Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance [Paperback]

Richard Taruskin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 7, 1995 | ISBN-10: 0195094581 | ISBN-13: 978-0195094589

Over the last dozen years, the writings of Richard Taruskin have transformed the debate about "early music" and "authenticity." Text and Act collects for the first time the most important of Taruskin's essays and reviews from this period, many of which now classics in the field. Taking a wide-ranging cultural view of the phenomenon, he shows that the movement, far from reviving ancient traditions, in fact represents the only truly modern style of performance being offered today. He goes on to contend that the movement is therefore far more valuable and even authentic than the historical verisimilitude for which it ostensibly strives could ever be. These essays cast fresh light on many aspects of contemporary music-making and music-thinking, mixing lighthearted debunking with impassioned argumentation. Taruskin ranges from theoretical speculation to practical criticism, and covers a repertory spanning from Bach to Stravinsky. Including a newly written introduction, Text and Act collects the very best of one of our most incisive musical thinkers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Music lovers who have watched the "authenticity" (period instrument) wars of the 1980s and 1990s could be excused for forgetting that Richard Taruskin is a musicologist and professor by trade, not a professional critic. For it is as an essayist and critic (if not a professional gadfly) that he has made a real impact on American musical culture. Indeed, in early-music circles, and even in the marketing of period-instrument performances by record labels, the word authentic has been abandoned almost entirely--and this is due largely to Taruskin's impassioned arguments (and his ability to get them published in places like The New York Times).

Text & Act is a collection of Taruskin's most important (or, at least, most inflammatory) essays and articles on the subject of authenticity in the performance of 18th- and 19th-century music. These are the pieces that got Taruskin a reputation for being a flame-thrower; many fans of what is now called HIP (historically informed performance) have gotten the idea that Taruskin is the enemy of everything HIP stands for. They should have a look at this book: they'll see that he actually applauds many of the HIP movement's achievements. (In fact, Taruskin was himself a Baroque cellist and a founding member of the New York period-instrument orchestra Concert Royal.) What he skewers mercilessly are the pretensions and a few of the assumptions on which HIP was originally based and that it used to market itself.

Readers will also see why Taruskin has deeply infuriated so many people. He regularly makes inflammatory (if not downright insulting) statements at the outset of an essay and then backpedals in the middle. He quotes a statement by another writer or musician, draws implications from that statement that are far more extensive than the speaker apparently intended, and then demolishes those implications and often mocks the unwitting speaker. Especially in his introduction (which I recommend you skip until you've read the rest of the book), he continues to fight battles that he has already won, even as he seems to brag of his triumphs.

Nevertheless, Taruskin's main points are persuasive. They may even seem obvious, but all too many musicians seem to have forgotten them. "Authenticity" in the sense of a faithful re-creation of the composer's intentions and preferred conditions of performance is simply not an achievable goal. We can't know the composer's real intentions (he or she is almost certainly dead), and re-creating original performance conditions is unfeasible (we can't spend the equivalent of the unlimited budget Louis XIV had for his operas, and there are no more French nobles trained in Baroque dance to do the ballets), if not impossible (there are no more 14-year-old boy sopranos to sing Taverner's masses or Bach's soprano solos). There's no point in having as a goal a performance that would please the composer--again, the composer is (as a rule) dead. What's important is a performance that pleases us, the people performing and listening to the music now. So for anyone who wants to understand the early-music revival of the late 20th century and the debates surrounding it, this book is indispensable. Just don't be surprised if you want to smack the author every so often. --Matthew Westphal

Review

"This is not a book, it's an education, and a joyous one. Richard Taruskin's stylistic flair and incisive wit make it an endless pleasure to pick his fertile brain."--James R. Oestreich, Classical Music Editor, The New York Times

"This deliciously readable collection by America's most brilliant musicologist is a model of how to think independently, even before that becomes fashionable, and of how to articulate values, even after that becomes unfashionable. When other books on music are forgotten, Taruskin's essays, like those of Berlioz and Tovey, will be savored and relished as the best musical writing of their time."--Rose Rosengard Subotnik, Professor of Music, Brown University

