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Early Music: A Stock-Taking, Part 2
15th June 2022
In the past couple of decades, Early Music can be said to have come of age. After a shaky but extremely characterful start in the early years of the 20th century, and a postwar ‘rebirth’ with the likes of Nikolaus Leonhardt and Gustav Leonhardt spearheading exciting new ventures, the 1970s and 80s can retrospectively be likened to moody teenage years, with an insistence on authenticity and dogma that raised the hackles of the traditionalist establishment. (Talk of ‘tradition’ is always problematic vis-à-vis Early Music:... read more
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Early Music: A Stock-Taking
8th June 2022
Our recent piece on ‘Versions and Editions’ prompted an interesting response from some of our regular readers, as a result of which we take a closer two-part look at the history and present state of the Early Music movement in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
Increasing numbers of editions of Early Music repertoires (everything from the Baroque and before) fostered a growing interest among performers. Among the first to take a deeper interest in such repertoires were instrument player and manufacturer Arnold... read more
How to Celebrate a Jubilee
31st May 2022
The music industry loves anniversaries. The centenaries, sesquicentenaries, bicentenaries (and so on) of composers’ births, deaths and other significant occasions (the 2013 centenary of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, for example) provide excuses for new recordings, reissues and box-set compilations of varying enormity and expense. Even literary figures with musical leanings (like Proust) are celebrated with themed releases, as are other significant figures from history, including royalty. So it’s a little surprising... read more
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Of Versions and Editions
25th May 2022
Anyone whose interest in classical music is of more than the casual, ‘background listening’ kind will at some point or other have come upon the question of versions. Even with such an old warhorse as Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (a work currently placed on the naughty step), the choice of ‘with or without choir’ arises, while other perennial crowd-pleasers such as ‘Albinoni’s Adagio’ (actually a concoction by 20th-century musicologist Remo Giazotto) and Allegri’s Miserere open up several cans of worms. You might be asked, if... read more
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When is a symphony not a symphony? (A Question of Genre)
18th May 2022
These days, genre looms large in the music world. It’s an affliction that looms large in the world of popular music, with various new types of pop and rock music emerging on an almost annual basis. In classical music, the situation appears to be more stable, at least on first appearances. The venerable Gramophone magazine has for many years divided its reviews into orchestral, chamber, instrumental (just one player), vocal (anything sung that isn’t opera) and opera, with a separate section for ‘Jazz & World Music’. Other... read more
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