Text and Act

Gathers together for the first time Taruskin''s influential and insightful essays and articles on musical performance practice written over the past decade. Links issues in musical performance with wider cultural scene. Author''s highly respected and controversial viewpoints and reputation will spark intellectual debate in the musical field.Text and Act, a collection of essays and reviews, published over the last dozen years, offers a brilliant evaluation of the early music movement, transforming the debate about "early music" and "authenticity". Demolishing the argument that the movement to revive period instruments and performance practices represents the recovery of an ancient truth or a reinstatement of a lost tradition, these writings show that the movement actually represents the triumph of a modernist esthetic - and consequently that "period" performances are in fact the only truly modern performances of classical music on offer. Yet far from impugning the movement''s claim to a