florida state university college of music performance practice

subjective opinion dependent on memory. 32 The following is a chronological overview of
the movement with the expectation of tracing antecedent catalysts for the inception,
growth and acceptance of the movement.
Until recently, much of the discourse regarding the history of the “early music
revival” would trace its early development after the Second World War. While it is true
that significant activity occurred after the Second World War, it fails to acknowledge that
there was prior interest and endeavors that forged paths, then laid and reacted to
philosophical and theoretical foundations that greatly influenced the influx of activity
during the middle of the twentieth century. Of late, several publications (Cohen and
Snitzer, 1985; Haskell, 1988; Hartmann, 1988, 1992; Klis, 1991; Sherman, 1998; Elste,
2000; Fabian, 2003, et al.) have explored the movement in a broader context, recognizing
its beginnings as well as its proliferation into the mainstream of music performance. 33
Early Music - The Denouement of the Nineteenth Century
Music performance before the nineteenth century was mainly concerned with the
creation of new compositions and less so with the posterity of works. Clear exceptions
were the performance of earlier works in liturgical settings, 34 composers like Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart who adapted the music of Bach and reorchestrated the music of
Handel. 35 However, in the nineteenth century an expanding and increasingly affluent
middle class fractured the public into assorted groups based on performance taste. 36
Reference to this fracturing can be perceived in the notorious debate and
controversy between Romantic composers Richard Wagner and Johannes Brahms. It has
long been acknowledged that the Romantic “traditionalist composers,” Mendelssohn,
Schumann and Brahms, to name a few, had an insatiable veneration for composers of the
past and resurrected many works that had fallen out of public favor. By the end of the
32 Nicholas Cook, “Words about music, or analysis versus performance,” in Theory into Practice –
Composition, Performance and the Listening Experience (Leuven UP: Orpheus Institute, 1999), 9.
33 Dorottya Fabian, Bach Performance Practice, 1945-1975: A Comprehensive Review of Sound
Recordings and Literature. (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 29.
34 Bernard D. Sherman, “Authenticity in Musical Performance” from The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, ed.
Michael J. Kelly, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, http://www.bsherman.org/encyclopedia.html
(accessed June 14, 2007).
35 Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell, The Historical Performance of Music: An Introduction,
(Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999), 4.
36 Sherman, “Authenticity in Musical Performance,” (accessed June 14, 2007).
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