Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance

Rating:
Summary: Authentic scholarship
Review: A fascinating book, which holds together very cogently for a book of essays. Ignore the Introduction - or at least read it after the rest of the book. In any case it is full of petty squabbling and point-scoring from the heart of Academia-ville which is unworthy of the rest of the book. Professor Taruskin arguments are persuasive and convincing, and emerge with great force. If they get a bit repetitive after a while that must be partly because all these essays were originally published as stand alone pieces. Mr Taruskin's style can irritate in such large doses, from needlessly obscure vocabulary and convoluted sentence construction to some leaden sarcasm, but it is never unreadable. He is at his best making brilliant insights drawing together disparate musical strands to tell us fascinating things about our modern musical culture. There is also a passion about, and love for, the music in question which shines through all the pieces. Like all the best revelatory insights Taruskin's main point has a simplicity and obviousness which can blind the reader to the fact that what he is saying is both radical and true, and he was the first person to stand up and say it. Bravo.

Rating:
Summary: Taruskin Takes Baroque Robots to Task
Review: God bless Richard Taruskin! He takes to task that tribe of robotic performers who seek refuge in Baroque music because they fear emotional content in music and because they loathe the idea of interpretation or, more likely, are simply not up to the job. Their warped view of Baroque performance practice is easily marketed, but is facile and not very wholesome, like the musical equivalent of a meal at McDonald's.

Taruskin's pique at such wannabes and also-rans as Christopher Hogwood gives voice to a generation of music fans frustrated by amateurish and superficial performances of Baroque music, much of them coming from London and Boston. Correctly, he points to the Modernist underpinnings of the current early music aesthetic, which excludes much of what can be plainly read in old treatises (regarding rubato, varied reprises, improvisation, etc., none of which are much practiced by the so-called Historically Informed clique).

Taruskin should be lauded continually for pulling back the veil of "authenticity," revealing the blatant falsehoods behind most of what is produced by the so-called Historically Informed movement.

Rating:
Summary: A Significant Collection
Review: Richard Taruskin is one of contemporary musicology's most prolific and insightful voices. It seems that a month does not go by without a new article of his appearing in a journal or newspaper. With so much material to consider, any collection of his articles - which is essentially what "Text and Act" is - would of necessity benefit from an organizing principle. In this case, the articles all take on the subject of music and performance, considering more specifically the resurgence of early music performance and accompanying cries for authenticity. These essays are, in my opinion, amongst Taruskin's finest, and were for some time amongst his most controversial. His position is that early music performance music is laudable in spirit, but often lamentable in its details. He takes aim specifically at those scholars and performers who claim to seek an "authentic" mode of musical performance, derriding them not for sloppy scholarship (although he does not hesitate to point out inconsistencies) but for claiming immunity from a universal historical and epistemological problem, namely that there is no way of knowing exactly how a piece from a given year would have been performed in that year (or any other predating sound recording for that matter). He argues instead that the move toward the more streamlined, metronomic, and quicker style that these performers advocate is a demonstrably established trend in 20th century performance practice rather than a leap to the past. He does not advocate repacking all the 18th century oboes and cellos and closing all the sourcebooks; he simply advocates a helthy awareness of the discrepency between what we are doing now and what was done centuries ago. These articles initially drew harsh responses, but now it seems that they have become the standard currency in which the subsequent debates in this field take place. The rhetoric really seems to have turned away from authenticity in the years since this collection was published. "Text and Act" is essential reading for anyone interested in early music performance.

Rating:
Summary: A Thought-Provoking Study
Review: Richard Taruskin is one of the few musicologists who is taking on the big, basic issues in the field. This is not meant as a put down to all the analysts, biographers, and critical editors (Taruskin is pretty amazing at that stuff too -- he wrote an enormous biography/analysis on Stravinsky to name but one work). Taruskin simply takes their work and uses it as evidence in his persuasive arguments on the nature of music and performance. In this collection, "Text and Act," he sets out to analyze our conceptions (and misconceptions) about the relationships between composers, performers, musicologists, and audiences. His primary arguments question the idea of musical authenticity and the extent to which a performer's intuition and emotion should mix with a composer's indications. This, of course, touches directly on some very big questions (What are a composer's intentions? Does a composer even have intentions? How accurate is our historical evidence? How should we compensate for things we can never reproduce or never categorically know?) and implies some even bigger questions (What is music? Why do we need music? Why do we play music?). He explores performance practice trends (particularly regarding composers such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Stavinsky, and the genesis of the Early Music "authenticity" movement) in detail and creates a convincing argument for looking at the history of music performance in the 20th century.

