Question

The following dual passages discuss theories regarding the performance of historical musical repertoire.

Passage A
The movement toward historical performance practice (HPP) emerged in the twentieth century as a necessary corrective to the excessive romanticization of earlier music. By that time, Baroque and Classical repertoire had become smothered beneath heavy vibrato, massive orchestral forces, and highly subjective tempos that reflected the modern performer's ego rather than the original composer's design. HPP advocates argue that our primary ethical duty in performance is to the composer. To honor their vision accurately, performers must meticulously consult historical treatises, employ period-appropriate instruments, and strip away centuries of accumulated interpretive habits. It is true, as critics of the movement frequently point out, that standard musical notation from these eras is frustratingly imprecise. A manuscript from the eighteenth century routinely omits crucial details regarding articulation, ornamentation, and phrasing, leaving a considerable amount of information to be deduced. Nevertheless, this inherent ambiguity does not grant modern performers a license to invent or to substitute their own emotional inclinations for historical reality. Rather, it compels them to become musical archaeologists, relying on rigorous academic scholarship to fill the gaps left by the composer's incomplete manuscript. While achieving absolute historical fidelity may ultimately be a distant horizon we can approach but never fully cross, striving for it remains the only objective and defensible standard by which to judge the merit of a performance. Without this anchor, classical music risks devolving into a mere vehicle for contemporary vanity.

Passage B
The growing insistence on strict historical authenticity in musical performance rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding of what the art of music actually entails. A piece of music is not a fragile museum artifact meant to be preserved in a vacuum; it is a dynamic, living dialogue between the past and the present. Those who demand we play Mozart exactly as his contemporaries did willfully ignore the fact that modern audiences possess vastly different auditory expectations, having been shaped by centuries of subsequent musical evolution and acoustic innovation. More importantly, treating the written score as an inviolable sacred text ignores the very nature of musical notation itself. Master composers have always understood that a written score is merely an outline, a pragmatic shorthand that relies entirely upon the interpreting musician to breathe life into it. The composer provides the underlying structural architecture, but the performer must provide the visceral soul. Therefore, an interpreter's primary responsibility is not to subserviently execute a set of antique, skeletal instructions, but rather to translate the emotional core of the historical work for contemporary ears. If a performance fails to resonate emotionally with the modern listener, it has failed entirely in its artistic mission, regardless of how historically accurate the gut strings on the violins or the tuning of the harpsichord might be. The true essence of a composition survives not through sterile replication, but through continuous, imaginative reinvention.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses a principle regarding musical scores that is endorsed by the authors of both passages?