Text and Act
Essays on Music and Performance
1st Edition
Published on 7. September 1995
391 pages
978-0-19-535743-1 (ISBN)
Description
Over the last dozen years, the writings of Richard Taruskin have transformed the debate about "early music" and "authenticity." Text and Act collects for the first time the most important of Taruskin's essays and reviews from this period, many of which now classics in the field. Taking a wide-ranging cultural view of the phenomenon, he shows that the movement, far from reviving ancient traditions, in fact represents the only truly modern style of performance being offered today. He goes on to contend that the movement is therefore far more valuable and even authentic than the historical verisimilitude for which it ostensibly strives could ever be. These essays cast fresh light on many aspects of contemporary music-making and music-thinking, mixing lighthearted debunking with impassioned argumentation. Taruskin ranges from theoretical speculation to practical criticism, and covers a repertory spanning from Bach to Stravinsky. Including a newly written introduction, Text and Act collects the very best of one of our most incisive musical thinkers.
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Content
- Intro
- Contents
- Author's Note
- INTRODUCTION
- Last Thoughts First
- IN THEORY
- 1. On Letting the Music Speak for Itself
- 2. The Limits of Authenticity: A Contribution
- 3. Down with the Fence
- 4. The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past
- 5. What-or Where-Is the Original?
- 6. The Modern Sound of Early Music
- 7. Tradition and Authority
- IN PRACTICE
- Beethoven
- 8. The New Antiquity
- 9. Resisting the Ninth
- Mozart
- 10. An Icon for Our Time
- 11. A Mozart Wholly Ours
- 12. Old (New) Instruments, New (Old) Tempos
- Bach
- 13. Backslide or Harbinger?
- 14. Facing up, Finally, to Bach's Dark Vision
- 15. The Crooked Straight and the Rough Places Plain
- Antiquarian Innocence
- 16. Report from Lincoln Center: The International Josquin Festival-Conference, 21-25 June 1971
- 17. The Price of Literacy, or, Why We Need Musicology
- 18. High, Sweet, and Loud
- 19. Text and Act
- Full Circle
- 20. Stravinsky Lite (Even "The Rite")
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- X
- Y
- Z
