Historically informed performance : ideology or obligation?

The article is a daring attempt to define and discuss a number of issues that arise around the term “early music”. The author draws our attention to the ambiguity of the definitions of this term for which none of the applicable criteria (time of origin of the work, style of composition, precision in recreating the idea of the composer, etc.) is sufficient. What is more, contemporary approach to the music of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries is vastly different to approaches of romantic artists of the nineteenth century. At the same time, there still exists a tradition to “explain” the works of the Old Masters through their reworking and adaptation to fit contemporary music tastes. By rejecting, as Fétis did, belief in the progress and development of music, we need to notice and esteem distinctness of old compositions, their compositional techniques, instrumentation, sound and specific habits of performance. The first duty of a musicologist is to find the most accurate vision of the composer’s works and to provide it to the performer. Musicians in turn should revive the original sound idea of the work. The whole article is devoted to the description of the following, various phases of the approach to the issue of “early music” – from the first trials of the mid-nineteenth century through the work of Wanda Landowska and the Schola Cantorum at the beginning of the twentieth century until the broad movement started even before the World War II by P. Sacher, which resulted in the early music ensembles in ‚50. The principles developed by the end of the twentieth century (used up today with a greater or lesser extent) include: detailed studies on early music sources, restoration of works, as precise as possible - both in terms of compatibility with the score and with the performance habits of the era, aiming to reproduce (or at least explain) the historical and stylistic context of the work being performed, the need for close cooperation between musicologists and musicians to achieve the best artistic effect. Finally, the author recalls an excellent example of applying the rules of historically informed performance in relation to the music of the nineteenth century - a collection of 23 CDs with the music of F. Chopin performed exclusively on historical instruments.