Should a performance of a piece of music be authentic?
Obviously, er... OK, instinctively I feel the answer should be “yes” - because authenticity is good, right? But cosiness is not logic. We can’t answer without first answering the question “What is authenticity?”
It isn’t just music performance that can be authentic. Poetry readings, performances of plays and of drama in general, even wilder stuff like preaching, family life, sales pitches, all of these can be authentic - or not. And for all of these, authenticity is seen as a good thing.
Poetry, for example. I’m going to take a ridiculously extreme example: suppose I am reciting some poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer to a primary school class. Poetry written in the 1300’s, so in Middle English.
Here’s what I’m reciting, in what passes for the original. (Yes, I know there are issues with the text - they don’t matter here)
My peyne is this, that whatso I desyre
That have I not, ne nothing lyk therto;
And ever set Desyr myn hert on fyre
Eek on that other syde whereso I goo,
What maner thing that may encrese woo,
That have I redy, unsoght, everywhere;
Me lakketh but my deth and then my bere.
What are my options?
Well, I could just pick up a modern version - off the Internet, probably. This is easy; is it authentic? I believe most people would say no, and I would agree with them.
Or I could just reproduce what Chaucer wrote, speaking it with Middle English pronunciation. This is harder, because it involves a bit of work, but it can be done - well, up to a point: we can’t reproduce Chaucer’s actual voice, but we can reproduce a generic voice from his time and place. Is this authentic? I suspect that many people - and especially many musicians - would say yes; are they right?
I would say no. That’s no surprise - I wouldn’t need to write this otherwise.
The point is that authenticity is a quality of a performance - it is not a quality of a text or of a performer. Authenticity means that the performance is what the author would have wanted - not that the text is what the author wrote. The word “authentic” has never quite lost its original meaning of “made by us, not bought in” - and therefore its link with the word “author”. But that means we have to look at the whole performance; we can’t just look at the performer, and even more, we can’t just look at the text.
Would Chaucer really be happy if I stood up in front of twenty-first century nine-year-old schoolchildren and said
“Airk on tha toe therr seed, khwairrer so ee go, khwaat mannairr thing that my encrrairsser woe, that haav ee rairdy, unsorkht, everr-ee khwairrer”?
Would he really want the audience not to understand more than an odd word here and there? I don’t believe it.
But would he really be happy if I said
“But if it’s shitty, I’ve got it, no fucking choice”?
I don’t believe that either.
The first example preserves the sound, the physical properties of what Chaucer wrote - at least as far as I can represent them in modern script - but does not convey the meaning, and therefore does not create the experience in the audience that Chaucer intended. It is very much what many scholars would describe as “authentic”, but if it doesn’t connect to the audience how can it be what Chaucer would have wanted? How can it be authentic?
The second example preserves the meaning, well, reasonably close, but doesn’t preserve the sense of what Chaucer wrote. For example, the register is wrong: “shitty” and “fucking” are informal to the point of vulgarity; there are many parents who would regard this register as unsuitable for nine-year-old children. It’s not that Chaucer avoids such language; he even uses “cunt” and “arse”; but like all great poets he is acutely aware of register, style and transparency. The original here is formal: it’s shown by the legal term “peyne” (the sentence imposed on a convicted criminal) and by the formal word choice, for example, “desire” for “want”, but more, the register, the tone, becomes less formal as the verse progresses, till we hit that rapid-fire “me lacketh but my death, and then my bier”.
We can also note the metre.
The first example pretends to preserve the metre, but actually, it doesn’t. The listener - and again, it’s the listener who matters - doesn’t really hear it as language; the noises are so incomprehensible that the question of metre hardly arises; maybe a slight sense that the sound is rhythmical, but no more than that.
The second example is at least in metre; but the metre is amphibrach, against Chaucer’s iambic, and in both his and our cultures, iambic is formal (To be, or not to be - that is the question) and amphibrach is informal (There was a young lady of Riga). It does share Chaucer’s flexible approach to metre, though, and that is one point in its favour. The only point in its favour. And while we’re on metre, note that Chaucer’s is thirty syllables in three lines; my second example is twelve syllables, and I suppose could be split in three
But
If it’s shitty
I’ve got it. No fucking choice
But that’s a bit artificial, and doesn’t leave much of the metre!
So what is the next step? Detail. Exactly why do we make these judgements. And here, I want to start with the second example.
There need not be anything wrong with a poem that included the words I’ve suggested. The issue is that it does not really reflect the original. But that is something I can only say if I know the original - and more than that, I need to know the original inside-out. Indeed, the whole discussion of the second example above is only possible if I have that level of knowledge of the original; if I know the text, yes, but more than that - I know the details of pronunciation and of vocabulary; and by vocabulary I don’t just mean meaning, I mean register, feel, style and rhythm.
I can not perform a poem unless I understand what the author wrote, and not just a quick skim through, but in depth, in careful, respectful study of all the layers, properties, details of the text, of the context in which the author expected it to be read, of the form in which the author published it. That depth of respect and understanding of what the author did and of what the author wanted is fundamental to authenticity.
But didn’t the first example do exactly that? Well, up to a point. But when you look at it, there is nothing in the first example that went beyond the mere text. Somebody with a good knowledge of Middle English pronunciation could indeed have just skimmed the text and read it like the first example. It wasn’t that the first example was wrong as far as it went; it was that the first example didn’t go any further. We’re in “death of author” territory here - only the text matters, and that just as a set of words that would have been spoken like this. The screen reader on my computer could do as well, once it had been told what language it was.
To sum up: the first example showed no respect for the performance, or for the audience, and therefore showed little respect for the author; the second example showed no respect for the performance, or for the author, and therefore showed little respect for the audience. Neither is authentic.
Authenticity therefore comes not from any one particular consideration: it is threefold.
Firstly, it comes from a deep understanding of the piece being performed: a deep understanding of what the author wrote, what the author expected it to be used for, how it was published.
Secondly, from a deep understanding of the audience, their background, their language, their expectation.
Thirdly, it comes from a careful consideration of how these two can be matched together, so that the audience experiences what the author intended.
All three of these are impossible, obviously. But together they justify the assertion that, whether it’s poetry, music, drama, or anything else that is being performed, a performance should be authentic.
But it never will be.