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HIP Librarians: An Introduction to

Historically Informed Performance for
Music Librarians
a
Rachel E. Scott
a
Ned R. McWherter Library, University of Memphis, Memphis,
Tennessee, USA
Published online: 15 Aug 2014.

To cite this article: Rachel E. Scott (2014) HIP Librarians: An Introduction to Historically Informed
Performance for Music Librarians, Music Reference Services Quarterly, 17:3, 125-141, DOI:
10.1080/10588167.2014.935587

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 Music Reference Services Quarterly, 17:125–141, 2014
Published with license by Taylor & Francis
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DOI: 10.1080/10588167.2014.935587

HIP Librarians: An Introduction to Historically

Informed Performance for Music Librarians

RACHEL E. SCOTT
Ned R. McWherter Library, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

Preparing a historically informed performance requires musicians

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to think critically about the various sources of musical evidence

available and to apply them in performance. This article will
explore the music librarian’s role in performance practice. How
can music librarians leverage the primary sources in their collec-
tions and encourage performers to enrich their performances?

KEYWORDS historically informed performance, music research,

performance practice, information literacy, primary sources,
music librarianship

Preparing a historically informed performance requires musicians to think

critically about the various sources of musical evidence available and to
apply them to performance. To use library terminology, it requires perform-
ers to draw heavily on information literacy competencies. As an information
professional and the keeper of musical sources, the music librarian in a con-
servatory or academic music library setting is uniquely situated to facilitate
historically informed performance. Music library collections provide access
to valuable primary sources, albeit often in facsimile or digital formats, and
music library services encourage students to think critically about the variety
of sources available. Both the collections and services offered should pro-
mote performance practice—the enrichment of musical performance through
consultation and application of various forms of contextual musical informa-
tion. Music librarians possess a combination of information literacy expertise
and familiarity with music source materials that puts them in an excellent
position to advocate for historically informed performance.
Historically informed practice in music is a modern, though not a new,
idea. In 1905, the acclaimed violinist Joseph Joachim wrote:

© Rachel E. Scott
Received: 3 February 2014; Revised: 5 May 2014; Accepted: 2 June 2014.
Address correspondence to Rachel E. Scott, 126 Ned R. McWherter Library, University of
Memphis, TN 38152, USA. E-mail: rescott3@memphis.edu

125
 126 Rachel E. Scott

In order to properly prepare a piece, the performer should first learn

under which conditions the composition originated. A piece by Bach or
Tartini requires a different performance style than one by Mendelssohn
or Spohr. The hundred years that separate the two pairs of composers
mean a great deal in the historical development of our art, not only in
relation to form, but also for musical expression.1

While most performers of his time were content to play Bach using a mod-
ern instrument at contemporary concert pitch or to interpolate a cadenza
by a modern performer into a Mozart concerto, Joachim’s statement shows
that consideration of the composer’s expectations with regard to sound and
expression had entered the mainstream performer’s consciousness by the
beginning of the twentieth century.
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The idea of performance practice was developed and contested by

performers and musicologists throughout the twentieth century. Arnold
Dolmetsch—a performer of early music and builder of period instruments—
wrote in 1915, “We can no longer allow anyone to stand between us and
the composer.”2 This desire to remove editors and the intervening centuries
of tradition from performance quickly caught on among most early music
scholars and performers. However, others fought the perceived veneration
of “authenticity,” which, of course, is impossible to fully realize. Nonetheless,
the need for historical awareness in relation to Renaissance and Baroque
music was clearly demonstrated and eagerly espoused. The value of his-
torically informed practice did not immediately extend to the music of the
Classical and Romantic periods. As late as 1980, The New Grove Encyclopedia
of Music and Musicians entry on “Performing Practice” states: “There is no
‘lost tradition’ separating the modern performer from the music of Haydn,
Mozart and their successors. . . . There has been no severance of contact with
post-Baroque music as a whole, nor with the instruments used in performing
it.”3 This perception has since changed, and performance practice currently
extends into even the most recently composed repertoire as a means of
investigating and approximating the expectations of the composer. Although
it is interesting to observe the development of historically informed perfor-
mance over the course of the past century, it is outside of the purview of
this article.4
The critical-thinking skills involved in preparing a historically informed
performance correspond directly to the information literacy competencies
as defined by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
and the Music Library Association Bibliographic Instruction Subcommittee’s
Information Literacy Instructional Objectives for Undergraduate Music
Students. In The Historical Performance of Music: An Introduction, musi-
cologists Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell contend: “In order to realise the
goal of historically informed performance, musicians need to collect, crit-
icise, arrange, evaluate and interpret such raw material, which may be of
 Historically Informed Performance for Music Librarians 127

