"Tribute" Bands and Beethoven

A recent post about the concept of "tribute" bands in On the Overgrown Path, one of my regular stops in my blog-reading rotation, cites to a recent article in The Guardian by Meurig Bowen:

who, although he keeps it a secret in the Guardian article actually manages a world famous Benjamin Britten tribute band himself - the Aldeburgh Festival.

I thought that was pretty funny.

The article itself is worth a read. I love early music and authentic performance, but I too have had my share of experiences with one-eyed lutenists and bass viol players who insist on dressing and smelling like the Renaissance. An excerpt:

Classical music's "period instrument movement" has covered as much ground as music history can throw at it. With a tool bag of gut strings, valveless trumpets, white-noised sopranos and investigative musicology, it has tracked backwards in time from its 18th-century starting point to simulate the music of medieval Parisian troubadours, and forwards to Elgar and Wagner as they might have sounded then. Short of rearing, by barbarous means, some castrati to recreate a night at the opera in Handel's London, where else can the search for musical "authenticity" go?

The answer lies not in brilliantly obscure PhDs about harpsichord string lengths in 18th-century Potsdam, or experiments with grain-fed oboists - but it is almost as kinky. It lies in the world of tribute bands.

Read the whole article...