Early Music Defended against Its Devotees: A Theory of Historical Performance in the

Twentieth Century
Author(s): Laurence Dreyfus
Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Summer, 1983), pp. 297-322
Published by: Oxford University Press
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SUMMER,1983 Vol. LXIX, No. 3

THE MUSICAL
QUARTE
Early Music Defended against its Devotees:
A Theory of Historical Performance in the
Twentieth Century
LAURENCE DREYFUS

Trying to develop a new theory, we must first

take a step back from the evidence and recon-
sider the problem of observation.
-Paul K. Feyerabend,Against Method

A Theory of Early Music?

W ITHIN the cultural phenomenon called "Early Music," there

has been little, if any, philosophical reflection on its own activ-
ity. There is, of course, a large and growing literature which charts the
day-to-day course of historical performance. But the language here is
pragmatic, designed to answer the question: How ought we to per-
form this? This concern may be entirely legitimate. But once we wish
to explore the motivations underlying this question, to understand
why late twentieth-century culture should place such a value on
historically "correct" renditions of centuries-old music-in effect,

297
298 The Musical Quarterly

once we wish to articulate a theory of Early Music-there seems to be a

conspiracy of silence.' When the question is raised at all, we are most
often informed that Early Music resulted from the progress of modern
musicology. But this merely displaces the problem onto musicology.
More commonly the question is answered with a logic that sounds
oddly theological: "Thou shalt perform the music in accordance with
the composer's intentions, for this is (H)is will." Authentic renditions,
it appears, are ethically superior to inauthentic ones. Many people
apparently find this argument persuasive. Yet as a justification for
historical performance, much less a theory of genesis and structure, it
is evasive and empty. Small wonder that the critics of Early Music
remain unconvinced and continue to view it as a hoax or nuisance.
But if Early Music is indeed something more than a passing antiquar-
ian fad, then it requires a theory embracing both explanation and
critique. A theory should no doubt answer the detractors. But, curi-
ously, it must also rescue Early Music from its moralizing devotees.
But what is "Early Music?" Certainly not only the set of musical
objects comprising the older repertories of European music. For this
definition would gloss all too neatly over the first question of a
theoretical inquiry: namely, Why has a sector of "serious" music
culture devoted itself to the recovery of forgotten repertories, instru-
ments, and practices?It is therefore more useful to define Early Music
as a late twentieth-century ensemble of social practices instead of
restricting it to the works which occasion the interest. To be blunt:
Early Music signifies first of all people and only secondarily things.
A brief listing of the actors and their props is necessary. First there
are the performers (professionals and amateurs of varying profi-
ciency), together with the teachers and scholars, this last group pri-
marily musicologists but also other humanists interested in dance,
theater, iconography, and cultural history. Then there are those in the
supporting professions such as luthiers and other instrument makers,
music publishers, newspaper critics, concert managers and agents,
record company executives, and sound engineers. And complement-
ing these active participants are the consumers-the ever-growing
audiences, who are most heavily concentrated in Western Europe and
(increasingly) in North America, but who by now span the globe from
1 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), for example, does
not contain an article entitled "Early Music," nor any coherent discussion of the twentieth-
century revival of earlier repertories, instruments, and practices.
 Early Music 299

Melbourne to Moscow. We must mention the visible tools of the

trade-those exterior signs of Early Music-the "original instru-
ments": both antique and reconstructed viols, "baroqued" violins,
plucked lutes, harpsichords and organs, winds of endless variety, and
a vast arrayof percussion. Only then do we arrive at the music itself: a
massive corpus extending from liturgical chant of the Middle Ages
through Classical symphonies of the eighteenth century and (at the
present writing) casting a covetous glance at the nineteenth century.
Finally there are the keys that unlock the doors to historical recon-
struction: the didactic treatises, the archival documents, and the ico-
nographical and notational evidence which form the basis for the
discipline "performance practice."
If there is an idea which cements together this diverse collection of
people and things, it is authenticity. Whether or not it is named, this
highly charged concept underlies every conscious act of Early Music.
One might wonder exactly what is meant by it. First, as a regulative
ideal, authenticity expresses a supposed opposition to the self-
aggrandizing individualism prevalent in Mainstream musical praxis.
In the typical version of this widespread myth, the individual Main-
stream artist harnesses the musical text to his own will, thereby
glorifying self-expression at the expense of the composer's intentions.
A musician humbled by authenticity, on the other hand, acts willingly
in the service of the composer, thereby committing himself to "truth,"
or, at the very least, accuracy. But there's the rub. For if we peer behind
the uplifting language, we find that one attains authenticity by follow-
ing the textbook rules for "scientific method." Early Music, in other
words, does not preach some empathetic leap into the past in an act of
imaginative Verstehen. What it has in mind is a strictly empirical
program to verify historical practices, which, when all is said and
done, are magically transformed into the composer's intentions. Au-
thenticity in Early Music, then, is grounded in a philosophical posi-
tion I shall call objectivism. By "objectivism" I mean above all the
epistemological proposition that knowledge is assured by accurately
describing things in the world without taking stock of the biased
vantage point from which the (human) observer perceives the phe-
nomena. Only by maintaining this strict separation of subject-object
can Early Music restrict itself in practice to empirical accumulation
and research while claiming authenticity in principle as a moral
value.
300 The Musical Quarterly

Adorno on Early Music

There is no better diagnosis of this objectivism than that of the

Frankfurt-School critic, Theodor W. Adorno, in the few passages he
devotes to "historical performance."2To be sure, Adorno is no friend
of Early Music. Having even gone so far as to castigate Stravinsky for
his caustic return to a pseudo-Baroque idiom-branding it a regres-
sion in consciousness-this mandarin of modernism is unlikely to
have anything kind to say about Early Music's wholesale evacuation
of the twentieth century.3 On the other hand, Adorno's pronounce-
ments pierce forcefully through the well-intentioned but pitiful apol-
ogetics that characterizesmost discussions of Early Music. Although
his conclusions, as we shall see, are quite wrongheaded, his orienta-
tion provides an excellent introduction to a more comprehensive
theory.
Adorno's most substantive criticism focuses on the illusive objec-
tivity which underlies the notion of Werktreue-loyalty to the musical
work. He points out that while no one would claim that the essence of
a musical work is tantamount to the sum of historically demonstrable
facts surrounding its performance, the "fans of old music" go right
ahead claiming that authenticity is guaranteed by reconstructing the
relevant instruments, texts, and practices. But in so doing Early Music
has no room for crucial nonempirical considerations-such as emo-
tional expression or the meaning of a work-without which, all
would agree, music making is inconceivable. As Adorno puts it:
"Objectivity is not left over once the subject is subtracted."4 More
perniciously, he senses that this theoretical exclusion actually encour-
ages the liquidation of subjectivity. That is, since the daily preoccupa-
tion of Early Music stresses the objective retrieval of historical prac-

