From embodiment to reenactment – the performer’s body as a research tool in HIP

All types of sources that are relevant for musical interpretation research include aspects of the body at a central point. The most common sources include text information like instructive texts or annotated parts as well as sound information encoded in piano rolls or early recordings. Understanding the meaning of historical text and sound information requires retrospective translation processes, for example from annotations back into cultural practices, from instructions back into sound, from early recordings back into performances. For this translation of historical sources into sound production, the concept of embodiment is obvious, although it has already been given different definitions in current discourses. To sharpen the use of the term in historical interpretation research, "historical embodiment" is only defined as a tool for reconstructive interpretation analysis and thus differs, for example, from the body discourses and embodiment concepts of sociology or cognitive and cultural studies. If physical translation is applied not only to isolated information, but to larger contexts, “historical embodiment” expands into “musical reenactment”. This term is also defined here as a method of gaining knowledge and thus differs from current concepts of reenactment as a performative practice, as defined in theater and cultural studies.