The French Cantata in Performance

IT IS SOME YEARS NOW since the desire to perform early music according to the strict stylistic conventions of its own period was the concern of a small coterie of scholarly enthusiasts only; the longplaying record, in particular, has so disseminated such performances that nowadays a very large body of musicians and music lovers takes the matter for granted. An interest in music of the past-let alone its authentic performance-is, of course, a phenomenon unique to the twentieth century, previous generations seeming to have preferred the contemporaneity of their own music to the outmoded expression of the past. It is true that the nineteenth century rediscovered Bach but the view then current of music being an evolutionary process (nearing perfection) tended to inhibit an appreciation of earlier styles until much later in that century. It has been largely left to our own times both to prise open the rich vein of music stretching back to early medieval times and to judge this music on its own terms. And since the pioneering days of Dolmetsch and others in the early years of this century the crusade on behalf of authenticity in the performance of early music has gathered so many followers that to all intents the cause seems to have been won. In the light of this it is interesting that Dene Bamett suggested at The Third David Nichol Smith Seminar on Eighteenth-Century Studies' that there is at least one area which does not seem to have been touched by the prevailing attitude towards authentic recreation: that is, in the performance of eighteenth-century operas and cantatas, or, to be more precise, in the acting techniques employed in modern productions of these works. Barnett believes that the highly

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