The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century

With 17 music examples - audio on the web.

Argues that while authenticity in performance is impossible to realize, the continuing attempt to achieve it is what defines Early Music as a perpetual revolution.

Its performing traditions lost to time, early music has become the subject of significant controversy across the world of classical music and presents numerous challenges for musicians, composers, and even listening audiences. The studies of instruments and notes on early manuscript pages may help to restore early music to its intended state, yet the real process is interpretive, taking place within performers themselves.

This book is about historical performance practice in its broadest sense. A veteran of the early music movement and an experienced performer himself, Bruce Haynes begins by identifying the most common performing styles, using and comparing sound recordings from the past. To help musicians distinguish between Period and Romantic styles, he expertly engages with the most current and controversial topics in the field in defining the differences between them. Throughout, he presents many compelling arguments for using pre-Romantic values as inspiration to re-examine and correct Romantic assumptions about performance.

This book also offers a fresh perspective on a broad spectrum of questions about music in history. From Werktreue and the Urtext imperative to formality in ritualized performances and authenticity as an industry standard, Haynes offers straightforward explanations of the most significant questions in the field. Two chapters compare Baroque expression through rhetoric and gestural phrasing to the Romantic concept of autobiography in notes. Throughout his fascinating discussions of descriptive and prescriptive musical notation, the Romantic interpretive conductor in early music, and the controversial practice of composing in Period style, Haynes argues that performances are more pleasing and convincing to contemporary performers and listeners not through the attempt to return to the past, but rather by endeavoring to revive as best we can the styles and techniques that originally produced the music.

Part history, part critical reflection on the state of the authenticity movement, The End of Early Music describes a vision of the future that involves improvisation, rhetorical expression, and composition. This stimulating and compelling book will appeal to musicians and non-musicians alike.

CONTENIDO:

Introduction

PART I: PERFORMING STYLES
When You Say Something Differently, You Say Something Different
Mind the Gap "Current Styles"
Mainstream Style "Chops, but No Soul"

PART II: HOW ROMANTIC ARE WE?
Classical Music's Coarse Caress
The Transparent Performer
Changing Meanings, Permanent Symbols

PART III: ANACHRONISM AND AUTHENTICITY
Original Ears
Ways of Copying the Past
The Medium Is the Message

PART IV: WHAT MAKES BAROQUE MUSIC "BAROQUE"?
Baroque Expression and Romantic Expression Compared
The Rainbow and the Kaleidoscope

PART V: THE END OF "EARLY" MUSIC
Passive and Active Musicking
Perpetual Revolution

Notes
Bibliographic Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index