Omar Zoboli

Omar Zoboli is professor at the Musikhochschule Basel, Switzerland. He won first prize at the International Competition of Ancona and at the Italian Television (RAI) Competition for Young Performers in 1978. In this interview, he discusses his early career, studying with Heinz Holliger, and his inspirations. He also talks about his sound concept and performance on period instruments. Zoboli speculates about Antonino Pasculli’s instrument and reeds. He talks about tone production and his teaching philosophy. Finally, he talks about repertoire, solo playing, and jazz improvisation.

Renewable Early Music

In the past few decades there have been major changes to historically informed performance practice. Early music departments have appeared in conservatories worldwide, where one can study early music on period instruments according to extant performance sources. Despite historically informed performance practice being well-known and well-acknowledged, no course has been offered thus far by Hungarian conservatories, resulting in the phenomena of young professionals with bachelor and/or master degrees but with only scarce awareness of this practice. This essay provides readers with the basic notions of early music performance, emphasizing the particular mentality shaping its theoretical foundation. Keywords: early music, historical performance, early music department

Gadamer and the Hermeneutics of Early Music Performance

The success of the early music movement raises questions about performing historical works: Should musicians perform on period instruments and try to reconstruct the original style? If a historically “authentic” performance is impossible or undesirable, what should be the goal of the early music movement? I turn to Gadamer to answer these questions by constructing the outlines of a hermeneutics of early music performance. In the first half of the paper, I examine Gadamer’s critique of historical reconstruction and argue that this critique sheds light on mistaken tendencies and misunderstandings within the early music movement, but it does not discredit the movement as such. In the second half of the paper, I attempt to show how Gadamer’s dialogical account of historical consciousness provides a framework for understanding what historically informed performance is seeking to accomplish, as well as its advantage over a Nietzschean approach.

Reflection

During a rehearsal of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantata BWV 51 in Oxford in 2008, a colleague, whom I had invited to listen and to observe, advised quite simply: more shapes. The aim, I believe, was to lift the notes further from the page to create a more nuanced and stylish performance. This suited both the contrapuntal edifice of Bach’s music and the period instruments that we were using. On this occasion I was leading the ensemble and therefore in possession of greater authority than usual. I have nonetheless had similar subsequent experiences of this piece, and of similar repertoire, where I have possessed artistic licence to create a microcosm of musical shapes not found in the notated score. Indeed, I have found that such practice continues to be strongly encouraged within this genre....