THE EARLY MUSIC REVIVAL:

A UNIQUELY MODERN SEARCH FOR MUSICAL AUTHENTICITY

MUS 3327

DR. BOYD

BY

ZEREK DODSON

14 APRIL 2014
 THE EARLY MUSIC REVIVAL:

A UNIQUELY MODERN SEARCH FOR MUSICAL AUTHENTICITY

The 20th century has proved to be a time of great diversification in the art music world,

producing numerous seemingly contradictory approaches. Composers and performers have

looked both forward—as in the case of the experimental and avant-garde composers—and

backwards—as in the case of the Early Music movement. Having gathered momentum as a

significant part of the classical music landscape since the 1960s and 70s, the Early Music

movement has strived to recreate the contexts, sounds, and performance techniques of pre-

Classical repertories in a relentless search for a nebulous, yet validating, sense of

“authenticity.” Thanks to the efforts of the movement’s adherents, performers of early music

regularly desire to perform a piece as it was envisaged by the composer, complete with original

instruments (modern reproductions of period designs) and the highest fidelity to good period

performance practice (modern extrapolations from surviving evidence); there is hardly a

conservatory or major city lacking in an early music group or collegium musicum. Yet despite

the movement’s emphasis on the past, many of the goals and products of early music are

inextricably linked to 20th century developments in society and music—particularly anti-

Romanticism, Neoclassicism, the quests for exotic and non-traditional soundscapes, and the

participatory focus and anti-establishmentarianism of the 1960s. This paper will trace the

development of the Early Music movement and its intersection with musical modernism, arguing

that the emerging performance style for Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque repertories is

shaped by fundamentally modern conceptions of music.

1
 Until the 19th century, virtually all music was intended for immediate performance and

enjoyment. No core repertory of established musical classics existed, and works more than a few

decades old were generally derided as old-fashioned and unsophisticated. With very few

exceptions—notably Handel’s great oratorio The Messiah—“early” music was largely forgotten

and consigned to gather dust on the shelves of the libraries of the musical cognoscenti.1 Most

historians point to a pivotal Berlin performance of Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion on March 11,

1829 as the beginning of a new appreciation for older compositions, and thus the birth of the

Early Music movement. Organized by Felix Mendelssohn, the performance was a complete

success, performed three times for an enthusiastic, capacity audience. More than any other

event, this performance ushered Bach’s music into the contemporary public sphere while paving

the way for interest in other Baroque composers and compositional styles. Musicians in the

remaining decades of the century began to avidly study music of the past—admittedly, rarely

looking before Bach, or Palestrina at the earliest—and found inspiration and a sense of piety and

chaste sweetness.2 Brahms and other composers researched and edited the works of Baroque

masters; the discipline of musicology began to emerge, partly as a response to the surge of

interest in older music; themed “historical concerts” attracted interest as novelties in large,

cosmopolitan cities such as Paris and London.3

In the 20th century, two highly visible figures emerged who paved the way towards a full-

fledged Early Music movement, stressing questions of authenticity and fidelity to composers’

intentions to a greater degree than ever before. Arnold Dolmetsch, a French violin teacher who
1
Thomas Forrest Kelly, Early Music: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011), 12.
2
Harry Haskell, The Early Music Revival: A History (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.,
1988), 11-3, 17.
3
Ibid., 21-4.

2
had emigrated to London, produced high-quality reproductions of period instruments

(particularly harpsichords, lutes, viols, and recorders) and advocated a staunchly anti-Romantic

performance practice. His major scholarly work The Interpretation of Music of the XVII and

XVIII Centuries, published in 1915, was groundbreaking in its prescription of performance style

based on scholarly research on music treatises and surviving descriptions from the period. By

the 1930s, Dolmetsch’s views on performance practice and his assertion of a quantifiable “cult of

authenticity” to which performers ought to aspire were widely accepted in the musical

community.4 In Paris, Wanda Landowska emerged as one of the first harpsichord virtuosi, and

the first genuine celebrity of the Early Music movement. Landowska felt that original

instruments and studies of treatises were imperative for adequate performance of Baroque music,

famously declaring that performing Bach on harpsichord rather than piano was playing Bach’s

music “his way.” However, she stressed fidelity to the essential character of the music over

historical fact, and realized the music of Bach (drawing on the spirit of the instructions in old

treatises and her own intuition) with her monstrous Pleyel harpsichord—which, equipped with an

iron frame, high-tension strings, and a massive sixteen-foot stop, could easily rival the sound of a

modern orchestra.5 Nevertheless, her personality and teachings had enduring influence on

scholars, performers, and instrument makers.

