Text and act : essays on music and performance

391 Pages·1995·24.52 MB·English

by  Wolfgang Amadeus

Text and Act
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TEXT
and
ACT
Essays on Music and
Performance
RICHARD TARUSKIN
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1995
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1995 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taruskin, Richard.
Text and act: essays on music and performance /
Richard Taruskin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-509437-9. - ISBN 0-19-509458-1 |pbk.)
1. Performance practice (Music)
2. Style, Musical.
I. Title.
ML457.T37 1995 781.4'3-dc20 94-24903
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Contents
Author's Note, vii
INTRODUCTION
Last Thoughts First, 3
IN THEORY
1. On Letting the Music Speak for Itself, 51
2. The Limits of Authenticity: A Contribution, 67
3. Down with the Fence, 83
4. The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past, 90
5. What—or Where—Is the Original ? 15 5
6. The Modern Sound of Early Music, 164
7. Tradition and Authority, 173
IN PRACTICE
Beethoven
8. The New Antiquity, 202
9. Resisting the Ninth, 235
Mozart
10. An Icon for Our Time, 263
11. A Mozart Wholly Ours, 273
12. Old (New) Instruments, New (Old) Tempos, 292
vi CONTENTS
Bach
13. Backslide or Harbinger? 298
14. Facing up, Finally, to Bach's Dark Vision, 307
15. The Crooked Straight and the Rough Places Plain, 316
Antiquarian Innocence
16. Report from Lincoln Center: The International Josquin Festival-
Conference, 21-25 June 1971, 322
17. The Price of Literacy, or, Why We Need Musicology, 344
18. High, Sweet, and Loud, 347
19. Text and Act, 353
Full Circle
20. Stravinsky Lite (Even "The Rite"), 360
Index, 369
Author's Note
Every piece in this collection has been thoroughly reedited—to ex-
punge redundancies, to correct the style, to refine or enrich the
argument. If I am asking my readers to reread me, the least I can do is
to offer them an improved text. Those encountering these pieces for
the first time need never know what they have been spared.
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INTRODUCTION