Is most broadcast Early Music really 'early'?

[ardcarp]

Sunday's EMS:

Highlights from the 2019 London International Festival of Early Music, including performances by lutenist Elizabeth Kenny, recorder player Olwen Foulkes, soprano Tinka Pypker with fortepianist Anders Muskens, ensembles Palisander, Solomon's Knot and Parandrus, and members of the Chetham’s Early Music Ensemble.

A wide selection of music including pieces by Machaut, Dufay, Kapsperger, Sweelinck, Vivaldi, Sammartini, Tartini, CPE Bach and Schubert.

Presented by Lucie Skeaping.

Yes, we've got some Machaut and Dufay. Doesn't happen that often. When I was at school, we learned about Bach and Handel as representatives of 'early music'. It was mainly through singing that the delights of 16th and 17th century music revealed themselves. Then of course the likes of David Munrow brought medieval music from a place of academic interest into full glorious daylight

I say all this because I cannot help feel that BBC's EMS tends to feature the Classical period (and now even Schubert) rather too often in its programmes. I wonder if there is some confusion between HIPP and 'Early'?

Personally, I'd like the balance of EMS to be tipped a bit more towards pre-1600 and less towards post-1700.

Any thoughts?

[Joseph K]

I agree.

I love, for example, Ars Subtillior music...

[ardcarp]

Ooh. Enlarge on that JK!

[Quarky]

Couldn't agree with you more!

From my scanty knowledge, there is a transition period mid- 1700's to the classical period - so CPE Bach is as late as I would like to go.

Schubert is a non-starter, as is Mozart, who frequently appears in early music programmes. Strange I haven't heard Haydn in an early music programme.

I guess BBC's reasoning is to popularise the programme, rather than any compare and contrast educative value.

[Joseph K]

Ooh. Enlarge on that JK!

They were the New Complexity of their time! And loved singing songs about smoking dope!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJrclYubteg

here's most my collection:

[vinteuil]

.


... the term 'early music' seems to mean different things to different people.

For the punter - those buying CDs, going to concerts, listening to the radio - the expectation is chronological: music composed before a particular - arbitrary - date. That date has advanced as Historically Informed performers have explored later and later repertoire.

For the 'professionals' in the Early Music world - funders, concert promoters, festival and competition organisers, broadcasters, learned journals, musicologists - the term 'early' seems to have lost any chronological sense, and really just means 'Historically Informed Performance Practice'. As an example: the York Early Music Festival Competition - this Competition used to be run by the (now defunct) Early Music Network [EMN], before being completely taken over by the York EM Festival. The definition used by the EMN for its activities, including the biennial Competition, was -

" ‘Early Music’ is to be understood as a conventional rather than a chronological term, and is here taken to mean historically-informed performance; particularly that on forms of instruments with which a composer would have been familiar and music performed with techniques and in styles which get closer to the composer’s original conception, or of particular later traditions of performance, than is possible if other approaches are employed."

So no chronological cut-off - more a question of Historically Informed Performance Practice.

My question is - does IRCAM still have - or is it building replicas of - the computers and other electronic apparatus for which the compositions of the 1980s and early 1990s were created? I think we need to explore in the 'Early Music' slots the world of Historically Informed electroacoustic music...


.

[DracoM]

...and included in that Early Music perf ...............erm?.......Schubert?

[ardcarp]

Thanks for your brilliant collection photos JK! Can't beat the good old Ars (ironically titled) Nova.

Vints:

So no chronological cut-off - more a question of Historically Informed Performance Practice.

Well, of course a chronological cut-off point is arbitrary. All I was suggesting in my OP was that (on a scale between Iron Age Man and iPhone Man) EMS has tended towards the latter. I completely disagree about HIPP defining early music though. You could have a HIPP performance of Britten. Think how some extracts in last night's BBC4 programme sounded. You make a similar point about IRCAM and presumably Boulez.

Nothing like a reductio ad absurdum!

and Quarky:

I guess BBC's reasoning is to popularise the programme, rather than any compare and contrast educative value.

I don't see why what I call (in my Miranda voice) early music should be any less popular or enjoyable than the Classics.

[ardcarp]

Today's programme.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000k26d

By far most interesting to me was the first recorder ensemble, Palisander. For a start, they sang before playing Sweelinck's 'English Piece' but following that was their take on Tartini's 'Devil's Trill' Sonata. It was rather a re-imagination. Parts of it might have found a place on Hear and Now. It included some incredible note-bending. Virtuoso stuff throughout. (About 27 mins from the start.)

[DracoM]

That recorder playing was the most outstanding piece in the prog for me.
Bit mystified about how they decided to sing 'Ne Irascaris' - all dancing top - or so it seemed. One of the blackest pieces, yet here sounded more madrigal than motet.

[Quarky]

My only complaint is that the programme was not long enough, and some items, e.g. CPE Bach were so short, it made it difficult to get a fix on them. Comments about Sweelinck agreed.

If the professionals in their wisdom have decided to move the goal posts and admit the Classics, who am I to dissent? But I shall continue to follow my own musical nose.

[ardcarp]

the professionals

?