very different origin, content, quality and purpose.”5 These processes reflect
five of the six information literacy competencies advocated by the ACRL:
“Determine the extent of information needed, access the needed informa-
tion effectively and efficiently, evaluate information and its sources critically,
incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base, use information
effectively to accomplish a specific purpose.”6 The overlap of these com-
petencies creates an excellent opportunity for the music librarian to help
students apply their critical-thinking skills in an area of utmost importance
to musicians: performance.
In order for music librarians to facilitate historically informed per-
formance, they must be familiar with the relevant sources, both within
and outside of their collections. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of
this research, music librarians may also need to explore sources out-
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side of traditional musicological research. In the following section, best

practices for identifying and promoting these sources will be detailed.
Sources consulted may include various types of musical scores, instrument-
specific or theoretical treatises, narrative accounts, historical or archival
records, period instruments, photographs and other images, and early
recordings.

SCORES

Scores are the primary source material for musical research; however, they do
not necessarily answer all of the performer’s questions about a piece. Despite
all of the notation on the page, musical scores remain open to interpre-
tation. Composers cannot—and do not necessarily want to—indicate every
nuance of tempo, dynamics, phrasing, attack, affect, or tone color. Notions
of performer’s responsibility vary widely from one composer to another.
Many composers wrote something different than what they expected to hear;
certain conventions and stylistic elements either could not be or were not
notated, and are accordingly challenging to recreate. This means that even
under the watchful eye of the composer, a piece will sound different from
one performance to another.
François Couperin commented on the ambiguity of musical notation in
L’Art de toucher le clavecin: “There are in my view some deficiencies in the
way we notate music which relate to the manner in which we write our
language. It is that we write something different from what we play. This is
why foreigners play our music less well than we do theirs.”7 Couperin was
likely referring specifically to notes inégales, but there are other examples of
stylized rules and conventions in which composers’ notation did not match
their expectations. Composers often expected performers to ornament, to
realize a figured bass, or to play certain rhythms according to conventions of
the time and place.
 128 Rachel E. Scott

The openness of the score makes the art of performance incredibly

exciting for the performer, but it also makes determining the intent or expec-
tations of the composer quite challenging. The conventions and elements of
style so rudimentary to a composer of the French Baroque that they need
not be written down, including notes inégales, are not the same conven-
tions and style with which a modern performer is acquainted. The distance
between the composer’s sound and stylistic expectations and the realized
performance only increases as time passes from the date of composition.
This inexactness can be uncomfortable for students who are accustomed to
presenting the musical text “as is.”
Although scores cannot convey the exact intentions of the composer,
one’s choice of score is exceedingly important to historically informed per-
formance. Certain scores are simply more accurate and better prepared than
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others. In the age of the International Music Score Library Project and other
online platforms that offer freely digitized but often error-riddled perfor-
mance editions, this truth must be conveyed to music students by their studio
and classroom teachers, conductors, and librarians. In order to articulate why
and how certain scores differ, the music librarian must be aware of the var-
ious formats in which musical scores can be found—including manuscript,
scholarly or critical editions, performance editions, and anthologies—and the
strengths and purposes of each.
Musical manuscripts present a rich source of information about the
expectations of the composer, early performances, and performance practice.
Musical manuscripts may be autographs (in the hand of the composer) or
copies (in the hand of a known or unknown copyist). They may present the
whole work or fragments, the completed work, or sketches/drafts. They may
represent a specific performance (performance score) or no performance at
all (for example, presentation scores).
Autograph manuscripts provide the most direct link to the composer;
they allow viewers to see nuances in notation that are scrubbed away in
the publication process. A crossed-out repeat sign in the autograph of the
first movement of Mozart’s Symphony in D Major, K. 385 shows that the
composer considered, but decided against, a repeat; the difference in ink
color confirms that he added flutes and clarinets at a different time than
the other instruments. While some of the insight is purely musical, as in
the Mozart examples above, some is related to the character or personality
of the composer. Stanley Boorman’s entry on manuscript sources in Grove
Music Online highlights the latter: “We feel that we can detect something of
Beethoven’s personality in the barely legible scrawl with which he covered
the pages of his drafts, even coming to see the power of the inspirational
force that drove him.”8
While it may be tempting to conflate an autograph source with the one
authentic or true expression of a piece (Werktreue), doing so is dangerous.
Several composers revised pieces repeatedly throughout their lives,9 leaving
 Historically Informed Performance for Music Librarians 129

performers several different versions of a single piece from which to choose.