2 Adorno discusses the matter in three places: (1) in a 1951 article entitled "Bach gegen
seine Liebhaber verteidigt" ("Bach Defended Against his Devotees"), later collected in a volume
called Prismen (Berlin, 1955; Frankfurt, 1967), pp. 178-79, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber as
Prisms (Iondon, 1967; Cambridge, Mass., 1981), pp. 145-46; (2) in the chapter on "Types of
Musical Conduct" from the Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie (Frankfurt, 1973), Gesammelte
Schriften, XIV, 187-90; trans. E.B. Ashton as Introduction to the Sociology of Music (New York,
1976), pp. 9-11; (3) in an article from 1966 entitled "Der Missbrauchte Barock" ("The Abused
Baroque"), collected in the volume Ohne Leitbild (Frankfurt, 1967),pp. 133-57, esp. pp. 149-55.
3 Philosophie der neuen Musk (Tiibingen, 1949;Frankfurt, 1975),Gesammelte Schriften,
XII, 188, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster as Philosophy of Modern Music (New
York, 1973), p. 207.
4 Adorno, Prismen, p. 176;Prisms,
p. 144.
 Early Music 301

tices, it fosters the attitude that subjectivity in interpretation (whether

in performance or in criticism) is irrelevant or, at best, unknowable.
While proudly proclaiming its historical credentials, Early Music
manages to overlook some glaring inconsistencies. For example, the
concern to reproduce "the Baroque sound" uncritically absolutizes a
nineteenth-century concept of orchestration that did not yet exist in
the early eighteenth century. In other words, the reconstruction of the
original instruments verifiably used by a medieval, Renaissance, or
Baroque composer is taken as essential to the meaning of the music
before the idea of essential instrumentation becomes historically oper-
able. On a deeper level, Early Music has imposed the notion of
authenticity on composers for whom the term is meaningless; in other
words, for those who have not yet imagined the metaphysics of
Goethe's Fassung letzter Hand, through which the intentioned text
becomes discrete from its reproduction.5 In one sense, then, the histo-
ricists are bad historians; they fail to take stock, as do all objectivists, of
their own historicity.
Adorno also points out that objectivism tends to relegate questions
of aesthetic value and critique to a secondary, if not meaningless,
status under the guise of furthering rigorous scholarship. The bedrock
of this position is of course the prevailing doctrine of historical
relativism, according to which no artistic epoch is regardedas superior
to any other. This assertion is in itself not too problematic. But in a
neat sleight of hand, the objectivist extends his relativism a step
further, so that each work of art mysteriously becomes the equal of its
contemporary. We may best observe this tendency in modern musi-
cology, which has produced an enormous apologetic literature de-
signed to rescue the "minor masters." Often prompted by a search to
discover the origins of a genre (e.g. "Jacques Buus wrote the firstand
longest monothematic ricercar") or the antecedents of a style (e.g.
"Sammartini's symphonies contain the kernel of the mature Classical
style"), this Kleinmeister-compulsion figures as a leveling device by
which all works are reduced to a manifestation of the lowest common
denominator. One can easily see how congenial this doctrine (or
methodological consequence) is to Early Music, which treats all Ger-
man Baroque composers by one norm of German "Baroque" perfor-
mance practice. As Adorno so impudently puts it: "They say Bach, but

5 See Georg von Dadelsen, "Die

'Fassung letzterHand' in der Musik," Acta musicologica,
XXXIII (1961), 1-14.
302 The Musical Quarterly

mean Telemann."6 For what we have here is nothing less than a grand
nivellement of value so that one interprets Bach, for example, only in
terms of the most common features of period style.
Adorno tries to cast the objectivist sensibility in a psycho-social
mold by seeing it as a form of contemporary ressentiment, an angry,
puritanical resistance to the reign of emotion prevalent in the recep-
tion of the Mainstream Classical repertory. By fusing together
Nietzsche and Freud, albeit in a somewhat obscure manner, Adorno
has distilled a powerful insight. For although on the surface the Early-
Music enthusiast appears as highbrow as the traditional "Classical
music" buff, his aesthetic intent is of a wholly different order. One
might, for example, say that the Mainstream listener is attracted to
music, usually of a late-Romantic hue, because of the low cost of
affective output: he feels drained yet fulfilled by identifying with the
emotional ebb and flow of the piece. The Early-Musicfan, on the other
hand, not only curbs his pleasurable response to the music, but brags
about his command of authentic historical facts-the justification for
the instruments and editions used, for example. Indeed, he is proud
not to be emoting over Tchaikovsky's Pathetique and considers his
sobriety a mark of superiority. But this somewhat peculiar stance may
in fact stem, according to Adorno, from a desire to liquidate Romantic
subjectivity, which appears as a form of promiscuity. The irony here is
that the puritan has implanted the civilized ban on the uninhibited
expression of feelings (the mimetic taboo) directly into the art form
whose purpose it was, in the first place, to sublimate it.7 Music, a
cultural outlet for sotially imprisoned subjectivity, is then trans-
formed into a place of containment, a prison for feelings. If Adorno is
right, then objectivism is not some value-free consumer choice, but,
above all, a rationalization for a defensive posture.
The tables are now turned. For, as Adorno sees it, the Early-Music
fans are the ones who, in their objectivist zeal, have distorted the great
music of the past. As for Bach, "They have made him into a composer
for organ festivals in well-preserved Baroque towns, into ideology."8
It must be made clear, however, that Adorno is not proposing as a
superior alternative the standard neo-Romantic practice of the
6 Adorno, Prismen,
p. 177;Prisms, p. 145.
7 On the mimetic taboo in culture generally, see Max Horkheimer and Theodor W.
Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklirung (Frankfurt, 1969). pp. 149-50; Dialectic of Enlightenment,
trans. John Cumming (New York, 1972), pp. 141-42.
8 Adorno, Prismen, p. 163;Prisms, 136.
 Early Music 303

Mainstream-the Great Conductor leading the swarming chorus and

orchestra in enervating renditions of the Passions. Rather he is ques-
tioning whether anything was gained by exchanging one distortion
for another. (Later we shall see that much was gained.) However,
Adorno's solution, if it can be called that, is not really an answer at all
but a retreat into the inner sanctum of the Frankfurt Institute. For
from within this theoretical sanctuary it is easy to condemn every
contemporary attempt to perform Bach as ideologically tainted.
Adorno prefers instead to see Schoenberg and Webern as the true
interpretersof Bach, for having channeled their engagement with the
past into "contemporary" orchestrations of his keyboard works, they
remain "loyal to his heritage by breaking faith with it."9 They then
are Bach's true devotees. This displacement from reception onto pro-
duction (that is, from performance onto composition) is a neat trick,
but it will delude no one. And yet, Adorno may have no other choice.
For if Early Music is grounded in a neurotic need to repress feelings,
how can it be anything more than a dredging operation for historical
residue?
Before recoiling from Adorno (either in shock or in amusement),
one ought to localize the source of his discomfort. For Adorno did not
know Early Music as it blossomed in the late 1960s and 1970s but
confronted the more barbaricgropings of the 1950s and a bit beyond.
(He died in 1969.) This was the period of the "sewing-machine" style,
sometimes called the "Vivaldi revival," when German chamber or-
chestras enthusiastically took up "terraceddynamics," when histori-
cally minded conductors urged players to stop "phrasing," and when
repeat signs in the music occasioned a blaze of premeditated embel-
lishments. "Motoric rhythms," it seemed, revealed a new species of
musical gratification-the freedom from feeling. "Let the music speak
for itself" was the battle cry. In practice: substitute brittle harpsichords
for grandiloquent Steinways, pure Baroque organs for lush Romantic
ones, cherubic choirboys for wobbly prime donne, intimate ensembles
for overblown orchestras, the Urtext for doctored editions, then one is
true to Bach (or whomever) and his intentions. The musical results of
this early purism were so sterile that we can hardly criticize Adorno for
having missed the seeds of a critical new development. Instead, he
focused insightfully on the grimaced faces of the sanctimonious
participants.
9 Adorno, Prismen,
p. 179.
304 The Musical Quarterly

