Richard Wexler writes:
>I'd say that both are in the service of the music.

This is a big statement.  What is the music?  I claim that, from
one perspective, the music is what the performer creates and what
the musicologist studies.  Note the pre- and post- placements of
the disciplines, although of course the interaction between the
two makes it not so tidy.

>The music is only well served when the performer in fact reads
>what the musicologist has to say.  Isn't that what's meant by
>"historically informed performance"?

I agree that this is what is meant by "HIP".  But how informed is
"informed" to be?  At what point does the performer stop reading
and start performing?  There can be no easy answer to this question.

Although I agree that this is basically what HIP is, I do disagree
that this is the only means by which music is well-served.

>How is it becoming less true that the two disciplines are aligned?

For some time, there were no performance traditions of "med-and-ren-music",
and so it could not be approached at all without the aid of the
musicologist.  There was no sense of what even the notes & rhythms
meant.  This is now mostly untrue, and instead we argue about
ornamentation and other aspects (which I do find interesting
historically as well as in other ways).  It is especially untrue
that there is no longer a performance tradition for med-and-ren-music
and so, quite blatantly, the performer can follow that tradition
without speaking to the musicologist at all.

>What's counter-productive to art is ignorance

I disagree with this.  Art requires insight, but it does not require
a cosmopolitan completeness of scope.  For instance, their isolation
is precisely one reason that native traditions in other cultures
can be so stimulating to us today.

Again, regarding the alignment, it has been generally true that
more informed performances have simply been better... more nuanced,
more emphatic, simply more interesting.  Now we see performances
which are also interesting but not as authentic, as per the subject
of this thread.  In other words, aesthetics is falling out of line
with musicology.  It does not say that musicology no longer has
anything to contribute, but I do think that the two major triumphs
of musicology have been both the historical education (which I
regard as inherently good, but orthogonal to art as such) and most
especially the rediscovery of some *very good ideas* used in the
past.  These ideas are good for "the music" because they are good
ideas, and for no other reason.

More familiarity with the music, as jump-started by musicology,
facilitates "good ideas" forming from other directions.  This is
what happens, and it will go on happening.  What makes these ideas
good is precisely the same nebulous human interaction which makes
any art good, and the only sense in which "authenticity" is above
the fray is the very restrictive sense of "historical education".

>As for Harnoncourt, I don't have a great deal of sympathy for him.

I have no particular knowledge of this scene, and so do not mean
to imply that I am discussing it.  I agree that in a musicology
conference, one should be prepared to discuss within the framework
of musicology.

Todd McComb
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