Musical performance informed by history and vice versa: how philosophy could help music and history learn from each other

ABSTRACT

‘Historically informed performance’ (HIP) has become standard practice for the performance of ‘early music’ composed before 1800 and is increasingly applied to more recent compositions. The approach provokes controversy for the tension between its claims to replicate historical performance practice, the observation that the resulting ‘period’ style often reflects present-day stylistic preferences and the inference that its attribution to the past is more imagined than real. Musicians who practice HIP identify dilemmas which relate to questions of historical evidence and interpretation. The philosophy of music currently neglects the dilemmas that performers identify as problematic for HIP. In contrast, the philosophy of history makes scant reference to musical performance but extensively examines the understanding and interpretation of historical texts. Musicians share with historians the need to engage with the past. Musicians should find it instructive to consult the philosophy of history on how historians construct an account of the past. Historians may find informative the way in which the nature of music and the HIP of older music highlight performative aspects of the historical account, allow comparison between parallel debates in historiography and musicology and suggest how changes over time in audience reception affect the comprehensibility of the historical account.

KEYWORDS:

• Early music
• historically informed performance
• philosophy of music
• philosophy of history
• historiography
• hermeneutics
• presentism

Acknowledgments

With grateful thanks to the many colleagues both musical and historical who commented on earlier drafts of this work, especially Lauren Redhead, Lesley Hardy, Leonie Hicks and Daniel Taylor. And with much appreciation to the reviewers for their thoughtful suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Shanks

John Shanks graduated in Science and Medicine at the University of Glasgow, in Humanities & Cultural Studies at the University of London and then went on to study music at Canterbury Christ Church University and Goldsmiths University of London. His particular enthusiasm is the performance of early vocal and choral music. Through his work with older music he has developed a research interest in the different ways in which historians, musicians and artists working in a variety of media attempt to recreate an experience of the past for present-day audiences.