Dave Lampson replies to me:

>>It's just as funny as presuming to know how music a couple of centuries
>>old sounded to its contemporary audience.
>
>Well, this would be funny if it had any basis in fact.  Unfortunately,
>though this red herring makes for snappy banter, sounds as though it came
>out of one of those ill-informed anti-HIP tirades we so often see in print.
>To my knowledge, no major player in the HIP world has ever claimed to know
>how audiences in the past perceived music.

For the most part, I agree, although I dimly recall a statement by Joshua
Rifkin (and it was only one remark) about his recording of the b-minor Mass
to the effect that:  if you want to hear how the b-minor Mass sounded to
Bach, buy my recording.  It could have been merely self-advertising.  I
wasn't thinking about the major interpreters - in fact, there's been more
of that kind of thing from the other side - but about some of the audience.

 [I certainly don't deny the occasional hyperbole in the heat of battle -
 on both sides.  Nothing wrong with that; it's human nature.  It's when it
 reaches the point of calculated polemics that I take exception, and it
 seems that the anti-HIP folks more often engage in such.  -Dave]

>Hell, I can't even figure out how music sounds to Steve,

It sounds pretty.

 [But that's exactly what I can't figure out!  :-)  -Dave]

Steve Schwartz