There are cases in which even the Fassung letzter Hand (last manuscript
version) should not serve as the definitive version. When several autographs
for a given piece exist with considerable differences, musicians have a choice
of which particular version to perform. Scores must always be analyzed in
conjunction with performance history and piece-specific historical sources.
Unlike printed scores, each musical manuscript is unique. While
manuscripts typically catered to the demands of a specific purpose or buyer,
the uniform and standardized notation in printed scores makes them suit-
able for the largest possible number of users. While modern performance
scores are most commonly used for performance and study, manuscripts
more frequently had purposes beyond performance and study, for example
as decoration or gifts. Due to the prohibitively expensive costs, rarity, and
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unique preservation needs of manuscripts, most music libraries do not have

a large collection of them. Consequently, it is important to be able to iden-
tify the availability and location of the manuscript for a given piece. The
collection housing the manuscript is typically listed in the composer’s work
list in the New Grove Encyclopedia of Music or Grove Music Online. RISM
(Répertoire international des sources musicales, or International Inventory of
Musical Sources after 1600) now requires no subscription10 and should be
searched in addition to Grove. Some archives and collections, including the
Morgan Library & Museum, have digitized musical manuscripts. High-quality
images of the manuscript in question may be available online.
Manuscript facsimiles and microform reproductions have made
manuscript material more accessible to music libraries. When an expensive
microform collection is acquired, one must ensure that a collection-level
catalog record is imported into the library’s integrated library system (ILS).
The record may be customized according to local preferences and needs.
For example, brief or minimal-level bibliographic records may be enhanced
to include comprehensive title-level access. In order to identify which
manuscript facsimiles are currently locally cataloged, one should conduct
a subject search for “manuscripts—facsimiles” limited to the music library’s
holdings. Students must also be taught to search union catalogs, including
WorldCat, and to understand what they find. The greatest utility of collection-
level records often comes from their presence in union catalogs where they
are collocated with like materials. The comprehensiveness of WorldCat’s
holdings allows students to bravely explore facets and limits in their searches
for microform and digital surrogates of archival and manuscript materials.
However, even the most comprehensive record in the catalog cannot
replace the music librarian’s expertise and promotional efforts. The music
librarian must be familiar enough with the contents and organization of
the microform collections to facilitate their use. The accompanying guides
are often in foreign languages and unintuitive; patrons will have questions.
To increase awareness, the music librarian should contact any performance,
 130 Rachel E. Scott

musicology, or theory faculty in addition to graduate students and perform-

ers who may have an interest in the collection. Notifying institutional and
area ensembles and publicizing the acquisition via the library’s Web site,
blog, or social media channels should also increase usage.
Scholarly or critical editions are secondary, and not primary, sources.
More exactly, the critical commentary section of the scholarly edition is
what constitutes a secondary source; the score itself is an edited primary
source. Nonetheless, they should be consulted in preparation for a histori-
cally informed performance. These scores provide insight into the available
primary sources and expose readers to the rigorous processes by which edi-
tors consult multiple manuscripts and contemporaneous source material to
inform their choices. By reading the editorial notes of a well-researched edi-
tion, the performer will learn the state of documentary evidence at the time
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the edition was prepared, some of the conventions of contemporaneous

performance, and some of the idiosyncrasies of performing the piece.
Scholarly editions present the music librarian with an opportunity to
teach students about the various purposes of different types of musical scores
and to discuss with students how these editions are researched, compiled,
and edited. Many students do not consult critical editions, even those, such as
the Neue Mozart Ausgabe, that are freely available online.11 There are many
likely reasons for this state of affairs: critical editions are typically physically
separate from the performing editions in libraries and do not circulate, critical
editions are often not discussed until graduate-level coursework and remain
unknown to most users, the amount of textual commentary in critical editions
is intimidating, and the lack of editorial markings is disconcerting to students
accustomed to being told exactly how to shape a phrase or when and how
to decrescendo.
Students must be taught that critical editions should not be performed
literally; the lack of phrasing and dynamics in the score does not mean that a
performer should not phrase or use dynamics. Although the removal of errors
and anachronisms is a necessary step in editing a score, it should not be
the ultimate goal of the performer. Richard Taruskin argues that authenticity
should not be equated only with lack of errors and anachronisms: “All too
often the sound of a modern ‘authentic’ performance of old music presents
the aural equivalent of an Urtext score: the notes and rests are presented with
complete accuracy and an equally complete neutrality.”12 The notes and rests
must not only be conveyed with accuracy and a thorough understanding of
the style and conventions, they must also be brought to life.
Performance editions are sometimes unfairly dismissed as source mate-
rial; they can serve a purpose in the preparation of historically informed
performances. The primary problem with performance scores is that they
are not chosen intentionally but simply accepted as the most convenient
option. Some performance scores were edited by famous musicians and
may provide some insight into their interpretations of a composition. In the
 Historically Informed Performance for Music Librarians 131

late nineteenth century, the pianist and conductor Hans von Bülow edited
many of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. His editorial contributions include
highly nuanced dynamics and phrasing, several idiosyncratic fingerings,
and paragraph-long footnotes of explanations and instructions. Von Bülow’s
effort differs substantially from music theorist Heinrich Schenker’s consid-
erably cleaner edition of the same pieces for Universal in 1918. Older
performance editions often include historical information about perfor-
mances, performers, and publication. This information may or may not be
useful, depending on the needs of the performer. Regardless of the purported
authenticity or uniqueness of the score in hand, it must be contextualized
with information specific to the piece’s performance history, any extant nar-
rative accounts pertaining to the piece, and a general knowledge of the
aesthetics and techniques of the time.
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TREATISES

