Roger Norrington misses the point

In a  this past weekend, British conductor and early music expert Roger Norrington explains just how he saved Beethoven from 20th century conductors. The occasion was a 75 birthday concert at Royal Festival Hall and a documentary about him and his work in the early music movement, "In Search of Beethoven."

At one point, the controversial conductor who shocked the music world by applying Beethoven's metronome markings to his symphonies, reprises his earlier skepticism about 20th century conductors. He lambastes them for relying on tradition, not evidence and says he had a feeling of "rightness" when performing Beethoven his way (that is with original instruments and performance practice techniques of Beethoven’s time). He then questions the need for interpretation:

But how far is it necessary to "interpret" a piece, to personalise it, even to change it, for your own time? During the first half of the 20th century it seemed quite a normal thing to do. The era of fascism, communism and grand capitalism was also the era of larger halls, larger orchestras and star conductors. During the Nazi period, Beethoven's Eroica was made to assume the mantle of the heroic German nation, either conquering, or suffering heroic defeat at Stalingrad. The music became slower and slower and more Wagnerian. Wagner got slower, too. So did Brahms and Bruckner. Many conductors changed the notes in places to bring works "up to date". Mahler arranged Beethoven's ninth symphony in grandiose style (he also completely rewrote the four Schumann symphonies).

I am more in tune with an earlier conductor, George Henschel. Originally a very fine baritone and a friend of Brahms, he wrote in his autobiography that, at the time he was conducting (1880s-1900), "we didn't know about interpretation - we simply tried to play the music as well as possible". Evidence-based performance tends towards Henschel's approach. If you have the right instruments (or good modern players), the right size of orchestra, sitting on the stage in the way the composer intended, playing the music at his own speed, with the appropriate articulation and note length, and with the written or natural harmonic phrasing, you are going to get a very good and characterful performance without having a "great idea" about it.

Naturally, your own personality comes into play, but it should never come between the composer and the audience. You should be the advocate of the composer, not his master. You do not need to change notes or tempo - the composer is all. As Schoenberg remarked: if we don't understand why the slow movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony is given a metronome mark of 60 (when most conductors take it to about half that speed), then we don't know the music well enough yet.

What Norrington misses is that, ultimately, everything musical act involves interpretation. He can't escape from that no matter how hard he tries to lie among the "evidence."

There is no objective performance of art. Any claim to a scientific discovery of rightness is fraught with problems, from imperfect sources to how much our own society has changed since the time of the original performances. I understand that Norrington has been hardened by having to fight battle after battle to bring new (or old) ideas and approaches to classical music's "sacred music" like Beethoven, and that is why he is so defensive and combative. He should have not been bullyed in his early days by conductors, critics and historians who didn't like his ideas or change in general. What Norrington has done shedding new (again, old) light on Beethoven and other composers has been wonderful -- but it represents just another way of performing music and he has no right to claim, well, that his approach is "right" over anyone else’s.

The biggest knock against Norrington over the years is that his performances often lack musicality and overall artistic statement. If he would argue that these issues are not something a conductor should be adding (interpretation), I would counter that he is leaving out a key element of performing the Beethoven and musicians of his time expected: that the performer is an integral part of the process of making music. Singers of the time improvised and elaborated on arias, and Beethoven himself was known for his interpretations. But more than that, Romantic musicians strove to establish music as the highest art form. They would not have been satisfied with any performance that just uses “the right instruments, the right size of orchestra, sitting on the stage in the way the composer intended, playing the music at his own speed, with the appropriate articulation and note length, and with the written or natural harmonic phrasing.” No, they expected performers to be an important part of the process, not automatons passing on information from composer to listener.

So Norrington is just as ahistorical as any conductor. And that’s a good thing, because contemporary performances need to speak to contemporary audiences, not the dead. And even Norrington’s performance practice concepts are a contemporary movement that is popular because they fit our desire to reach the past -- not because he has gotten a time machine and discovered exactly how music sounded in Beethoven’s time.

In fact, Norrington's strict adherence to his theories is his downfall. Music doesn't work well with absolutes and a freer application of his research to his conducting, one that allowed for more musicianship and, yes, interpretation, might have served him better, although I certainly enjoy some of this “interpretations.” In the meantime, it is he who now needs to stop preaching from his own bully pulpit and let others do things their way.