Authentic performance

The authentic performance movement is an effort on the part of musicians and scholars to perform works of classical music in ways similar to how they were performed when they were originally written. The movement had its beginnings in the performance of Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music, but subsequently came to incorporate the Classical and even Romantic eras as well. The two methods adopted by authentic performance artists have been to use historically appropriate instruments and to rely on written evidence from the past to gain insight into how the works were originally played.

Books

• Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making by Frank Hubbard (1965; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press ISBN 0674888456) is a classic tale of scholarly detective work, both with old instruments and old written sources, that led to the rediscovery of how the old harpsichords were built.
• Charles Rosen's discussion of authentic performance may be found in Chapter 12 of his book Critical Entertainments (2000; Cambridge: Harvard University Press; ISBN 0674006844). This chapter contains the full version of the quotation above concerning tuning, which is from the French critic Charles de Saint-Evremond.
• The quotation above from Joseph Haydn about the necessity of at least one rehearsal is taken from p. 145 of Rosen's book The Classical Style (2nd ed., 1997; New York: Norton; ISBN 0393317129).
• Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (1997). "The good, the bad and the boring", Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198165404.