Historically Informed Performance: On Taking Refuge in the Past and the Myth of Authenticity

Authors

  • Valentina Sandu-Dediu National University of Music, Bucharest, Romania

Keywords:

Early music, Baroque instruments, musical performance trends

Abstract

Historically informed performance has a stable, enthusiastic audience and has offered impulses to redefine and reconsider theories on musical performance in general. If we have already gotten accustomed to the sound of an ensemble of baroque instruments, as well as with an interpretative manner that tries to reproduce the practices of the time when the respective music was written, we are continuing to reflect on (at least) two fundamental problems: seeking refuge in the past and the claim to authenticity.

Author Biography

Valentina Sandu-Dediu, National University of Music, Bucharest, Romania

Valentina Sandu-Dediu is professor of musicology, stylistics and theories of performance at the National University of Music Bucharest. She wrote over 30 studies, 300 articles, and 10 books: Rumänische Musik nach 1944 (Pfau Verlag, Saarbrücken, 2006); Alegeri, atitudini, afecte. Despre stil și retorică în muzică (Ed. Didactică și Pedagogică, București 2010 / 2013), Octave paralele (Humanitas, București, 2014); În căutarea consonanțelor (Humanitas, București, 2017). She also plays the piano in chamber music (CDs released in Romania, Germany, and USA). Sandu-Dediu was a fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, she is rector of New Europe College, Bucharest (since 2014), and received the Peregrinus-Stiftung Prize of Berlin-Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften in 2008.

References

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Dolmetsch, Arnold, The Interpretation of the Music of the 17th and 18th Centuries, London: Novello and Company, 1915

Dreyfus, Laurence, “Early Music Defended against Its Devotees: A Theory of Historical Performance in the Twentieth Century”, in The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Summer, 1983), pp. 297-322

Gray, Cecil and Warlock, Peter, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa: Musician and Murderer, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd, 1926

Harnoncourt, Nikolaus, Le discours musical. Pour une nouvelle conception de la musique. Traduit de l‟allemand (Musik als Klangrede.Residenz, Salzburg 1982) par Dennis Collins, Paris: Gallimard, 1984

Jeppesen, Knud, The Style of Palestrina and the Dissonance, 1927, latest edition: Dover Books of Music, 2005

Kivy, Peter, Authenticities. Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance, New York: Cornell University Press, 1995

Taruskin, Richard, “The Authenticity Movement Can Become a Positivistic Purgatory, Literalistic and Dehumanizing”, in Early Music, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Feb., 1984), pp. 3-12

Taruskin, Richard, „Tradition and Authority”, in Early Music, Vol. 20, No. 2, Performing Mozart's Music III (May, 1992), pp. 311-325

Taruskin, Richard, “Is There a Baby in the Bathwater? (Part II)”, in Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 63. Jahrg., H. 4. (2006), pp. 309-327

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Published

2020-06-10

How to Cite

Sandu-Dediu, V. (2020). Historically Informed Performance: On Taking Refuge in the Past and the Myth of Authenticity. Doctoral Horizons, 1(1), 97–110. Retrieved from https://doctoral-horizons.unatcpress.ro/index.php/Journal/article/view/7

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2020): Doctoral Horizons

Section

Articles