Thomas Dressler wrote :

> I'm just going to say that you must not know my performances.

Indeed, as I said so.

> I am just going to counter your statement by wondering why anything that Widor did is often considered "wrong" from the standpoint of historic performing practice. [...]

> When I first learned early music techniques 33 years ago, I was taught by a teacher who felt everything Romantic was wrong, that Widor was wrong about Bach, etc.
>
> I now disagree with that.  I'm not saying Widor was right about everything--there is plenty I think he did not fully understand. However, I don't think just saying that Widor used the same words makes me wrong.
> Mattheson described the affekts and musical lines in very similar terms, too.

I see nothing in what you wrote (partially quoted above) which I would not agree with.  And I wrote nothing of the kind.

Actually, my post was just a side-remark not on your performance or opinions, but on Roy's remark ("Bach is turning your pages" or whatever), and even, not on what it meant but only on the way it was said.

Fundamentally, I'm certainly not a "Baroquer", a style of performance which IMHO is so often a caricature, based on excess, exageration, absolutism and lack of musical sense in reading the documents.  But this has nothing to do with, for instance, the use of ancient fingerings or ancient instruments which were modern ones in the time they were used, therefore have obviously to be familiar to performers who want to understand how it worked then.

No problem here, AFAIC.

Now, every performer is free to play the way s/he wants, and every listener is free to enjoy and/or agree or not.  Note that enjoying and agreeing are two different things.  You may disagree with Richter playing the WTC on the piano, making benefit of a modern instrument and underlining fugal parts -- and you may enjoy it however.

Nobody is *obliged* to follow ancient rules when playing ancient music.  If you decide to play Bach with romantic principles, it's your perfect right and responsability.  If the listener just refuses such a position, it's his/her problem, not the performer's.  BUT if a performer claims to follow ancient principles and do something else, that does not make sense, to me anyway.  Only, at that point, I ask the performer about what s/he considers as ancient principles: not only the documents he relies on but also what he deduces from them.  Ancient documents can often be discussed and it's far to be uncommon to find another document which says, not the exact opposite, but something different. Having a driving licence means you know the rules - not that you're a good driver.

Back to Widor playing Bach and Tom's comments.  What I call "ultra-romantic" about Widor is not his phrasing, which after all is often logical and, if I dare say so, based on universal conceptions - even if they may be disputable.  It's not either his articulation, which is not "romantic" but "XIXth-century-styled".  What I mean is: Widor's legato on the organ, which he mainly learned from Lemmens, is the heir of singing legato and piano legato.  It's a conception of playing, neither right or wrong by itself -- just from his time, or rather from the time just before.  The fascinating thing is that Widor himself clearly felt and said that there was a problem here, that it did not always work properly and that something was mysterious for him which he could not solve.

On another hand, claiming for instance that an upbeat is always to be played detached (some "modern authentic" players) is as stupid as claiming it always has to be legato (some less "modern" players).  There are plenty of steps between both these ways (and even outside them, as the over-legato).  Btw no baroque treatise or document, AFAIK, says anything of the kind with such a rigid diktat.  One of the best examples is the subject from the Fantasy and fugue in C minor by Bach:

c | g g g g | a_flat------ f d f | b_nat...

in which the articulation between c and g, but also between first and second g (and next), have to be considered.

And on the idea that slurring should always go from strong to weak, i.e. never across the bar-line etc, Bach himself provides examples of the reverse, i.e. against the fur (quotes on request).  It does not mean one can do it anywhere "because Bach does so", it means that this was not impossible; up to the performer to make his mind if it's welcome or not in such or such situation -- and again, up to the listener to decide if s/he likes it or not.

(I cheer Tom about his excellent distinction between phrasing and articulation, something which is so often completly mixed up and blurred.)

What is "ultra-romantic" in Widor is rather the idea that a modern instrument (and in Widor's mind Cavaille-Coll's organs were the top) is the best to perform Bach, because it offers, at last, after so many years but thanks to the genius of builders, the opportunity to the performer to express all that was intended by the "Master", all that was included in the deepness of his music, which old clumsy and incomplete organs could not.  And indeed, Widor takes very, very large benefit of what offers the "modern" instrument, realizing complete "orchestrations" (Widor's term) of Bach's works, using complicated combinations of manuals, slowly opening and closing the swell box, and even, in some occasions, re-writing the score itself.  This is undoubtly romantic, based on the idea of progress in art. By doing so, Widor makes a confusion between two different things, progress and improvement.  Similary, nobody would have disputed that the modern piano was the perfect instrument to play Rameau, Mozart or Scarlatti.  And this is where Widor speaks about "the happy organist who can feel Bach looking over his shoulder and congratulating him with a large smile" -- which came to my mind when reading Roy's nice and enthousiast comment on Tom's playing.

Again, nothing wrong or right here -- just a philosophy.  As Widor himself writes: "My indications are only the result of my thinking.  Everybody is free to accept or reject them.  What is important is: think and ask yourself."  Well, for that time, I find this a supreme elegance.  And I would be happy that some of our modern scholars / professors be as open-minded as that.

Nicolas Gorenstein

(For those interested, I remind that the forewords, comments and explantions in the standard Widor-Schweitzer edition are not Widor's but Schweitzer's and that they widely differ in registrations, articulations, and many general conceptions.  Though they prepared the edition together, Schweitzer did not say a word about this, contrary to Widor.)

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