https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8567-2479
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Nemesio García-Carril Puy, Julian Dodd. Being True to Works of Music, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 79, Issue 2, Spring 2021, Pages 268–272, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaac/kpab010
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Being True to Works of Music is a brilliantly written monograph on musical authenticity that, definitely, constitutes an inescapable point of reference in the literature. The book’s scope is limited to analyzing the concepts of authenticity in the practice of performing works of purely instrumental Western classical music. Four hallmarks make it an indispensable reading, not only for philosophers interested in the topic, but also for musicians involved in that practice. First, the book supplies a comprehensive critical update of the main views about what it is for a performance to be authentic. Second, it uncovers and theoretically systematizes a kind of authenticity that, despite being entrenched in the performance practice, has gone unnoticed in the literature: interpretive authenticity, which consists in performing a work “in a manner that evinces understanding of it” (p. 3). Third, the book’s main thesis is striking and challenging: interpretive authenticity is the most fundamental performance value, and hence, more fundamental than score compliance authenticity, a kind of authenticity that consists in “accuracy in rendering the work’s score into sound” (p. 3). And fourth, Dodd’s view on authenticity implies that purely instrumental musical works have meaning, leading him to supply here a new and sophisticated characterization of musical meaning.
