PT Journal (Analytic) AU O'Dea, Jane W. AT Authenticity in musical performance: personal or historical?

CT The British Journal of Aesthetics CY 1994 DB Expanded Academic ASAP XX Service Name: Gale XX Date of Access: 3 May 2009 IL http://find.galegroup.com.viviena.library.unsw.edu.au/itx/start.do?prodId=EAI M AB The concept of personal authenticity provides a bridge between interpretive c reativity and historical authenticity in musical performance. The early music mo vement has been overly restrictive, stifling performers' creative interpretation s in the interest of historical authenticity. Performers should instead use the tradition creatively, combining their own sense of performative excellence with the new interpretive options revealed by historical scholarship. DE Early music movement_Beliefs, opinions and attitudes DE Authenticity_Analysis DE Performance practice (Music)_Beliefs, opinions and attitudes DP Oct 1994 v34 n4 p363(13) DP Oct 1, 1994 PB Oxford University Press RM COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group SU Authenticity in musical performance: personal or historical? SU Early music movement_Beliefs, opinions and attitudes SU Authenticity (Philosophy)_Analysis SU Performance practice (Music)_Beliefs, opinions and attitudes TX The performance of 'early' music by organizations exclusively devoted to the speciality has in the last decades more and more assumed the nature of a sultist ritual. Under the banner of authenticity members of the cult present us with performances that are occasionally boring and dull because their aim is not, or at least not primarily, to give aesthetic pleasure, to elate and enhance but to demonstrate, educate and provide spiritual purification. For the audience it is an ascetic exercise in moral uplift comparable to the dutiful absorption of a long uninspiring sermon.(1) Frederick Neumann is not alone in his critique of the 'authentic' performance movement. Taruskin, Leech-Wilkinson and Temperly accuse it of acquiring airs of 'moral superiority' and cite instances of devotee critics 'condemning other styles of performance as "wrong" or "unjustified" '.(2) Leppard speaks of 'its having sometimes resulted in restriction and a sort of mean-spirited isolationsim, promoting the formation of musical cults'.(3) Dreyfus wishes to rescue it 'from its moralizing devotees'.(4) And Kerman describes authenticity as a 'baleful term which has caused endless acrimony' for its association among other things with 'art connoisseurs who evoke it to confound forgery'.(5) In short, one only has to examine the proliferation of articles dealing with historical authenticity in musical and philosophical journals of the last ten years to realize that somehow, somewhere, an atmosphere of orthodoxy and restriction has come to surround the historical performance movement. Much of this arises out of their purportedly claiming superiority for their interpretations, a charge which, while sometimes exaggerated by defensive mainstream musicians, nevertheless is not entirely without foundation. For however they try to soft-pedal it, it is undeniable, as Rosen suggests, that two highly contentious notions have risen to prominence in connection with the authentic performance movement: (1) that there is one ideal performance for each musical composition-- the one the composer

intended, or at the very least the one he expected to get from current instruments and contemporary performance practice; (2) that the goal of the responsible performer is 'to renounce the delights of imagination and realize this ideal sounding as closely as possible'.(6) It is here in connection with the renunciation of creative imagination that the debate becomes most acrimonious. For not only are mainstream performers extremely reluctant to relinquish this hitherto appreciated aspect of their interpretative powers, they see it as detrimental to the art that is music in performance. Among the effects most deplored, commented on (and hotly contested) is the aura of 'cautious correctedness' it has spawned throughout performance in general. Donington, for example, speaks of 'romantic exaggerations (tending) to be over-compensated by austere understatements no nearer to the spirit of the originals and considerably more inhibiting to our musicianly enjoyment'.(7) Along similar lines Leech-Wilkinson, noting that the 'more recent authentic performance is characterized by relatively uniform tempo and dynamics, a clean sound and at least an attempt to avoid interpretive gestures beyond those notated or documented as part of period practices' pleads for 'a greater freedom of approach, for more wide ranging experiments and for the possibility of greater intensity of expression'.(8) To this, proponents of the historical performance movement are likely to respond; 'but intensity of expression, that is to say "self-expression" on the part of the performer is precisely the problem'. And, to drive the point home, negative comments about performers made by various well-known composers will probably be cited. So, we will be reminded that Brahms 'declined an invitation to the opera saying that if he sat at home with the score he'd hear a better performance'.(9) Verdi, speaking of creativity in performance as 'a conception that leads to the abyss' insisted 'I want only one single creation and I shall be quite satisfied if they (i.e. performers) perform simply and exactly what he (the composer)has written'.