But, Adorno aside, the question remains whether the situation in

Early Music today differs so fundamentally from that of the 1950s.The
latter-day Early-Music enthusiast will likely object: "Wait just a
moment! We've come a long way since the 1950s."In this he is surely
right. Of course one would not want to commit a genetic fallacy,
mistaking the origin of a phenomenon for its subsequent form. On
the other hand, one must grant that the objectivist program of authen-
ticity and its related relativism remain wholly intact. It is merely the
sum of facts about instruments, practices, and circumstances which
has swelled: the method appears more impressive, even sophisticated.
But if we honestly evaluate the artistic quality of most Early-Music
performances, then there are ample instances of wretched renditions
ground out by stony-faced champions of authenticity to grant to
Adorno's diagnosis a good measure of truth.
What Adorno cannot account for-and this is a crucial point-are
Early Music's manifest successes. His theory is, for example, unable to
deal with a performer such as Gustav Leonhardt. For here is someone
who has read the treatises,consulted the proper sources, is technically
without par, yet arrivesat thought-provoking radical interpretations.
Perhaps, one could say with no small irony, Adorno has suspended his
own dialectic. For I hope to show that it was this same deception in the
realm of ideas-the objectivist program of authenticity-which fos-
tered, paradoxically, one of the more critical developments in
twentieth-century music. But one does not discover the real advances
of Early Music, as most would have it, in the outward signs of
historicity-the "original" instruments, verifiableperforming forces,
or text-critical editions-but in the revised operations in the minds of
the players. This means that the most crucial interpretive sectors of
performance-articulation, phrasing, tempo, rhythm, and tone
production-do not remain metaphysical universals beyond the grasp
of history but emerge as weapons that force Mainstream culture to
confront its own historicity. At its most successful, Early Music does
not return to the past at all but reconstructs the musical object in the
here and now, enabling a new and hitherto silenced subject to speak.
To survey and connect these seemingly discrete moments within Early
Music is, as I see it, the aim of an adequate theory.

The Birth of Early Music and the Repression of the Present

The arrival of Early Music coincided with the most profound crisis
in European musical culture in which the middle-class public
 Early Music 305

soundly repudiated an avant-garde that dared to forsake traditional

tonality. One might say that both Early Music and early modernism
occupy nearly analogous positions with regard to the Mainstream.
Whereas the avant-garde strode forward in advancing the cause of
historical time, Early Music took an equidistant leap in the opposite
direction. But while the avant-garde could not fail to recognize the
grave consequences of its actions, Early Music was blissfully ignorant
of its historical status. For to maintain equilibrium in a mythical
kingdom of the past, replete with courtly values and (palpably) har-
monious relations, Early Music paid a price: it forcibly repressedevery
sign of the present.
This is not to say that Early Music was pointedly antimodernist.
Its day-to-day activity, with few exceptions, made sure to brush away
the problems of tortured humanity, like all forms of antiquarianism,
into the recesses of the unconscious. What it promised was a sense of
stability, an illusion of serenity, a "haven in the heartless world."
Neither was Early Music in any sense a Neo-Classic movement. It was
not remotely interested in converting living composers to the joys of
pre-Romantic idioms. Nor was it even concerned to integrate itself
into Mainstream institutions: from the firstit saw itself as something
apart from the real world. Indeed, Early Music drew a wondrous
curtain on reality and celebrated its devotion to the past by resurrect-
ing the relics of that beckoning age-the "antique" instruments
themselves. To the same extent, then, that "modern music" circa
1890-1914exposed the raw nerve of social disharmony in the form of
the neurotic utterance, Early Music redressed the imbalance by re-
pressing the nightmarish present and mounting a grand restoration of
the glorious past. Whereas the Mainstream had said "no" to modern-
ism, Early Music forgot it was traumatized.
This kind of amnesia surfaces in the work of Arnold Dolmetsch,
perhaps the most famous pioneer in Early Music. For despite his
enormous pretentions to historical accuracy and empirical method,10
one sometimes gets the impression that he not only wished to revive
the past, but actually to improve on it. Take, for example, his recon-
struction of the harpsichord in a now-forgotten account from the
1930s by his pupil Robert Donington."1 We learn, perhaps to our

10 Dolmetsch's
major work was his Interpretation of the Music of the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1915).
I Robert Donington, The Work and Ideas of Arnold Dolmetsch (Haslemere, 1932), p. 8.
306 The Musical Quarterly

surprise, that Dolmetsch was not entirely happy with his reconstruc-
tive labors. Even after scrupulously rebuilding a historical copy, it
seems that
the old harpsichord has certain limitations [and produces] a jangle, slight in the treble
but audible in the bass. [Moreover, the] use of the damper-raising pedal (correspond-
ing to the sustaining pedal of the piano) is rendered impracticable, precluding a
number of effects of great musical value.

The solution:
[Dolmetsch's] new instruments, which remedy these historical oversights, have
proved both purer and more sustained than any previous harpsichord.'2

One could easily make light of Dolmetsch's "fidelity" to history, but I

find much more interesting Donington's view that the Dolmetsch
"improvements" are good common sense. Progress marches on, and it
is irrelevant that two hundred years have meanwhile intervened. Not
only, then, is the repudiation of the world as is forgotten but also the
grand retreatitself.
Early Music as Defamiliarization
How ironic, then, that Early Music, cowering from harsh reality,
ought to turn around and administer the same shock which, at its
inception, it sought to stifle. For there is no escaping a relatively recent
trend in which critics treat Early Music as if it were a rebellious and
rampaging modernism. Of course this metamorphosis from traum-
atized refugee to agent provocateur was a gradual process. But begin-
ning in the 1970s it became clear that Early Music was not a harmless
bit of antiquarianism but a sweeping movement able to rock the
foundations of Mainstream musical culture. For what had been
thought of as durable and traditional masterpieces, especially of Ba-
roque music, became alienated, indeed "defamiliarized"in a disturb-
ing departure from expected norms. I refer here to the priem ostran-
enie ("device of making strange") made famous by the Russian
Formalists. For in a similar way to the processesof literaryproduction,
the operations performed by Early Music "tear the object out of its
habitual context ... and force a heightened awareness."13 One per-
ceives this most vividly in Early Music's ability to inflect long melodic

