Without wishing to offend or annoy anyone, I would advise against the use of the term HIP. There are reasons for and against, but I think the "cons" have it over the "pros."
The main reason not to use the phrase is that it is excruciatingly bad grammar. It makes us look bad. It is hard to imagine a group of any three words that have so many problems. Performance, of course, is not informed. People are informed. By extension, I concede the transfer to the action of the person:one can, of course, make an informed decision. "Make" takes on the temorary role of a stative verb. And one can have an informed opinion, again, there is an implied reference to the owner of the opinion. But can one make an informed performance? It is, I suppose, as E.B. White famously remarked, a matter of ear. Or possibly it is problematic in that there is no speaker--in a performance, there are many actors and events, it isn't just a person. Performance is also not historically"--performance can be historic, but that means something very different. And performance is not historically informed, and neither are people. People are informed about history; they don't undergo a process of being informed that is historic, unless the process of learning is at a memorable occasion.
Its cast in the passive. It has an undertone of fudgery with an overtone of elitism: After all, some performances must logically not be informed so sad, if only the others read more! I'm sure the players of modern instruments, many of whom attended Conservatory, don't appreciate being the historically uninformed.
There are other problems with the term as well; obviously people wanted more freedom to play how they wanted, with less emphasis on the authenticity aspect. But the result has been the recapitulate the last 200 years into twenty and give us quite a bit of modern blended in.
On the plus side, HIP is hip, and anything like that is goodwho want to be unhip? Alas, even with Sting how hip can we be? Its like the Gollux in the Thurbers The Thirteen Clocks Its always then; its never now. If we want to be HIP, ditch the word history. Replace it with sex, food, clothes, designer drinks. There has to be a better word than history.
So a new phrase, or live with the old one? I like Early Music performance-the term was reviled by many in the 70s, maybe there is something better. I have no problem with Historical Performance. It seems pretty descriptive. I like it more than when it surfaced as the title for EMAs magazine. Obviously authentic is a bad word to bandy about--implying that everything else is fake. But we can be historical without being authentic.
Historical Performance-History is back, and this time Its Personal. dt To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
