So far, I have analyzed the elements that made the performance flexible on the early recordings and tried to understand the performance practices of the time by comparing
Reinecke's performance, notation, and explanation in his book. I then tried to emulate his performance to integrate it into my own performance. Finally, in this section, I will discuss
the importance of aiming for historical accuracy in performance and what authentic performance means to us.
As Bruce Haynes notes: “totally accurate historical performance is probably impossible to achieve. To know it has been achieved is certainly impossible.”1 We have some idea of
how Reinecke played, and we certainly have more tangible examples of his performance practice than we do of Mozart's. However, if we approach Mozart's time through Reinecke's
performance of Mozart, whether we have arrived at the truth becomes entirely speculative. In any case, what we aim to do is not to bring a copy of the past directly into the present
but rather to integrate elements of it into my performance. Peres Da Costa wrote:
I—like many others—see great value in arming oneself with as much information as possible about the original performance ideals for any musical work. Through this process, the work can be viewed from new or different perspectives, amplifying the choices available in its realization. Having more choice makes for a more varied and flexible musical intuition.2
The essential part of approaching historical performance is the process rather than the result. In the case of this research: get as much information as possible, analyze what can be
heard in the early recordings, accept the differences between the recordings and what we practice today instead of closing one's ears to them, and try to integrate them into
performance in one's own way. Haynes also wrote:
[...] what we are aiming at, rather, is the starling shock of newness, of immediacy, the sense of rightness that occurs when after countless frustrating experiments, we feel as though we have achieved the identification of performance style with the demands of the music.3
In his article, Mineo Ota, a researcher in the field of art studies, interviews several Japanese performers of early music and finds the following commonalities regarding the authenticity
of their performances:
They share the view that while they take "fidelity to the past" in the sense of historical research, in other words, objective "authenticity", as something to be taken for granted, their ultimate goal is to achieve "authenticity" in the subjective sense - that is, to be convinced that this is the truth for them.4
He concludes that there are two layers of "authenticity" in the historical performance and that there is a structure in which subjective authenticity has been established on the basis of objective authenticity.5 It is the recognition that what we do is ultimately subjective that gives us more flexibility and daring in our performance.
In such a process, one accepts that one's taste and performance may change. Haynes explained: “We tend to talk about tastes as if it were permanent. But, although we don't
always notice, our tastes do change. We learn to like new things. Our listening vocabulary has been regularly extended.”6 When compiling this research, I hesitated to capture my
experiments on video and put my current stance on historical performance into words because I thought that my performance and values might change a lot in the future. When I
mentioned this to my supervisor, Wouter Verschuren, he said: “The research is not a contract for your performance. You might play differently tomorrow, and that's fine. Use it to
expand the possibilities of your performance.”7 Even in Tijdschrift voor Oude Muziek, Anner Bijlsma commented about Frans Brüggen’s recordings that there are enormous changes in
his ideas: “It makes you wonder. Was he wrong, then? Or is he wrong now? Where's the mistake? There is no mistake. Truly great music travels along with you, just as the moon travels
with a train.”
With less than ten days to go before the deadline for this research, I was lucky enough to have two opportunities to talk to Neal Peres Da Costa on Zoom. I would like to end this
section with his words of encouragement:
The world is definitely changing. You have to be courageous. The younger generation is expanding what is available and saying something new by using the practices and doing it in a very individual way. That would be Mako's way.8
1. Bruce Haynes. The End of Early Music: A Period Performer’s History of Music for the Twenty-First Century, 10.
2. Peres Da Costa, Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing, xxv.
3. Bruce Haynes. The End of Early Music: A Period Performer’s History of Music for the Twenty-First Century, 10.
4. Ota Mineo. "Shinseisei no Kozo". Kokusikantetsugaku17 (March 2013), 42.
5. Ibid, 45.
6. Bruce Haynes. The End of Early Music: A Period Performer’s History of Music for the Twenty-First Century, 221.
7. Wouter Verschuren, Mako Kodama, December 2023. Based on the author's memory.
8. Neal Peres Da Costa, Mako Kodama, Feburary 19th 2024. Based on the author's memory and notes.
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