florida state university college of music performance practice

Table 2 Continued
Conductor Year Keyboard Continuo
Instrument
Hempfling 2004 Organ
Veldhoven 2004 Harpsichord
Carrington 2006 Organ
Max 2006 Pianoforte
Expression
It is often noted that the early efforts of historical correctness were bent on
stripping away expressive elements to distance and disassociate itself from performance
practices of the previous century. During this time, objective interpretations were valued
and respected while those that were interpreted with subjective expression became
unpopular and often described with pejoratives such as “ignorant,” “a historic” and
“anachronistic.” However, of late, objective interpretations have also suffered stiff
criticism as being “sterile” and “lifeless.” This approach is also often heard under the
mantra “letting the music speak for itself.”
Several writers have suggested a renewed and increasing interest in infusing
Bach‟s music with degrees of expression. Some have even suggested that the
contemporaneous enterprise of performing Bach‟s music, as well as other early
repertoire, could be referred to as neo-romantic. Fabian (2003) questions and dismisses
the application of labeling recordings as neo-romantic stating that writers make these
associations because they are ignorant in the differences of Baroque and Romantic
expression. 358 If this is so, what constitutes an expressive performance? Roland Jackson,
in his Spring 1995 editorial to Performance Practice Review, recounts a Nova television
show entitled What Is Music? that pondered the question, what is music expressivity?
Jackson noted that it was concluded from experiments conducted that indicators such as
subtle to obvious rhythmic and dynamic changes, which were not necessarily in the
written score, were gauges of an expressive performance versus the non-expressive
performance. 359
358 Fabian, Bach Performance Practice, 1945-1975, 15.
359 Jackson, “Performance Practice and Musical Expressivity,” 1-2.
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