Early Music America Winter 2013 - (Page 3)

Early Music America Board of Directors President Christopher Bone readerforum Actuary Vice Presidents Thomas Forrest Kelly Harvard University Angela Mariani Harmonia, Altramar, Texas Tech University Debra Nagy Case Western Reserve University Secretary Charlotte Newman Arts Administrator Assistant Secretary Kathleen Spencer Franklin & Marshall College (ret.) Treasurer Marie-Hélène Bernard Handel and Haydn Society Lewis Baratz Harpsichordist Robert Cole Cal Performances (ret.) JoLynn Edwards University of Washington, Bothell Raymond Erickson Keyboardist; Music Historian Susan Gidwitz Valerie Horst Amherst Early Music Etsuko Jennings Morgan Stanley Robert A. Johnson Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney P .C. David Klausner University of Toronto Hank Knox McGill University; Harpsichordist Alexandra MacCracken Ensemble Gaudior Sarah Mead Brandeis University Robert Mealy Juilliard School of Music Charles Metz Optometrist; Harpsichordist Rachel Barton Pine Violinist Benjamin Roe WGBH Daniel Shoskes M.D., Cleveland Clinic Melissa Smey Miller Theatre, Columbia University Nell Snaidas Soprano Murray Forbes Somerville Music City Baroque Orchestra Jeffrey Thomas American Bach Soloists Ruben Valenzuela Bach Collegium San Diego Birgitt van Wijk Heritage Helicopter Services; Ars Lyrica Houston Staff Executive Director Ann Felter Membership Director Dina Scarpino Advertising Manager Patrick Nugent Pastness of the Present? In his article "Early Music 21st-Century Style," printed in the summer issue of Early Music America, Matthias Maute sketches a program for performing Romantic and modern music (he mentions speciﬁcally the music of Brahms, Schoenberg, and Shostakovich) in period styles (he seems to be thinking of Baroque). Mr. Maute evidently feels that early music has gone stale and that something new must be found if it is to continue as a vital endeavor. The problem is that Mr. Maute's "something new" takes the premises of early music and turns them upside down. For most of its recent history, early music has been about historically informed performance. The achievement has been to reintegrate performance style and repertoire, making both musicians and their audiences aware of various historical performing styles and of the importance of playing music of the past in historically appropriate ways. To use the insights provided by historically informed performance to produce musical experiences that depend upon mismatching performance style and repertoire is to at best to trivialize those achievements, at worst to pervert them. If, from early music's point of view, it was inappropriate to play Bach's Brandenburgs with a 20th-century symphony orchestra in a lush Romantic style, why should it seem right to play Shostakovich in a Baroque manner? Mr. Maute provides a brief history that admirably compresses into a few paragraphs the last hundred years of early music. His application of post-modern skepticism is also well done: one cannot deny that we will never know with certainty how accurately we are reproducing performance styles of the past, and it is equally true that we will always see that past through the musical styles and cultures of the intervening years, decades, and centuries. But early music has always been stubbornly pre-post-modern, and one might say that it is early music's unfashionable commitment to the principles of Altertumswissenschaft that deﬁnes its philosophical and historical styles. Thirty years ago, when some historians were denying the accessibility of historical fact, early music was not only pursuing historical "fact" but was applying the results of its research in audible ways. It did so-and continues to do so-because, unlike historians of politics, economics, religion, etc., who deal with abstractions that need never be tested, early music is concerned with the listening experience, and that experience cannot be abstract. I doubt that any sophisticated member of the early music community has ever assumed that research has-or ever will-arrive at stable truths; there has always been the sense that what is presented as historically accurate reconstruction represents only the current state of knowledge. And it is that changing current state of knowledge-or, if one prefers, that current state of illusion-that keeps early music fresh. It does not follow that simply because we are not certain of how accurately we have reconstituted past performance styles, our next step should be, as Mr. Maute proposes, to apply those styles (the historical accuracy of which we cannot be certain) to music for which they were certainly never intended. One may argue that, having created an awareness of the performance styles of various periods, it would be a waste of that awareness not to apply it as Mr. Maute suggests. After all, as no less an authority than Barthes has told us, texts are nothing more than ﬁelds for Speak Up! Early Music America magazine welcomes your commentary. Please include your name, city of residence, e-mail address, and phone number with all correspondence. Send to: Reader Forum, Early Music America, 472 Point Road, Marion, MA 02738; fax: 508-748-1928; or editor@earlymusic.org. Early Music America magazine reserves the right to edit letters for clarity, style, and length. Early Music America Winter 2013 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Early Music America Winter 2013

Editor's Note
Reader Forum
Sound Bytes
Musings: Time Traveling with Instruments
Profile: Pure Gold: Beiliang Zhu
Recording Reviews
Let's put on a... Zarzuela!
A Banquet of Music 40 Years in the Serving
Honoring Krebs
Book Reviews
Ad Index
In Conclusion: Dido and Aeneas Reconsidered

Early Music America Winter 2013