I'm a singer specialized in early music and as being one during my preparation for a concert (regardless it's a programme that I put together or someone else) I'd do my research on the pieces I am supposed to sing. Looking up the origin of every single thing I have ever been busy with is probably a result of my insatiable curiousity, and it just got "worse" as I've got more and more involved with medieval and renaissance repertories.
Doing research became also a necessity, but also something I've always enjoyed to do. I think I've mentioned this before, but I decided to become a singer in the last year of grammar school (it is quite late to make such a decision, according to current standards - NB: it's a stupid standard), because I was tired of library hours and I needed challange. I didn't want to spend my entire adult life in a library. Little I had known back then that I'd be involved with early repertories which will demand a certain amount of library hours. I wasn't planning to become an early music singer I've just gradually become one. I still remember how I hated and cursed square notation and Gregorian chant at my first encounter with them during my studies and now I wouldn't be able to imagine my life without Gregorian chant, square notation and neumes! It was a true metamorphosis from being an old school Classical Musician-Singer into a brand new Early Musician-Singer. I had finally the tools to search back the origin of all those Renaissance motets I had ever sung with chamber and church choirs. I finally understood that Ave vera virginitas is just a little part of Josquin's Ave Maria motet. And I understood at last, why would historians would state that Johann Sebastian Bach was a revolutionaire composer for applying the old techniques with his newly developed ones. My growing knowledge on early repertories helped me to become a better and updated Classical Musician. The more I had to perform from early notation the better my sight-reading skills become.
I've seen classmates at conservatory who were completely clueless when they were pushed into doing research. They found it somehow a waste of time, and not as an opportunity to become better performers. The thing is that research will help you understand the pieces you're performing. Either you acknowledge this or not, sitting in your practice room won't ever make you a better performer, it will just make your technique better and not your performing skills. Imagine you have a really abstract piece on your programme: if you just playing the notes without understanding the piece itself, it doesn't matter how flawless your performance is, your audience will be bored and they won't understand the piece. Easy or abstract, any piece needs to be understood and only becoming as good as anyone else won't make you a better performer. Communicating the message behind - a message you decoded from the piece - will excite your audience. Technique will never excite or elevate them on the long term.
Therefore: read, research and discover! You think you've seen it all? Do you think you know everything? You couldn't be more wrong...
