Philosophy of the Performing Arts

authenticity in musical performance 79
former must be that it is instrumental in bringing about the latter, and that
the latter is neither a possible nor a desirable goal for musical performance.
The quest for sensible authenticity – reproducing the subjective experience
of a contemporary listener – involves what Kivy terms “the paradox of his-
torical musicology” (1995, 71). Our ability to hear a performance of a musi-
cal work “historically” is a product of historical musicology. But it necessarily
distinguishes our experience in listening to a sonically authentic performance
of a period piece from the experience of period listeners, who heard the
work ahistorically. He further argues, like Young, that eliciting what he terms
“historicist listening,” which replicates the experience of the period listener,
is not a desirable goal of artistic performance, since period listeners were
unable to properly appreciate the aesthetic value of the work performed. This
is not to oppose “historical listening,” listening that is informed by a knowl-
edge of the history of the performed work. Kivy contrasts these two kinds of
listening in respect of the introductory measures of Beethoven’s Symphony
No. 1 (1995, 205). In opening the piece on an active chord of the “wrong” key,
Beethoven clearly intended to surprise or startle the audience. But the open-
ing measures cannot have this effect on a modern listener. Thus historicist
listening is not possible, and a fortiori not a feasible aim of sonically authentic
performance. But, Kivy maintains, this is in no way to denigrate historical
listening informed by the knowledge that the contemporary audience was
surprised and shocked by the opening:
that Beethoven intended to produce that effect, that he produced it by depart-
ing from the usual manner of Haydn and Mozart of strongly declaiming the
tonic in the opening measures of slow introductions, that the departure con-
sisted in starting on an active chord of the “wrong” key, and so on ... This
knowledge ... can facilitate appreciation of what Beethoven was trying to do
and how he was trying to do it. And that appreciation ... is a kind of aesthetic
appreciation of the work that is by no means contemptible. (Kivy 1995, 206)
None of this, however, Kivy stresses, involves historicist listening, and thus
none of it is furthered by sonically authentic performances, assuming that
the aim of the latter is to facilitate historicist listening.
The force of such objections to Davies’s account of authenticity depends
upon whether Young and Kivy are correct in saying that our modern ears
cannot give us an experiential appreciation of period music as it was intended
to be heard even if the performances to which we listen are sonically authen-
tic. It also depends upon whether, to the extent that there are necessarily
experiential differences between our listening and the listening of a period
audience, this undermines the case for authentic performance understood
in the way that Davies proposes. In his later defenses of his view, Davies