12 Ibid.,
pp. 9-10.
13 Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism (The Hague, 1955;New Haven, 1981),pp. 176-77. See
also FredricJameson, The Prison House of Language (Princeton, 1972), pp. 50-54.
 Early Music 307

lines with a series of mercurial gestures, to defuse grandiose cadences

into grammatical ending points, to endow dance rhythms with unex-
pected lilts and graces, and to deploy a wide variety of tonal colors in
new ways. The Mainstream listener, who believes his preferredmas-
terpieces forever safe from tampering, is now compelled to sit impo-
tently by as an unwitting iconoclast knocks down his favorite Classi-
cal knick-knacks, reminding him precisely of that fractured frame of
mind, which, with Great Music, he hoped to forget.
Defamiliarization, moreover, displaces the attention from the in-
terpreter onto the composition. Consider, for example, the way one
usually judges performances of, say, the Elgar Cello Concerto (Casals,
Fournier, Rostropovitch, DuPre). Then contrast this with the usual
manner of reviewing performances of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos
(either a Mainstream or an Early-Music rendition). With the Elgar, we
admire (or object to) various "interpretations" based on the per-
former's approach to sound, tempo, Romantic feeling, and taste.
What is striking is that any particular judgment leaves the Elgar
concerto untouched. Questions regarding its meaning or value rarely
appear on the agenda. Not so with our Early Musicians tampering
with the Brandenburg Concertos. The choice between performing
styles here is anything but value free, for preferring one over the other
amounts to a manifesto pro or contra authenticity. Are you in favor of
respecting Bach's intentions, or are you a proponent of the elan vital?
The aesthetic evaluation here is irrelevant:the point is that the "mean-
ing" of J. S. Bach gets mentioned in the first place. All at once, it
becomes most important to take sides: you either subscribe to authen-
ticity tout court, seek compromises to appease the purists, or else put
up with inauthentic renditions of famous Baroque music while mak-
ing appropriate apologies for moral weaknesses in this area should
you be taken to task.'4

14 Interesting in this regard is an article in The New York Times, March 21, 1982, entitled
"The Reborn Bach Aria Group." "The Bach Aria Group plays on modern instruments. 'We all
have gratitude and admiration for people like Nikolaus Harnoncourt, who have done so much
work with authentic instruments and performances,' says Mr. [Samuel] Baron. But it does not
mean that his is the only way. You don't have to reconstruct the Globe Theatre to present a
meaningful Shakespeare performance.... My personal hero was Karl Richter, the German
conductor, who did so much to clean up Bach performance practices. Yet I felt sad that at the end
of his life he had to defend himself [because he was] behind the times in mattersof authenticity....
[Even] without going to the old instruments, there'sa lot of scrubbing up to do." In other words,
the guilty modern player realizes he had better rid himself of outmoded practices. But note that
Early Music is not really a respected colleague but an inimical adversary.
308 The Musical Quarterly

Through the logic of defamiliarization, Early Music turns around,

forgets the moment of its genesis, and repeats (albeit in muted form)
the provocation incited by its cultural adversary:it co-opts the defiant
scream of the early avant-garde and itself becomes a threat to estab-
lished musical values. Perhaps this disruption can be explained as a
repetition compulsion. Freud describes the analysand's predicament
in this way: "He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a
contemporary experience instead of... remembering it as something
belonging to the past." 5 Why Early Music should need to forget its
original raison d'etre is not hard to imagine. After all, who today
would freely admit the wish to live as a fixture in an antique shop, a
perhaps valuable but dead museum piece? Who, moreover, would
enjoy conceding that he has given up on any meaningful contempo-
rary art, and (what is worse) that he secretly wishes to annihilate the
specter of modernism? Thus there are perfectly plausible reasons why
fantasies of this order are concealed beneath such comfortable webs as
authenticity and the composer's intentions. We can also understand
why defamiliarization in Early Music is not ordinarily accorded its
due recognition: the disruption was unintentional.

The Language of Resistance

To the extent that defamiliarization within Early Music mimicked

the provocation firstvoiced by the avant-garde, it has also encouraged
similar forms of resistance. On the surface, this resistance manifests
itself in the sober calls for moderation: to revive historical perfor-
mance is admirable to a point, but not if it becomes fanatic. Yet if we
examine the metaphors used in these invocations to the golden mean,
it appears that Early Music has committed an inexcusable violation of
social mores, as if it has exhibited some horrible disease in polite
society. The affront then demands some act of censure in order to
expose it, a public rebuke which the critic rationalizes as social
responsibility.
Consider first two newspaper reviews of works by Schoenberg
performed during 1913-14:
Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony-self-torture of a flagellant who whips himself
with a cat-o'-nine-tails while cursing himself! When a conglomeration of horns

15 Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Leipzig, Vienna, Zurich, 1920);rev. ed.
trans. James Strachey (London, 1961), p. 12.
 Early Music 309

pushes upwards through the strings, it sounds like the words, "You, monster!" A
hideous modern sound of the scourge! Schoenberg's unappeasable nature is made
clear: reckless self-mutilation and a reckless admission: "I am like that!" A sort of
cat-music, whining, wailing, desperate.... Schoenberg is uncontrolled.... He bares
his breast in a fury of penitence and shows his scars-and the spectacle is shocking.
And yet, if people mention Brahms's chastity, one ought to speak of Schoenberg's
shamelessness. [Ernst Decsey, (Berlin) Signale, Feb. 4, 1914]16

Or else:
I fear and dislike the music of Arnold Schoenberg.... It is the decomposition of the
art, I thought, as I held myself in my seat.... What did I hear? At first, the sound of
delicate china shivering into a thousand luminous fragments. In the welter of tonali-
ties that bruised each other as they passed and repassed, in the preliminary group of
enharmonies that almost make the nose bleed and the eyes water, the scalp to freeze, I
could not get a central grip on myself. Schoenberg is the cruelest of all composers for
he mingles with his music sharp daggers at white heat, with which he pares away tiny
slices of his victim's flesh. Anon he twists the knife in the fresh wound and you receive
another horrible thrill.... Every composer has his aura; the aura of Arnold Schoen-
berg is, for me, the aura of original depravity, of subtle ugliness, of basest egoism, of
hatred and contempt, of cruelty, and of the mystic grandiose.... If such music making
is ever to become accepted, then I long for Death the Releaser.'7
There is, I regret to say, not much in Early-Music criticism that
rivals the honesty and literary competence in these two texts.'8 But a
superior competitor is found in Gerard Zwang, a French surgeon and
self-proclaimed sexologist, who, in his book of 1977,A Contre-Bruit,
launches an unprecedented attack on the infamy of Early Music.19
Zwang complains that French National Radio has succumbed to a
condition he calls "N&crobaroquisme."In responding to the allures of
the authenticity craze, he claims, the radio has propagated three evils:
boys supplant women in church choirs, period instruments replace
"modern" ones, and worst of all musicians tune to Baroque pitch (a

