I say hear! hear! to this. Or Here! here!.
As Richard Taruskin has said "The problem with the idea of an authentic
performance is that we will never know whether we have got it right."
I am afraid "HIP" often means "The way I want to do it myself - and everyone
who disagrees is wrong".
Cynically yours
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: <[email protected]>
To: "lute-cs.dartmouth.edu" <[email protected]>; "David van Ooijen"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2010 2:52 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: String tension - HIP
Hi David,
--- On Fri, 3/26/10, David van Ooijen <[email protected]> wrote:
From: David van Ooijen <[email protected]>
Subject: [LUTE] Re: String tension
To: "lute-cs.dartmouth.edu" <[email protected]>
Date: Friday, March 26, 2010, 4:50 PM
On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 8:17 PM,
There is so much 20th century baroque performance practice
(I call it
the esperanto early music style) around that is not hip
whatsoever.
I'm a little confused with the way the term HIP seems to be bantered
around in early music circles nowadays. It was my understanding that HIP
(Historically Informed Performance) came about as a response to the older
use of the idea of "authenticity." We modern early-musickers gave up on
the chimeric pursuit of "authentic" performances when it was realized that
there never was a consistent "olden" style in use in any place or time.
Like Ray Nurse said in his lecture in Cleveland two years ago, what do we
think is going to happen if the stars align and one should somehow happen
to play a piece by Dowland exactly how he would have done it? Will he
magically appear and put a gold star sticker on your lute? So what?
Thus, a HIP performance simply means being informed about the sources.
One can be perfectly HIP by choosing not to utilize information that is
ambiguous, incomplete or contradictory. One could also put in a HIP
performance on modern piano, trumpet or electric guitar by studying texts
about period phrasing, accentuation and ornamentation. I'd even go so far
as to say that HIP-ness sometimes even involves doing something that we
know was NOT done if it enhances the musical experience for modern
audiences.
What? One example: Performers do this all the time when they decide not
to repeat the B section in a rounded binary form because it seems
redundant and spoils the effect of conclusion for modern listeners. This
even applies to the B sections (which we call development and
recapitulation) of first movements of sonatas by Mozart and Haydn, which
are nearly all marked with a repeat. This really makes them rounded
binaries, but I don't know anyone who plays them like this.
Chris
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