"How to Be HIP"

BBC Early Music Show - 5 Days Left to Listen

Christopher Hogwood Lecture

The Past is a Foreign Country

Been away from Boston for a while

So I had not been aware that Harry Christophers (of The Sixteen) had replaced Grant Llewellyn (who is now with the NC Symphony) as artistic director of the Handel and Hadyn Society.

From several years ago:


H&H YT channel
wiki

Heather MacDonald on HIP

Classical Music’s New Golden Age (via The Western Confucian)

But regardless of such disagreements, the value of the movement to our musical life has been indisputable. It has unleashed arguably the most concentrated rediscovery of lost music in history. Composers that had lain silent for centuries—Jean-Féry Rebel, Johann Friedrich Fasch, Heinrich Ignaz Biber, to name just a handful—are heard again. Hundreds of groups of specialists are busily digging into twelfth-century plainchant and thirteenth-century troubadour traditions. Unfamiliar repertoire by overly familiar composers is also being restored. The Naïve label, in one of the greatest recording projects of the early-music movement, is releasing all of Vivaldi’s operas. A wind blows through these magnificent, mostly unpublished works, but even when the rhythms are most propulsive, a deep melancholy pervades the music. Naïve’s recording of the haunting duet for mezzo and chalumeau (a proto-clarinet) from the oratorio Juditha Triumphans, “Veni, me sequere fida,” is alone a contribution to civilization.

The public’s ear for this music has expanded accordingly. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a few aristocratic salons hosted private performances of Renaissance and early baroque music, but outside those elite settings, there was no commercial demand for pre-Classical music. Today, by contrast, enough people are eager for works from remote eras to put the medieval a cappella ensemble Anonymous 4 on the top of Billboard charts. Jordi Savall’s Renaissance music group Hesperion XXI brings audience members to their feet during performances. Early-music festivals have even reached Missoula, Montana, where Heinrich Schütz’s Musikalisches Exequien was performed in March 2010, and Indianapolis, which offered Spanish ballads from the time of Cervantes in June 2010. The New York vocal group Polyhymnia invites its audience to “glimpse behind the tapestried walls of the ducal court at Munich, to hear the psalms kept for the private use of their patron,” assuming in their listeners the same desire to know the past that animates the performers themselves. Amateurs also perform this previously discarded music. Camps teaching medieval chant are ubiquitous, from Evansville, Indiana, to Litchfield, Connecticut. Reed, viol, and lute players can brush up on their skills at the Summer Texas Toot in Austin; San Jose, California, hosts a workshop for recorder players.

More:
H&H Society: Historically Informed Performance
Discussion at Bach-Cantatas.com
What is Early Music?
"Historically Informed" Performance: Who Says, and Why Must It Be
Centre for Research into Historically-Informed Performance
Period Performance Practice
Medieval and Renaissance Instruments
Period instruments

The PIPE List
Authentic Performance Recording Labels
Period Instrument Orchestras, Choruses & Operas | Early Music America
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra
Period instruments - The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Baroque Band Chicago's period-instrument orchestra

"Authentic" baroque music performance: comment and research
Welcome to the HIP-ocrisy Home Page!

Period Performance

The "classical music" market is saturated with CDs and performers--how does one select recordings without resorting to reviews and listening to samples, or depending on word of mouth.

When I was rediscovering classical music I came upon the Academy of Ancient Music. I believe the first AAM recording I heard was a CD of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nacthmusik, which I borrowed from the Saratoga library. Very crisp and impressive. Since then they've become one of my favorite ensembles, and I've made them my first choice for Baroque and early Viennese CDs. Their complete Mozart symphonies was a must-have. Through the AAM I learned about period performance, or "historically informed" performance which is apparently the official term that advocates and performers use. If I had to explain it with my own words, I would say its performing a composition with intstruments from the period, ensemble sizes appropriate to the period and to the text, proper accoustic conditions, and so on--performing the work as the composer originally conceived it. But perhaps these other sources can explain it better: an excerpt from a book on the subject of period performance. Wikipedia entry on historically informed performance.



The AAM was founded in 1973 by Christopher Hogwood. He is an accomplished harpsichord player, and his article "Old Music for New" (and the essays by other performers) at the AAM website are worth reading. "Old Music for New" is an easy-to-understand introduction to period performance and helped me get hooked onto period performance, at least intellectually. Hearing the performances, both recorded and live, got me hooked as a listener.

Mr. Hogwood is also affiliated with the Handel and Haydn Society, located right here in Boston. The H&H Society is the local historically informed performance ensemble, and usually there are rush tickets available for their performances, except the really popular ones--$10 for the unpopular seats, but a good deal nonetheless. I believe he was actually conductor for a while, before stepping down (he remains as conductor laureate). His successor is Grant Llewellyn:


I think Mr. Hogwood was also the artistic director for the H&H Society, but apparently that is true no longer. Sir Roger Norrington is the new artistic director. I have not heard of him before checking the website, but I will try to attend at least one H&H Society performance this season. (Maybe I can get the New Scot to go; or maybe we'll go hear Natalie MacMaster instead.)

(Guild Music page for Mr. Hogwood.)


Andrew Manze is Artistic Director for the English Concert. He also performs as a soloist, and has collaborated with the Academy of Ancient Music--he was also a conductor of the group for a while. Page from his management agency. A review of one of his performances. I had the opportunity to hear him perform a couple of years ago here in Boston for the BEMF--I missed his performance in 2003 unfortunately. He gave some demonstrations for the audience and explained some aspects of music theory.


Ton Koopman is the director of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir. Mr. Manze has collaborated with him, and so has Yo Yo Ma (whom I still listen to, but is by no means into period performance). A bio for Mr. Koopman. (See the Sony Classical bio for a photo of Mr. Koopman with Mr. Ma, taken by Annie Leibovitz no less; more photos at bach-cantatas.org bio.) Goldberg interview.

Boston is a great city for music, especially early music and historically informed performance, due to the various festivals and music schools in the area. The scene in Northern California can't compare, though occasionally Cal will book some one impressive. (I think the AAM has even performed at Cal.)

Misc Links:
Early Music Network
Early Music America
Disucssion at bach-cantata.org on HIP
NYS Baroque essays on HIP
What is early music?
Perdo Persone on HIP
A conversation with Sir Roger Norrington
"The Search for Authenticity"
"Thoughts on Historical Performance"
Leeds University Centre for Historically-Informed Performance
University of Birmingham
USC Thorton School of Music EMP program
Longy School of Music Early Music Department
New England Conservatory Historical Performance program
Steven Lubin's website. New York Baroque Dance Company.
MusicaOmnia
Renaissance and Baroque Society of Pittsburg
San Francisco Early Music Society
a music editor's reaction to period performance
anti-HIP page
HIP and the qin

Hrm, something to remember if I'm ever in Chicago.

From Brad Leissa's Information Pages
Introductory Notes
Period Instrument Performance Ensembles
Period Instrument/Authentic Performance Recording Labels