Historically Uninformed Views of Historically Informed Performance

This article argues that contemporary analytic philosophy of music has characterized historically informed performance practice as compliance focused, impersonal, and work centered. The first part gathers evidence in support of this claim from the works of Julian Dodd, Peter Kivy, James O. Young, Aron Edidin, and Stephen Davies. In the second part of the article, I reject this received view. Evidence from actual performance practice, as well as from the practitioners’ reflection on their activity, belies the received view outlined in the first part of the article. I conclude by drawing three methodological lessons from these oversights.