florida state university college of music performance practice

Movements such as the Society of Saint Cecilia, the strong Anglican tradition in
England and the Bach revival all contributed to popularizing and propagating works from
the past. The revivals of such works were only intent in performing and studying them,
not in trying to recapture and perform them in their original conditions. Conductors
performed “early music” in the context of their own contemporary and authentic practice
of performance. As a result, early works were often arranged to reflect larger performing
forces and instruments that were contemporaneous.
The twentieth century was besieged with social crisis and conflict that radically
influenced all parts of life. Despite the revulsion of war, a paradigm shift was occurring
in music that not only was interested in the music of the past but also its performance
practice. One year following the beginning of “The Great War,” commonly known as
World War I, Arnold Dolmetsch published in 1915 his work The Music of the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. This publication, as well as other less well-known
publications, represents an interest that was growing in the performance practice of
earlier works. Two important movements were present in society during this time that
greatly influenced music making. Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity was a movement
that was opposed to expressionism of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the
Neoclassicism movement represented composers who drew inspiration from composers
and music of the 18 th century.
Within the first decades of the twentieth century, a renewed interest began to
mount in historic instruments throughout Europe. Wanda Landowska, the celebrated
harpsichordist and avid music historian, was instrumental in bringing about a renewed
interest in the harpsichord. Because many organs built during the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries were in their original conditions they became an excellent tool for
scholars to gain an understanding of the sonic ideals of the Baroque period. These
pursuits led to the resurrection of other instruments like the recorder, viol and lute.
By the 1930s, several publications had emerged that dealt specifically with
theoretical aspects of performance practice. The Germans thought it important enough to
create a sub discipline within musicology termed Aufführungspraxis, which is roughly
translated as performance practice. The 1933 founding of the Schola Cantorum
137