An excellent way to investigate the general aesthetics or instrument-specific

techniques of a given time period is to read contemporaneous treatises.
Treatises may be specific to a single instrument or class of instruments,
or they may treat topics like music theory and composition. While they
originally served primarily pedagogical purposes, these texts convey a great
deal about performance and style of a specific time and place. Dolmetsch
was likely referring to instrument-specific treatises when he wrote: “Reliable
information is to be found only in those books of instruction which the old
musicians wrote about their own art. Happily there are many such, well filled
with precepts, examples, and philosophical considerations.”13 Fortunately
for modern readers, many treatises have been digitized and the precepts,
examples, and considerations of old musicians are often freely available
online.
Treatises often include as much information about style and expression
as they do about instrumental technique. Music librarians might not know
how to identify relevant treatises for instruments that they do not play, or
for periods with which they are less familiar. In order to identify the more
important treatises specific to a given time and instrument, readers would do
well to consult one of these Grove handbooks: Performance Practice: Music
Before 160014 and Performance Practice: Music After 1600,15 both of which
list treatises by instrument for each major era. These handbooks not only
identify relevant titles but also devote a few paragraphs to description and
comparison of the relevant treatises. Not specific to music, but useful in iden-
tifying treatises and narrative accounts published before 1800, is the English
Short Title Catalogue.16 This database is maintained by the British Library
and indexes English-language titles (including translations). While its useful-
ness in discovery is limited—subject headings are often broad, for example
 132 Rachel E. Scott

“Music” or “Music–Europe”—this database is one of the most comprehensive

for pre-1800 sources and does identify the location of manuscript holdings
and the availability of digital and other formats.
Music librarians might not know when to recommend or consult a
treatise. When a patron expresses confusion about how to accurately exe-
cute an ornament or curiosity about figured bass conventions for a specific
composer, these are opportunities for the music librarian to recommend
a contemporaneous treatise. Instrument-specific treatises provide examples
and rules to address questions about ornamentation, figured bass, accom-
paniment, style, and technique. In order to publicize these items, music
librarians should collaborate with studio instructors to create instrument-
specific subject guides. Harnessing the subject knowledge of instrumentalists
and singers to help identify and annotate key treatises for various instruments
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would create an exceptionally useful resource for performers.

NARRATIVE ACCOUNTS

Narrative accounts include any references to a musical event or composition

in contemporaneous literature, journal or newspaper articles, correspon-
dence, diaries, memoirs, or any other written accounts. For well-known
composers, such accounts are indexed and/or excerpted in the complete
works and thematic index of a composer. Among the numerous volumes of,
and the supplements to, the Neue Mozart Ausgabe is, for example, Series X,
number 34: The Documents of His Life, compiled by Otto Erich Deutsch.17
When such accounts are not included in the complete works or thematic
index, readers should consult a well-researched biography. The contem-
poraneous accounts cited in the biography can then be investigated and
requested through interlibrary loan or searched for online.
An excellent way to identify newspaper and journal articles from
the mid-eighteenth to twentieth centuries (1766–1962) is to search RIPM
(Repertoire international de la presse musicale or Retrospective Index to
Music Periodicals). Because this database is an index and not a full text
database, the music librarian will likely need to instruct users how to
request identified sources through interlibrary loan or to find the text online.
Fortunately, many eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth-century periodicals
have been digitized by Google Books, HathiTrust, Internet Archive, and other
projects. Free, online retrieval of these full-text documents has made this
process increasingly user-friendly.
Several other article databases can be searched for contemporaneous
reviews. To do so, one must select appropriate search dates, limit the
document type to review (as appropriate), and search the composer or
composition name. Many libraries have significant nineteenth-century cov-
erage in JSTOR, Nineteenth Century Index, ProQuest Historical Newspapers,
 Historically Informed Performance for Music Librarians 133

and other multidisciplinary article databases. Some music periodicals have

print indexes that facilitate the identification of contemporaneous sources,
including Etude.18 The secondary literature can also help users find narra-
tive accounts; most musicological scholarship includes references to primary
sources, including a variety of contemporaneous reports and records.

