ABSTRACT
The book concludes with a recent example of contemporary misunderstanding of meaning in Romanticist music, involving the use of Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets as an astronomical soundtrack. It reasserts the need for a deeper realisation of the essential links between cultural meaning and musical meaning, including in performance practice, and hopes this will provide a deeper incentive for Romanticist historically informed performance (HIP) to be more seriously considered by teachers, students, and performers. In opposition to a reductionist HIP scholasticism, the author calls for a C19th Romanticist HIP not merely in historical letter but also in re-animated Spirit, for nuanced approaches which embrace the Romanticist idea of metaphysical meaning in artworks. Far from simply ‘putting the dirt back in,’ such HIP aims at ‘putting the meaning back in.’ Finally, the author suggests a further HIP journey, from the fading Romanticism of early recordings back into the mid-century passion and freedom of High Romanticism. Our postmodern culture may well find a new affinity with such performances.
