Great difficulties are noted in human sciences regarding the definition and use of the concepts designating cultural phenomena. This also stands good for the musical area, in which not often arise certain confusion when one moves to the understanding of what the terms interpretation and performance designate. The present essay aims to answer to this task, urgent both from the theoretical and from the scientific viewpoints. As the analysis involves the translation and transliteration of fundamental concepts from one idiom to another, we first approach the criteria guiding their application within the historical context of the classical-romantic Viennese musical tradition. The main objective is to demonstrate how these concepts differ in sense and end. The next step consists in a careful analysis of the concept of musical reproduction. Finally, the trinomial reproduction, interpretation and musical performance is proposed as a conceptual basis for teaching and research of the musical interpretative practice. At the same time, the theoretical field of the discipline increases in its scope, migrating from a basically interpretative concept to that of a multiform artistic process with great productive and transformational potential that also includes the extramusical elements of reproduction.
interpretative/performance practice; theory of musical interpretation and of performance; Viennese musical tradition; conceptual reform of interpretative and performance practice