Slowly, the Early Music spirit attracted more devotees. The esteemed French pedagogue

Nadia Boulanger was noted for her extensive knowledge of Renaissance and Baroque works and

recorded performances of Monteverdi and Bach (with a sensitive continuo realization on modern

4
Nicholas Kenyon, editor, Authenticity and Early Music: A Symposium (Oxford:Oxford
University Press, 2011), 39; Haskell, 26-43.
5
Kenyon, 38-9.

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piano) in the 1930s.6 In 1933, the Belgian-based group Pro Musica Antiqua debuted under the

directorship of Safford Cape, an American who had ended his composition career to pursue

performances of early music. One of the first ensembles to focus on the repertoire of the early

Renaissance and medieval periods, Pro Musica Antiqua did away with the practice of wearing

medieval costumes (as Dolmetsch had done) and attracted a mix of scholars and ordinary

concertgoers.7 The multi-faceted composer Paul Hindemith established the Yale Collegium

Musicum in 1940, organizing performances of Dufay and Monteverdi on period instruments and

injecting his own ideas on period performance practice.8

Influenced by Cape, Noah Greenberg brought early music to a wide audience, assembling

the leading American early music performers into the New York Pro Musica in 1952, whose

fresh-sounding and vivacious performances garnered critical and popular acclaim.9 The English

vocalist Alfred Deller single-handedly developed and popularized the falsetto countertenor

singing style, ever since a fixture in Early Music vocal groups; the charismatic David Munrow

brought a new energy and virtuosity to the performance of early wind instruments.10 The Studio

der fr͘ühen Musik, formed in 1959 by Thomas Binkley, pursued the performance of medieval

monophonic works, drawing on surviving North African and Middle Eastern monophonic

traditions for insight into possible performance practices. Other vocal and instrumental

ensembles devoted to Early Music (notably under the conductors Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav

6
Ibid., 44
7
Haskell, 60-1.
8
Ibid., 108.
9
Kelly, 97-8.
10
Haskell, 148-9, 163.

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Leonhardt, and Christopher Hogwood) have risen to prominence through the 1960s, 70s, and

80s, issuing numerous influential and commercially successful recordings.11

Along with the rise of such professional groups, Early Music experienced a sudden surge

of popularity at the amateur level during the 1960s and 70s. The recorder, relatively easy to

play, was adopted as a key educational instrument in primary schools all over Europe and the

USA towards the beginning of the century, and recorder clubs and societies at the adult level

attracted numerous amateurs. In contrast to contemporary music for amateur performance, much

music from the Renaissance and early Baroque periods (including instrumental dances and

consort music, as well as virtually all madrigals) was both easy and rewarding to play and sing. 12

Forms of grassroots education in Early Music (such as summer workshops and festivals)

emerged in the 60s and 70s, and their popularity stemmed partially from the anti-

establishmentarian feelings of the time. Early Music was a reaction against the prevailing

musical views: instead of passively absorbing pre-packaged music, the Early Musikers were

making their own music, analogously to other grassroots and folk movements of the period. The

non-elite, non-traditional, and fundamentally egalitarian methods of teaching and performing

(e.g., participatory learning as equals, communal playing in conductor-less ensembles, freedom

from totalitarian musical strictures) were highly attractive to a counterculture influenced by such

societal dissidents as the hippies and anti-war protesters.13

Somewhat ironically, the Early Music movement is now predominantly professionalized,

with Early Music courses and ensembles taught and directed by trained specialists at universities

11
Kelly, 99-105; Bruce Haynes, The End of Early Music: A Period Performer’s History
of Music for the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 49-50.
12
Joel Cohen and Herb Schnitzer, Reprise: The Extraordinary Revival of Early Music
(Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1985), 85-9.
13
Kelly, 111-13.

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and conservatories across the globe. Virtually every major music school in the United States

(and many other countries) offers some version of an Early Music ensemble, and recently some

conservatories have even begun to award academic degrees in Historical Performance and

related fields.14 Although still a vibrant movement, Early Music has lost some of its novelty and

uniqueness as a result of its popularity.

