Historically informed performance

Abstract

Historically Informed Performance (HIP) practitioners explore repertoires from antiquity to the late 19th century. Ranging from lost traditions demanding profound sonic reimaginings to the defamiliarizing of canonical repertoire, HIP has produced a vast body of musical performance, recordings, and scholarship. The relationship between the mainstream and HIP has been marked by suspicion, but the so-called “turf wars” also reflect the breadth of HIP. While HIP practitioners may not often consider the relationship between their work and historical reenactment, HIP has produced insightful scholarship on issues such as authenticity, expression, historical understanding and its relationship to creative performance, and the relation between past and present. HIP has tended to distance itself from the heritage industry’s more kitsch forms of reenactment, and the term reenactment is scarce in HIP literature. HIP’s decades-long debate comprises “a continuous, reflexive critique” that despite its acrimony offers an alternative and potentially fruitful perspective that resonates with and extends reenactment studies.