Authenticity and horizons of expectation

 The notion of “authenticity” theorized in Tarskin’s article within the frame of musicology seems to evoke a much more general question of literary esthetics, related to the reception theory. The “reception theory” developed by H. R. Jauss in the literary field, as well as the notion of “horizon of expectations,” could enlighten Tarskin’s notion of “authenticity.”  The relation between the present and the past in Tarskin’s article reveals a more complicated dialectical dimension. In Tarskin’s vision, the present is not the only element that matters. The present has to challenge the past so that the past can reveal its “authenticity.” Tarskin does not try to give to the notion of “authenticity” the meaning of a direct and exclusive relation between the performer and the present period with its own specific “horizon of expectation” (as Jauss puts it, this would be only a “synchronic” perspective). He tries to “historicize” the notion of authenticity by interrogating the past with the instruments and the vision of the present. In the same way, Jauss considers that a second step, the “diachronic perspective”, has to follow the first methodological step, the synchronic perspective, in order to integrate the works of the past into the present (to reveal their “authenticity”). Tarskin’s attempts to explain the complex relations between different historical periods (baroque, romantic, modernist “geometrical”) that are related to the present could be better understood by taking into account Jauss’ theory, which claims that there are no eternal literary works (therefore no intrinsic “authenticity”). The “authenticity” (and “eternity”) can be preserved only when the reception (the present) continues to ask the old horizons new questions. But these questions have to have their roots in the present. Indeed, Jauss asserts that a work of art does not preserve its “eternity” because of an initial (“authentic”?) question that was formulated once and for all at the beginning. In the same way, if the performer asks an “old question” (for instance, in music, the question related to the sounds of old instruments), the work of the past will be stuck in its own horizons, incapable of connecting the past with the present. That implies a dynamic relation that brings into dialogue different periods of time, as long as the beginning of the dialogue with the past has its source in the present. The work does not survive because it addresses an eternal issue, stuck in the past (for instance, the recurrent issue regarding the instruments), but because new questions have been raised throughout time, not only about the “original” work, but also about various performances and “horizons of expectations”. Addressed in the light of Jauss’ reception theory and horizons of expectation, the notion of “authenticity” would then be a dialogical chain of questions and answers, or a “history” of questions asked by the present to the recent past, and furthermore, to more and more remote pasts.