Comprendere la musica antica. Una nuova acquisizione di archetti barocchi per la SUM

[1] The Interpretation of the Music of the XVII and XVIII Centuries (1915) [2] The interpretation of Early Music (1963) e A performer’s Guide to Baroque Music (1973). [3] La mia definizione di autenticità è semplice e categorica. Autenticità è la congruenza tra musica ed esecuzione musicale. “Fallo come è stato fatto originariamente” non è male come punto di partenza per avvicinarci all’autenticità. Robert Donington, The Present Position of Authenticity, Performance Practice Review, 1989 [4] (…) In the course of over 15 years’ experience in conducting Renaissance choral music, in fact, I seem to have built up quite a collection of specific performance practices, as I learnt recently when some members of my choir Cappella Nova presented me with a treatise they had compiled from our week-to-week doings in rehearsal. Hardly any of them is historically sanctioned; but, taken as a whole, they are what give our performances authenticity, of a type that is not a thing achieved but a perpetually self-renewing challenge. For as our own discoveries have changed us, they have given rise to new dissatisfactions and new ideals. Ours is a constantly evolving style of performance that, in the words of one reviewer, ‘requires great conviction, and it will not be to everyone’s taste’. That is certainly true; indeed, I would have added ‘therefore’ before the last clause, for that is the nature of convictions. But what else are we (or should we be) talking about when we talk about authenticity?