Hyperreal Authenticity and the Postwar Early Music Recording

The Early Music movement has evolved through decades of interactions between musicians, instrument makers, and scholars, as well as record labels, producers, and sound engineers. The frictions implicit in these collaborations have created a peculiar aesthetic that I term “hyperreal authenticity,” a heightened, “more-than-perfect” state in which a façade of historical authenticity conjures an idealized past (usually through the use of historical materials) that is obligatorily mediated through modern technologies. Hyperreal authenticity is unique and essential to Early Music recordings and productions, but its role lies beneath the surface and often remains implicit and unnoticed. Its clearest characteristic is its ability to communicate multiple modes of listening and production simultaneously, its primary tool the instrumentalization of historical places and spaces. Space and hyperreal authenticity are so integral to the Early Music recording industry and the way it has shaped listening that it is possible to piece together a sonic history of the movement since World War II by following this common thread. This article focuses on a selection of four influential instances in which the relationship between space and hyperreal authenticity has changed the course of Early Music history since the second half of the twentieth century.