"Little escapes his sharp eye, and his incisive commentary spans developments from the Middle Ages to the present era. The author is sometimes whimsical, often bitingly critical, occasionally self-indulgent, and always provocative. Highly recommended."--Library Journal

"Should be consulted by everyone interested in the performance of old music."--Choice

"Taruskin's prose is remarkably readable, and the content is very thought-provoking. He readdresses old concerns (tempo, authenticity) in a most refreshing way."--Dr. Gary Miller, Southeast Missouri State University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 392 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 7, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195094581
• ISBN-13: 978-0195094589
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #858,127 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Taruskin's Sturm und Drang., September 8, 2010

By 

Anna Shlimovich (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (Paperback)

This rather earlier book of the famous, and now perhaps also infamous, musicologist Richard Taruskin is an excellent read on many subjects of music. The book was published in 1995, it is a collection of essays, and although it is already quite radical on many points, it is not yet as extremist as Taruskin's later writings. In 1995 there are still 6 years before Sep 11, and life is peaceful, beautiful and prosperous. Taruskin tells us that "A humanist has been defined as one who rejects authority but respects tradition." At that moment, he still finds it "so dispiriting, and ultimately sinister" when rhetoric is taking the opposite track "respecting authority and rejecting tradition" - exactly a position he takes himself some 13 years later, i.e. today.

However, in those glorious past days, he is more preoccupied with musical, not political dilemmas, and his erudition is astounding. The book touches on many issues. I liked his essay on modern vs traditional approach in interpretations; he provides a marvelous excursion in the past, speaking of enormous liberties conductors like Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner, Willem Mendelberg were taking with the score, in particular, with Beethoven. He gives a lot of credit to Toscanini, who was the first one to play "com'e scritto", whatever it meant for the Maestro, however. He notes that the speedy tempos of Toscanini were lauded during his days by German and Austrian audiences, and that future conductors, as Furtwangler and Scherchen, are already examples of the Glacial Shift theory, according to which performances have been getting steadily slower.

Taruskin's favorites are clearly defined. He prefers Nicholas McGegan in Handel, Nicolaus Harnoncourt in Bach, and in Mozart, he esteems Frans Bruggen, Malcolm Bilson and John Eliot Gardiner. His rage and fury are targeted on Christopher Hogwood's Beethoven, while he praises much Roger Norrington in the same First Symphony. Along the lines of his argument, Taruskin tells interesting stories of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Schubert, their famous expressions and dialogs with their teachers, which make it somewhat an entertaining read, although in no way Taruskin's writings are an easy read - his vocabulary is extensive, and his constructions are rather complex.

I also liked very much the chapter "Resisting the Ninth" - an essay on Beethoven's Symphony No. 9. Taruskin reviews in particular the recording under the baton of Roger Norrington, but he gives extensive background on this opus, and to my amazement, I learned that in the 19th century this symphony was viewed as "eccentric, unconnected, and incomprehensible; the fourth movement of it so monstrous and tasteless, and inits grasp of Schiller's Ode so trivial" - this all is according to Louis Spohr, a musician who played for the composer conducting. Then Fanny Mendelshon, whose brother dicrected it in Dusseldorf premier in 1836, wrote that the symphony was "in parts abominable...a burlesque". Taruskin explains that the only musicians who embraced the Ninth without reservation were those "whose own aesthetic program it could seem to validate", i.e. Wagner, and later Brahms in his First Symphony, Frank, Bruckner, Mahler. This chapter is truly full of the most interesting facts and ideas, and is marvelously written.

