"Early Music"

[Lat-Literal]

Try this Early Music Late. Simon Heighes talks about how music was part of social life. (not early music but you'll get some idea)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06p4t0j

Thank you doversoul.

I did listen to all of the programme yesterday and found it interesting, especially in the way he discusses informal gatherings of musicians. The idea of people bringing a musical instrument with the advanced musicians playing the more sophisticated music and the less adept eagerly chipping in. In an odd way, I was reminded of the Irish etc folk traditions.

[doversoul1]

Again, this is mostly post - 1600 but I think this concert gives a pretty good impression of the music in domestic gatherings

Through the Night: Thursday (this is a re-repeat)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06pxjfr

United Continuo Ensemble and tenor Jan Kobow.

[BBMmk2]

I think I must apologise for my views about when Early Music ended. I feel I have overstepped the mark here.

[Roehre]

.. I feel I have overstepped the mark here.

which one, the 1600 or the 1685 one ?

[jean]

Again, this is mostly post - 1600...

But all the composers there apart from J S Bach and Purcell are largely unheard-of and unperformed, and count as 'early' on those grounds alone - a point I've already made on this thread.

[BBMmk2]

which one, the 1600 or the 1685 one ?

Ah yes, Roehre, thank you. Both, I think. I must revise this.

[Quarky]

Again, this is mostly post - 1600 but I think this concert gives a pretty good impression of the music in domestic gatherings

Through the Night: Thursday (this is a re-repeat)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06pxjfr

United Continuo Ensemble and tenor Jan Kobow.

Many thanks, doversoul, for all these references. As a result of which I am at serious risk of having my interest in music reawakened.

[french frank]

But all the composers there apart from J S Bach and Purcell are largely unheard-of and unperformed, and count as 'early' on those grounds alone - a point I've already made on this thread.

But does 'early' refer to date or style? Are they unknown/underperformed because they were not in the vanguard of stylistic evolution - in which case there is a case for considering a work composed in 1700 as 'early'?

After all, why are people attracted to 'early music' if not to the style? Given that some composers are innovative and others conservative there will be a fluidity with dating. From our perspective looking back, it's the innovators who offer more interest as a general rule.

Does that hold water? I don't know … :-)

[Serial_Apologist]

After all, why are people attracted to 'early music' if not to the style?

It wouldn't surprise me at all if a lot of people are attracted to "early music" by way of folk or rock music, being able to identify with its greater rhythmic viguor than in anything in the classical area they can identify prior to "The Rite". (And maybe "The Rite" and its rhythmic legacy is too far in the opposite direction for them, though this is changing, eg Techno's complexity is now par for the rhythmic course). We shouldn't forget that the sublimation of rhythic energy in western classical music from around 1600 to 1912 was retrograde in terms of its evolution harmonically, though some will disagree, rightly claiming diatonicism led to other kinds of rhythmic evolution (Mozart qv) - to which I'd say that was still essentially limited within the symmetric 3/4-4/4 based range of metrics, and this dominated even the feel of composers opening themselves to other meters, eg Tchaikovsky to five in his "Pathetique". The finale of Schmitt's "Tragedie de Salome" in 1910 must have come a pretty big shock, I would think!

[Roehre]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if a lot of people are attracted to "early music" by way of folk or rock music, being able to identify with its greater rhythmic viguor than in anything in the classical area they can identify prior to "The Rite". (And maybe "The Rite" and its rhythmic legacy is too far in the opposite direction for them, though this is changing, eg Techno's complexity is now par for the rhythmic course). We shouldn't forget that the sublimation of rhythic energy in western classical music from around 1600 to 1912 was retrograde in terms of its evolution harmonically, though some will disagree, rightly claiming diatonicism led to other kinds of rhythmic evolution (Mozart qv) - to which I'd say that was still essentially limited within the symmetric 3/4-4/4 based range of metrics, and this dominated even the feel of composers opening themselves to other meters, eg Tchaikovsky to five in his "Pathetique". The finale of Schmitt's "Tragedie de Salome" in 1910 must have come a pretty big shock, I would think!

PS: Mahler's time changes in Scherzo 6 [though less exposed] were not received lightly either

[french frank]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if a lot of people are attracted to "early music" by way of folk or rock music, being able to identify with its greater rhythmic viguor than in anything in the classical area they can identify prior to "The Rite".

That may be true, though it wouldn't alter the basic premise - that 'conservative' composers went on composing in that style and therefore extended the limits of 'early music'.

[jean]

But does 'early' refer to date or style? Are they unknown/underperformed because they were not in the vanguard of stylistic evolution - in which case there is a case for considering a work composed in 1700 as 'early'? ...

I think the distinction I'm making is purely a pragmatic one - what we mean when we talk about 'early music' now.

When the term was first used (do we know who first used it?) it embraced anything too early to be found in the concert repertoire of the time. It was a question of style, and instrumentation, and to some extent tonality - anything modal was always going to be 'early', but not all 'early' music is modal.

As to why all those underperformed baroque composers are underperformed...I don't know. There are an awful lot of them, and I am sure chance has a lot to do with it - they were performed in their time and place, and they probably didn't expect to survive for posterity.

[doversoul1]

... they were performed in their time and place, and they probably didn't expect to survive for posterity.

I think that was probably the case, too: music was a consumable albeit highly valued, and composers were jobbing composers who needed to offer new products continuously if they were to stay on the job market. I almost think the development of musical style was more to do with the market demands (including by all those Dukes and Princes) rather than with the composers' artistic inspirations (obviously, this had much to do with is but maybe not the main urge). I imagine the composers in those days to be more like craftsmen than artists.

This is what I find it so interesting to listen to the music by all those underperformed composers. Collectively, these composers’ music (seems to me) offers a glimpse into the lives of people who lived in the time. I suppose it’s rather like going to the museum and see furniture and tools used by people from a distant time.

[Roehre]

That may be true, though it wouldn't alter the basic premise - that 'conservative' composers went on composing in that style and therefore extended the limits of 'early music'.

... in the same way as some "conservative" composers living today are still composing in early 20C idioms, and in the 1890s a beethovenian, mendelsohnian or schumanesque idiom was not unusual either

[Roehre]

....I imagine the composers in those days to be more like craftsmen than artists......

Which was the case up to and including young Mozart. Haydn shared his meals and accommodation with "downstairs" e.g.
But there were exceptions. Troubadours were not rarely of nobility, and an Ockeghem or a DesPrez were highly praised and accordingly paid musicians. But JSBach at the other hand.....