Peter Wilton wrote:

>In message <[log in to unmask]>, rw25
><[log in to unmask]> writes
>>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"?
>
>It depends what you think a performance is for, doesn't it?  Do we
>reject chant as performed from 1611 until the Solesmes revival as
>"uninformed", or is it adaptation to different circumstances.  Is this not in
>fact normal, and is our obsession with "historically-informed"
>performance just a particular, and specific obsession of a small part of
>the plethora of modern musical cultures?  Of course, admitting this may
>make certain kinds of musicology appear less valuable, and this may be
>why it may be resisted.

You're speaking about various kinds of music I did not have in mind.
I thought the subject of discussion was historical music being presented
as music from the past.

>>How is it becoming less true that the two disciplines are aligned?
>>I just don't see it happening.  In my opinion, the onus is on the
>>performer to know what it is he or she is doing.  What's counter-
>>productive to art is ignorance, and witless performance results in
>>inherently inferior art.
>
>How universal is the notion that music should be "art"?  Or that "art"
>requires adherence to historical information that may not be part of an
>audience's cultural baggage at all?

When we're regarding music of the past as representing the antecedents
of music of the present we consider art music, then I think it's fair
to take the view that the earlier music is also art music, whether or
not in fact it functioned quite that way in its own time.  As for music
not thought of as art music in any sense, of course its performers have
no obligation to know anything more than how to play it well.  As for
the audience, it's obliged to do othing more than hear it.  If it chooses
to know something about it in addition, that's all to the good.

Richard Wexler +------+ 1-301-405-5538 (w); 1-301-779-6906 (h) +-------+
| Musicology Division | University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 |
| Department of Music | E-mail: [log in to unmask]                     |
+---------------------+------------------------------------------------+


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