HISTORICAL/ARCHIVAL RECORDS

Historical and archival records may provide valuable information about

ensemble size, salaries, stage design, performance dates, and other con-
textual historical data. There is a good deal of overlap between personal
narratives and historical records; many narratives are included among the
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records of a musical venue, ensemble, company or publisher. Rémy Campos,

in an article on the Société de Musique of Geneva, argues that archival
records, such as concert programs and committee minutes and correspon-
dence, in addition to narrative accounts like press reviews, help contextualize
musical scores and treatises.19 Given their detail and the exactness of their
record keeping, historical and archival records can be an excellent source of
factual historical information. The challenge is determining what information
is available and how it can be accessed.
Finding archival records often requires that one go directly to the source.
Now researchers can visit the Web site of the ensemble or venue’s archive in
order to determine, for example, how frequently Lortzing’s operas were per-
formed at the Wiener Staatsoper20 in a given time period or the salaries paid
to Concertgebouw21 musicians in the 1890s. However, the availability of the
archive’s online presence does not ensure the availability of archival records;
the bulk of archival records have not been digitized or even indexed. For
many ensembles and venues, the best finding aid may be secondary sources,
including histories of the ensemble written using archival materials. Many
archives provide a bibliography of publications written using archival docu-
ments. The list of literature provided by the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde
in Wien (Vienna, Austria) is a good example.22

ICONOGRAPHY

Contemporaneous images can be used to investigate period instruments,

ensemble size or seating, operatic staging, embouchure or technique, and
several other aspects of performance. These images might be photographs,
paintings, engravings, illuminations, or any other visual media. The context
and original purpose of the image must be taken into account when assign-
ing weight to the accuracy of its depiction.23 The technique and posture of
an angel striking the lyre while suspended in air in a devotional painting can
 134 Rachel E. Scott

likely be discounted, but the depiction of the instrument itself might bear
some resemblance to those used in the time and place in which the paint-
ing was made. Although photographs can be edited, they are nonetheless
more objective and more readily accepted as historical record. Their obvi-
ous limitation is that cameras were not widely available until the mid- to
late nineteenth century. Architectural plans and drawings from patents, trea-
tises, or other scientific materials are also more easily accepted as factual.
Most other existing image types were created as artistic works, not to record
aspects of musical history.
Finding relevant images can prove challenging. To browse the local col-
lection for books with numerous depictions of music or musical images, one
should search the subject “music in art” or “musical instruments in art.” The
Library of Congress’s Dayton C. Miller Musical Iconography Collection24 is
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keyword-searchable and currently includes around 850 prints. Subscription

image databases, such as ARTstor, and those maintained by museums and
archives, such as the Picture Archives and Graphics Department at the
Austrian National Library,25 contain music-related images. When the compo-
sition in question was debuted in a known location, the cultural repositories
of that region should be searched for relevant images.
To search library catalogs for images of a performance venue, do a
subject search for the name of the venue as listed in the Library of Congress’s
authorities database. For example, search “Burgtheater (Vienna, Austria)” and
“buildings, structures, etc.” to find books about this venue, which may (or
may not) include images. Performer and composer biographies often include
images, and instrument-specific reference works typically include technical
diagrams of instruments, as well as pictures of performance.26

ORGANOLOGY

The instrument that might have been used to debut a piece of music is
another valid point of investigation for historically informed performance.
According to Grove Music Online, organology is “the study of musical instru-
ments in terms of their history and social function, design, construction and
relation to performance.”27 The differences in timbre, volume, technique,
materials, and sound between modern instruments and their predecessors
can be staggering. Stephen Davies contends that period instruments should
sound better than modern ones in the works written for them: “They make
clearer or more salient features of the work that are aesthetically signifi-
cant.”28 The idiomatic features of period instruments may or may not be
replicated on modern instruments, but should, at the very least, be inves-
tigated and understood by the performer. The Baroque harpsichord, for
example, is a completely different instrument than the modern piano. When
playing a Baroque keyboard piece on a modern instrument, the performer
 Historically Informed Performance for Music Librarians 135

must investigate these distinctions. Differences in the keyboard’s action and

register may render some of the composer’s desired articulation and effects
impossible on a modern keyboard.
Performers might also consider seeking out a period instrument for the
performance or refashioning their modern instruments to sound more like
the period instrument. Peter Walls writes that “interest in period instruments
has been driven by a conviction that music of earlier eras is best served by
recreating the instrumental timbres envisaged by the composer.”29 Although
most music libraries do not have a collection of period instruments, they do
have sources that can elucidate some of the differences between modern
and period instruments. A very helpful series in establishing the techniques,
sounds, and historical background of several instruments is the Cambridge
Handbooks to the Historical Performance of Music. Many music reference
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sources, including Grove Music Online and The New Grove Dictionary of
Music, also include period- and composer-specific information for several
instruments.

