The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century

by Bruce Haynes

Overview

Part history, part explanation of early music, this book also plays devil's advocate, criticizing current practices and urging experimentation. Haynes, a veteran of the movement, describes a vision of the future that involves improvisation, rhetorical expression, and composition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195189872
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	07/20/2007
Edition description:	ANN
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	9.51(w) x 6.43(h) x 0.97(d)

About the Author

Recently retired as a performer, Bruce Haynes worked for many years in Holland. He introduced the hautboy into the Dutch music curriculum, teaching at the Royal Conservatory. Currently, he is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Music at the University of Montreal. He has published widely on the history of the oboe and performing pitch standards.

Table of Contents

List of Musical ExamplesList of Recorded ExcerptsPreface: If this Muses Come to CallAcknowledgementsPart I: Performing StylesOne. Performing Style: When You Say Something Differently, You Say Something DifferentTwo. Mind the Gap: Current StylesThree. Mainstream Style: "Chops, but no Soul"Part II: How Romantic Are We?Four. Classical Music's Coarse CaressFive. The Transparent PerformerSix. Changing Meanings, Permanent SymbolsPart III: Anachronism and AuthenticitySeven. Original EarsEight. Ways of Copying the PastNine. The Medium is the Message: Period InstrumentsTen. Baroque Oratory Compared with Romantic AutobiographyEleven. Gestural PhrasingPart V: The End of "Early" MusicTwelve. Passive and Active Musicking: Stop Staring and Grow Your OwnThirteen. Mainstream Musicking as "Early Music"Fourteen. Perpetual RevolutionNotesList of Bibliographic AbbreviationsBibliographyIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Wide-ranging in its reference and powerful in its invigorating view of the "end" of early music. Hayne's informative text urges us onward with historical acumen, a performer's keen insight, and even more than a dollop of whimsy and wit. This is an End that we should hasten to begin."—Historic Brass Society Journal

"This is a thoughtful, entertaining, and important book by an expert who can write for both lay and professional readers."—J.P. Ambrose, CHOICE

"The End of Early Music is a must-read for anyone interested in the early music movement. Haynes goes on to urge all performers of rhetorical music to engage in more improvisation and personalization in their performances."-Maria Coldwell, Early Music America

"A wide-ranging, thought-provoking, enlightening and entertaining volume which has already been the source of a great deal of lively discussion among Early Music cognoscenti. It should be on the shelf of everyone concerned with Early Music, be as it performer, director, researcher or listener. It belongs as well in the library of every institution with an Early Music program. It is as timely a book as there could be on the subject in this day and age, and, as such, much needed and very welcome."-The Double Reed

"Haynes provides an invaluable service by framing the issue of performance style in clearly defined terms that set the parameters for the broader discussion that must occur if classical music is to maintain, or as some would say, regain its stature as a relevant artistic force.... While The End of Early Music is subtitles A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century, it should be read by any and al intereste in our musical past, present, or future."—David Dolata, MLA Notes

"'Early Music' (with its off-putting "scare-quotes") is dead; long live early music! Reading the mature reflections of one of the 'Early Music Movement's' important revolutionaries about the panorama of performing styles in today's musical world is both a pleasure and a challenge. Mr. Haynes's breadth and depth of learning and observation is admirable, but more important is his clear-minded yet passionate formulation of an artistic vision of creative musicianship for our time."—Stephen Stubbs, Northwest Center for Early Music Studies

"From one of the brightest lights in the field of baroque music comes yet another indispensable book. Only Haynes, a performer of great sensitivity and dedication to the 'project' of historical performance, only Haynes, a scholar of alacrity and dynamism, only Haynes, who for over thirty years has never stopped interrogating what we are doing when we approach the past in performance, only Haynes could have written a brilliant book for early music in the new millennium. It is thoughtful, iconoclastic, tender, and honest. This is the new Quantz-obligatory reading for everyone who cares about early music."—Kate van Orden, performer on historical instruments and Professor, University of California, Berkeley

"Haynes has made a series of subtle and important points for all listeners, musicians, all artists and potentially all art in fact, very well.... If you have anything but the most casual interest in music before 1800 and its most proper and effective performance, then this readable and well-argued book, which has a great balance of technical and non-technical illustrations for the practicing musician and listener alike, should not be ignored. Thoroughly recommended."—Mark Sealey, Classical Net

"Haynes's book...will be useful to students of historical performance practice and instructors of courses on that topic, not only for its extensive quotations and audio samples but for its lively, provocative style." —Journal of the American Musicological Society

From the Publisher