Why the HIP-ocrites and the Performance Practice Puritans
Need to Open Their Minds and Ears
and
Listen to Certain Kinds of Purportedly Non-HIP Recordings!

"One of the reasons that reconstruction of earlier playing styles is so difficult is precisely the fact that we start from the viewpoint of late 20th- century taste and habits, and use them as the basis for comparison. But what does modern taste consist of? If the style of Elgar's day is 'old-fashioned', in what ways is modern style 'new-fangled'? The answer...is that we use more vibrato and less portamento than was used earlier in the century, we are more concerned with clarity of detail and exact note values, we take most music more slowly and we change tempo less frequently and to a lesser degree.

If these characteristics of modern style have arisen so recently, do we not have to be very cautious in using them as a basis for investigating much earlier playing styles? What would happen if, in order to reconstruct, say, the performance practice of Beethoven's day, we were to start not from modern style but from the style preserved on early gramophone records?

. . . . our conjectures would be quite different if we were living in the 1920s instead of the 1980s. Similarly 18th- and 19th-century descriptions of tempo rubato make a very different sort of sense if we take early, rather than late, 20th-century style as the starting point for comparison. My own very strong suspicion is that many of the habits preserved in early gramophone records had their origins at least as far back as Beethoven, and in some cases earlier. This is something to argue about, but one central point is indisputable: the styles of the early 20th century did not arise overnight. For this reason, if for no other, it is time for historically minded performers to start considering the implications of early gramophone records."

Robert Philip
The Recordings of Sir Edward Elgar -- Authenticity and Performance Practice
Early Music, Vol. 12, No. 4, November, 1984, pp. 481-489, pp. 488-489

"The purists are scandalized because I do this!"
Pablo Casals, talking about his use of staccato in the Bach Suites for the 'Cello Alone

The HIP Woolly Mammoth

a/k/a "Woolly"

Welcomes You

To

The Historically Informed Performance Practice-ocrisy Home Page

Where Modern Instruments and Vibrato Reign Supreme!

The Concert Grand Piano
The Pleyel Harpsichord
The Dolmetsch Clavichord
The Boehm Transverse Flute
The Piccolo "Bach" Trumpet
'Cellos with Pins
Pipe Organs by Cavaillé-Coll, Ladegast, Sauer, Aeolian-Skinner, and Willis
The Moor Double-Keyboard Piano
The Tourte Bow
The Soprano Saxophone
Female Sopranos and Altos
The Modern Symphony Orchestra
Enormous Choirs
The MOOG Synthesizer

Where Recorders Are Devices That Preserve Performances for Posterity!

Where Gamba Is A Misspelling Of The Surname Of A Portuguese Explorer!

Where Zink Is An Ingredient In A Cold Remedy!

Where the Genius of Immortal Performers of the Music of the Past on Anachronistic Instruments and in Anachronistic Realizations Is Extolled!

The HIP-ocrisy Home Page is Committed to the Proposition that Any Piece of Music May Be Validly Performed in the Style of Any Period Subsequent to the Period of its Creation As Well As in the Style of the Period of its Creation.

After All, Do You Honestly Think That J. S. Bach Gave A Tinker's Dam About Palestrina's "Performance Practice" When He Performed The Palestrina "Missa Sine Nomine"?

If You Do, There is a Handsome Historic Bridge From Manhattan to Brooklyn that the HIP Woolly Mammoth Will Be Happy To Sell To You!

"A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it." - Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart.

Where Slovenly Musicology, "Scholarly" Narrow-Mindedness, and Performance Practice "Red Lining" Are Castigated and Ridiculed!

Where The Performance Practice Puritans' Inconsistencies Are Exposed, and
The HIP-ocrites' Double Standards Are Unveiled!

"The trouble with music critics is that so often they have the score in their hands
and not in their heads." - Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart.

The HIP-ocrisy Home Page Is Dedicated To Reminding The Performance Practice Puritans Who Have Anointed Themselves Guardians Of Our Early Music Morals That They're Closed-Minded, Condescending, Humorless, Smug, Supercilious, Intolerant, And Bigoted Cultural Fascists.

"Deny it only if it is true!" - Theodore Roosevelt

Coming soon to the HIP-ocrisy Home Page!

The Cotton Mather Memorial Prizes in Performance Practice Puritanism!

The HIP-ocrisy Home Page is for those of us who love Pablo Casals's "Brandenburg Concertos", Wanda Landowska's "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue", Leopold Stokowski's arrangement of the "Chaconne", and Rosalyn Tureck's "Well-Tempered Clavier".

The HIP-ocrisy Home Page is for those of us who think that there has never been a better recording of "Messiah" than the one Sir Thomas Beecham made in 1948 or a more stirring recording of the "Concerti grossi, Op.6", than Herbert von Karajan's.

If you don't gag in "Fantasia" when the "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" begins, if you like Wendy Carlos, Jacques Loussier, Glenn Gould, and Don Dorsey, if you've had your fill of the arch and condescending Performance Practice Puritans who try to make you feel like a second class citizen every time you stand up for your right to believe that Edwin Fischer's recording of the Handel "Chaconne in G" is the best ever, then this Home Page is for you.