Early Music and the Paradox of Technology

This chapter discusses the tension between the early music revival and technological innovation. The history of the revival may be divided into several discrete “waves,” characterized by the impact of technology on historically informed performance (HIP). The focus is on the reintroduction (since the 1990s) of technology as a means to synthesize and sample sounds to enhance historically informed aspects of their structure and sound. This includes an exploration of the use of advanced studio techniques to reimagine historical sounds, samplers (and especially virtual organ software) to reproduce them, and advanced computer programs to recreate the acoustics of historical venues.