Klarinet Archive - Posting 000070.txt from 1999/03

From: "Craig Hill / Karen Hutchinson" <hutchill@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] About authenticity
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 1999 02:42:14 -0500

Some thoughts about what Mark Gustavson wrote:

> 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?

How about this for a reason: Rediscovering an expressive vocabulary that we
have lost connection with. Why? So that we and the audience will be moved by
the music making. (Isn't that what all the 18th c. sources say?) To be
*more* musically alive.

>Does this approach shift the emphasis from the music to the performance?

Yes, but not completely, and I think that's just fine. If Sabine want's to
ornament her Stamitz, that's OK too, in that particular case I find the
"ornaments" (Hello, Dan!) not particularly stylish, in that they probably
would have been quite foreign to the kind that the composer might have
envisaged (or perhaps even heard). To me they convey more about Sabine;
that's fine too, but they seem at odds with the piece itself.* Call me
stylistically hypersensitive if you like!

*(Why? You tell me!)

>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.

On the contrary - the surface details comunicate *so* much to us, as we all
know, an inflection on a single note can alter the entire meaning of a
phrase. Even the colour of the instrumental sound can convey a certain
meaning, hence the importance some people attatch to the use of early
instruments.

And I don't for a moment accept the usual counter- argument that we although
we hear more or less "original sounds" we won't experience the music with
"original ears". (That is to say we will have a different experience from
our 18th and 19th century counterparts given the same stimulus.) Educate
yourself! Listen to lots of performances! Immerse yourself in another sound
world for a whole year just for fun! Would Shakespeare be a greater
experience in the exact dialects that were spoken in the 16th century--the
sounds that Shakespeare heard? Could be - lets do it and find out! If at
the end of all that we feel that a performance has been a more
involving/richer/moving experience then we've come closer to a style for our
*own age* as well.

Craig

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