[Bards] Good FAQ on Early Music Styles and Performance

[Martha Schreffler]

I would like to recommend a website regarding Early Music performance and re-creation. It includes a good overview, definitions and repetoire. http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/   I feel that the information in the FAQ can be applied to all areas of period performance recreation (i.e not just music) and have pasted here three paragraphs I found particularly salient. - Mot

"One basic fact seems inescapable: Learning more about the circumstances surrounding the creation of a piece of music leads to a greater understanding of it. The sonorities and resources of historical voices & instruments give insight into phrasing & articulation. Historical tuning gives insight into harmonic motion. Especially in the case of music very distant from us, such as Medieval or early Renaissance music, some "common sense" ideas on how music should be performed, as based on typical practice today, are very different from those described in historical treatises. Although ultimately a performer makes an artistic decision as to what and how to perform today, understanding these differences can lead to a more informed decision, even if modern instruments or other factors are eventually chosen. This is what makes the term "Historically Informed Performance" (or HIP) fairly widely accepted today."

"In its own time, the setting for early music was very different from today, and so e.g. performing Medieval music in a concert hall is already inherently an anachronism. Facts such as this are unavoidable, even if performers painstakingly research and interpret music according to historical sources. Likewise, the mere idea of "historical performance" is primarily a modern one, and so attempting to render works in this way contains some philosophical contradictions which cannot be resolved. With the right attitude, these philosophical pitfalls are simply a way to ensure that musical performance will remain a creative activity. One can even extend the context in all directions, from using period-style instruments and vocal technique, to placing the music into its historical social context in a historical building in historical costume. Such extremes are less common, but can also be fun, provided one remembers that there is nothing one can do to recreate a historical audience, i.e. an
 audience for which the music is truly new."

"To return to a fundamental issue, even the hypothetical perfect reproduction of the original performance presents theoretical problems. At some level of precision, and for relatively early music this level is not very fine at all, the notation and available sources will not dictate every detail. Phrasing, nuance, the most delicate inflections of single notes... these are not included in notation. The performers must make these decisions, especially as they reflect their own physical gifts or inclinations. Singers will not sound identical, even if their technique is the same. This is part of what makes music a living art, something which must be continually reinterpreted in order to exist (until the invention of recordings). More than that, the composition of a piece, especially one which we would want to hear centuries later, was a creative act made in the context of creative musicians. In this sense, if musicians today are to abandon any creativity when rendering old music, then
 they are not authentic, because that is not the frame of mind under which the original was made. The same frame of mind is indeed impossible today, because the piece will never be new again. Of course, for many individuals, it will seem new, and that is part of what has made the revival aspect of early music so successful and exciting."
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