Recent discussions on HIP

["Chris Dawes" <orgalt@the-wire.com>]

Hello, Miners.

This has been a fascinating little exchange on our normally-quiet list.

Before we leave the subject with "Historically Informed Performance",
beaten, bloody, and kicked several times beyond unconsciousness, I'd like to
make a rare emergence from hibernation and clarify something.

As a professional performer and sometime proponent of HIP, I also happen to
love Gould's performances and have no trouble accepting the validity of
both.  That both the pro-HIP and anti-HIP camps seem to view the two as
mutually contradictory baffles me more today, forty years after the movement
emerged, than ever.

HIP is the matured ANTIDOTE to so-called "authentic" performance... not some
insidious descendant striving similarly to undo individuality and muzzle
evolution.  HIP knows it cannot re-create the past, but rather seeks to
reach into what can be said with surety to inform (not shackle) contemporary
thought and interpretation.

Gould in particular was very eloquent and even poetic in his verbal
portrayals of Bach's place within 18th century Europe, and insightful in
many conclusions he reached therefrom.  While his own performance was never
bound by knowledge of the past, I will continue to insist that it most
definitely was informed by it.  It was a relationship with a teacher, not a
tyrant, and I feel sure Gould would agree.

In music, as in all other things, let the past be a sign post, not a
hitching post... but least give it this much -- the past is what gives the
present and the future meaning.

-------------------------------------------------,
Christopher Dawes, FRCCO <orgalt@the-wire.com> --'
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St.James' Cathedral, Toronto, Canada---------'
Organ Alternatives(www.orgalt.com)---------'
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