Authenticity in performance: "a style that grew out of the music itself"

Research has shown that audiences tend to prefer interpretations they know well. This project will investigate the complexities of producing composer-appropriate sound environments as well as performance practices to achieve both the sought-after familiarity coupled with an introduction of sound and interpretive authenticity that adds appeal to the listener.

Aims

The contextualization of musical compositions contributes to the choice of which instruments to use; the instruments themselves hold a key to the interpretation of the composer’s score that cannot be ignored: pitch, duration, tempo, articulation, dynamic nuance, balance, timbre, and beat hierarchy cannot with any subtlety be notated in the score, yet are all affected by the instruments on which a score is performed.

The aim of the project is to challenge audience perceptions and tastes by juxtaposing until recently more familiar interpretations of well-known pieces with performances where interpretative choices (including those of the instruments on which the music is performed) are guided by the placing of the music in the sound world of the composer’s time. Furthermore, by following the performance practices of the time, the objective of the project is to evaluate the desirability of historically informed performance (HIP) and to gain some measure of changing audience perception of HIP.

Methods

Practical demonstrations will be given to illustrate how each element of interpretation can change the musical outcome; it is here that the audience’s involvement is essential; they will be asked in detail their responses to performers’ interpretive solutions to the underdetermination of scores; which responses, clearly, will call on experiential, emotive, expectational, and surprise elements in the audience’s enjoyment of the performance.

Questionnaires seeking to analyse reactions relating to audience enjoyment of the performance will be employed; using methods from the social sciences and empirical aesthetics to analyse results, it will be possible to gauge the participant’s enjoyment of the performance.

Results

Results arising from dialogue between audience and performers will be recorded and fed back into performance research, adding to results on taste and authenticity.

Publications

Nuti, G. "The performance of Italian basso continuo; style in keyboard accompaniment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries" Ashgate Publishing