Vibrato seems to have been inspired by passionate singing. The Tremolo stop on early organs was an attempt to imitate such singing. The stop operates by quickly placing and removing a pad on the wind supply, making it shake, but on the same note. Good vocal vibrato is a similar thrumming that doesn’t change pitch; bad singers have this huge pitch wobble. The problem with instruments is that they can only do a pitch-change vibrato, which destroys the natural harmonics.

I started using vibrato-free sound for instruments in the mid 1960s. My musicians in the London Baroque Players showed me what it sounded like, and I read various treatises which gave me the background. As a singer I had found I could use a clear sound, but learned a pitch-change vibrato  because that was what everybody did. Even with the amateur Schütz Choir I didn’t think to encourage a pure tone.

What gradually convinced me was not just the theory, but overwhelmingly the practice. When I heard Bach and Handel played pure I simply fell in love with the sound. Then I vividly recall trying some Mozart for the first time: I was almost weeping with joy at what felt like recognition. It felt so right, as well as so beautiful.

As the London Classical Players moved through the core repertoire we were surprised each time to find the evidence speaking for Pure Tone. In Schubert, Beethoven, Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and on to Brahms, Bruckner and Wagner, each and every time I was stunned by the beauty of sound, and the way that the purity of the sound encouraged a more musical phraseing in every case.

Instead of vibrato destroying the natural overtones, pure tone encouraged them, so that the whole orchestra produced this amazing warm sound. When we arrived at Brahms with our experiments peopIe asked “What will you do about the Brahms Sound?”

I replied that we would discover what it was like when we played it with instruments of his time.  Because Brahms’ friend the great violinist Joachim tells us to play with a steady left hand and an expressive right, I naturally asked for pure tone from the band. But when I heard the result I immediately wanted to play all the symphonies like that like that, because it was so extraordinarily beautiful.

After the LCP years of experiment, I created this sound as a matter of course with the marvellous Stuttgart Radio Orchestra. I fairly quickly got them to adopt historical practice. With all the instruments making the same pure sound, so many things fell into place. The woodwind matched up; normally flute, oboe and bassoon use varying amounts of vibrato, but the clarinet uses none. When clarinets first tried it in the 1920s they were laughed at for sounding like Benny Goodman! Then the horns: for a while in the 30s and 40s French and Russian horn players adopted vibrato. I remember hearing a French orchestra and nearly fainting at the sound. Thank goodness that disappeared. The horns could go back to matching  the brass who, at least in Germany, are taught to play straight at all times.

It has struck me that perhaps the two most “Romantic” instruments in 19th century music are the clarinet and the horn. Is it ironic, or perhaps very revealing, that they are the very ones that today shun vibrato? they are joined by the pianoforte and the harp. Even in a modern traditional orchestra if you add the brass that’s a lot of abstainers isn’t it? But of course there are a lot of strings to contend with. When they lay down their trembling eiderdown of vibrato they tend to dominate the texture.

For me what started as a serious experiment with music history ended up as an aesthetic question. Is Pure Tone valuable in itself? Permanent vibrato started to come in around 1910 (which en passant let’s notice is after Elgar 1 and all of Mahler). My  Stuttgart boys and girls were so well trained that they automatically played later pieces with Pure Tone before stopping to ask if it was right to do so. We played quite a lot of Vaughan Williams at Stuttgart, and some Nielsen and Sibelius. It sounded so marvellous that we stayed with what we heard.

I realised that VW didn’t hear an orchestra with vibrato until he was about 50, so it was not a big stretch to imagine him enjoying our performances, particularly of his 5th Symphony, which is so spiritual.

When I conducted a cycle of the symphonies with the Deutsche sinfonieorchester Berlin I had the same experience: they were so used to “my” sound that they set straight off pure. And they did the same with a Martinu cycle that followed. Once again I let them play, and once again it sounded splendid.

One time the game was reversed. When Stuttgart were accompanying the Wagner Wesendonck Lieder the singer asked for the Henze orchestrations. Almost the moment we started rehearsing it sounded odd. Henze clearly had the sound of a modern orchestra in his head; in his arrangement we need to adapt. For the first time in ten years I called for “vibrato” and amid amused cheers it all sounded much better. It was again an aesthetic question. We need to be open to each sound world and its possibilities.

