Gramophone Records

(RECORDING COMPANIES: AP, Archive Pro- duction; C, Columbia; Cap, Capitol; D, Decca; DT, Ducretet-Thomson; H, HMV; LI, London International; N, Nixa; OL, Oiseau Lyre; V, Vox.)

MUSIC HISTORY

So great now is the output of recorded seven- teenth- and eighteenth-century (and earlier) music that it is difficult to imagine, even with

the current craze for the instrumental music of

this period, where it is being absorbed. Besides

the HMV History of Music in Sound volumes

on 78s, designed to provide illustrations to the New Oxford History of Music, and occasional things on the popular commercial labels, such

as the Decca Gregorian Chant series, most of

this early music is issued on three main labels —Archive Production, Oiseau Lyre, and Vox —and is probably subsidised, since the demand for it must be small, from popular issues on other labels by the same or associated com-

panies. If this is so, we should no doubt be grateful to these companies for being willing to sacrifice a proportion of profit to 'culture,' for an inappreciable return in 'prestige.' As the catalogues grow, however, the ungrateful ques- tion begins to pose itself : 'Is all this recording of 'early music as useful or valuable as we persuade ourselves?' This applies particularly to the mass of early concertos, symphonies and sonatas with which the market is now being flooded. Here is a list of some recent issues of this kind : Torelli, 12 Concertos Op. 8 (on both V and OL); 5 Concertos by Vivaldi, 6 by Albinoni, 6 Violin Sonatas by Leclair, disc after disc of concertos by Rameau and other keyboard music by him and Couperin, 2 Sin- fonias by J. C. Bach, keyboard music by Bach's sons, keyboard Sonatas by Kuhnau, Pasquini, Scarlatti, Paradisi, C. P. E. Bach, and Haydn, some primitive Trios by Haydn (all these on OL), and a Cello Concerto by Vivaldi, with several pieces by Couperin (D). There are occasional things of charm in all these, but there is much more that is deadly dull, and we gain little in msthetic experience front them, little even in historical knowledge that matters, except the knowledge that it would not have mattered if we had never heard them, and that we are right to accept J. S. Bach as the supreme

and for us the only necessary representative of that epoch, who said everything that at this date it has to say to us much better than any- body else.

Not even all Bach is worth recording— the various Concertos for three and four claviers, for instance (DT), or the Coffee Can- tata, coupled on V with a dull solo cantata— but to hear the magnificent new issue of the 6 Brandenburg Concertos, or the 2 Violin Con- certos, coupled with the Double Concerto, or the 3 Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsi- chord (all V), is to realise that all those other estimable concertos by the swarm of estimable composers working between 1650 and 1750 may be written off without regret. A most unscholarly view, of course, but there is plenty of room for scholarship in the study of Bach alone, as in the Vox Brandenburgs, which are offered in authentic performances on the orig- inal instruments, with a handsome volume of scholarly notes thrown in, including the full score of all six works. The exploration of Bach's work is also being done on an ambitious scale in the AP series, in which the ninth of the twelve research-periods of the series is devoted entirely to recordings of his works, in twelve categories. It might be argued that Bach has less need of representation, in an historical series, since he easily finds his way into popular catalogues, even those of the EMI group, which only touches 'historical' music on its popular labels when it can sell it with a star performer, as in the magnificent Germani per- formance of the Organ Sonatas (H) or the rather unsatisfactory Schweitzer set of Chorale Preludes (C). The excellent Stuttgart perform- ance of the Musical Offering, and George Malcolm's Chromatic Fantasia and Italian Concerto (both D), and the 4 Flute Sonatas played by Rampal (DT), are other popular Bach issues in the same class. The competition of these commercial issues is another argument against 'historical' Bach recordings—the new B minor Mass and Magnificat (both OL), for instance, cannot stand up to the existing all- star versions—though occasionally the 'histori- cal' issues beat the glamorous ones at their own game, as in the new Vox Brandenburgs, many of the AP performances, and the ravish- ing harpsichord playing of' Nef and Gerlin on OL. And if it comes to duplication (or triplica- tion), better three versions of the Bach Magni- ficat (available on AP and Vox as well as OL), or two of the unfamiliar Easter Oratorio (of which V now offer an excellent rival to the N version), than two of Torelli's Op. 8.

