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RR 2013/103 The Cambridge History of Musical Performance Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell Cambridge University Press Cambridge 2012 xxvi + 906 pp. ISBN 978 0 521 89611 5 £110, $190
Keywords History, Music
Review DOI 10.1108/09504121311308705
The authors of this new work to join the extensive Cambridge History series rightly say that musical performance is attracting even more attention today than it has in the past. There are several reasons for this, ranging from the debate about "authentic and historical" performances of earlier works such as Mozart and Vivaldi, across to new ways in which digital and other technology can be used to "enhance fidelity" and showcase technical virtuosity. Add to that the musical and cultural changes happening to performance - ever wider global music and a plurality of styles, shifting preconceptions about taste and aesthetic, crossovers and the emergence of "happening" style performances such as Stockhausen, and all this makes now an appropriate moment to review and reassess musical performance. The work under review does a wide-ranging and competent job, picking up on context, interpretation, vocal and instrumental issues, and historiography. At least two other titles in the Cambridge History series might be of interest to readers - one on Western music theory, and another on eighteenth-century music.
This work will be a fine addition, then, to the bibliographic repertoire, and a suitable candidate for the shelves of an academic library (and that of any musical institution) where musical performance is being studied (and mis is so more than ever, encompassing musical traditions and styles from classical to jazz and...