Philosophy of the Performing Arts

76 performance and the classical paradigm
level intentions should trump his or her low level intentions, since the latter
reflect only the means by which the composer intends to realize the former.
But this means that historical authenticity understood in terms of satisfying
the composer’s intentions may support exactly the kind of performance to
which proponents of historical performance are opposed – performance
on modern instruments, unknown to the composer, that are still unfamiliar
enough to us to provoke the intended response. Kivy develops Dipert’s line
of reasoning. He asks whether, on the “intentions” construal of authenticity,
it is authentic to perform a piece on modern instruments capable of replicat-
ing the timbral or other properties of the instruments specified by the com-
poser. Why shouldn’t we say that, given the option of using such instruments
to realize his middle or high level intentions, the composer would be happy
for the piece to be played on the modern instruments? Another way in which
this kind of point is sometimes put is that performers who wish to be true
to the work should strive to be true to its spirit rather than to its letter (see,
for example, Leppard 1988).
Aron Edidin offers an interesting response to this line of argument (1991,
413–415). He suggests that artists are interested not merely in producing a
particular effect in their audience, but also in producing that effect by partic-
ular means – for example, startling the audience by the use of the clarinet, in
the Gluck case. Indeed, this is itself a high level intention. But this high level
intention would not be satisfied if the sought-after effect were produced by
other means. This undermines the idea that a performance on modern instru-
ments could be authentic in the sense of satisfying all of the composer’s high
level intentions. But it also raises the concern that an authentic performance
conceived in these terms may in many cases not be possible. For the Gluck
example supposedly demonstrates that the high level intention to produce a
particular effect by specified means may not be satisfiable in a modern audi-
ence. This implication of the Gluck example might be questioned, however,
if our ears can to some extent be trained to hear things in the way they were
heard by contemporaries of the composer.^8
There is a further objection to the idea that we should pursue authenticity
defined in terms of satisfying the composer’s intentions. Why, it might be
asked, would a performance that complies with those intentions be desir-
able? In raising this worry, Kivy appeals to the general principle that we
must evaluate any proposal as to how a work should be performed in terms
of the “aesthetic payoff ” of so performing it, that is, the aesthetically satisfy-
ing qualities that would be realized thereby (Kivy 1995, 152).^9 Why should
we think that the aesthetic payoff of performing a work in accordance with
the composer’s intentions is likely to be higher than the aesthetic payoff
of performing it in ways that depart from those intentions, even by ignor-
ing the minimal requirement that the performers comply with the score?