(10) And then there is Stravinsky's well-known riposte: The St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach is written for a chamberensemble. Its first performance in Bach's lifetime was perfectly realized by a total force of thirty-four musicians, including soloists and chorus. That is known. And nevertheless in our day one does not hesitate to present the work in complete disregard of the composer's wishes, with hundreds of performers, sometimes almost a thousand. This lack of understanding of the interpreter's obligations, this arrogant pride in numbers, this concupiscence of the many, betray a complete lack of musical education.(11) And although the mainstream performance community might once more react defensively, the citation of these composers together with the incontestable wealth of interpretative insights gleaned from the authentic performance movement over the last few decades is apt to drag out of the closet yet again that insecurity, uncertainty and self doubt, that Robert Morgan so tellingly depicted as the unmistakable symptom of the present situation of our musical culture.(12) Because no matter how much performers might wish for a return to those confident days when you 'just played', when how you played was encapsulated in one uniform and universally assumed set of (nineteenth-century) stylistic conventions, those days are quite simply gone. Neither is it clear that we should mourn their passing. As Rosen has remarked, "Early music has been and is a remarkably

beneficial movement...[it]...has laid bare the deadening uniformity of today's conventional concert world, where we find the same phrasing for Mozart and Beethoven, the same vibrato for Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, the same pedaling for Beethoven and Chopin'.(13) Indeed it cannot be denied that historical scholarship has opened up a whole new world of interpretative possibilities to the performer.(14) The revival and technical exploration of older instruments, revealing as they do wonderfully illuminating aspects of phrasing, articulation, rhythm, dynamics lays bare a rich and subtle range of sounding possibilities hitherto unthought of. No less important, research into the ways composers expected their music to be played, the publication of 'Urtext' scores, the exploration of the culture and society that surrounded them, all raise questions and generate new, exciting ideas as to what constitutes excellence in interpretation. One cannot, in fact, overstate the liberating expansion of horizons that historical scholarship proffers to musical interpretation. The possibilities it suggests are immense; the challenges it sets wonderfully enervating. Never before have listeners had access to such an exotic palate of tone colours. Never have performers had so much with which to feed their interpretative imaginations were they only allowed to use them. And here we come to the crux of the matter--the restrictiveness that has come to be associated with the authentic performance movement and which seems bent (at least in some cases) on forcing performers into corners and quelling their creativity. But do we have to polarize creative imagination and historical scholarship in seeking to interpret musical works in a manner true to the spirit in which they were conceived? Are scholarly research and personal conviction on the part of the performer really so incompatible? I would suggest that they are not. But I would add that I say so not for the reasons usually cited and at this stage well documented--the impossibility of attaining a single, true, certain 'authentic' rendering of a musical work and therefore th e inevitable and possibly reluctant admission of creative imagination into the performance process. Rather I say so in light, ironically enough, of the notion of 'authenticity' itself, not however that version of it we have come to associate with the historical performance movement. Instead I speak in light of the more general notion of authenticity developed in the thought of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre and which, to distinguish it from its 'historical' sibling, I shall term 'personal' authenticity. I will argue that an exploration of this latter notion of authenticity reveals a concept capable of meaningfully integrating interpretative creativity on the part of performers with the notions inherent in historical authenticity. I shall further argue that construed as a necessary virtue of musical interpretation it has the capacity to encompass in a much less vociferous manner the moral strictures currently endorsed by the historical performance movement. Finally, I shall argue that it captures par excellence that insecurity, uncertainty and self-doubt cited earlier as an unmistkable symptom of the current musical scene. I shall suggest that personal authenticity enables us to see all of these in a somewhat more positive light, one that yields greater potential for excellence in the art of musical interpretation. Authenticity(15) is characteristically associated with the virtue of sincerity.(16) But although the essential characterizations of sincerity--truthfulness and honesty--are retained in the more complex notion of authenticity, rather than speaking of holding beliefs, attitudes or values 'sincerely', authenticity instead speaks of holding beliefs, attitudes, values that are 'truly one's

