Text and Act: Essays on Music and PerformanceOver 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. |
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Page 12
... Furtwangler , which so freely interpret the " inviolable " text ( adding a wealth of unnotated nuances and perpetually varying the tempo ) , with the notion of Werktreue l Furtwangler , after all , was just as committed to Werktieue as ...
... Furtwangler , which so freely interpret the " inviolable " text ( adding a wealth of unnotated nuances and perpetually varying the tempo ) , with the notion of Werktreue l Furtwangler , after all , was just as committed to Werktieue as ...
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actually aesthetic artists authentic performance authenticity authentistic authority Bach Bach's Baroque Baroque music Beethoven Bilson Brahms Brüggen cadenzas called Christopher Hogwood claim classical music composer composer's Concerto conductor contemporary course culture Early Music edition editors ensemble essay evidence fact fortepiano Furtwängler half note Hanover Band Harnoncourt historical performance Hogwood idea ideal instruments intentions interpretation Joseph Kerman Josquin's listener mance matter means Mendel metronome Missa modern performance modernist motet movement Mozart musical performance musicians musicology never Ninth Norrington notation notion object opera Orchestra original past performance practice performance style performance-practice piano piece players playing positivist precisely quoted recent recording Renaissance music rendition repertory rhythmic Roger Norrington Romantic scholar scholarly score seems sense singers sound sources Stravinsky Symphony taste tempo textual criticism thing tion Toscanini tradition Treitler twentieth century University Press violin Virgil Thomson voices Werktreue word writing York Zaslaw
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Page 106 - The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives ; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered...
Page 107 - Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged.
Page 106 - It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence...
Page 103 - There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, and there is a smaller number of people who can appreciate technical excellence. But...
Page 103 - Consider the way of the scientists rather than the way of an advertising agent for a new soap. The scientist does not expect to be acclaimed as a great scientist until he has discovered something. He begins by learning what has been discovered already. He goes from that point onward.
Page 110 - In art this state of mind results in a desire to create a certain abstract geometrical shape, which, being durable and permanent, shall be a refuge from the flux and impermanence of outside nature.
Page 132 - ... in their dimensions, beautiful ones comparatively small; beauty should be smooth, and polished; the great, rugged and negligent; beauty should shun the right line, yet deviate from it insensibly; the great in many cases loves the right line, and when it deviates, it often makes a strong deviation; beauty should not be obscure; the great ought to be dark and gloomy; beauty should be light and delicate; the great ought to be solid, and 47 even massive.
Page 106 - English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.
Page 41 - It is impossible to exclude individual judgement from editorial procedure: it operates of necessity in the all-important matter of the choice of copy-text and in the minor one of deciding what readings are possible and what not; why, therefore, should the choice between possible readings be withdrawn from its competence? Uniformity of result at the hands of different editors is worth little if it means only uniformity in error; and it may not be too optimistic a belief that the judgment of an editor,...
Page 195 - They seem to belong to three overlapping types: a) those establishing or symbolizing social cohesion or the membership of groups, real or artificial communities...