Every year Stuttgart commissioned one or two works from living composers. Because of our new techniques I suggested that we ask them if they wanted to play with vibrato or not. The results were very interesting. Some said they had always detested vibrato. Others said the “usual sound” was fine. A very small but intelligent third group asked if they could choose as they went along. I was very pleased with this reply, since I felt that any vibrato should be meaningful, not just aimless wobbling. One well- known german composer Wolfgang Rihm uses exactly this method: Molto vibrato, senza vibrato, poco vibrato. Very effective, very expressive.

That’s the way forward: orchestras that can happily play with, or without, with perfect ease. Audiences are getting quite used to 18th century music played with pure tone. But for some the 19th and early 20th centuries are hardy to take. Here are a few examples of the evidence:

ARNOLD ROSÉ (1863-1946)

Rosé was the outstanding Viennese violinist of the era. He was named Court Musician, and a court coach and horses picked him up to take him to play at the Opera. He knew Brahms and Schönberg well, and premiered several of their compositions. He also knew Mahler, and married Mahler’s favourite sister Justine. At age 18 he was made a Concert Master of the Opera and Vienna Philharmonic, and held the post for 50 years. He was also Wagner’s last Concert Master at Bayreuth. In addition he led an extremely celebrated string quartet (the Rosé) on tours throughout Europe. During all that time, like Joachim and Auer before him, he played with Pure Tone, and did not permit vibrato in any of the orchestras he led.

You can hear one of his last appearances with the VPO in the 1938 Mahler 9 recording. After that he was dismissed for being Jewish and escaped to London, with his laughter Alma. On his dismissal the VPO rather soon fell in line with the vibrato of other European orchestras, although even today they employ a somewhat gentler version.

A PARIS SAXOPHONIST

In the 1920s the star French saxophonist Marcel Mule was in both the army band, and at the Opera Comique. He was used to playing “straight” without any vibrato, but as the Jazz Age developed in Paris he was invited to join a band. He was surprised, and rather shocked, to discover that the players used a “wavering sound”, but he gradually learned how to do it. Back in the army and at the Opera he could play straight again.

AN AUDITION IN VIENNA

In 1928 a young violinist auditioned for the Vienna Opera. He played his best to the Conductor Schucht, the Leader Arnold Rosé, and the Manager. After a while Schucht asked if he could play without that  “bleating goat sound”- the vibrato he had recently learned at the Hochschule. Fortunately he could still remember how to play straight, and he got the job.

MARCEL MOYSE

The great French flautist explained in one of his many treatises, how he discussed with other wind players in the 1920s whether or not they should adopt the “string vibrato”, already more prevalent in France than other countries. They finally decided they would.

LEON GOOSSENS

At around the same time, the English oboe virtuoso, Leon Goossens (with whom I was once fortunate to play) recalls in a memoir how he was pondering exactly the same question. He started to experiment with vibrato (which is quite difficult on the oboe) and got a lot of criticism from his neighbouring wind players sitting in the London orchestras.

He persisted, and created a beautiful tone for hs subsequent solo career. But the new undulating sound did not go unchallenged. When Sir Thomas Beecham asked Goossens for the “A”at a rehearsal, and Goossens provided it, the conductor famously said “Take your pick  gentlemen”.

No doubt different traditions were followed in different orchestras at different times. But if we follow the evidence, Pure Tone is likely to have been normal with any of the composers we are looking at. Permanent vibrato  seems to have come from the players, not the conductors. Sir Adrian Boult told me that vibrato just “seemed to gradually  arrive” from one day to the next. He was happy with or without it.

MAHLER

seems to have used the word just once, in a late New York correction to the 5th Symphony Adagietto. Perhaps he was making a little experiment

with the new fashion? It’s the only place you’ll hear vibrato in my Stuttgart recording of the Mahlers. But his friend and brother in law was the famous Vienna Concertmaster Arnold Rosé, who forbade vibrato in the orchestras he led. When Mahler conducted the Vienna Philharmonic his brother in law was leading.