own'.(17) In other words, underlying the whole notion of authenticity is the idea of being true of faithful to oneself, that one's beliefs, values, actions, are in some sense an expression of one's true and honest self. And here one may immediately begin to raise questions. For one does not have to look too deeply into the human psyche to recognize that people's beliefs, attitudes and values typically are not so much a genuine expression of their true and honest selves as rather an expression of the overwhelming pressure of social norms, stereotypes and others' expectations. Neither should this entirely surprise us. For it is simply irrefutable that we characteristically acquire our beliefs, values and attitudes (or ones from which they derive) from external, public, impersonal sources--from cultural inheritance, upbringing, hearsay, received opinion. Furthermore, typically we do not even consciously choose these impersonal beliefs and attitudes. Rather we slip into them unreflectively or even unwillingly, find ourselves as a result of upbringing, social environment, sharing the beliefs and values of a particular group or community. And one suspects that were we to live in a radically different society, we would find ourselves embracing and no less sincerely subscribing to a very different set of beliefs and values. Now none of this bodes well for the notion of 'authenticity'. On the contrary it suggests that the latter is somewhat of a pipe dream and that people are in fact more or less individual and much more standardized than they would probably care to admit. And indeed it was precisely recognition of that fact--the perception that modern society breeds people that are 'standardized' that first led Rousseau and Wordsworth to express fear for that 'sentiment of being' which they saw corrupted by modern society.(18) Interestingly enough it is that same 'sentiment of being' that Taruskin sees the historical performance movement trying to oust from the musical performance process.(19) What is this sentiment of being? And how does it relate to authenticity? Here we enter into the realm of existentialist philosophy and its suppositon that man is 'self-legislating' and 'self-creating'--that one's being as a human being is an open question, a matter to be decided by oneself.(20) In other words human being has in itself no specific, fixed qualities, no predetermined life styles or goals. Rather it is up to it which styles of life it embraces, which goals it sets itself, which values it espouses. And although human beings are far from omnipotent and indeed find themselves 'abandoned' or 'thrown' into a particular world, time and social environment, all of which restrict the range of possibilities 'open' to them, nevertheless as a 'human' being one is always free to formulate one's own attitudes and projects concerning those 'givens'. that is to say, one can always envisage further possibilities, always conceive of alternative life styles, alternative goals, alternative values. Hence Heidegger's and Sartre's insistence that 'man is his possibility', 'man is freedom'.(21) But human being is possibility not only because it 'has' a range of possibilities open to it. It 'is' its possibilities in that ultimately it and it alone is accountable for the values, lifestyles, goals it espouses. In other words, of central importance to existentialist philosophers is the notion of there being no 'a priori' grounds for

making one choice over another, nothing to 'justify' our adopting this or that value, or particular scale of values. Rather there are only our own decisions and choices. And precisely because there are only our own decisions and choices, because we are as human beings free from divine, moral, rational or naturalistic impositions of goals, values and are instead free to formulate our own, it follows that we and we alone are responsible for these formulations. And now we may begin to discern more fully what it means to act authentically. For if the latter means to act in a manner that is true or faithful to oneself and 'oneself' is a self-creating, self-legislating being, then to act authentically is to act in a manner that is true to oneself as such a being. It is to act in full awareness of the possibilities open to one. It is to live in a way that fully acknowledges one's ultimate responsibility with regard to the values, goals, lifestyles one embraces. And this is where the central complaint of Rousseau and Wordsworth enters the picture. People are typically extremely reluctant to live thus. Instead they behave as though custom or tradition entirely circumscribed them and they have no option but to accept passively the anonymous roles in which they were raised or which were otherwise thrust on them; no choice but to accept and act in accordance with the beliefs, values, lifestyles and so forth, they inherit or see exhibited all around them. But people are fundamentally mistaken or self-deceived in this assumption. And to deny that one has possibilities, to deceive oneself into thinking that one is 'thing like', determined by such things as social roles, personality traits and habits, conventional laws and principles and therefore one cannot be held accountable for one's attitudes and actions is to live in the way of 'bad faith'.