16 Cited and translated by Nicholas

Slonimsky in his Lexicon of Musical Invective (New
York,1952),pp. 156-57.I havemodifiedthe translationslightly.
17JamesGibbonsHuneker,TheNew YorkTimes,Jan. 19,1913.Quotedin Slonimsky,pp.
153-54.NeitherDecseynor Hunekerwereordinaryphilistines:Decseywasa pupil of Bruckner
andan importantAustrianwriteron music.Hunekerpopularizedtheworksof RichardStrauss,
and countedamong his friendsG. B. Shawand HavelockEllis.
18Only in the earlydayswhen, forexample,a diaryentryof two Victorianladiesrecords
attendinga Dolmetschconcertin 1892.They describe"toothachecalling unto toothache...
physicaltorture... nothingdivinein it."Citedin Margaret
Campbell,Dolmetsch:TheManand
his Music(Seattle,1975),p. 69.ConsideringDolmetsch'sinfamousdilettantism,thismaysimply
be accuratereportage.
19GerardZwang,A Contre-bruit(Paris,1977).
310 The Musical Quarterly

semitone below contemporary). Here is a sample of Zwang's tirade

against Early Music:
A grandiose project that only ends in . . putting back into circulation musical
vehicles which ought never to have left the garage.... That is, old nails, bagpipes,
jew's harps, screeching fiddles, out-of tune cigar-boxes... which only proliferate like
malignant tumors in the poor body of Music instead of gracing attics and flea markets.
... All this worthless antiquarianism is vitiated by a defect rendering it null and void:
they play a half-step below pitch. And this, no (real) musician can bear.... Lucky are
those music lovers with relative pitch. For the others, it is impossible to listen without
discomfort, nausea, without clenching one's teeth.

His solution:
I say it in all tranquillity. Gustav Leonhardt and consort, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and
sons, Frans Bruggen and assistant fifers, Kuijken & Co. are the polluters of the musical
environment. They create anti-art, anti-music ... And it is with the greatest joy that
[I] would see all those guilty of musical outrages thrown into prison. Imprisonment
must be coupled with the destruction, by fire, of those old buggies which they have the
effrontery to call musical instruments.20

More than sixty years separate Zwang from Decsey and Huneker,
yet the strident tone and the arrayof metaphors are strikingly similar.
Pathology is most frequent among the images, with torture, murder,
sin, and criminality following close behind. Zwang's own specialties
include referencesto war, terrorism,and pollution, all of which enrich
an already fertile field. Now it is clear why Schoenberg's critics re-
spond to him the way they do. With Zwang, however, the "symp-
toms"-low pitch, instrumental and vocal sonorities per se-are
simply too trivial to account for his uncontrolled anger. Instead, it
appears that Zwang is victimized by a process of musical defamiliari-
zation which has robbed him of prized possessions.21 It is less the
Baroque violin that upsets Zwang's sensibilities than the Baroque
violinist's tinkering with musical fundamentals.22 For Early Music

20 Ibid., pp. 41, 15, 16.

21 His complaints center consistently on repertory which he already knew; he abuses,
moreover, not the typically mediocre Early-Music dilettante but the leading players of the
advance guard.
22 An example would be Early Music's use of vibrato which it sees as an additive ingredient
similar to an ornament. Since vibrato in Mainstream practice is omnipresent, it is tautological,
or to use Roman Jakobson's term, "unmarked" with respect to expression: since it always refers
to individual warmth, it is almost meaningless. In Early Music, on the other hand, vibrato takes
on a "marked" value which enlarges the field of expression: senza vibrato no longer has to mean
senza espressione as in even advanced contemporary music. Early Music therefore criticizes the
notion of expressivity as one metaphysical unit either present or absent, viewing it instead as a
range of emotions experienced by the musical subject.
 Early Music 311

enables a powerful and sometimes disturbing insight into a historical

subject not yet regimented by the dictates of the culture industry, a
subject located beyond the epistemological horizon of conventional
"expressivity." In addition, it serves to undermine the mythic quali-
ties of harmony and restitution which neo-Romantic culture had
imputed to Baroque music. This, then, is perhaps why Schoenberg's
Chamber Symphony of 1906 and Leonhardt's Bach in 1977 wreak
similar havoc.
Musicology contra Early Music

It is the musicological community, however, which offers the most

substantive resistance to Early Music. This may seem paradoxical.
After all, the scholars were the ones who had nurtured Early Music by
discovering the musical repertories comprising it, by editing them so
rigorously, and by publishing the treatises. But above all the musicol-
ogists championed the historicist view that music was conditioned by
its time. From here it was but a short step to the necessary conclusion:
Baroque music requires Baroque performance practice. Indeed, it was
largely through musicological lobbying (or so the story goes) that
Bach-Stokowski was deleted from symphony programs in the first
place. But beginning in the 1960s, it became clear that the Early-
Music progeny were coming into conflict with the implicit goals of
postwar musicology: accumulating, venerating, and (sometimes) em-
balming the European cultural heritage.23
The most significant form of musicological critique thrives on
reprimanding Early Music for its inadequate scholarship: that the
specific practices which Early-Music adherents have read about in
treatises and seen confirmed in the musical notation are based on a
faulty logic. The most visible proponent of this view is undoubtedly
Frederick Neumann, who has claimed since the 1960s that several
important conventions of Early Music are historical misinterpreta-
tions.24According to him Early Music has fallen prey to a "childhood
disease" (again, pathology!) which
23 All these activities are understandable
responses to the demotion of high culture by
contemporary society. The question is whether apologetics, however appropriate, is method-
ologically justifiable. Being limited to the positive, this orientation is often unable to deal with
truth. On this point see Adorno, Philosophie, p. 33; Philosophy, p. 26. But for a brilliant
antidote to Adorno's negativity, see Hans Robert Jauss, Asthetische Erfahrung und literarische
Hermeneutik, Bd. 1: Versuche im Feld der asthetischen Erfahrung (Munich, 1977), trans.
Michael Shaw, Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics (Minneapolis, 1982),pp. 13-21.
24 For a list of Neumann's publications, see his
biography in The New Grove.
312 The Musical Quarterly

is caused by a somewhat naive trust in the infallibility of historical treatises, the

symptoms of [which] are manifested in a faulty interpretation of these documents.25

Neumann's strategy is to show how the evidence of the treatises

does not warrant the conventional practices of Early Music. For in-
stance, he claims that the overdotting of French overtures, a promi-
nent trademark of Early Music, is a myth invented by Dolmetsch. Not
only do the witnesses who allude to it (such as J. J. Quantz) arrive too
late to confirm a Baroque practice, but even notational evidence which
points to overdotting argues for the contrary-that composers had to
prescribe it because a convention never existed. Although it is not
often made explicit, Neumann's dismissal of Early Music's prized
conventions gives the clear impression that "modern" players are
perfectly justified in retaining the received wisdom of the
Mainstream-"Play as written! "-since so-called historical perfor-
mance is a hoax.
This is why, in a sense, Neumann stresses that the lesson his work
teaches outweighs the importance of his findings. As he puts it:
When we play the overtures, sarabandes, chaconnes, etc. of Lully, Rameau, Handel
and Bach, it is a mistake to deprive them of their majestic dignity in favor of the frantic
style of jerks and jolts. [He is referring here to overdotting in French overtures.] In any
case, for many listeners a prolonged series of such jerks and jolts can be rather
irritating. Others might find such a style stimulating, perhaps because it reflects the
nervous tensions of our age; they have the privilege of their taste, but must cease the
claim of historical authenticity.26

