General preface

Summary

No doubt the claim, heard frequently today, that ‘authentic performance’ is a chimera, and that even the idea of an ‘authentic edition’ cannot be sustained for (most) music before the last century or two, is itself the consequence of too sanguine an expectation raised by performers and scholars alike in the recent past. Both have been understandably concerned to establish that a certain composer ‘intended so-and-so’ or had ‘such-and-such conditions of performance in mind’ or ‘meant it to sound in this way or that’. Scholars are inclined to rule on problems (‘research confirms the following …’), performers to make the music a living experience (‘artistry or musicianship suggests the following …’). Both are there in order to answer certain questions and establish an authority for what they do; both demonstrate and persuade by the rhetoric of their utterance, whether well-documented research on the one hand or convincing artistic performance on the other; and the academic/commercial success of both depends on the effectiveness of that rhetoric. Some musicians even set out to convey authority in both scholarship and performance, recognizing that music is conceptual and perceptual and thus not gainfully divisible into separate, competitive disciplines. In general, if not always, the scholar appears to aim at the firm, affirmative statement, often seeing questions as something to be answered confidently rather than searchingly redefined or refined. In general, with some exceptions, performers have to aim at the confident statement, for their very livelihood hangs on an unhesitating decisiveness in front of audience or microphone.