(22) It is to forget or to try to ignore that one is a self-creating, self-legislating being. It is to live and act inauthentically. Now I would suggest that one of the reasons why mainstream performers react as forcefully as they do to some of the more stringent admonitions of the historical performance movement is their perception that those admonitions ask them to act 'inauthentically'. I would submit that for performers, doing what they are told, renouncing creative imagination and realizing as closely as possible the supposedly empirically verified sound anticipated by the composer constitutes in effect an artistic version of 'bad faith', one they cannot in all conscience live with. Why can't they live with it? In order to answer this we need to look more closely at the notion of responsibility inherent in authenticity. For Heidegger, human being (human 'consciousness') is cast in the form of care or concern.(23) As it develops, this consciousness, these primaeval concerns, evolve into a depth structure of over-arching interests, purposings, aspirings or intendings. These provide the motive force which propel human beings into the future in that they incline us towards certain things. It was, for example, my being 'interested' in becoming a musical performer that prompted my initial commitment as a young person to that effect. But, as Charles Taylor tellingly delineates, interests, purposings, aspirings and so forth imply not only that one is attracted towards certain things, also imply that one ascribes a certain value to those atractions.(24) To 'aspire' to be a musical performer, for example, is

not only to want to be one, it is also to deem it a worthy, fulfilling way of life. Just so our motivational structures of over-arching interests, purposings and aspirings do more than simply incline us towards certain things, they give meaning to our lives by ascribing a value to those inclinations. They classify them in such categories as higher or lower, virtuous or vicious, more or less fulfilling, more or less important. They judge them as expressing and sustaining qualitatively different modes of life. And it is on the basis of such 'strong evaluations' that we are enabled to choose rather than merely plump for particular goals, styles of life--it was my evaluating musical performance as more fulfilling than science that prompted me as a young person to opt for the career of musical performer rather than that of scientist. And here in the notion of choices issuing from one's motivational structure of over-arching interests, purposings and aspirings, one may begin to glean how a particular choice might be described as 'owned'. Moreover, one may begin to understand how there are no a priori grounds for our choices. For interests and aspirations are not the sort of thing we can just decide to have. Rather they are things we simply find ourselves having. Indeed in many cases one suspects they have a genetic dimension.(25) And if that indeed is the case. then nothing 'justifies' our being interested in a particular activity, nothing justifies our evaluating the mode of life it sustains and expresses as worthy, higher or fulfilling. Rather 'we' simply evaluate it thus. And the choices and actions thereby initiated may indeed be described as owned in some pertinent sense. But it must be stressed here that the evaluations which issue from our motivational structures are not definitive, incontrovertible pronouncements as to what constitutes a higher or lower mode of life, a worthy or unworthy undertaking. Rather our evaluations are, in Charles Taylor's aptly chosen words, 'articulations of our sense of what is worthy, or higher, or more fulfilling and so forth'.(26) To have a sense or idea of something is to have an essentially accurate but nevertheless highly incomplete or hazy notion of it--to have a sense of what it is like to be a musical performer is to have some general notion of what is involved, one which falls far short, however, of knowing what it is really like. Just so, to have a sense or idea of what is fulfilling or worthy, or higher or more integrated and so forth is to have only a hazy incomplete notion of it, one which falls far short of knowing it fully. It is our responsibility as self-creating beings to complete and clarify that initial unstructured sense. It is up to us to formulate it in more specific, concrete terms. Now I would submit that musical performers have just such an inchoate, hazy sense of what constitutes artistic excellence in performance and that their musical life is spent striving to articulate in more specific, concrete terms--in actual performances--that inherent artistic sense. It is this ongoing quest for artistic excellence that propels them into the future, renders their lives as musicians meaningful and worth while. Indeed one often hears musicians speak of 'having' to play, a remark which illustrates well the notion of nothing justifying our interests, of their being simply 'ours'. It also illustrates how profoundly important to our sense of well-being interests can be. Take away performers' capacity to play and they will have to go through a profound adjustment, one that may make life feel hardly worth living, hence Paul Wittgenstein's extraordinary feat of accommodation.

