Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Part I Haydn in context
- Part II Stylistic and interpretive contexts
- Part III Genres
- Part IV Performance and reception
- 14 A composer, his dedicatee, her instrument, and I: thoughts on performing Haydn's keyboard sonatas
- 15 Haydn and posterity: the long nineteenth century
- 16 The kitten and the tiger: Tovey's Haydn
- 17 Recorded performances: a symphonic study
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
17 - Recorded performances: a symphonic study
from Part IV - Performance and reception
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 September 2011
- Frontmatter
- Part I Haydn in context
- Part II Stylistic and interpretive contexts
- Part III Genres
- Part IV Performance and reception
- 14 A composer, his dedicatee, her instrument, and I: thoughts on performing Haydn's keyboard sonatas
- 15 Haydn and posterity: the long nineteenth century
- 16 The kitten and the tiger: Tovey's Haydn
- 17 Recorded performances: a symphonic study
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Why study recordings of Haydn's symphonies? What can they tell us that the usual sources of music-historical data, i.e., paper documents, cannot? The most obvious answer is that recordings capture a performance, providing evidence of performance practices of the past as well as the present. Recordings are also important documents of reception history and can reveal patterns of consumption, changes in taste, variations of musical meaning, and shifts in the musical qualities essential for the definition of a particular musical work. But since the recording process itself is just as much a performance as the activity of the musicians, a study of recordings is also a study of technology. In addition to preserving musical practices, recording inspires them, profoundly altering our musical values.
The ontology of recording
In studying recorded performances, the ontology of a recording is of vital importance. As a historical document, a recording offers a unique portal to a particular moment in the performance history of a musical composition. But the conceptual separation of the recording from the recorded musical object is crucial, for a recording of a Haydn symphony is not simply a recording of Haydn's music. Neither is it a recording of a single performance of a symphony by a particular conductor and orchestra. Also recorded are the acoustics of the hall or studio, the unique properties of the equipment used to make the recording, the placement of the microphones, and the sound of the storage medium itself.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Haydn , pp. 249 - 263Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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