Inside Early Music:
Conversations with Performers

by Bernard D. Sherman

(NY: Oxford University Press, 1997)

table of contents


Introduction: An Atmosphere of Controversy

PART ONE: The Middle Ages, Plainchant, and “Otherness”

1. A Different Sense of Time—Marcel Pérès on plainchant
2. You Can’t Sing a Footnote—Susan Hellauer on performing medieval music
3. Vox Feminea —Barbara Thornton on Hildegard von Bingen
4. The Colonizing Ear Christopher Page on medieval music
Postscript: The Middle Ages, Plainchant, and “Otherness”


PART TWO: The Renaissance, Oxbridge, and Italy 131

5. There Is No Such Thing as a Norm—Paul Hillier on Renaissance sacred vocal music
6. Other Kinds of Beauty—Peter Phillips on Palestrina and the Tallis Scholars
7. Singing Like a NativeAlan Curtis, Rinaldo Alessandrini, and Anthony Rooley on Monteverdi
8. Emotional Logic—Andrew Lawrence-King on instruments and improvisation


PART THREE: The Baroque 230

9. Consistent Inconsistencies—John Butt on Bach
10."One Should Not Make a Rule”—Gustav Leonhardt on keyboard music
11. Aladdin’s Lamp— Anner Bylsma on the ’cello (and Vivaldi)
12. Beyond the Beautiful Pearl—Julianne Baird on Italian and English styles
13. You Can Never Be Right for All Time—Nicholas McGegan on Handel
14. At Home with the Idiom—William Christie on the French Baroque
15. Triple Counterpoint—Jeffrey Thomas, Philippe Herreweghe, and John Butt on Singing Bach’s Sacred Works


PART FOUR: Classic and Romantic

16. Restoring Ingredients—Malcolm Bilson on the Fortepiano
17. Speaking Mozart’s Lingo—Robert Levin on Mozart and Improvisation
18. Taking Music off the Pedestal—Roger Norrington on Beethoven
 Postscript: “Classical” and “Romantic” Performance Practice in Beethoven
19. Reviving Idiosyncrasies—John Eliot Gardiner on Berlioz and Brahms

20. Reinventing Wheels—Joshua Rifkin on Interpretation and Rhetoric

Epilog 531

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