Question

The emergence of the Historically Informed Performance (HIP) movement in the late twentieth century fundamentally challenged the mainstream classical tradition's approach to Baroque repertoire. Mainstream practitioners had long argued that musical works are living entities that evolve, justifying the use of modern instruments and romanticized expressive techniques as natural continuations of a vibrant, unbroken performance tradition. In stark contrast, early proponents of strict HIP, whom we might term 'historical literalists,' contended that a composer’s intentions are inextricably bound to the specific acoustic properties of period instruments and the documented performance conventions of their era. For the literalists, any performance using a modern grand piano for a piece conceived for the harpsichord constitutes a fundamental distortion of the work's ontological reality, regardless of the performer's subjective aesthetic success. More recently, however, a new wave of 'pragmatic' HIP scholars has argued that the literalists inadvertently impose a modernist rigidity onto Baroque practices; these pragmatists note that primary sources from the eighteenth century frequently celebrate performer improvisation, flexible instrumentation, and spontaneous ornamentation, suggesting that the original composers themselves embraced a far more fluid conception of their own works than the literalists acknowledge.

Based on the passage, the 'historical literalists' would be most likely to agree with which of the following statements? (Select all that apply)