Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book deals with the ways in which different media may seek to negotiate the divide between the norms of modern audio-visual genres and those associated with representing the past authentically. It provides a timely historiographical account through a case study based on David Munrow's approach to early music performance. The book demonstrates the intellectual milieu within which Munrow's beliefs about the perceived similarities between certain non-European musics and instruments, and the musical cultures of Europe's past, were formed. It focuses on medievalism, neomedievalism, and fantasy in the thoroughly contemporary—but suggestively historical—television series Game of Thrones takes this further still. The book looks at the problem of authenticity from the opposite angle to those that precede it, focusing on the recreation of an historical art work rather than the representation of history through a modern work.