Use of vibrato in singing and violin playing

Many thanks for the Hurwitz link.   He seems to take the view that vibrato was, in fact, commonly used in violin playing in the eighteenth century, and cites, especially, Geminiani in support of this.   If you think about it, the early eighteenth century Italian composers - Vivaldi especially - were seeking to add expressiveness to their writing, and vibrato was one of the tools available to them. It would be astonishing if they hadn't used it.   He is able to find what he considers explicit directions for its early nineteenth century use in, for example, the orchestral writing of Rossini.   So I'm tempted to ask - what did Wagner  ( one of the great conductors of his time) do?   And one of the conductors who had worked with Wagner was Hans Richter, who conducted the Halle in the premiere of Elgar's First Symphony.    But on the other hand, there is Fritz Kreisler, whose use of vibrato seems to be agreed to have been new - and, of course, Elgar wrote his violin concerto for him.   And just to confuse matters further, I am at this moment listening to Elgar's own recording of his Bavarian Dances, which is very much alive, pointed, boisterous, and seems to be pretty sparing of string vibrato.........

I always find David Hurwitz amusing... his reviews of recordings never hold back in their ire and I sometimes wonder how he can bring himself even to comment on the latest Norrington disc, such is his rage at the conductor!

For me neither the wirings of Norrington or Hurwitz are wholy persuasive as they are both so correct in their own minds. A qucik look at some other sources on the internet or around will show you that the views of musicians from the various periods of history are often more subtle than the vibrato or no vibrato extremes. Vibrato comes in many forms and somenbody such as Leopold Mozart wrote about how much he disliked wide and slow vibrato on the one hand, but also used more subtle vibrato to create the greater charactr and colour. In the end he seems to have been saying that it is a matter of taste; one man's colourful vibrato is another man's schmaltz.

Just last week Sir Colin Davis was inteviewed by Jessica Duchen for the Independent (you can also find the interview on her blog) and he was quite outspoken with regards to the practices of the HIP movement and leadig lights such as Norrington and John Eliot Gardiner. I suspect he has a rather grudging admiration for some of the latter's work but he is quite strong in his rage at Norrington conducting Berlioz's Requiem without vibrato. Davis also cites the same sources as Hurwitz.

For me I have to admit that in the end it is about the depth of meaning the performance conveys rather than the adherence to one particular set of performing practices. I have heard Davis conducting Mozart operas live and he is a remarkable steward, and then again I also have heard live most of Gardiner's Mozart opera cycle and I have to say his versions of Tito and Idomeneo remain to my ears great, timeless performances.

One of the most bizarre recordings I own is Norrington conducting Bruckner 4 - it is quite a shockto the system! And on one point I would draw swords with Norrngton - is use of the term 'pure tone' to describe vibratoless playing... that would imply  anything else is 'impure', which is quite the sweeping statement.

Here we go, the PC brigade getting 'hung up' on semantics. Pure doesn't necessarily mean good and impure bad. We add impurities to Iron to make steel, stainless steel is iron with impurities. It is a far richer material and is there for our benefit. Sometimes only stainless steel will do, sometimes pure iron is the best choice.

You win, your use of semantics is more advanced than mine...

Parla says something very interesting - that the use of vibrato always was at the player's discretion.   If he's right, then the notion that any HIP style is fundamentally more "correct" than any other ( and since about 1970 we've had several conflicting ones, even limiting the field to original instruments and early pitches) can't really stand up.   Possibly, if a composer asks for it, his request needs to be seen against whatever we think the accepted convention of the time and place may have been.  

There is an ancient story of Toscanini, as cellist in the orchestra of the premiere of Otello, observing to the letter one of Verdi's pppp markings.   Verdi, who was conducting, stopped and told him not to - he had used it in the hope that the players might just play a little softer than their usual mezzoforte.  And in the recordings of his own music under Richard Strauss you will find gracenotes, particularly in Don Juan, taken very differently from almost any other conductor you care to name.   In other words, what a composer asks for doesn't always tell us what his request means.   And sometimes, even when he is available to ask, musicians don't ask him.   Even the notion that for the baroque, a small band is generally historically correct has to be balanced against the reliable evidence that Corelli's Concerti Grossi were played on occasion in his own lifetime by very large groups of string players indeed.   I think I'm right in saying that in on these occasions he sometimes took part, but I'm open to correction.  

From a young age, I have always wondered why violinists use vibrato.  If he/she can press down at the right spot to play the note right, why wiggle it out of tune?  Similarly, I don't find vibrato to be a "natural" way to sing.  I bet that the earliest human beings started singing without vibrato, and that it was developed later to "impress" the listener.  In fact, vibrato (for both voice and instruments) came into being along with concert halls' getting larger, as classical music became more popularized in the 19th century, instead of being the exclusive enjoyment of kings and nobles.  As the size of audiences grew, bigger halls were built, and vibrato could cause the sound to seem louder and travel farther, hence reaching the far corners of these bigger halls.