What is Historically Enlightened Performance?
Adolph von Menzel: Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci (c.1850)
When I started out as a performer I played Early Music: music from the Middle Ages to the 18th century. In the early 1980s I was in an ensemble (of two) called the Early Music Duo. We did many concerts and tours for Musica Viva around Australia and even in South East Asia.
Early Music Duo: Greg Dikmans and Max Hynam in 1982
I was a proud member of what was called the Early Music Revival.
After returning from postgraduate studies in Europe, I started teaching in universities and conservatoriums. I taught what became known as Historical Performance (aka Performance Practice or Performance Practice Studies).
Historical performance studies takes seriously the huge amount of historical information available to us. It acknowledges that there is no unique historical truth that is valid for all times, places, styles, genres and composers.
This is why the term ‘authentic’ performance did not stand the test of time. It was really just a marketing term.
At some point another essentially marketing term gained traction and is still used widely today: HIP (Historically Informed Performance). Some prefer Historically Inspired Performance.
HIP is cool. HIP is fashionable.
Not only is HEP an older version of the word HIP—in the 1930s a hep-cat was a stylish or fashionable person, especially in the sphere of jazz or popular music—but it better encapsulates what we should be trying to achieve.
Being Informed versus Being Enlightened
The classic How to Read a Book (1940, rev. ed. 1972) by Adler and Van Doren makes the important distinction between being informed and being enlightened:
To be informed is to know simply that something is the case.
To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth. …
Enlightenment is achieved only when, in addition to knowing what an author says, you know what he means and why he says it.
— Adler and Van Doren
To be enlightened is to have a deep understanding. Understanding leads to insight and comfort with the data.
© Greg Dikmans