Björn Schmelzer’s recent essay The Monstrosity of Early Music is now freely downloadable on the website of the publisher!
"Should we then renounce Early Music as a conservative fantasy, or can we transform this fantasy so as not to leave the (musical) past and its remains in the wrong hands? To do so would mean renouncing the revivalist dream, accepting both the intrinsic alienation of art, and the fact that historical knowledge can never redeem an encounter with the impossible."
The essay gives not just a nice background to Graindelavoix’s intrinsic critique on historical performance but focuses on the 19th century as a pivotal period for our historical understanding, moving from E.T.A. Hoffmann to Victor Hugo, a pastel drawing by Millet, Thomas Hardy, Sardinian polyphony, the resentment listener of Adorno and finally art without art…"
Here is the link:
https://acortar.link/Rhvrlc