But why did Early Music become so popular during the 20th century? Partially, it is due

to the exotic allure that Early Music shares with world music: the unusual sonorities and sounds

(open and parallel fifths, unusual instruments) evoked the alien and foreign, which had been

enamoring audiences since the 19th century. Many features of historically informed performance

share their origin in the anti-Romantic backlash at the beginning of the 20th century, such as the

absence of rubato, restricted use of vibrato, and de-emphasis on emotional expressivity.15 Both

Haynes and Taruskin note distinctive features of modern performance style (such as

dehumanization of the music, devaluation of expression and sentimentality, and a conception of

the musical work as an objective fixture that demands conformity in performance), although

Haynes argues that period performance style has tried to distance itself from the “sewing-

machine” style of Baroque performance that was in vogue during the middle of the 20th

century.16

The search for a purer, anti-Romantic music produced both the Early Music movement

and Neoclassicism, a movement that emulated earlier styles without concerning itself with issues

of authentic performance. Nevertheless, prominent neoclassical and later modernist composers

14
Ibid., 115-16.
15
Haskell, 184-6.
16
Haynes, 49-58; Richard Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 23.

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frequently crossed over into the Early Music domain. Paul Hindemith was both a modernist

composer and leading figure in the historical performance movement, directing the Yale

Collegium Musicum and frequently performing on viola d’amore, for which he also wrote a

sonata. Poulenc wrote a harpsichord concerto for Landowska, and other composers—including

Debussy, de Falla, Milhaud—wrote (or intended to write, in the case of Debussy) new works for

harpsichord that utilized it primarily for its distinctive sound rather than its historical

associations. By the time of the New Virtuosity, both the harpsichord and the recorder had

entered the instrumental arsenal of the avant-garde, with such composers as Berio, Stockhausen,

Xenakis, Ligeti, Carter, and Babbitt writing parts for them.17

The influence of the Early Music movement has not been limited just to art music but has

also affected genres of popular music. With the adoption of the harpsichord and Baroque-

influenced compositional devices, the genre of “Baroque pop” experienced brief popularity in

the 1960s. Harpsichords, recorders, and other early instruments were used to great effect in pop

and rock music, from Simon and Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair” (1966) to Led Zeppelin’s

“Stairway to Heaven” (1972), taking advantage of the instruments’ unique sounds and general

associations with an earlier, simpler time.18 In the last few decades, the rediscovery and

performance of medieval music has spawned the new genres of Medieval Metal and Medieval

Rock. Bands (predominately located in northern Europe) working in these genres feature

17
Haskell, 170-2.

Elizabeth Upton, “Concepts of Authenticity in Early Music and Popular Music

Communities,” Ethnomusicology Review 17 (2012), accessed April 5, 2014,

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medieval and Renaissance instruments in addition to standard rock paraphernalia, and often base

their performances on extant medieval compositions.19

However, the Early Music movement’s most indelible mark on musical culture is

its insistence on authenticity in performance. Mendelssohn and other 19th century lovers of

Baroque music felt free to update the music of the past—through rescoring, rearranging,

recomposing (particularly Kreisler and Casadesus, who famously passed off their own neo-

Baroque compositions as authentic), and injecting fundamentally Romantic notions into

performance—to integrate it into a continuous, vibrant musical tradition, make it accessible to

contemporary audiences, and take advantage of obviously superior modern instruments and

performance techniques.20 Today, these modifications would be decried as grossly incorrect and

insensitive, largely due to the Early Music movement’s impassioned rejection of such a

chauvinistic conception of musical progress and sensitivity to the fundamentally different

conception of the pre-Classical repertoire.21

Nonetheless, the movement has been criticized for its anachronistic application of

modernist ideologies and practices, particularly by the influential musicologist and critic Richard

Taruskin. Taruskin and others see the development of the established Classical canon as

instilling a “museum ideology” and subconscious acceptance of the value of Werktreue, or

fidelity to the text, that has entrenched itself in modern Classical music culture. Composers are

creative gods from a higher realm, transmitting their timeless epiphanies through inviolable

19
Matthias von Viereck, “Modern Minstrels: Medieval Rock on the Rise,” trans. Martin
Pearce, Goethe-Institut, November 12, 2007, accessed April 10, 2014,
http://web.archive.org/web/20080316224736/http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/thm/prh/en2839815
.htm.
20
Haskell, 86; Kenyon 67.
21
Haynes, 7.