EARLY RECORDINGS

As a source of evidence in performance practice, sound recordings are

not as objective as they might seem. Many twentieth-century composers
recorded and performed their own works at tempos that matched the mark-
ings indicated in their scores. One such example is composer Samuel Barber
accompanying soprano Leontyne Price in his Hermit Songs during a live
concert at the Library of Congress.30 Some composers, however, consistently
played or conducted their own pieces at a very different tempo than is indi-
cated. Igor Stravinsky, for example, very frequently offered different tempos
and executions in his performances and sound recordings than in his score.
Using recordings to investigate nineteenth-century repertoire is even
more problematic. Most of the existing recordings of performers who
debuted nineteenth-century pieces were recorded using primitive record-
ing techniques and materials. Accordingly, the sound quality is not good and
can compromise the musical content. Early recordings were also produced
later in famous performers’ careers, which has huge implications for singers,
but may also be important for instrumentalists. Would Friedrich von Flotow
have been so amenable to Adelina Patti championing his opera Martha if all
he had to go on was her early twentieth-century recording of “Last Rose of
Summer?”31 To what extent were Patti’s inexact pitch, sliding between notes,
and extreme rubatos due in part to the vocal decline she faced later in her
career, rather than indicative of how she performed at the pinnacle of her
career?
Although they are not definitive, these recordings can provide useful
insight into the interpretations of performers who were active as early as the
 136 Rachel E. Scott

mid-nineteenth century. Listeners can hear examples of the ornaments and

cadenzas in context and get a sense of how and when rubato was employed.
A great contemporaneous source for those interested in verismo opera, for
example, would be Enrico Caruso’s early twentieth-century recordings of
Leoncavallo’s “Vesti la Giubba” from Pagliacci.32 He recorded this aria just
over a decade after the opera premiered and after having performed the
role to great critical acclaim. Listeners can assume that both the style and
interpretation are in line with the expectations of both the composer and
contemporaneous audiences.
Identifying early recordings is more straightforward than other primary
sources, but obtaining and listening to them presents several challenges.
Once the performer or ensemble has been identified, one can search the
name in WorldCat and limit the search to sound recordings. However,
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many institutions are not willing to loan sound recordings, and many early
recordings may be on formats that one’s library has no means of play-
ing. This problem has been addressed in part by the availability of many
early sound recordings online. A variety of commercial platforms, such as
YouTube, and institutional repositories, such as the Cylinder Preservation
and Digitization Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara
Libraries,33 provide an excellent selection of early twentieth-century record-
ings. The sound quality of these recordings is often very bad and can
detract from the appreciation of the musical content. These limitations to
access add another layer of difficulty to a source that is already fraught with
controversy.

APPLICATION

Music libraries have many valuable resources in their collections. However,

until they know about the relevant resources and how they are best
used, students are unlikely to invest the time and energy to consult them.
A formidable hurdle will be choosing how this information is best delivered
to performers. Both marketing and library instruction should be employed
to encourage historically informed performance. Promotional ideas include
holding an open house to showcase rare materials, hosting a demonstra-
tion of period instruments, creating displays to feature manuscript materials,
curating virtual exhibitions of primary source musical materials, and main-
taining LibGuides, or online subject guides, that link performance practice
sources and explain how best to use them.
Collaborating with ensemble directors and studio teachers to offer infor-
mation literacy instruction is an excellent way to expose students to some
of the resources available to them. The worksheet in the Appendix includes
several questions that the music librarian could use in an instructional setting.
The worksheet cannot be completed in a 60-minute session; as a result, the
 Historically Informed Performance for Music Librarians 137

librarian should choose several questions and demonstrate how to search

and use the relevant sources to answer them. In order to maximize rel-
evancy, students should then answer the questions using a piece in their
repertoire.
Instruction should take place in the library so that students have ample
opportunity to search for, find, handle, and navigate the resources for them-
selves. Ideally, both the music librarian and the classroom instructor would
be present to reinforce the importance of the instruction and to answer
questions as they arise. Even if formal instruction cannot be arranged for an
entire class or ensemble, instruction can occur more casually at the reference
desk or in the stacks. Kirstin Dougan has noted that, because of the variety
and complexity of musical materials, “A simple music reference interview in
which the patron is seeking a known item might include several steps that
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will likely involve a fair amount of instruction.”34