Taruskin's essays on Mozart was also valuable. Naturally, he is dismayed by commercialization of Mozart and by sentimental approach to his art. It was personally intriguing for me to find that Taruskin sees Mozart as a tragic figure, which is quite close to my own view on Mozart's music, that it is not at all cheerful as it is frequently served to the "faceless mass" (per Taruskin), but rather that his music is full of melancholy. Taruskin's essay does not mention Salieri specifically, but he concedes that Mozart's music was more complex that his contemporaries, and was viewed as brash and overspiced for an average listener. "Too many notes, my dear Mozart, and too beautiful for our ears." - complained Emperor Joseph II at a rehearsal of Die Entführung aus dem Serail.

Perhaps the most controversial idea expressed in the book is concerning Bach. Taruskin claims that "Anyone exposed to Bach's full range knows that the hearty, genial, lyrical Bach of the concert hall is not the essential Bach. The essential Bach was an avatar of a pre-Enlightened - and when push came to shove, a violently anti-Enlightened - temper. His music was a medium of truth, not beauty. At the truth he served was bitter. His works persuade us - no, reveal to us - that the world is filth and horror, that humans are helpless, that life is pain, that reason is a snare."

However, this seems to reflect on the author's inner ideas about life, and ironically such views made him come to his later conclusions, expressed in "The Danger of Music". I think everyone has her own Bach, and to view the glass is as half-full, one can retort by saying that Bach music is full of hope and vigor, its intrinsic beauty persuades us that humanity is also genius and bliss, that life is creation, that reason ultimately prevails over horror, that inspiration is divine. That to me seems to be the ultimate conclusion of Bach, but not an intermediary means he uses to show filth and horror, only to bring the listener to the enlightened end, which is the magic of music. But as with everything, each man worships his own Bach and tends to his own garden.

Overall, this is a great book to learn a lot, while keeping in mind that even in 1995, the author was already criticized of his blunt, if not offensive language, and of his "tired neo-Marxist attempt to make music slave of history"; yet I still adore his passion in this book; he is very opinionated and controversial, but never boring. The book is bigger than any review of it. Recommended.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Authentic scholarship, August 9, 2001

By 

Bernard Hughes (London, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (Paperback)

A fascinating book, which holds together very cogently for a book of essays. Ignore the Introduction - or at least read it after the rest of the book. In any case it is full of petty squabbling and point-scoring from the heart of Academia-ville which is unworthy of the rest of the book. Professor Taruskin arguments are persuasive and convincing, and emerge with great force. If they get a bit repetitive after a while that must be partly because all these essays were originally published as stand alone pieces. Mr Taruskin's style can irritate in such large doses, from needlessly obscure vocabulary and convoluted sentence construction to some leaden sarcasm, but it is never unreadable. He is at his best making brilliant insights drawing together disparate musical strands to tell us fascinating things about our modern musical culture. There is also a passion about, and love for, the music in question which shines through all the pieces. Like all the best revelatory insights Taruskin's main point has a simplicity and obviousness which can blind the reader to the fact that what he is saying is both radical and true, and he was the first person to stand up and say it. Bravo.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Just For Early Music Bashing, March 22, 2002

By 

Jeremy Baguyos (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (Paperback)

The "mainstream" vs. "authentic" debate was settled years ago. The working relationship between the two groups is more amiable, today. Perhaps because, "Text and Act" by Richard Taruskin pointed out that both "mainstream" and "authentic" movements shared the same false assumptions (musical truths can be derived through manuscripts, critical editions, and selected primary documents), pursued the same unattainable goals (faithful reproductions of composer intent and composer circumstance), and interpreted music through the same modernist bias (rejection of 19th century tempos via objective neoclassism). "Text and Act" was written with an axe to grind against the early music movement, but if the mainstream musicians and concertgoers look beyond the verbal combat, they too will glean some understanding of their own interpretations of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and other avatars of the Western Art Music Tradition. Lastly, Taruskin's broad perspective offers a rounded view of the standard repertoire and their composers which does well to fill in the gaps left by both "authentic" and "mainstream" musicians who tend to look at repertoire on a case-by-case basis and make musical decisions based on selective scholarship. Keep a Webster's handy and enjoy the author's invectives.