Steve Schwartz:

>Absolutely agreed.  But the *insistance* upon HIP or "current common
>practice" is indeed an aesthetic red herring.  I don't deny that HIP can
>reveal something previously unknown or long buried in a score.  But I do
>deny that it's the only way to do this.  And, fortunately, I find myself
>in agreement with most of the leading practitioners of HIP.

Actually, it wasn't a reply so much as a separate digression - I originally
submitted it to the list with a different title for that reason [Which,
of course, you can't do if you are responding to a thread - it breaks it.
-Dave].  The main thrust of the post was to point out that the process of
music is one rooted in physicality, and our talking about music should be
seen as merely part of that process.

One of the doctrines that comes out of historicism is the idea of "the
necessity of error" - that often the only way to do things, is the wrong
way.  Insistence may be philosophically wrong, but it is what people must
do to focus themselves.  The insistence on neo-classicism, serialism,
romanticism, HIP or my own lyric style is, in one context, wrong.  But it
is also necessary.  In performance, it is better to be wrong, than unsure.

Thus when someone says "this is the only way to do things" we must take it
more as a solliquoy, an individual talking to himself, and his audience,
more than a gnomic sentence.  The words do not mean what they parse to
meaning, but, as with the words of the credo - they arise out of the
impulse to faith.

Stirling Newberry
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http://www.mp3.com/ssn