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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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 concertos conductor contemporary culture Early Music edition editors Eliot 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 metronome Missa modern performance modernist motet movement Mozart musical performance musicians musicology never nineteenth-century Ninth Norrington notation notion object Orchestra original past performance practice performance style performance-practice piano piece players playing positivist precisely present 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