Other Original Period Items

The historically informed performance, period performance, or authentic performance movement is an approach by musicians and scholars to research and perform works of classical music in ways similar to how they may have been performed when they were originally written. more...

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The movement had its beginnings in the performance of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music, but subsequently came to incorporate the Classical and even Romantic eras as well. The two methods adopted by historically informed performance artists have been to use period instruments and to utilise treatises and other written evidence to gain insight into performance practice, i.e. stylistic and technical considerations based on how the works may have been played in the period in which they were written.

Historically informed performance compared to traditional musical practice

Most historically informed performance artists advocate the practice as a way of achieving more artistically effective performances of older music. They feel that the gradual changes in the construction of instruments and in the training of musicians have produced instruments and styles that are optimal for (roughly) mid to late 19th-century music, but not for older work.

In the community of classical musicians, students have over the centuries learned ways of playing and interpreting music from their teachers and also from performances they hear. This results, to some degree, in stylistic accretion, as modes of performing developed by outstanding musicians are echoed through time in the performances of the younger musicians that they influenced. Thus, the way that music is performed is in part a function of the musical culture as it has evolved up to that time.

The historically informed performance movement emphasizes instead historical scholarship, covering both instruments and performance practice, in order to obtain a more direct view of original performance practices. Such scholarship is the work both of the performers themselves and of non-performing specialist scholars, usually working in universities.

Adherence to principles of historically informed performance is not an all-or-nothing matter. Many traditional musicians are deeply interested in what scholarship can tell us about how music was performed in the composer's time. Moreover, modern instruments can be played in ways that approximate what may have been achieved on instruments of the composer's era.

Early instruments

Many of the instruments of early music disappeared from widespread use around the beginning of the Classical era. Others continued in use, but greatly altered their sound quality and playing characteristics in the course of the 19th century. In either case, when older instruments, or reconstructed versions of them, are used, they are called original instruments, "historical instruments," or period instruments. The discussion below (see also Organology) covers instruments that had to be revived entirely, followed by instruments whose earlier form was rediscovered. See also List of period instruments.

Read more at Wikipedia.org