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musical scripture, which is to be slavishly reproduced by transparent performers for the elevation

of a silent audience. Performers are, in essence, deviant corrupters of the pure, musical texts,22

and some have even compared this “untouchability” or “Urtext imperative” of the score to

religious fundamentalism.23 Taruskin argues that the actual pre-Classical roles (of performers as

superior to composers, notation as “thin” writing akin to shorthand and requiring modification

and embellishment in performance, etc.) are discarded by the Early Music movement.

Musicologists, clinging to musical documents and historical evidence in a sort of “documentary

fetishism,” prescribe performance instructions designed to produce a conformist, monolithic, and

stifling environment. Performance practice itself is a kind of textual criticism, but Taruskin takes

issues with the careless adoption of doubtful sources and heavy use of intuition and personal

taste on the part of the scholars of the Early Music movement.24

As many have noted, historical performance is a reconstruction, and completely authentic

reproductions of past performances based on existing evidence is impossible; a historically

informed performance is more like a historical novel than a “work-copy” of an actual, historical

performance. Still, the historically informed performance practices that the Early Music

movement has developed have forced audiences to realize that music is a product of its time, and

that an appreciation of its context and original performance conditions are essential to a well-

rounded musical experience.25 Early Music adherents may define “authenticity” as fidelity to the

composer’s intentions or to the surviving musical text, and they may use it to cloak an

underlying “holier-than-thou” mindset (as with Wanda Landowska). Yet the fact remains that
22
Taruskin, 10-3; Haynes 4-7.
23
Haynes, 89-93.
24
Taruskin, 13-19, 30-45.
25
Haynes, 127-155.

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audiences are never period, and even the most faithful reproduction of a medieval or Renaissance

work will never affect the audience in the way it affected its original listeners.26

Early Music uniquely satisfies the demands of the Modern era’s identity crisis. The sense

of dissatisfaction and loss of a unique identity in the late 20th century’s emerging pluralistic

culture expresses itself through a desire for both nostalgia and novelty, and Early Music contains

just enough of both qualities to endear itself to the modern population.27 As Early Music and

period performances encroach upon the 19th century (and even the 20th century, with

Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring being performed on period instruments), a movement that originally

was anti-Romantic is rediscovering an “authentic” Romantic performance style. As Haynes

points out, there are now three distinct styles for performing the Beethoven symphonies—the

style preserved in recordings from the early 20th century; the mainstream, “modern style;” and

the new “period Romantic style”—all of which are quite different, but claim to represent an

authentic style.28 Clearly, the scholarship of Early Music raises more questions than it answers;

nevertheless, the movement’s surprising success and chief accomplishments (i.e., restoring the

glories of Western pre-classical music to the general public and promoting a more sensitive,

contextual approach to the appreciation and study of music) have been unparalleled in the 20th

and 21st centuries, and the cross-pollination of early repertories with avant-garde, popular, and

world music have yielded invaluable treasures.

26
Kelly, 87-90.
27
Kenyon, 75-8.
28
Haynes, 218-20.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cohen, Joel and Herb Schnitzer. Reprise: The Extraordinary Revival of Early Music. Boston:
Little, Brown & Company, 1985.

Haskell, Harry. The Early Music Revival: A History. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1988.

Haynes, Bruce. The End of Early Music: A Period Performer’s History of Music for the
Twenty-First Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Kelly, Thomas Forrest. Early Music: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011.

Kenyon, Nicholas, editor. Authenticity and Early Music: A Symposium. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1988.

Taruskin, Richard. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995.

Upton, Elizabeth. “Concepts of Authenticity in Early Music and Popular Music Communities.”
Ethnomusicology Review 17 (2012). Accessed April 5, 2014.
www.http://ethnomusicologyreview.ucla.edu/journal/volume/17/piece/591.

Viereck, Matthias von. “Modern Minstrels: Medieval Rock on the Rise.” Translated by Martin
Pearce. Goethe-Institut, 12 November 2007. Accessed April 10, 2014.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080316224736/http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/thm/prh/en2
839815.htm.

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