Now in so far as they are engaged in the business of musical interpretation, performers aim at a very specific type of artistic excellence, one that involves sounding musical works created by others in such a way as promotes aural understanding and appreciation of them. Like all artistic practices, musical interpretation has, among other things, public standards of excellence. That is to say, it involves elaborate superstructures of rules, principles and what I shall vaguely call 'ideals', all of which govern the manner in which it is pursued. These make it possible to engage in it with more or less skill, sensitivity and finesse. And a knowledge of these is essential for anyone wishing to participate meaningfully in the practice. Rules essentially determine right and wrong ways of doing things. In the case of musical interpretation, music scores stipulate, more or less specifically, certain aspects of the sounds performers will produce, their pitch, for example, their approximate duration, volume, timbre, tempo. But although one could indeed characterize music scores as constituting for performers elaborate sets of sounding rules, these are yet too schematic to determine exactly how they are to be played. Instead, it is the performer's task, to go beyond what is essentially only 'sketched' in the score and taking into account what scores of their very nature cannot accommodate--the subtle nuances of actual sound sensation--it is her task to realize the score in such a way as aptly and eloquently facilitates aural understanding and thereafter appreciation of the musical work. But although it is indeed performers who ultimately decide what every tone will actually sound like, this is not to suggest that they make their decisions in an arbitrary, autocratic fashion. Here, the notion of 'tradition' and what I shall call 'practical principles' enter the picture. These essentially encapsulate the wisdom of the past, summarize masterful and appropriate ways of bringing about the end of interpretative excellence. Such encapsulations offer guidance, suggest more or less skilful ways of doing things, which suggestions help performers to select from among the myriad choices admissible, proper, fitting courses of actions. Neither can one over-emphasize the crucial role of performance tradition in musical interpretation. For given the complex diversity and infinite variety of actual sound sensation, without them, performers, in going beyond the generalized musical score, would be faced with an infinite and overwhelming array of possible soundings so that finding an artistically adequate one is like shooting in the dark. Traditions, even flawed ones, have the utility of furnishing 'interpreative exemplars'--general approaches to the business of interpretation. And by using these general approaches, performers are enabled to discriminate, reject certain tonal qualities as inappropriate, accept and endorse others as eminently susceptible of aural understanding. But while it is undeniable that by furnishing such general approaches performance-traditions 'direct' performers one must be careful not to overestimate the extent of that direction. For one achieves interpretative excellence not by simply repeating actions that have proven or have been deemed successful in the past. Rather one achieves them by appreciating--coming to understand the ideals of excellence embodied there and thereafter seeking to approximate those ideals in

one's own performance. In other words, artistic practices such as musical interpretation do not have a goal or goals fixed for all time. Rather they tolerate and even encourage change while yet remaining the same practice. They do this by what Carroll aptly terms 'a creative use of tradition'.(27) by participants utilizing the public modes of reasoning and explanation developed there in ever new contexts, ever new practical situations; and by their devising thereby their own 'original' exemplifications of excellence which are as transformations of what has gone before, which modify and extend previously established conceptions in the light of new creative insights developed. Now it is towards such original exemplifications of excellence that musical performers aspire. Precisely because, however, their intuitive initial sense of artistic excellence, while accurate, is nevertheless hazy and incomplete, no one formulation can ever be said fully and satisfactorily to articulate it. Instead, there is always room for another articulation. Their interpretations are, in short, always open to challenge. Moreover, in seeking to complete and