CONCLUSION

The value of historically informed performance cannot be disputed. When

musicians invest the time and effort in understanding the musical and
historical context in which a piece was composed, their performances
can only be enriched and their musical knowledge and critical think-
ing skills expanded. Fidelity to the composer is a legitimate consideration
because the composer has arguably the most valid understanding of how
a piece should sound. Research is required because musical conventions
were context-specific and often went unnotated, modern instruments dras-
tically change the sound of piece, and reliance on innate musicality and
contemporary practices can lead to naïve interpretations. Contemporary
classical musicians are typically distanced by centuries from the com-
poser’s work; the introduction of contemporary musical practices into a
Baroque or Classical piece changes the character, import, and meaning of a
work.
Musicians engaged in historically informed performance display a high
degree of information literacy. Information literacy in performance practice
involves selecting, evaluating, interpreting, and applying musical sources to
a performance. The music librarian should have both the information literacy
expertise and familiarity with music source materials to teach student per-
formers. These competencies—valuable to all performing musicians, not just
those interested in early music—may be unfamiliar or unintuitive to the stu-
dent performer. This presents music librarians, working in cooperation with
studio and musicology faculty, an opportunity to enrich the critical thinking
skills and performances of music students. Music librarians should seek to
educate their constituents on the rich resources available to them and to
advocate for historically informed performance.
 138 Rachel E. Scott

NOTES

1. Joseph Joachim and Andreas Moser, Violinschule, vol. 3 (Berlin: Simrock, 1905), 5. “Um seiner
Aufgabe vollkommen gerecht zu werden, wird sich der Darstellende zunächst über die näheren Umstände
unterrichten müssen, unter denen die Komposition, die er vortragen will, entstanden ist. Denn ein Werk
von Bach oder Tartini erheischt eine andere Vortragsweise als eines von Mendelssohn oder Spohr. Der
Zeitraum von rund hundert Jahren, der die beiden Autorenpaare voneinander trennt, bedeutet für die
geschichtliche Entwicklung unserer Kunst nicht nur einen großen Unterschied in formaler Hinsicht,
sondern einen weit größeren noch nach der Seite des musikalischen Ausdrucks hin.”
2. Arnold Dolmetsch, The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries Revealed
by Contemporary Evidence (London: Novello and Co, 1915), 471.
3. Howard Mayer Brown, “Performing Practice,” in The New Grove Encyclopedia of Music and
Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie, v. 14 (London: Macmillan Publishers, 1980), 388.
4. For an in-depth history of this topic, readers should consult Harry Haskell’s The Early Music
Revival (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988).
5. Colin Lawson and Robin Stowell, The Historical Performance of Music: An Introduction
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(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 17.

6. An ACRL task force is currently extensively revising the standards. Association of College
and Research Libraries, “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,” accessed
November 1, 2013, http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/informationliteracycompetency.
7. Translation in Peter Walls, “Historical Performance and the Modern Performer” in Musical
Performance A Guide to Understanding, edited by John Rink (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2002), 18.
8. Stanley Boorman et al. “Sources, MS.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford
University Press, accessed November 1, 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/
grove/music/50158pg1.
9. Christopher Hogwood reports that Mendelssohn suffered “Revisionskrankheit.” Christopher
Hogwood, “Urtext, que me veux-tu?” Early Music 41, no. 1 (2013): 121.
10. “Online Catalog of Musical Sources,” Répertoire international des sources musicales, accessed
November 9, 2013, http://www.rism.info/.
11. “Neue Mozart-Ausgabe: Digitized Version,” Digitale Mozart Edition, accessed November 15,
2013, http://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/nma/start.php?l=2.
12. Richard Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995), 72.
13. Arnold Dolmetsch, The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, (London:
Novello, 1915), vi.
14. Howard Mayer Brown and Stanley Sadie. Performance Practice: Music Before 1600 (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1989).
15. Howard Mayer Brown and Stanley Sadie, Performance Practice: Music After 1600 (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1990).
16. “English Short Title Catalogue,” British Library, accessed November 1, 2013, http://estc.bl.uk/.
17. Erich Otto Deutsch, Neue Mozart Ausgabe, Serie X, Werkgruppe 34, Die Dokumente seines
Lebens. Kassel, Germany: Barenreiter, 1956.
18. Pamela R. Dennis, An Index to Articles Published in the Etude Magazine, 1883–1957
(Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2011).
19. Rémy Campos, “Histoire de l’interprétation et histoire des bibliothèques: Le cas des matériels
de la Société de Musique de Genève (1823–2006),” Fontes Artis Musicae 54, no. 1 (January 2007).
20. The Spielplanarchiv indexes performances from 1869 to present. Wiener Staatsoper,
“Spielplanarchiv,” http://db-staatsoper.die-antwort.eu/.
21. The Archive of the Concertgebouw scans on request and at a cost, coverage varies. The
Archive of the Concertgebouw, https://stadsarchief.amsterdam.nl/english/archives_database/inventaris/
1089.en.html.
22. “Literatur,” Archiv, Bibliothek und Sammlungen der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien,
accessed November 1, 2013, http://www.a-wgm.com/literatur/literatur.htm.
23. For an introduction to the study and application of iconography, please consult Erwin
Panofsky’s Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: Harper
& Row, 1962).
 Historically Informed Performance for Music Librarians 139

