florida state university college of music performance practice

lame, a healthier approach is to view the phenomenon resulting from the symbiotic
relationship of the recording industry and consumer demand – a mutual relationship that
both benefited from each other and contributed in augmenting claims of historical
verisimilitude.
Towards the Millennium - The Institulization of Early Music
The institulization of early music and performance practice is evidenced by its
acceptance into mainstream practices in the latter part of the twentieth century. Prior,
there was specialization, a clear delineation between performers of early music and
performers in the mainstream classical world. As Heidi Waleson relates, early music
training in educational programs in North America began to teach “convergence rather
than specialization.” 126 This pedagogical move ensured early music‟s broader appeal in
the latter part of the twentieth century.
However, this pedagogical success also had negative implications. Laurence
Dreyfus criticized that while the educational institutions had successfully contributed to
the propagation of early music, it also taught conservative uniformity. The uniformity of
approaches taught in early music became formulaic and confused and shrouded as truth,
which realistically stifled much of the essence of early music, its improvisatory nature. 127
During the 1970s and for the majority of the 1980s early music was at its height
of increased popularity and widespread acceptance. However, the late 1980s brought
about a dramatic change in how performance practice would be viewed. One of the most
famous critical essays concerning the early music movement is Richard Taruskin‟s
contribution to Nicholas Kenyon‟s 1988 book, Authenticity and Early Music, called “The
Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past” which was followed by Text and Act
in 1995 that provided a synoptic reading of his foremost criticisms. While not the first or
only voice to deliver early music a coup de grâce, American musicologist Richard
Taruskin has been credited as the chief pundit of the early music movement, and has
particularly been disparaging concerning claims of authenticity. Taruskin and his cadre
126 Heidi Waleson, “Early Music Meets Higher Education,” Early Music America 5.3 (Fall 1999): 31.
127 “The Early Music Debate: Ancients, Moderns, Postmoderns,” The Journal of Musicology 10.1 (Winter
1992): 116.
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