Early Music - when does it stop being "early"

[uncleboko]

Is anything set in stone here or is it entirely a matter of opinion? To my ears a great deal of "early music" sounds like "early rock 'n roll"!!

[french frank]

Hello, uncleboko (weren't you on the old messageboards?)

I think it depends on the context - whatever is convenient. The Early Music Show has taken in Mozart. I think of it as being pre-Baroque, but with Baroque included when the term is used more broadly.

[Ariosto]

Hello, uncleboko (weren't you on the old messageboards?)

I think it depends on the context - whatever is convenient. The Early Music Show has taken in Mozart. I think of it as being pre-Baroque, but with Baroque included when the term is used more broadly.

Are you saying you think Mozart is pre-baroque?

In a way though J S Bach is considered pre-Baroque, or something like that, but I think of him as being modern, even contemporary ...

[french frank]

Are you saying you think Mozart is pre-baroque?

No. But if asked I would say he was 'classical' i.e. post-Baroque.

I just meant that he had featured on The Early Music Show thus, apparently, stretching the meaning of 'Early Music' to a point where I wouldn't like to be around when the elastic snapped.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I always used to think early music was anything that appeared on Telefunken's Das Alte Werke.

[Ariosto]

No. But if asked I would say he was 'classical' i.e. post-Baroque.

I just meant that he had featured on The Early Music Show thus, apparently, stretching the meaning of 'Early Music' to a point where I wouldn't like to be around when the elastic snapped.

I agree and personally think of Mozart as Classical. I suppose the EMS stretch the meaning quite often ...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

It's really a meaningless term. You could place the line anywhere. 1600, 1750, 1800, 1914, 1945, 2011...

It's a bit like calling Europe a continent, which it isn't. (It's just a convenient division of Asia). But I digress.

[french frank]

It's really a meaningless term.

In the sense that you don't know how it's being used in a particular context. I would personally use it to mean medieval and renaissance (i.e. pre-Baroque Western) music. But that's just me . Otherwise, you're on your own!

[vinteuil]

It's really a meaningless term. :

I think it has almost lost its meaning, yes. Or rather, it has several meanings. If you go to an HMV shop they may have an 'Early Music' section, which will probably mean anthologies of stuff up to and including renaissance and early baroque.

But for professionals in the 'early music' world the term no longer has a chronological limit - it is more a matter of approach (which is why the term Historically Informed Performance and Practice (HIPP) has tended to become the norm) - to quote from reports of the Early Music Network -

"‘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."

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I suppose it was a convenient term for music that had been given very little attention by performers for a long period of time.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think it has almost lost its meaning, yes. Or rather, it has several meanings. If you go to an HMV shop they may have an 'Early Music' section, which will probably mean anthologies of stuff up to and including renaissance and early baroque.

But for professionals in the 'early music' world the term no longer has a chronological limit - it is more a matter of approach (which is why the term Historically Informed Performance and Practice (HIPP) has tended to become the norm) - to quote from reports of the Early Music Network -

"‘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."

[MrGongGong]

About 9.30 , after the tea but before the first espresso

though as I get older I seem to get up earlier and earlier

[cloughie]

I would say probably when clanky harpsichords gave way to decent sounding pianos. Probably does not help as anything from Bach onwards sounds good on piano!

[MrGongGong]

I would say probably when clanky harpsichords gave way to decent sounding pianos. Probably does not help as anything from Bach onwards sounds good on piano!

so obviously not a fan of the vegetarian piano then

the harpsichord has been an essential sample in much R'n'B

[cloughie]

so obviously not a fan of the vegetarian piano then

the harpsichord has been an essential sample in much R'n'B

I assume you mean the current R'n'B rather than the 60s when the Hammond was preferred.