Text and Act. Essays on Music and Performance

With 150 music examples.

Over the last dozen years, the writings of Richard Taruskin have transformed the debate about "early music" and "authenticity." Text and Act collects for the first time the most important of Taruskin's essays and reviews from this period, many of which now classics in the field. Taking a wide-ranging cultural view of the phenomenon, he shows that the movement, far from reviving ancient traditions, in fact represents the only truly modern style of performance being offered today. He goes on to contend that the movement is therefore far more valuable and even authentic than the historical verisimilitude for which it ostensibly strives could ever be. These essays cast fresh light on many aspects of contemporary music-making and music-thinking, mixing lighthearted debunking with impassioned argumentation. Taruskin ranges from theoretical speculation to practical criticism, and covers a repertory spanning from Bach to Stravinsky. Including a newly written introduction, Text and Act collects the very best of one of our most incisive musical thinkers.

CONTENIDO:

Author's Note

INTRODUCTION
Last Thoughts First

IN THEORY
On Letting the Music Speak for Itself
The Limits of Authenticity: A Contribution
Down with the Fence
The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past
What -or Where- Is the Original?
The Modern Sound of Early Music
Tradition and Authority

IN PRACTICE

Beethoven:
The New Antiquity
Resisting the Ninth

Mozart:
An Icon for Our Time
A Mozart Wholly Ours
Old (New) Instruments, New (Old) Tempos

Bach:
Backslide or Harbinger?
Facing up, Finally, to Bach's Dark Vision
The Crooked Straight and the Rough Places Plain

Antiquarian Innocence:
Report from Lincoln Center: The International Josquin Festival-Conference, 21-25 June 1971
The Price of Literacy, or, Why We Need Musicology
High, Sweet, and Loud
Text and Act

Full Circle:
Stravinsky Lite (Even "The Rite")

Index