Reading Early Music Today: Between Reenactment and New Technologies

International audienceSince the revival of Historically Informed Performance in the 1960s, the interpretation of Early Music has continuously raised questions many of which remain unanswered. Nevertheless, understanding of earlier practice continues to grow and performers have long surpassed the strict historical urtext approach that initially prevailed, largely due to the growing body of evidence that instrumentalists of earlier times relied heavily on aurally transmitted improvised musical traditions, which can only be re-imagined today. The modern musician must also improvise in order to reconstitute or re-invent missing elements belonging to a long-forgotten tradition. From a philosophical point of view, therefore, the performance of early music today is closely related to hermeneutics, and the multiple questions involved in the interpretative process