ABSTRACT
A sobering message is reaching us : we don't always try to re-create authentic sound even when we have access to it. Richard Taruskin has shown how we remake music, whether Mozart or Machaut, according to our own taste, and that that taste changes by generation or even faster. I Robert Philip's new book on historical recordings shows how little we aspire to re-create the sounds and techniques of pre-war works (Elgar, Puccini) even when we have recordings made under the direction of the composer or to his satisfaction." Is it an accident that our efforts of reconstruction are concentrated on what we can't know? That we apply them with the greatest conviction to repertories where the performing tradition has been broken and there are no recordings?
