5 - Historical performance at the crossroads of modernism and postmodernism

Summary

Until recently, historically informed performers were in no doubt about the nature of their enterprise, ‘This is my historical (or old) violin’, they would say, and, if they also played conventional instruments, ‘This is my modern violin.’ But all this was challenged by Richard Taruskin's contention that much of what goes on in HIP is in fact modern performance, that the urge to perform in an ‘historical’ fashion and – particularly – the musical results, bear all the traces of musical high modernism. The movement apparently shares much with Stravinsky's attitude to performance and covertly continues general tendencies evident since the middle of the twentieth century: a privileging of text over performance, and an increasingly strict, geometrical approach to rhythm. On the whole, Taruskin sees ‘modernism’ as virtually synonymous with musicological positivism, objectivism and the retreat from personal commitment and human involvement in musical interpretation. He suggests that the ‘postmodern’ will provide some solution (whether ‘historically informed’ or not) by reintroducing the human element, breaking down grand claims for truth and allowing more freedom in performance.

It is the aim of this chapter to explore the relation of historical performance to modernism and postmodernism in more detail. For, although Taruskin's claims have usefully precipitated a debate about the place of HIP in late twentieth-century western culture, they do presuppose very specific and restricted definitions of the terms (just as they focus only on certain tendencies within HIP itself).