention what Reichardt writes
immediately afterwards - that if the
same such notes are indicated with
daggers, and he gives an example - then
they are to be played off the string.
("....soll der Bogen aber ganz von den
Seiten abgehoben werden"). It is odd
that the esteemed professor decided to
reject that crucial piece of evidence in his
book. It has made me very distrustful of
academics, and more determined than
ever to make my own research and
come to my own decisions.

I would post a jpg file of the passage but

this blog doesn't have the means for me
to do this. Find it here:

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22/4/2018 Clive Brown, Part 1 — Jesse Irons

http://imslp.org/wiki/%C3%9CberdiePflichtendesRipien-
Violinisten%28Reichardt,Johann_Friedrich%29

I leave you to think about that. Happy

music-making!

You might be interested in this:

http://www.milesgolding.com/StringTension.html

P O W E R E D BY S Q UA R E S PAC E

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