Tools

What we use:

Changing times bring with them evolutions in tastes and preferences. Naturally, these changes influence composers and performers, and are also driven by composers’ and performers’ artistic journeys. From both directions, these are reflected in the performing practices and instruments found in any given period.

Inasmuch as we can ascertain them, we use instruments in or as near to their form as it was when the composer knew them. We adopt techniques that were common at the time of composition but were replaced by others of later periods. We cannot ignore the long shadow of influence cast by the incredible artists active in the centuries since these works were composed, even the ones whose instruments and performing preferences may obscure the composer’s intention. They are part of our heritage and we would not discard them even if we could. But knowing where the composer left the work and where later generations of musicians picked it up guides us in our quest to present music we love with the sort of revelation and excitement that the first performers and listeners may have felt. The effect on their senses cannot be separated from the instruments and performing styles which delivered those first sounds.

The instruments we choose to use frequently remind us why makers and players sought the “improvements” that evolved into their “modern” selves. They are harder to play. They are sometimes quieter. Their systems of tuning are sometimes foreign and challenging to modern ears. But we absolutely love them. We love their wide-ranging spectra of tone colors, we value the questions they elicit and the discussions had because of them, and we are grateful to be able to sit beside the composer, as it were, and understand why he or she wrote what they did, what challenges they or their performers may have faced and what might have been lost when those challenges were surmounted with technology. Indeed, we are sometimes pleasantly surprised to learn that, to a composer or performer from the 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries, these challenges were often valued and, furthermore, exploited for artistic impact that is unavailable when the challenge no longer exists.

Those “improvements” hardly elicited even mild resistance. Key systems stabilized and standardized pitch accuracy for woodwinds, and metal for the body of the flute was seen as an enhancement to its carrying power over a large orchestra. A French Horn no longer had to contend with numerous crooks (extra bits of plumbing, essentially) to shift from one key to another once all available plumbing was placed on the instrument and controlled by a set of keys. Moving the grand piano from a straight-strung wooden instrument whose hammers were covered by leather or thin felt to a cross-strung giant clad with iron and producing a unified tone from the bottom of the range all the way to the top was celebrated by late-19th century Romantics. It paved the way for their highly-chromatic and expressive compositions. And steel strings were thought of as a remedy to the gut strings that had been used for centuries on numerous stringed instruments, a salve hailed by string-making companies as providing louder and more stable strings than their ancient counterparts.

And regarding those improvements made to our instruments, one finds that while the modern flute and oboe do project beautifully over an orchestra and play equally well in every key, their key-less wooden predecessors produce a different character - different personality - in each key, even if the listener is asked to reconsider what “in tune” means. It may even be that the composer exploited the often-stark differences in color and pitch relationships that a single baroque wind instrument can produce, an affect that cannot be replicated on the modern version. That horn may have to change crooks several times in a movement but the color it produces, likewise, cannot be replicated. The fortepiano - evolving at an immense pace from the time it was invented in 1700 to the advent of the modern piano in the 1870s - may be quieter than a beautiful Steinway. But within its decibel-limited spectrum it provides a huge array of colors and articulations. And the difference in character between its high, middle, and low registers - that which the Steinways and others sought to smooth out or eliminate - is exactly what a composer like Beethoven was basing the choice of placement for a particular musical motive. A performance of his music by a great musician on a modern piano can be thrilling, moving, and illuminating. But it can never fully bring the listener into Beethoven’s world the way we believe Beethoven wanted; it can provide something great, but not the same.