A “fresh vision” of conducting and teaching choral music

The idea of authenticity evokes many provocative thoughts. When a friend of mine said he was convinced that the notion of authenticity was highly overrated, misunderstood, and too often at odds with important elements of music making like imagination and change, I had to agree. The concept of authenticity in choral music is a frequently discussed subject connected all too often with a static definition of performance practices governed by a rigid set of rules. While the adherence to established musical traditions and historically situated performance practices is generally acknowledged as a sign of distinction, particularly within the formalized contexts of academic institutions, it is not always recognized that traditions and performance practices are necessarily dynamic, and that they offer opportunities for change and innovation.

One of the leading conductors who questions the notion of musical authenticity is Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a legend in the area of period performance, who calls for a “fresh vision” of authenticity – an examination of historical music from a diversity of perspectives. Harnoncourt criticizes the twentieth-century attempts to render historic music in its original form as the ideal. He questions the growing demand for “authentic” renditions of old music as old music. “This attitude toward historical music – the unwillingness to bring it into the present, but rather undertaking to return oneself to the past – is a symptom of the loss of a truly living contemporary music.”