24. “Dayton C. Miller Musical Iconography Collection,” Library of Congress, accessed November 1,
2013, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/miller/miller-home.html.
25. “Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung,” Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, accessed November 1,
2013, http://www.onb.ac.at/sammlungen/bildarchiv.htm.
26. Robert Palmieri and Margaret W. Palmieri, Piano: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge,
2003).
27. Laurence Libin, “Organology,” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University
Press, accessed November 1, 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/
20441.
28. Stephen Davies, Musical Works and Performances: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford, UK:
Clarendon Press, 2001), 218.
29. Peter Walls, “Historical Performance and the Modern Performer,” in Musical Performance: A
Guide to Understanding, edited by John Rink (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 24.
30. Samuel Barber, Leontyne Price & Samuel Barber Historic Performances (1938, 1953) (New
Rochelle, NY: Bridge, CD, 2004).
31. Patti recorded this and other arias between 1903 and 1907. The Complete Adelina Patti and
Victor Maurel (Swarthmore, PA: Marston, CD, 1998).
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32. Enrico Caruso, Caruso, Prima voce (Charlottesville, VA: Nimbus, CD, 1989).
33. “Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project,” UC Santa Barbara Library, http://cylinders.
library.ucsb.edu/ (accessed November 1, 2013).
34. Kirstin Dougan, “Delivering and Assessing Music Reference Services,” The Reference Librarian
54, no. 1 (2013): 41.

APPENDIX: HISTORICALLY INFORMED PERFORMANCE:

INVESTIGATING YOUR PIECE IN THE LIBRARY

Choose a piece you are currently working on (composed between 1600 and
1900).
1. Look up the composer and work in Grove Music Online or New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Record information specific to your
piece (date composed, original key, original scoring, extant alternate ver-
sions, catalog number, library holding manuscript, references) and the
complete editions and thematic catalogs available for your composer (at top
of works list).
A description of Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate, for example, would include the
following:
K165/K158a, in F major, scored for sop, 2 ob, 2 hn, str, bc; composed in
Milan, Jan 1773 (date from MS of work, not always clear), in Mozarts Werke
III/ii, 43; in Neue Mozart Ausgabe I:3, 157; motet, for V. Rauzzini; first per-
formed in Milan, 17 Jan 1773; rev. version with 2 fl instead of 2 oboes and
text changes, Salzburg, about 1780.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
2a. Look up the composer’s collected work(s) and thematic catalog. Write
the call numbers in the blank below and pull them from the shelves.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
 140 Rachel E. Scott

2b. Search the library catalog for manuscripts of your piece. If available, write
down the call number and view it. HINT: Search manuscripts as a subject
and your composer or piece title.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
2c. If unavailable, search RISM (Music Manuscripts after 1600) for
manuscripts of your piece. Note the key signature, scoring, date, and library
below. Any differences from the Grove entry?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
3a. Read the editor’s notes in the critical edition. List the sources (autograph,
copy, other manuscripts) consulted and/or omitted to prepare your piece.
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Summarize the editor’s process.

__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
3b. How are the editor’s markings (suggested ornaments, dynamics, etc.)
differentiated from those of the composer?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
4. Write down original key (found in Grove). Consult Bruce Haynes’ A
History of Performing Pitch: The Story of “A” to investigate the pitch in the
time period and city/region in which your piece was composed. How might
you apply your findings to a modern performance?
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
5a. Look up relevant treatises in Performance Practice: Music After 1600
(a Grove Handbook). List two that are specific to the time period, your
instrument (or class of instruments), and the geographic region.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
5b. Read both treatises. What information about ornamentation, technique
or style will you apply to your performance? List three ideas below.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
6. What contemporaneous narratives can you find specific to your piece?
The composer’s thematic catalog might list some; the composer’s letters and
diaries, contemporaneous reviews, and references in literature are all good
sources. List two and summarize them below. If you can’t find anything spe-
cific to your piece, write down sources consulted and provide two insights
specific to your composer.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
 Historically Informed Performance for Music Librarians 141

7a. What information can you find about the first performer or ensemble?
List sources consulted.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
7b. Search WorldCat for recordings of the first performer. If available, list a
few:
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
8. Write down the date and venue of the debut performance. List any venue
specific information (seating capacity/arrangement, stage height/shape, tech-
nical and acoustical information, sales and administration information)
around the time of the debut of your piece.
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__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
9. How does your modern instrument differ from the instrument used to
debut this piece? List three differences. Singers should list three differences
in execution and aesthetics.
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________