Taruskin's writing is conversational and witty. He masterfully combines biting, sarcastic humor with serious, empassioned arguemnts. He is surprisingly level-headed for a man who is so often considered the radical in the field. His essays incorperate all manner of historical, musical, and extra-musical evidence to reexamine commonly accepted ideas and suggest alternatives when appropriate. He supports most of the current performance styles, he simply questions the attitudes and reasoning behind them. Whether or not you agree with his conclusions, this is essential reading. Taruskin will set your mind in motion and make you look at our most complex art as a whole.

Rating:
Summary: Not Just For Early Music Bashing
Review: The "mainstream" vs. "authentic" debate was settled years ago. The working relationship between the two groups is more amiable, today. Perhaps because, "Text and Act" by Richard Taruskin pointed out that both "mainstream" and "authentic" movements shared the same false assumptions (musical truths can be derived through manuscripts, critical editions, and selected primary documents), pursued the same unattainable goals (faithful reproductions of composer intent and composer circumstance), and interpreted music through the same modernist bias (rejection of 19th century tempos via objective neoclassism). "Text and Act" was written with an axe to grind against the early music movement, but if the mainstream musicians and concertgoers look beyond the verbal combat, they too will glean some understanding of their own interpretations of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and other avatars of the Western Art Music Tradition. Lastly, Taruskin's broad perspective offers a rounded view of the standard repertoire and their composers which does well to fill in the gaps left by both "authentic" and "mainstream" musicians who tend to look at repertoire on a case-by-case basis and make musical decisions based on selective scholarship. Keep a Webster's handy and enjoy the author's invectives.

Rating:
Summary: Not Just For Early Music Bashing
Review: The "mainstream" vs. "authentic" debate was settled years ago. The working relationship between the two groups is more amiable, today. Perhaps because, "Text and Act" by Richard Taruskin pointed out that both "mainstream" and "authentic" movements shared the same false assumptions (musical truths can be derived through manuscripts, critical editions, and selected primary documents), pursued the same unattainable goals (faithful reproductions of composer intent and composer circumstance), and interpreted music through the same modernist bias (rejection of 19th century tempos via objective neoclassism). "Text and Act" was written with an axe to grind against the early music movement, but if the mainstream musicians and concertgoers look beyond the verbal combat, they too will glean some understanding of their own interpretations of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and other avatars of the Western Art Music Tradition. Lastly, Taruskin's broad perspective offers a rounded view of the standard repertoire and their composers which does well to fill in the gaps left by both "authentic" and "mainstream" musicians who tend to look at repertoire on a case-by-case basis and make musical decisions based on selective scholarship. Keep a Webster's handy and enjoy the author's invectives.

Rating:
Summary: Not Just For Early Music Bashing
Review: The "mainstream" vs. "authentic" debate was settled years ago. The working relationship between the two groups is more amiable, today. Perhaps because, "Text and Act" by Richard Taruskin pointed out that both "mainstream" and "authentic" movements shared the same false assumptions (musical truths can be derived through manuscripts, critical editions, and selected primary documents), pursued the same unattainable goals (faithful reproductions of composer intent and composer circumstance), and interpreted music through the same modernist bias (rejection of 19th century tempos via objective neoclassism). "Text and Act" was written with an axe to grind against the early music movement, but if the mainstream musicians and concertgoers look beyond the verbal combat, they too will glean some understanding of their own interpretations of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and other avatars of the Western Art Music Tradition. Lastly, Taruskin's broad perspective offers a rounded view of the standard repertoire and their composers which does well to fill in the gaps left by both "authentic" and "mainstream" musicians who tend to look at repertoire on a case-by-case basis and make musical decisions based on selective scholarship. Keep a Webster's handy and enjoy the author's invectives.