From the range of metaphors, one would think that Early Music is
some revolutionary force trying to topple the ancieni regime. Not only
does Early Music dethrone the monarchs ("depriving them of their
majestic dignity"); it compels them to do a sort of rock-and-roll (the
twofold "jerks and jolts"). The key figure here is surely Bach, whom
Neumann has taken special pains to protect from the suggestion that
his overtures ought to be dotted, that inequality ought to apply in his
music, or that his trills ought regularly to begin from the upper
neighbor. Even the title of Neumann's recent monograph is revealing:
Ornamentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque Music with Special
Emphasis on J. S. Bach (Princeton, 1978). No doubt Bach is the
centerpiece of much twentieth-century work in performance practice,
25 Neumann, "The dotted note and the so-called French style," Early Music, V (1977), 311,
trans. Raymond Harris and Edmund Shay. The article firstappeared in French in the Revue de
musicologie, LI (1965).
26 Neumann, "The dotted note," p. 323.
 Early Music 313

but the "special emphasis" alludes to his almost iconlike status: Bach
is viewed as a monument, which, if defaced, must contend with the
wrath of the worshippers. This is why the tone of Neumann's critique
is so formidable.
But tone is not substance, and that is why this reading of Neu-
mann's motivations in no way endangers his argument. Therefore, to
disarm Neumann means to examine his methodological premises.
But by this I do not only mean cataloging errors in his logic.27 For
Neumann's strength lies in his claim that Early Music lacks the
empirical support to prove its argument. But the blame lies less with
insufficient evidence than with Early Music's reliance on the empiri-
cist methodology in the first place. Specifically, Early Music has been
forced by its own fetish for the historically accurate "fact" to succumb
to the debatable view that empiricism saves all, that only the most
cautious inferences may be drawn from the "evidence," and that only
that which is demonstrable by verifiabledata (the neo-positivist twist)
is admissible.
But if we look at the real development of Early Music, we do not
find passive bodies of facts inducing careful inferences. Instead there
have been musicians coming up with ever-changing theories to ex-
plain what they were reading in the treatises, finding in the notation,
and learning about the instruments. Not only is the empiricist method-
ology unhelpful in the study of performance practice: it was never a
model for the progress of Early Music.28Instead, historical perfor-
mance must be recognized as an evolving and necessarily incomplete
paradigm rather than as a set of documented index cards set atop
inferences culled from freshman logic texts. Viewed this way, Neu-
mann no longer poses such a threat, since he can merely knock down
straw men, and offer instead the much touted "freedom" of Main-
stream conventions. What he contributes, on the other hand, are
useful anomalies that oblige Early Music to refine its hypotheses,
rejecting a powerful theory only when it can be replaced with some-
thing better.
27 David Fuller has done a
witty job of this in an article entitled "Dotting, the 'French Style'
and FrederickNeumann's Counter-Reformation," Early Music, V (1977), 517-43. The religious
metaphor is particularly apt, for what better way to describe Early Music than as a
Reformation-the return to the true religion, the idols removed from church, and even the theses
nailed to the door. The Jesuitical Neumann plies sophistical arguments designed to confound
the faithful and reinstate the supremacy of Mother Church.
28 See, in this regard, Paul K. Feyerabend,Against Method (London, 1975)and Science in a
Free Society (London, 1978), and also Allan R. Keiler, "The Empiricist Illusion: Narmour's
Beyond Schenkerism," in Perspectives of New Music, XVII (1978), 161-95.
314 The Musical Quarterly

Early Music and the Aesthetic of Novelty

The repertories of medieval and Renaissance music, unlike Ba-

roque and Classical music, had of course never participated in the
phase of defamiliarization, for they had never been familiar in the first
place. Instead, one might consider how they gave a new lease on life to
the traditional aesthetic category of novelty. According to this histori-
cal impulse, the objet d'art, like the commodity, is required perpetu-
ally to regenerate itself in a new guise. Built into this important motor
in the history of art are, at first,a sense of "progress"in the area of taste
and, later, a form of planned obsolescence. But it was of course early
twentieth-century modernism which wreaked such havoc with the
aesthetic of novelty, confronting it with its own undesirable conse-
quences-innovative artworks which conflicted directly with an op-
posed aesthetic of gratification. Thus, although the stylistic develop-
ment of the avant-garde was conceived as eminently rational (the
Schoenbergs and Co. continually insisted on their direct links with the
past)29the European middle classes took the path of least resistance
and dedicated themselves to a predictable standard repertory.
If we locate the revival of medieval and Renaissance music in this
historical condition (which, tellingly, has changed little over the
course of this century), then it becomes clear that this sector of Early
Music kills two birds with one stone. First, it promises progress by
producing an ever-"new" source of musical rarities for the future. And
second, it promises to be diverting and pleasurable. Thus, if you are
concerned that the Philharmonic has programmed Brahms's Second
Symphony for the third time this season, you can attend an Early-
Music concert, where many repertories are still under heavy excava-
tion and prospects for a regular supply of historical ore remain
excellent.
Along with this reconciliation of novelty and gratification go all
the latter-day accoutrements of the commodity: the exaggeration and
deception of advertising; the promise of the good life; the hint of
piquancy; the demotion of aesthetic quality; and the precipitous drop
in artistic niveau. These themes can be readily observed in a news-
paper blurb announcing a subscription series to the Waverly Consort
("America's foremost early music ensemble") in which I have itali-
cized items of interest. Note how peculiar this language would sound
29 Or, as Charles Wuorinen put it in 1975:"Credoin unam musicam." Liner notes to
String
Trio et al., Nonesuch H-71319.
 Early Music 315

in a notice for a Mainstream chamber-music series. The Waverly

series, entitled "Italia Mia," features:
Four brand new and exciting programs-saluting five centuries of great Italian music
and the seven colorful and historic cities in which it flourished ... at the courts of the
Medici, Sforzas and Gonzagas ... under Brunelleschi's fantastic dome for Santa Maria
del Fiore or Michelangelo's glorious ceiling for the Sistine Chapel... in the mosaic
vastness of San Marco, the gilded palazzi along the Grand Canal and the jewel-box
theatre of La Fenice. 10 Brilliantly Gifted Solo Singers and Players, 50 Medieval,
Renaissance and Baroque instruments, including viola da gamba-vielle-nun's
fiddle-rebec-l ute-vihuela-theorbo-sack but-gemshorn-cornetto-oud-
shawm-rauschpfeife-citole-dulcian-psaltery . . . For the past eight seasons the
Waverly Consort's Alice Tully Hall series has been sold out by subscription six
months in advance, with hundreds turned away at the box office. To share the
treasurable experience of the 1982-83 season, subscribe NOW and avoid
disappointment.30