clarify their artistic sense of what is worthy, or higher, or more integrated, they can all too easily fall into error. Most precisely they can fail to respect their 'givens'--those facts about their situation which are not of their choosing but which limit the options available to them. A performer, for example, may choose to ignore certain directions stated in the musical score and rationalizing that adding a few notes here and there renders it more susceptible of aural understanding and appreciation, may delude herself into thinking that a flashy bravura virtuoso interpretation of a simple Mozart concerto is eminently justifiable. Similarly, as Rosen suggests, a performer may convince herself without difficulty that 'the composer would have approved such and such a cut, been delighted with this accent, made an expresssive relaxation of tempo in just that place',(28) although the score specifies no such cut, accent or tempo deviation. In both of these cases the performer is refusing to submit to the relevance of musical facts which cannot be wished away. In other words, she is essentially being dishonest. And being thus dishonest, she is living in the way of bad faith--is pretending to herself that her ultimate goal is to promote aural understanding and appreciation, whereas in fact, in the first case, her aim is really to show off her formidable technical powers and the composition is merely a means to that effect. Or, in the second case, technical problems may lead a player into incorporating a relaxation of tempo at a particular place thereby making the passage playable. In so far as she chooses to repress the fact, however, and convinces herself instead that the relaxation is introduced for interpretative reasons, she is again essentially being dishonest and from an artistic viewpoint is acting inauthentically. Now it is precisely this type of artistically dishonest interpretation that devotees of the historical performance movement seek to check. Hence their insistence that performers pay far more attention to their 'givens'--the musical score and the historical context in which it was originally conceived. Neither is this a bad thing. It is in fact a very good thing in that it opens up a whole new realm of sounding possibilities to the performer which in turn forces her to think about compositions in new and exciting ways. But to ask performers to renounce their creative instincts and to realize in sound exactly and

only what has been empirically documented is no less to ask them to be dishonest, to live in the way of 'bad faith'. For it too calls for the disregard of certain 'givens'--the subtle nuances of actual sound sensation. And to ask performers to ignore the interpretative possibilities suggested by the latter is essentially to ask them to abdicate their artistic responsibility and to accept passibely, and unquestioningly, a new set of values and beliefs, those espoused and endorsed by historical scholarship. It is, in effect, to ask them to forgo that 'sentiment of being' that Rousseau saw as all important, to relinquish the role of musical 'interpreter' and to accept instead a new role, that of 'transmitter' of the 'composer's intentions'. Worse yet, it is to ask them to participate in the destruction of their own artistic practice, to castigate as wrong and improper all they have hitherto conceived as right and virtuous. For if interpretative excellence involves not repeating actions that have proven or have been deemed successful in the past, then performers, in so far as they are genuinely committed to the pursuit of such excellence, must reject any directives, however well founded, that enshrine such repetitiveness. The survival of their very art form depends on it. But for all that performers must defend vehemently the important contribution of creative instinct to performance art, they yet cannot deny that performers can and do often utilize the ingredient of creative instinct to rationalize performances ultimately disrespectful to the musical work as originally created by the composer. Neither can they deny that repressions and distortions of the sort mentioned earlier can and do occur. And that being the case, they cannot simply dismiss the admonitions of the historical performance movement as wholly unfounded. Instead, the question must always arise whether they are sure that they have 'truly' determined what is higher, worthy, more fulfilling--what is indeed artistically excellent. And the injunction is always in place to look again. Paraphrasing Taylor, 'it is just because all [performance interpretations] are potentially under suspicion of distorting their objects that [performers] have to see them all as revisable, that [they] are forced back as it were to the inarticulate limits from which they originate'.