Klarinet Archive - Posting 000030.txt from 1999/03

From: Mark Gustavson <mgustav@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] About authenticity
Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1999 16:36:09 -0500

Being a composer as well as performer, I have some thoughts about this HIP
thread. One must ask a few questions. What is the true intent behind desiring
authenticity of a reality one has no experience of? Does this approach shift the
emphasis from the music to the performance? When actors perform Shakespeare and
his contemporaries, would it be a greater experience ifi they speak in the exact
dialects that were spoken in the 16th century--the sounds that Shakespeare
heard? Even if you could realize that reality would you understand a word of
it? At the least, these questions concerning musical authenticity are about
surface details and have no affect on the music's qualities. Such performances
have no affect on the musical idea: the form, melodic material and harmonic
progressions the work is based upon. It is a "crime", moreover, to add to
someone else's creation and ignorance is not an excuse. Unless there is solid
documentation available that states that this is how the composer wanted
something to be performed and word of mouth from an "expert" who has no concrete
evidence only that this is how "Master So and So" did it, then don't change the
music. There is no room for guess work or adding to the music. When I went to
music school I attended performances by HIP followers but often there was no
concrete evidence behind their decisions just an "expert label" and an ego that
wanted to shift the emphasis from the composer's music to THEIR performance of
it.

Mark Gustavson
Composer/clarinetist

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