Early Music and the Flight from Envy

The failure to confront the cultural products of one's own time is a
feature which Early Music shares, by and large, with the Mainstream.
Where they differ most pointedly is in their response to the problem of
social envy. Whereas the Mainstream is forced by the competitive
nature of society to deal, for better or for worse, with notions of
value-both the principal actors and the musical objects are publicly
recognized as salable commodities-Early Music likes to pretend that
the problem does not exist. Denying envy, however, is hardly an
antidote. On the contrary, the denial is costly. For what often appears
as a pleasant diversion from present-day tensions, a utopian romp
through the courts of Europe, may in fact introduce, by way of music,
conditions which are far more coercive than those that Early Music
sought to escape in the firstplace. Having firstcelebratedits liberation,
Early Music turns around and proffers a more secure set of chains. By
considering the repression of envy, it becomes possible to explain why
Early Music so often seems to take on the trappings of a severe
monastic order, a disguise which otherwise eludes analysis.
Let us consider the status of envy within other sectors of serious
music.31 For the contemporary "advanced" composer, for example,
30 The New York Times,
May 16, 1982.
31 The standard work on the
sociology of envy is Helmut Schoeck, Der Neid (Freiburg,
1966), trans. Michael Glenny and Betsy Ross as Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior (New York,
1969). Freud treats the question of social envy briefly in Group Psychology and the Analysis of
the Ego, trans. James Strachey (London, 1959). Melanie Klein's Envy and Gratitude attempts to
augment psychoanalytic thinking on this point.
316 The Musical Quarterly

the encounter with envy is simply unavoidable. Today's composer

realizes from the start that mass adoration is not in the cards. He has
thereforecompensated for his envious desires vis-a-vis successful "en-
tertainers" before the firstdrop of ink falls on the page. This may take
the form of a snobbish elitism ("Who cares if you listen?"),32a venge-
ful vigil awaiting the vindication of posterity, or a retreat into the
hermetic cocoon of New-Music circles, where the injured give one
another comfort. Within Mainstream Classical music, too, envy and
its related guilt are obvious. Performers across the social spectrum
must struggle with auditions, juries, competitions-not to mention
managers, contractors, and critics. In response, the "artist"feels com-
pelled to achieve at the expense of his colleagues, to admire (i.e. envy)
his superiors, and feel a measure of guilt about those whom he has
vanquished. Although most musicians would not put it in these
terms, envy, a pervasive feature of all social life, cannot fail to be a
daily fact of life in Mainstream musical culture.
It was probably capitalist development of the late Middle Ages
which firstbrought envy into special prominence in the West. First it
legitimized the covetous wish for the desired object through the ideol-
ogy of the marketplace, making accumulation ("enlightened self-
interest") tantamount to social progress. It later masked the guilt
(caused by the fantastic enactment of the envious desire as much as
from the discomfort of being envied) with the idea of formal equality.
The social contract that resulted requires that envy be omnipresent at
the same time that its identity remain covert. Perhaps this is why, in
American English for example, the historical sense of "envy" has
either been neutralized (as in: "I envy you your trip to Europe") or
confused with jealousy (which requires a third party). With either
meaning, the ugly wish to see the downfall of someone perceived as
superior is obscured, either by suppressing the original definition or
by masking it under the sign of an acceptable Romantic triangle.33
Within the sphere of artistic production, our culture also tends to

32 The title of an article by Milton Babbitt,

High Fidelity, VIII (1959), 38. The original title,
"The Composer as Specialist," was deleted by the magazine and the now infamous title
substituted without the author's permission (private communication from Milton Babbitt).
Although it has little to do with the substance of Babbitt's article, the catchier phrase has
achieved a kind of notoriety and can serve as an exaggerated emblem standing for the tragic
isolation of the contemporary composer.
33 Rescuing the distressed damsel from a brutish suitor is a
preferable fantasy to disposing
of a secretly envied enemy whose very existence is galling.
 Early Music 317

underestimate the creative power of envy. For j ust as envy underwrites

the accumulation of capital, it also sponsors that particular form of
artistic progress prevalent in the West since the Renaissance: learn the
master's craft, admire (envy) him, and then outdo him (read:do him
in). The generally destructive and inhibiting effect of the "evil eye of
envy" is thereby transformed into a productive act, whose identifying
sign is the presence of something "new."34
If the musical Mainstream represents, as it were, an idealized
version of postindustrial society, with its transactions designed to
coordinate and rechannel the harmful effects of envy, then Early
Music must be characterized as a special psychological haven where
envy is not supposed to exist. It is as if Early Music signals a return to a
presumed state of innocence before envy became institutionalized as
the motor of social progress. A Brechtian table comparing the domi-
nant social code of Early Music with that of the Mainstream high-
lights these differences in a revealing way:
Early Music Musical Mainstream

1. The conductor is banished. 1. The conductor is the symbol of au-

thority, stature, and social difference.
2. All members of the ensemble are 2. The orchestra is organized in a
equal. hierarchy.
3. Ensemble members play a number 3. The "division of labor" is strictly
of instruments, sometimes sing, and defined, with one player per part.
commonly exchange roles.
4. Symptomatic grouping: the 4. Symptomatic grouping: the
consort-like-minded members of a concerto-opposing forces struggling
harmonious family. for control; later, the one against the
many.
5. Virtuosity is not a set goal and is 5. Virtuosity defines the professional.
implicitly discouraged.
6. Technical level of professionals is 6. Technical standards are high and
commonly mediocre. competitive.
7. The audience (often amateurs) may 7. The audience marvels at the tech-
play the same repertory at home. nical demands of the repertory.
8. The audience identifies with the 8. The audience idealizes the
performers. performers.

34Beethoven's
relationshipto Haydn,for example,particularlyas depictedin Maynard
Solomon'sBeethoven(New York,1977),typifiesthe processI am referringto.
318 The Musical Quarterly

Early Music Musical Mainstream

9. Programs are packed with homog- 9. Programs contain contrasting

eneous works and are often dull. items and are designed around a
climax.
10. Critics report on the instruments, 10. Critics comment on the performer
the composers, pieces and that "a good and his interpretation.
time was had by all."