(29) The great value of the historical performance movement lies in its having instigated such a revision. Its presence has forced performers to re-evaluate the whole process of musical interpretation, and to incorporate the dimension of historical scholarship, a dimension hitherto relegated to the more abstract, academic margins of musical practice. But in so far as performers are authentically engaged in the business of 'sounding' musical compositions in such a way as promotes aural understanding and thereafter appreciation, they cannot accept the interpretative suggestions of historical scholarship just as they are. Rather their task is to look at (or rather listen to) what they are meant to accomplish in a 'stance of openness'(30) where they (performers) are ready to bring to bear on those suggestions the subtle nuances of actual sound sensation, where they are ready to recognize and endorse any subtle or profound shifts of tonal emphasis that strike them as significant, any new ways in which to articulate those suggestions that might come their way in inspiration. Neither can they rest there. Instead they must recognize that these articulations are themselves open to question. And so the cycle continues.

Now this 'stance of openness' is very difficult. As Taylor has observed, 'there is not only the difficulty of such concentration and the pain of uncertainty, but also all the distortions and repressions which make us want to turn away from this examination and which makes us resist change'.(31) It is in fact much easier for performers to take up the performance conventions foisted on them--be they mainstream nineteenth-century or historical performance conventions, and to live within them without too much probing, hence their tendency to do exactly that. But to live outside them is not necessarily to condemn oneself to a life of confusion, insecurity and self-doubt (although, as Morgan so clearly delineates,(32) one may, of course, evaluate it thus). Rather, it is in Nietzschean terms to live one's life as a 'work of art',(33) to embrace musical interpretation not just as a career but as a way of life, a way of 'being'. Most specifically, it is to play in such a way as reveres and cherishes the musical work as encoded by the composer in the musical score, the wisdom and knowledge enshrined in performance practice. But it is also to play in such a way as never allows that wisdom and knowledge to become a dead weight that drags performers below that level of vision at which new possibilities are aurally conceivable. It is to live one's artistic life ever mindful of the seductive powers of a variety of versions of artistic dishonesty. It is to accept the necessity of ever asking: does this mode of sounding truly promote aural understanding or am I rationalizing that it does in order to cover up some technical deficiencies on my part? Am I being true to the spirit of the piece or am I using it to further some egotistical ends of my own? Am I playing it safe in interpreting the composition in this currently fashionable way or do I truly believe aural understanding is better served by playing it another way? All of these questions, however, presuppose that the performer cares about the music--is genuinely concerned with promoting aural understanding and appreciation, derives personal satisfaction and meaning from so doing. They pesuppose that the performer is 'authentically' engaged in the business of musical interpretation. Or, to put it another way, there is a passageway between cautious correctness and licentious creativity, there is a way of reconciling historical scholarship with personal artistic conviction. But the answer lies somewhere 'in a mean'. It lies in performers cultivating and exercising not historical authenticity but rather the virtue that is personal authenticity. REFERENCES (1)Frederick Neumann, New Essays on Performance Practice (Ann Arbor/London: UMI Research Press, 1989), p. 169. (2)Richard Taruskin, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and Nicholas Temperly, 'The Limits of Authenticity: A Discussion' in Early Music, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Feb. 1984). (3)Raymond Leppard, Authenticity in Music (London: Faber Music, 1988), p. 28. (4)Lawrence Dreyfus, 'Early Music Defended Against its Devotees' in The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 69, No. 3 (Summer 1983), p. 298.

