florida state university college of music performance practice

What is performance practice?
Performance practice is a subdiscipline of musicology that examines how
performance was practiced. 6 While this definition will seem somewhat redundant with
the idiom of performance analysis there is a subtle but critical delineation between the
two. The focus of performance practice deals with early repertory, which for many years
focused primarily on European music, for which there exist no sonic recordings from that
time period. 7 As a result, physical objects such as recovered treatises, organology,
iconography, and a myriad of other tools and documents aid the researcher to theorize
how performances might have sound.
What is performance analysis?
On the other hand, performance analysis is the direct study of recordings to gather
information about musical works. 8 The recordings themselves act as source documents
but it also takes into account performance attitudes, gesture, social context and audience
response. 9
Confusion over performance practice and performance analysis can partially be
blamed on the recent latitude of interpretation of what is actually considered “early
music.” In its inception and infancy, early music was more or less considered a repertory
confined to Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque eras. However, particularly in the last
two decades, this has been liberally expanded in some circles, to include repertory in the
Romantic and early twentieth century. This expanded vision of early music includes
works that may have existing sonic recordings. In the late 19 th century, the advent of
Edison‟s ingenious, albeit by today‟s standards primitive, invention of sound recording
was created which forever revolutionized the way we listen and perform. While there is
an availability of recordings for some of the repertory in the late nineteenth and early
6 José A. Bowen, “Performance Practice versus Performance Analysis: Why Should Performers Study
Performance?” Performance Practice Review 9.1 (Spring 1996): 16.
7 Ibid.
8 Bowen, “Performance Practice versus Performance Analysis,” 18.
9 Bowen, “Performance Practice versus Performance Analysis,” 19.
3