As this schematic comparison makes clear, Early Music attempts

to hold envious desires in check by negating every sign of social
difference. It is as if, with the absence of the tyrannical father-master
(who epitomizes difference), the children can live together in peace
and fellowship. Some form of this process, in which social envy is
transformed into group solidarity, occurs no doubt in all social forma-
tions. Early Music simply displays a superior talent in this regard, but
with an important difference: the repression of envy leaves in its wake
an enforced routine and a uniform mediocrity. The colorless and
suffocating atmosphere encountered so often in Early-Music perfor-
mances is therefore not merely the result of inferior technique but the
price paid for avoiding the reality of envy.35

Early Music and "the Rules"

Consciously, this "aetiology of the Early-Music complex" depends

on a peculiar understanding of performance practice, that it is in fact a
set of rules which guarantees correct musical behavior. But these
rules-to the extent that theories about historical performance can be
discussed as a coherent set-are subject to a precarious dialectic: they
define Early Music at the same time that they endanger its viability as
critique.
Viewed from outside Early Music, the rules appear as a secret,
powerful code, a concrete yet somehow inscrutable body of knowledge
which assures correct interpretation. As such, they wield enormous

35 The seemingly improved standards of Early Music during the last few yearsare probably
due less to real technical progress than to an influx of conservatory-trainedmusicians joining the
ranks in the hope of escaping the debilitating struggle for existence on the "outside." These
refugees from the Mainstream believe they have eluded the cut-throat competition of the "real
world." But their new-found freedom is largely illusory.
 Early Music 319

influence on Mainstream musicians, who would like nothing better

than to get their hands on the code and know the awful truth.36
In fact they really wish to halt the threatening advance of Early Music
through a neat expropriation of its secrets. By acquiring the rules, it
seems-particularly those that deal with marginally unimportant
areassuch as ornamentation-these Mainstreamerswill be able to take
a comfortable middle road, keep to their modern instruments, retain
their views on phrasing and articulation, and forestall criticism by the
growing number of Early-Music adherents. But try as they may,
something is always amiss: the rules do not work well on modern
instruments and often seem contradictory and counterintuitive. The
Mainstream musician then becomes resentful: "Since music is a living
art, I reserve the right to make my interpretations relevant to modern
audiences." Of course the appeal to relevance is somewhat disingen-
uous, considering that "contemporary" ideas are warmed-overpracti-
ces of Vienna in the 1920s prettied up by the perfectionism of the
recording industry. No matter. The rules of Early Music have such a
prestige and jurisdiction that they must be circumvented by an uneasy
compromise or rejected outright.
This special status which the Mainstream grants to the rules
cannot but be a source of pride to Early Musicians who have sworn the
oath of allegiance. No need now to take a daring interpretive leap;
proper application of the rules guarantees accurate "period style."
The rules also ensure identity by difference: we have something you
lack. Historically, of course, the recoveryof the rules had been integral
to the reconstitution of the musical object. But now, it seems, the rules
have lost their experimental potential and become dogma, dispensed
as an elixir transporting the rankest amateur into authentic, historical
time.
Here again Early Music differs from the Mainstream. The modern
violinist in the conservatoryworking up the Sibelius concerto believes
he is expressing his innermost feelings through the music. The typical
Early Musician, on the contrary, distrusts his intuitive impulses as a
harmful residue of a Mainstream upbringing. Instead, he reads the
proper treatises, invests in expensive facsimiles, consults source-
critical editions, and worries that he is deviating from the proper style.
The player soon comes to fear the rules as harsh proscriptions. Style

36 This is partly to compensate for the guilt they feel at their irreverencetoward the musical
texts: they too are trained to view art as moral improvement.
320 The Musical Quarterly

no longer elucidates but only inhibits. This is why, within much of

Early Music, experimentation is discouraged, and deviance from the
norms is branded heresy.

The Revolt of the Advance Guard

The hegemony of the rules in Early Music has meanwhile come to

be repudiated by the leading musicians in the movement. This was
bound to happen: if they spoke honestly, they would admit that they
had never regarded performance practice as anything more than an
initial stimulus to break with the Mainstream. But at least from the
pronouncements of the 1960s, it certainly seemed as if these players
had discovered a science of interpretation. They were the ones, after
all, who had exploited the slogans of "authenticity," "original in-
struments," "first version," and "composer's intentions." Perhaps
these gimmicks of advertising were once useful, but they have
backfirednow that they have become common property. On the other
hand, the advance guard has now overcompensated in the opposite
direction. (They were also tired of the accusation that they were
unfeeling antiquarians.) Hence: "The more I read the treatisesthe less
I know." And as often: "I play only from the heart."
These disclaimers, while appearing to contradict the underpin-
nings of Early Music, can be safely disregarded. For the proof of the
pudding lies not with rationalizations post festum but with the status
of the performances. And here, in my judgment, the advance guard
has continued an admirable tradition: funneling the raw material
informed by historical critique through the contemporary subject to
express something new and complex. If the outward signs of revolt are
symptomatic, they attest to a growing rift between professional and
amateur. This distance may in fact prove useful in safeguarding the
independence of the antiobjectivists. For those in the advance guard
have programmatically avoided preordained formulas, which is why
their insights resist duplication by students. At best, they have created
an inimitable antistyle.37

37 The constraints on the future development of the advance guard stem largely from the
demands of the recording industry, which encourages technical flawlessness and homogeneous
expression "in the age of mechanical reproduction." Once the performer is preoccupied with
"sound for sound's sake" it becomes difficult to formulate novel approaches to interpretation.
One wonders if the critical moment of Early Music has passed.
 Early Music 321

Early Music as Hermeneutics

In circumscribing the scope of this investigation, I drew a distinc-

tion between Early Music as a social ensemble and the repertory it
takes as its primary object. This was above all a tactical move, de-
signed to put the spotlight on the actors instead of the play, as is
usually done. But the distinction also proves useful in the way it
highlights another pair of terms familiar to the humanistic
disciplines-the interpreterfaced with a text. Indeed, Early Music can
be viewed as a classical hermeneutic activity, in that it attempts to
ferret out meanings hidden beneath the surface. Seen in this way, we
might consider Early Music with respect to what Paul Ricoeur has
called the two poles of hermeneutics.38The first pole, originating in
biblical exegesis, takes the restoration of meaning as its goal. As such,
the interpretation figures largely as a revelation of the sacred and
maintains an attitude of respect toward the symbol. The second pole,
on the other hand, attempts a demystification of meaning, which
underlies the symbol as a disguise. This hermeneutics is suspicious of
the symbol but hopes, through its interpretation, to minimize the
illusion. Although interpretive styles are often reduced to one form or
the other, Ricoeur observes that the great modern interpreters of the
second school-he names Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche-manage to
mediate strategically between both poles. As a consequence, demystifi-
cation and semantic restoration are not logically prior to each other,
but are inextricably linked.
If Mainstream critics of Early Music have misjudged it, it is be-
cause they have yet to acknowledge the hermeneutic circle enveloping
their opinions. Admittedly, Adorno suffered from no such naivete.
But he jumped too quickly, perhaps, into the second hermeneutic
mode, thereby neutralizing his own dialectic. To its credit, Early
Music is one of the few interpretive strategies to have braved both
hermeneutic poles, albeit with varying degrees of success. Perhaps this
is its most profound statement to the twentieth century: with only a
religious respect for historical reconstruction-the objectivist
stance-the revelation tends to unveil a mirrored image of the inter-
preter. But with only a perfunctory dismissal of historical

38 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and

Philosophy, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven, 1970),pp. 26-27.
See also John Thompson's introduction to Ricoeur's Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences,
trans., ed. John Thompson (Cambridge, 1981), p. 6.
322 The Musical Quarterly

performance-Adorno's skepticism-the demystification remains in-

complete. For Early Music cannot do without both modes of
interpretation-restoration and critique-if it is to signify beyond a
dead past and point to an idiom not yet invented.