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In periods earlier than that of the emergence of the concerto, the explorations are often, if not more necessary, at least more interesting and rewarding, though here again, once the charm of novelty has worn off, the conven- tions of the various periods, and the difficulty of distinguishing one composer from another behind those conventions, quickly become tire- some. Here AP again lead, with their various well-balanced research-periods front AD 700 to 1800, OL and V covering the period less systematically. Among their contributions, such things as Victoria's Missa pro Defunctis (V), Thurston Dart's records of Early English Keyboard Music (OL) are outstanding, and to them may be added Couperin's very beautiful Messe des Paroisses for organ (LI) and a re- cital by Piet Kee of Baroque Organ Music (H). On the other hand, a third series of Venetian Motets (V) and a second volume of Canzone Scordate (LI) seem superfluous, and several Motets by Couperin and Cantatas by Buxtehude (these curiously backed by a mono- tonous set of songs by Campian), both on OL, seem not well chosen, and undistinguished. At this stage, with the field still little explored, one or two such undistinguished works are not an imposition, but there seems to be a danger that, as the companies discover that after the fiftieth new version of Dvorak's New World Symphony—and the latest one by Schwarz (Cap) may well be the forty-ninth—the market for this work is exhausted. they will explore deeper, and dig up for us more and more undistinguished early music, and create the same craze for it as for eighteenth-century concertos. We know now by the existence of ITV that a demand for something totally superfluous that nobody wants can be created by the sheer insistence on supplying it, and it seems possible, from the persistence of the companies mentioned here in supplying early music, that their sacrifice of profit to 'culture' is a shrewd business speculation for the rainy day that may not be very far off. If this is so, and if the speculation is a good one, as it seems already to be proving, the characteristic works of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries may soon be as hackneyed as the symphonies and piano concertos of the nineteenth. This will be a change, but not necessarily, or not lastingly, for the better. If we have to choose from Dvorak's Fifth Symphony, Torelli's Fifth Con- certo or Buxtehude's Fifth Cantata to hear at every other concert. let it be the Dvorak, which we can at least still distinguish from Brahms and Tchaikovsky, whereas to our ears now . most of Torelli and Buxtchude might just as easily be by any one of a dozen of their con- temporaries. Even in Ba'ch's time (or come to that Mozart's) we can only distinguish the

giants from the rest, and before that not even them. Most early music sounds to us at this distance equally charming, pretty, soothing and lulling (as long as we do not hear too much of it at once, when it becomes boring). The Beethovens and the Schuberts of early music are as indistinguishable from the Raffs and the Hillers as from each other, and mediocrity and genius please us equally, which can only mean that this music has lost all its original meaning, for our ears, under its 'period charm.' That we can, by swamping ourselves in oceans of such anonymous music, recover the ears for it of its contemporary listeners, rediscover what it meant to them, and distinguish the person- alities of its composers, greater and lesser, seems unlikely, and anyway rather foolish. Although the lesser composers may have been important then, they are not, from a purely testhetic point of view, important any longer, and to concern ourselves with them as well as with the giants whom history and the survival of the greatest have picked out for us savours of the perverse. Such a desire in scholars may be dictated by noble qualms about possible mistakes in history's judgement, but if mistakes have been made it is not likely that we, with our modern coarsened cars, shall be able to discover them now.

Nor do mistakes seem very likely. In nine- teenth-century music, where we still do easily know mediocrity from talent, and talent from genius, and can fairly safely rely on the judge- ment of our own ears, occasional explorations among forgotten composers have never re- vealed a neglected genius, but rather give us confidence in the process of natural selection and the established preferences of our ignor- ance, reassuring us that we can safely go on con- centrating on those we recognise as undisputed geniuses, giving' the occasional hearing that wo do to disputed talents, and never giving a thought to the forgotten and presumably mediocre figures. Even so our musical life is crowded out with nineteenth-century music. The cure for that is not to clutter it up instead with the music of the seventeenth, which we should be thankful to have so well thinned-out for us by time. If lesser composers must be drawn on, better those of our own time, who do mean something to us, than the complete works of Albinoni.

COLIN MASON