Albert Schönbergzaal, Frans Bruggen and the 18th Century Orchestra Rehearsals - Royal Conservatorium, The Hague
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Frans Bruggen and the 18th Century Orchestra Rehearsals - Royal Conservatorium, The Hague
Ethnography of Early Music practitioners and reflections
As I entered the Albert Schönbergzaal in the conservatorium the room was empty of performers. The stage was full of seats and music stands, ready for the arrival of the orchestra. A number of coats were flung over chairs in the main seating area and instrument cases filled the floor space surrounding the stage. As I walked up the stairs to take to a seat in the gallery people slowly began to enter. Two people begun preparing the conductors area, testing the microphone and adjusting the stage. After a short period of time a quartet of string players took to the centre of the stage, moving the chairs so that they were sat in a square formation and then began tuning up and working through a number of sections. Slowly more and more people began to flood in, still eating lunch, chatting excitedly, some seemingly in no hurry, others taking immediately to their seats and tuning their instruments. The quartet continued to play in the centre of the stage, unperturbed by the growing hustle and bustle. Gradually the noise in the concert hall began to rise as the majority of the performers had taken their seats and were simultaneously tuning up. The cacophony of sound of the entire orchestra individually tuning began to fill the room triumphantly. The lead violinist asked for a note from the string section and then began to talk about the afternoon plan of which sections would be rehearsed. He asked if everyone had the right music in front of them, some nervous glances and a few people got up and ran over to their bags, an assistant walked to the side of the room and grabbed a handful of sheet music. This is distributed as each section of the orchestra talks and laughs amongst themselves, the trumpet players stand in a small semi-circle around their stands, the soloists sit on the outside of the orchestra pointing and waving at friends on the other side of the stage, gradually things began to fall still, as if some silent signal had been given. Nothing happens and the sound of tuning and chatter gradually builds once more. The room falls startlingly silent as an old, frail man, Frans Brüggen, is wheeled to the conductors spot. The orchestra erupts into an enthusiastic applause, the man claps back at them and clasps his hands together in gratitude. He thanked his wife for her assistance which receives another round of applause. The man then invites the orchestra to begin.
Throughout the rehearsal there is a hushed respectful silence, any chatting is done in the lightest of whispers after Brüggen’s entry. After one read through, he says “we must just do that bit again, in parts too slow and oboes too long, tempo, tempo.” He is very explicit and clear about what he wants. He also tells the whole orchestra, “Do not add ornaments when they are not written”. When the soloists enter the stage they run through the same section a number of times, he makes comments after each go, “Try to sing with even less vibrato, what I mean is don’t sing in a weak mode, the piece goes… it is an amour but an amour made of steel!” The singers get told frequently not to ornament, the orchestra is stopped on several occasions when the male soloist does it again, he is clearly struggling to let go of the ornament he has added in his own practicing of the piece. Brüggen speaks sharply for the first time, “please write it down” upon which the soloist points at his head to indicate he is singing from memory, “You need a pencil, I want you to have a pencil, write it down”. The soloists complete their section and head off the stage. In the next part of the opera the trumpets and percussion are more present. After a particular part there is some disagreement about how a part should be handled. Two gentlemen join Frans Brüggen and they compare notes and flick through the score deep in conversation. The orchestra begins to chatter amongst themselves. After a five minute interlude, the lead violin asks what the verdict is. Brüggen announces the change at which point everyone frantically scribbles on their scores. Some performers are still chatting as Brüggen tries to get the attention of the percussion section to give them a particular instruction. After repeating percussion three times to no avail, the lead violin stands and demands silence if you are not being addressed by the conductor. The entire orchestra falls silent once more, and some embarrassed glances are exchanged. Brüggen tells the percussion section, “bring some variation, you can do as you like here, vary it a little.” At another point of contention or discussion as to how a part should be played, one trumpet player makes a suggestion. Brüggen looks over his score and says, “Yes, it would work perfectly, you are right, but for the moment let’s not do it.” A few giggles circulate around the musicians. Throughout the rehearsals all of the instrumentalists constantly adjust and annotate their notation. When they are playing, it takes only the faintest movement of Brüggen’s arm and the orchestra comes to an abrupt halt. Whilst his voice and movements may be weak, his presence and authority are impressive.
(To continue reading about personal exeriences of listening to music, click here to read Loes' observations of attending a concert)
In my observations, one thing that struck me was the degree to which the musicians would constantly annotate their scores. As I sat and observed the rehearsals, rarely would one run through take place which wouldn’t be followed by several instrumentalists picking up a pencil and frantically scribbling away at the large book of music in front of them. This immediately made clear to me the relativity of the text, these musicians were working with the text. It was clear that they were not restricted by the black lines on the page, it was providing a clear guideline, it was setting some boundaries, but within that these musicians were making choices. As Inge Pasmans told me “the performance rules are very wide and very, yeah… not ambiguous, but they give sort of… the boundaries…” (Pasmans, 2014). She goes on to explain that you have to learn these boundaries, know the constrains that are placed on you by the style and period of the music you are playing, if you understand this then within many sections, improvisation is possible, even called for, such as in the variations of repetitions, here no instruction is given, or rarely, but performers are expected to do something different with each repeat. As Richard Egarr states, “Take something like the violin sonatas of Corelli, the Italian Baroque composer from the generation before Vivaldi. He writes out ornaments for the player, but he never thought people would actually play them. They’re just a guide. He’d expect players to make up their own. What I want to do… is encourage the creativity and sense of risk which makes that possible” (Hewett, 2013). In order to have the creativity and be able to take risks, as Inge highlighted you have to know what is possible, as Picasso famously said, “Learn the rules like a pro, so that you can break them like an artist” (Picasso, 2014).
This experimentation with playing was something Claudio experienced in his trip to the Orgelpark where he encountered a Baroque organ, to his surprise experimentation was not frowned on but encouraged, this reinforces Egarr's standpoint that risk taking and creativity should be encouraged, especially within the practice of HIP, only when this experimentation is combined with research of historical sources can performers really hope to deepen their understanding of their own discipline.
