There was an interesting piece in this mornings New York Times about string players not from the early music movement picking up baroque strings and bows, and tuning down their instruments. What des this mean? Is it the death of a movement? Perhaps, perhaps the victim of its own commercial success. There does seem to be a new generation of folks playing HIP, with only a sound in their ear and now knowledge or curiosity of the context, historical or other, from which that sound comes. On the other hand, chasing a sound for its own sake can be a beautiful journey in and of itself. The early music movement was rejecting tradition, but replaced it with the red herring of authenticity and the ideological weight of correctness. Perhaps that is now being replaced by beauty for the sake of beauty...better than tradition or authenticity. Has this early music movement been at heart an experiment to arrive at new aesthetic approaches that can now be freed from justification through historical authenticity? Has Taruskin been right all along?
We can only hope so...
From Amsterdam on a slow Sunday morning.
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