Early Thoughts on Performance Practice - Paperback

by Craig Dabelstein (Editor), David Whitwell (Author)

This volume presents the early views of philosophers and musicians having to do with the general background of what is known as Performance Practice. Performance Practice refers to the knowledge needed by musicians in bringing to life, in the form of present tense performance, older compositions, in view of the fact that we have a very incomplete system for the notation of music.But there are other problems besides our inadequate notational system. These include broad issues of society, the nature of the musical instruments themselves, acoustics, how the listener's brain "hears" music and performance traditions of earlier centuries.Modern musicians usually mean by "performance practice" the knowledge of small detail, such as trills, turns and improvisation. It is the hope of the present author that this volume will supply some of the background needed to help understand the solution of the smaller details.

Author Biography

David Whitwell is a graduate ("with distinction") of the University of Michigan and the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. (Ph.D., Musicology, Distinguished Alumni Award, 2000) and has studied conducting with Eugene Ormandy and at the Akademie fur Musik, Vienna. Dr. Whitwell has been a guest professor in 100 different universities and conservatories throughout the United States and in 23 foreign countries (most recently in China, in an elite school housed in the Forbidden City). Guest conducting experiences have included the Philadelphia Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Radio Orchestras of Brno and Bratislava, The National Youth Orchestra of Israel, as well as resident wind ensembles in Russia, Israel, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, England, Wales, The Netherlands, Portugal, Peru, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Canada and the United States.