My thought on the matter is that nowadays any well-rounded musician - and hopefully any well-rounded performance degree program (in any instrument) - will spend at least some time on historical performance practice.

I found it intesting as a student that there were certain older faculty who lived or grew up in the beginnings of the early music "movement" were very militantly trying to convince us we should use appropriate performance practice in older repertoire. The interesting part was all of us younger students already seemed to be on board with that - at least as much as it would be practical in various performing situations.

I imagine those schools with degrees specifically labelled historical performance practice are aiming to develop scholars/performers at the forefront of researching the actual performance practice vs. simply performing with a working knowledge of it. I imagine those coming out of those programs would aspire to travel, play in and/or lead various professional early music ensembles around the world.

While it's true I suppose that a lot of sacred music is early music, my personal thoughts are that the broader skills gained from a standard performance program would be more practically helpful in the average musical landscape of a church musician who is not always making music with an entire group of professional singers/instrumentalists and not always performing early music.

Period pronunciation of Latin, French, German, Italian, English and other languages of early music is itself an almost labyrinthian challenge for historically informed performance practice, and it would be something one has to study extensively in any historical performance program. Within choral/vocal one would not be concentrating just on sacred works either, but also on a huge secular repertoire, both accompanied and unaccompanied. As a couple of examples (well-known to those who know it well): (1) Performing, say the John Browne O Maria, salvatoris Mater with Tudor Latin pronunciation is a revelation (for example, "His iam, sanctis iubilemus" - spelled this in the Eton Choirbook, but pronounce roughly as "Hiss jahm, sanktiss jubilehmuss" with voiced "j"). (2) The not uncommon butchering of the pronunciation of the lovely carol "Ther is no rose of swych virtu as is the rose that bar Jhesu" which we so often hear is unfortunate (I grate every time I hear "the" pronounced as "thuh" instead of "theh") - better they simply use a modern English rendering. This is an area where much is known, and it is up to the period performer to learn it - or research it thoroughly - before attempting.

Another aspect requiring intense study (and research) is the matter of various melodic and modal idioms of different cultures (even within western music). Notation and the application of musica ficta rightly varies from region to region (I've seen too many franco-flemish pieces distorted by application of rules that apply properly to, say, Italian or English music).

Proper instrumentation and use of period instruments (or replicas) is another sticky wicket. For example, performance of a Bach work (eg. the Christmas Oratorio or the St. Matthew Passion) calling for "oboe da caccia" is not truly historically informed if it is played on a Baroque English horn (even though both are written as transposing instruments in F).

One could go on and on, even with western music, and it only becomes more complex the wider one casts the net. On the other hand, for some, this is truly fascinating work, and the benefits for the proper understanding of historical performance and how historical performance illuminates modern performance should not be undervalued.

Which program would that be? I imagine a traditional performance degree would be about applying current notions of style, rather than studying the sources and then trying to form one's own taste consistently with the evidence. But in some musicology programs you might be lucky if the subject of taste even comes up. If the object isnt getting a sheepskin, do as a friend of mine did and apprentice to a British cathedral choir.

If your focus is chant you might look for a school with some ethnomusicology program where you can study another oral tradition, even if you dont follow the whole Marcel Peres program of living without electrical lighting for a year.

Thank you so much to everyone for your food for thought.

My dilemma, really, is that due to family circumstances, it is absolutely NOT an option for me to study outside of the Cleveland area.

So - my options for grad school are an organ MM from Cleveland State University, a choral conducting MM from Kent State University, an organ MM from CIM, or an MM in historical performance from Oberlin or Case Western Reserve.

I'm afraid that if I do a degree at a state school that does not have an AMAZING reputation (like Indianna or University of Michigan) the degree won't be worth the paper it's printed on.

Any additional thoughts?

German Baroque? Now that would include Johann Sebastian Bach, wouldn't it? (and Heinrich Schütz, and Johann Hermann Schein)

So much for the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, the Magnificat, the Christmas Oratorio, the motet "Jesu, meine freude", the Passion Chorale which will be sung in countless Catholic churches on Good Friday.

I'm saddened.

I'm afraid that if I do a degree at a state school that does not have an AMAZING reputation (like Indianna or University of Michigan) the degree won't be worth the paper it's printed on.

For a MM, I think your actual abilities generally outweight the school's reputation in most cases and most circles. I guess it depends on what you want to do with it. Only when using your degree to get a teaching position in higher ed would your degree's institutional pedigree start to matter more -- but in such a situation, you'd likely be talking about a terminal degree (a DMA vs. a MM).

I agree with Mara. The most important question is what you want to get out of the degree/program.

Thank you very much for the replies.

And Mara, I'm not sure I'm good enough or not. But I don't close doors without trying; I let them be closed on me. My options may well be quite limited as far as to how "good" a program I can get into - but I refuse to have them limited by ME before I even get started ...

It seems apt to me to suggest that one should take every opportunity to acquire 'historical performance skills' and to cultivate a deep appreciation for the music for which they are appropriate, and a commitment to their application in parish life and liturgy. Liturgy can only be enhanced, its message and worshipfullness augmented by appropriate interpretative ethoi. It is only by such artfulness that the full meaning and import of any chosen genre fully realises its spiritual, paedagogical, and worshipfull raison d'etre. The question is, simply, is God and his Church better served with this knowledge and understanding, and are those things offered to him and those lives impacted by them of greater value than would they otherwise have been. It seems to me that the answer is an unmistakeable 'yes'.

P.S. - This topic was titled 'Historic Performance degree vs. Performance': if this suggests a dichotomy, it is a false one.

(ah, yes...my realism/pessimism... one of my faults... ;-) )

Thanks, Doug. Good info. That was my hunch too, that it's better to find everything out in detail upfront.