Historically informed performance (also referred to as period performance, authentic performance, or (HIP)) is an approach in the performance of music and theater. Within this approach, the performance adheres to state-of-the-art knowledge of the aesthetic criteria of the period in which the music or theatre work was conceived. Whenever this knowledge conflicts with current aesthetic criteria, the option of re-training the listener/viewer, as opposed to adapting the work, is normally followed. Music is usually played on instruments corresponding to the period of the piece being played, such as period instruments for early music. Historical treatises, as well as additional historical evidence, are used to gain insight into the performance practice (the stylistic and technical aspects of performance) of a historic era. Corresponding types of acting and scenery are deployed. Historically informed performance has originated in the performance of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music, but has come to encompass music from the Classical and Romantic eras as well. Quite recently, the phenomenon has begun to affect the theatrical stage, for instance in the production of Baroque opera.
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The gradual and still ongoing historical evolution in the construction of instruments and in the training of musicians, as part of the evolution of aesthetic sense, has produced a corresponding evolution in sounds and styles.
Historically informed performance needs to access musical instruments corresponding to the period of the music being played. This has led to the revival of musical instruments entirely gone out of practice, and to a reconsideration of the role and structure of instruments also used in current practice. The discussion below (see also Organology) covers examples of instruments that had to be revived entirely, followed by examples of instruments whose earlier form was rediscovered. See also List of period instruments.
Among keyboard instruments, the most dramatic disappearance was that of the harpsichord, which gradually went out of style during the second half of the 18th century. The fortepiano became more popular by such a degree that harpsichords were destroyed; indeed, the Paris Conservatory is notorious for having used harpsichords for firewood during the French Revolution and Napoleonic times.[1] Composers such as François Couperin, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for the harpsichord, clavichord, and organ.
A vast quantity of music for viols, for both ensemble and solo performance, was written by composers of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, including Diego Ortiz, Claudio Monteverdi, William Byrd, William Lawes, Henry Purcell, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, J.S. Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann, Marin Marais, Antoine Forqueray, and Carl Frederick Abel. However, viols were largely abandoned by the end of the 18th century, having been overtaken by the violin family.
Many composers wrote complex polyphonic part music (early chamber music) for viol consort, an ensemble of differently sized viols (typically held vertically) with a varying number of viols in it.
From largest to smallest, the viol family consists of:
Among the foremost modern players of the viols are Paolo Pandolfo, Wieland Kuijken, Jordi Savall, John Hsu, and Vittorio Ghielmi. There are many modern viol consorts.
Recorders in multiple sizes (contra-bass, bass, tenor, alto, soprano, the sopranino, and the even smaller kleine sopranino or garklein) are often played today in consorts of mixed size. Handel and Telemann, among others, wrote solo works for the recorder. Arnold Dolmetsch did much to revive the recorder as a serious concert instrument, reconstructing a "consort of recorders (descant, treble, tenor and bass) all at low pitch and based on historical originals."[2] For a number of important modern exponents of the recorder, see Recorder player.
The human voice is a biological given, but can be trained in different ways. For example, singers in historically informed performances may aim at a less loud tone, with less vibrato and different use of dynamics, to match the use of different accompanying instruments. A few of the singers who have contributed to the historically informed performance movement are Emma Kirkby, Julianne Baird, Nigel Rogers, and David Thomas.
Modern countertenor singing was pioneered by Alfred Deller, and leading contemporary performers include David Daniels, Terry Barber, Derek Lee Ragin, Andreas Scholl, Michael Chance, Drew Minter, Daniel Taylor, Brian Asawa, Philippe Jaroussky.
Compositions intended to be sung by castrati present a problem. The 1994 movie Farinelli: Il Castrato, about an 18th-century castrato, used digital effects to create the voice by mixing the sound of a countertenor with a soprano singer.
Historic pictures,[3] layout sketches and sources are giving information about the layout of singers and instruments. Three main layouts are documented:
Johann Mattheson: "The singers must stand alltime in front".[4]
Some familiar difficult items are as follows:
Some information about how music sounded in the past can be obtained from contemporary mechanical instruments. For instance, the Dutch Museum Speelklok owns an 18th century mechanical organ of which the music programme was composed and supervised by Joseph Haydn.[6]
The baroque oboist Bruce Haynes has extensively investigated surviving wind instruments and even documented a case of violinists having to retune by a minor third to play at neighboring churches.[7]
Generally acknowledged motivations for historically informed performance can be characterized as follows.
While normally accepted in literature (early poetry or prose is not re-written in modern language), in the performing arts historical respondence is of difficult implementation, both practically (how do we do it?) and conceptually (what meaning and function should be attributed to aesthetic elements that have evolved?). Prior to audio and video recording, no direct record of performing arts survives. Opinions on the implications of the aforementioned motivations and on how they should translate into criteria for historically informed performance vary.
Even within such Early Music Revival, awareness of the pitfalls was clear. Though championing the need (for example in his editorship of Scarlatti sonatas) for a thoroughly-informed approach, not least in understanding as fully as possible a composer's actual wishes and intentions in their historical context, Ralph Kirkpatrick, pioneer in the harpsichord rediscovery, highlights the risk of using historical exoterism to hide technical incompetence: "too often historical authenticity can be used as a means of escape from any potentially disquieting observance of esthetic values, and from the assumption of any genuine artistic responsibility. The abdication of esthetic values and artistic responsibilities can confer a certain illusion of simplicity on what the passage of history has presented to us, bleached as white as bones on the sands of time."[8]
Yet, the acceptance of the concept is rapidly evolving. Today, performing an Early Baroque opera, such as Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo without, at the very least, full historical awareness, would be inconceivable.
Classical recording producer Michael Sartorius writes: "While the debate on authenticity in baroque performance will continue, certain essential characteristics should be present, if the performance is to reflect the true baroque spirit."[9]