(5)Joseph Kerman, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard U.P., 1985), p. 192. (6)Charles Rosen, 'The Shock of the Old' in The New York Review (19 July 1990), p. 47. (7)Robert Donington, Baroque Music: Style and Performance (London: Faber Music, 1982), p. 1. (8)Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, 'The Limits of Authenticity: A Discussion', pp. 14-15. (9)See Richard Taruskin, 'On Letting the Music Speak for Itself: Some Reflections on Musicology and Performance' in The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 1, No. 3 (July 1982), p. 339. (10)See Eugene Ormendy's forward to Frederick Dorian, The History of Music in Performance (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1942), p. 7. (11)Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, trans. Arthur Knoedel and Ingolf Dahl (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard U.P., 1947), p. 173. (12)Robert Morgan, 'Tradition, Anxiety and the Current Musical Scene' in Nicholas Kenyon (editor) Authenticity and Early Music (Oxford U.P., 1988). (13)Charles Rosen, 'The Shock of the Old', p. 52. (14)For a succinct summary of these 'new' possibilities, see Raymond Leppard, Authenticity in Music, Chapter V. (15)From now on, after Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre, I shall use the general term 'authenticity' to refer to 'personal' authenticity. When I wish to refer to that notion of authenticity associated with the historical performance movement, I will prefix the word 'historical'. (16)See Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard U.P., 1972). (17)See Michael Bonnett, 'Authenticity and Education' in Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 12 (1978). (18)See Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity, Chapter 4. (19)Richard Taruskin, The Limits of Authenticity: A Discussion, p. 6. (20)The following account of authenticity relies on the writings of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre, in particular on Friedrich Nietzsche, 'The Birth of Tragedy', 'Thus Spake Zarathrustra' and 'The Will to Power' in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Oscar Levy (New York: Russell and Russell Inc., 1964); Martin Heidegger, Sein Und Zeit, trans. by Macquarrie and Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962); Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness translated by H. Barnes (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1956). I have also found David E. Cooper's illuminating account of Nietzsche's writings on authenticity in Authenticity and Learning (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983) extremely helpful and Robert C. Solomon's perceptive and illuminating account of Sartre and Heidegger in From Rationalism to Existentialism (New York: Humanities Press, 1972), Chapters 6 and 7.

Only in the context of Nietzsche's, Heidegger's and Sartre's writings, will I use 'man' generically. (21)Heidegger, Sein Und Zeit, p. 42; Sartre, Being and Nothingness, p. 439. The story of Paul Wittgenstein, brother of the philosopher, Ludwig, and a successful and well-known concert pianist illustrates well the kind of freedom Heidegger and Sartre had in mind. In the First World War Paul lost his right arm. But with remarkable courage and determination he taught himself to play using only his left hand and attained such proficiency that he was able to continue his concert career. It was for him that Ravel in 1931 wrote his famous Concerto for the Left Hand. Struck with a calamity that would have led most pianists to give up playing, Paul Wittgenstein was nevertheless 'free' to formulate his own attitudes and projects concerning his 'given'--his amputated right arm. That is to say, he envisaged and successfully realized an alternative life style to that suggested by his situation. See Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein (London: Vintage, 1990). (22)Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Part 1, Chapter 2. (23)Heidegger, Sein Und Zeit, pp. 66-67. (24)Charles Taylor, 'Responsibility for Self' in Gary Watson (editor), Free Will (Oxford U.P., 1982). (25)See Michael Bonnett, 'Authenticity, Autonomy and Compulsory Curriculum' in The Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1976). (26)Charles Taylor, 'Responsibility for Self', p. 122. (27)Noel Carroll, 'Art, Practice and Narrative' in The Monist, Vol. 71, No. 2 (April 1988), p. 143. (28)Charles Rosen, 'The Shock of the Old', p. 46. (29)Charles Taylor, 'Responsibility for Self', p. 125. (30)Ibid., p. 125. (31)Ibid., p. 126. (32)Robert Morgan, 'Tradition, Anxiety and the Current Musical Scene'. (33)Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, p. 27. ZZ