Philosophy of the Performing Arts

80 performance and the classical paradigm
answers both of these points negatively. First, he argues that Young and
Kivy’s objection “seriously underestimates our ability to control the way we
listen to different kinds of music.” While our ability to train ourselves to hear
period music authentically in light of our knowledge of period ideals and
practices will be tested in proportion to the discrepancies between the music
of the period and the music of our own time, “the goal of hearing ‘foreign’
music with understanding and appreciation is not inherently unachievable”
(S. Davies 2001, 235). Second, in response to Kivy’s paradox of historical
musicology, Davies grants that the phenomenology of the modern listener
and that of the period listener will almost certainly differ, but maintains that
the case for authentic performance is not compromised by such a conces-
sion. For authentic performance can achieve its goal – making the period
piece accessible to the modern listener for her appreciation – even if such
phenomenological differences exist.
Authenticity defined in terms of performance practice
Davies’s case rests upon a conception of the goal of historically authentic
performance that contrasts markedly with Kivy’s claim, cited earlier, that
we should assess a performance of a performable work in terms of its
“ aesthetic payoff,” where this is measured in terms of qualities of the lis-
tener’s experience. But Kivy’s further claim, that historical listening bears
upon the appreciation of a musical work by helping us to understand what
a composer has attempted and achieved, suggests a new way of presenting
the case for authentic performance – a way compatible with the general
thrust of Davies’s argument. Why shouldn’t we think of sonically authentic
performances as a source of understanding of the musical works performed,
understanding that can then enter into our historically informed listening to
other performances of the piece, or, indeed, to that very performance? This
would yield an “aesthetic payoff ” by contributing to musical appreciation in
the kinds of ways that Kivy identifies in his account of historical listening.
This kind of defense of authentic performance is best set out in terms of our
third notion of authenticity. This defines authenticity not purely in terms of
the sound of a performance, but in terms of the performance means and per-
formance practices that the composer expected to be operative in perform-
ances of the work. As we shall see, there are a number of ways in which our
understanding of a work may be augmented by listening to performances
that are authentic in this sense.
If authentic performance is to be justified by its (indirect) contribution
to the understanding and appreciation of a musical work, this presupposes
a conception of what the musical work is, an issue that we examined in
Chapter 2. Interestingly, Kivy defends his assumption that any case for