A Brief Thought On This Norrington Vibrato Thing

[Note: This post has been updated (1) as of 7:54 AM Eastern on 8 Aug. See below.]

Apropos and contrary to HIP zealot Sir Roger Norrington's loony campaign to do away with string vibrato in the performance of all music written prior to 1940 or so (see this S&F post for his latest foray), there's every reason to conclude that string vibrato has been in regular use forever and NOT merely as an ornament, and that it's been applied more or less sparingly by performing string players depending on their individual musical sensibilities and the violin "school" in which they were trained whenever the length of the note(s) was long enough to make its effect audible and the nature of the music's expressive requirements didn't clearly argue against its use (rare).*

Well, Wagner's music was written pre-1940. How about Wagner performed senza vibrato (if one can imagine such an absurdity)? Sir Roger has declared that Wagner, along with other composers of the Romantic era, "never heard an orchestra with vibrato; it simply wasn’t a part of their experience,” and it's been pointed out to us that in several of Wagner's scores Wagner actually notates vibrato for the strings in a number of places the inference being that senza vibrato was the norm, and therefore a point in Norrington's argument's favor.

That's a crock. The more reasonable inference is that orchestra string players of the time applied vibrato more or less sparingly according to their own individual musical sensibilities and training, and Wagner — perhaps the greatest conductor of his time, and a man intimately familiar with orchestral practices — wanted to ensure that at those points where he notates vibrato ALL the string players applied that device in full-blown form regardless of their own individual musical inclinations.

Sir Roger is simply off his trolley with this senza vibrato thing.

Way off.

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* See this lengthy article by David Hurwitz for a detailed investigation of this (Adobe Reader required).

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Update (7:54 AM Eastern on 8 Aug): Conductor and blogger Kenneth Woods of A View From The Podium has some thoughts on this senza vibrato business as it applies to the music of Elgar.