A major trend in classical music in the 20th century has been the “authentic” movement, otherwise called the Early Music revival. This is a movement that is committed to the performance of the music of the past within the conventions of its own time.
The term “Early Music” can mean different things to different people. Purists may say it applies only to music of the Mediaeval and Renaissance periods, that is, music up to about 1600. Others would include Baroque music (up to 1750), while others would include music up to 1800 and even later.
The Early Music revival started in the late 1960s, when orchestras, ensembles, and soloists playing on “authentic” period instruments began to replace performances of early music that used modern-day instruments. In vocal music, there has been a similar revival of lighter, more agile ways of singing, and a return to the smaller ensembles used in the past. The CD market has been important as a catalyst in this revival, and many seminal works of the past now exist in several authentic recordings.
To what extent “authenticity” is possible has been a subject of much debate, and most critics now agree that the term is inappropriate. One argument is that it is impossible to know exactly how music was played in the days before sound recording; another is that listening to “authentic” instruments via the medium of a hi-fi system can never be remotely akin to people listening to music in earlier centuries. The technology has changed, and also the perceptions of the listeners. Modern audiences have heard many different kinds of music from subsequent eras. Today performances are generally described as “historically informed” rather than “authentic.”
The movement arose out of the 19th century’s revival of interest in history in general, and its rediscovery of the music of the past in particular. Later came a desire to emulate the performance conventions of former times. As early as 1829, Mendelssohn revived Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, though he made no attempt to re-create the conditions under which it was first performed. On the contrary, in common with many performances up until the 1970s, he preferred to use the instruments and voices to which listeners in his day were accustomed. The balance between this approach and the desire to be historically accurate has preoccupied all the major figures in the Early Music revival.
Mendelssohn’s interest in Bach was no doubt prompted by the publication, in 1802, of Forkel’s biography of Bach. In many instances, the publication of a biography of a composer was followed by editions of his music, and in the case of major composers by “complete” editions of their works.
Providing editions of the composer’s original score for performance was the first major task for early music revivalists. These urtexts, as they were called, were printed editions of the music that followed as accurately as possible the composer’s original manuscript. The word comes from the German, meaning “original text.” The provision of urtexts has been a major preoccupation of musicologists throughout the 20th century.
The translation and re-publication of early treatises on performance has also helped the authentic performance movement. The Interpretation of Early Music (1963) by the musicologist Robert Donington has become a standard reference text for performers of authentic and early music.
In the early days of the revival, little attempt was made to use authentic instruments. Harpsichord parts were played on the piano; recorders were replaced by flutes; viols by violins. Anachronistic instruments such as clarinets and horns were frequently used. Performances using period instruments tended to be mounted by music historians and enthusiasts rather than by professional musicians.
Musicologists and instrument makers were important in preparing the ground for the revival of early instruments and singing techniques. One such was Arnold Dolmetsch (1858–1940), ancestor of a whole family of musicians who made their careers in various aspects of Early Music. He restored and manufactured early instruments such as the lute, clavichord, harpsichord, and recorder. In 1915, he published The Interpretation of the Music of the XVII and XVIII Centuries, which stimulated interest in authentic performance. Ten years later, he founded an early music festival at Haslemere in Surrey, and his tours of the U.S. sowed the seeds for an early music movement there.
Since the 1960s, the manufacture of reproduction early instruments has flourished, and obsolete instruments such as the cornetto and sackbut have been revived. Mediaeval instruments with no surviving examples have been reconstructed from paintings.
Other initiatives included the publication, under a team of enthusiasts headed by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, of the complete works of the Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. This led to performances of several of his operas in the first decade of the 20th century, and paved the way for later revivals of 17th-and 18th-century operas in Europe. Together with revivals of the music of Henry Purcell and the Elizabethan madrigalists, these events helped to re-establish the musical heritage of countries whose national music had been overshadowed by that of the Austro-Germanic school.
While Mediaeval and Renaissance music was first revived with novel instruments such as the crumhorn, often used entirely inappropriately, there has more recently been a trend toward purely vocal performance. The exploration of the music of the Renaissance owes much to the work of the musicians and musicologists Richard Terry and Edmund Fellowes, whose enthusiasm for Elizabethan music led to extensive editions of Renaissance church music and the English madrigal.
In the early 1900s, several figures made professional careers out of the performance of early music. Of particular note was Wanda Landowska (1879–1959), a keyboard player of Polish origin who made an international career as a harpsichordist. She first played the harpsichord in public in 1903 and subsequently commissioned instruments manufactured to her own specification. Far from authentic, these used iron frames and many features of the modern grand piano. Settling in the U.S. in 1940, she made a considerable impact there and her many disciples included the American player Ralph Kirkpatrick.
In vocal music, the singer Alfred Deller developed the counter-tenor voice to recital standard, and revived interest in the English lute-song.
Many modern composers of the 20th century shared an enthusiasm for early music, particularly those associated with neoclassicism. Igor STRAVINSKY’S passion for Baroque music is evident from pieces such as Pulcinella, based on music by Pergolesi, and in his performances of the madrigals of the Renaissance Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo. Other 20th-century composers interested in early music included Paul HINDEMITH, who conducted early music concerts with the Yale Collegium Musicum in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1940.
In the 1960s, the harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt began to play on copies of Baroque harpsichords, abandoning the various pedal-operated effects that characterised Landowska’s style, and also that of the English harpsichordist George Malcolm. Leonhardt’s technique was based on subtle finger articulation and rhythm, and he performed and recorded with other similar-minded string instrumentalists to re-create the sound of the baroque string ensemble.
From these revivals, baroque orchestras began to develop, using not only authentic string instruments but also woodwinds with only a few keys, and unvalved brass. Pioneering among these was Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s Concentus Musicus Vienna. Although their early recordings display technical deficiencies compared to the best players of the 1990s, they paved the way for the many baroque orchestras that have flourished since the 1970s.
Several of the instrumentalists in the 1960s revival have gone on to become international conductors and founded orchestras of their own. Among these is Christopher Hogwood, whose Academy of Ancient Music has recorded many of the major works of the Baroque and Classical eras, and William Christie, an American harpsichordist who settled in France and whose performances with his group Les Arts Florissants have resulted in many stagings of opera using baroque costume, gesture, and dance.
The authentic movement has moved forward to encompass works later than the Baroque period. The major works of Mozart and Beethoven have been recorded using period instruments, and the various types of early fortepiano have been re-created and recorded. Pioneers in this respect have been the Viennese pianist-musicologist Paul Badura-Skoda and the American fortepianist Malcolm Bilson, whose recordings of the Mozart Piano Concertos have become something of a landmark.
Playing techniques have changed even since the beginning of the 20th century. Several orchestras have revived such techniques as string portamento (sliding between two pitches), and used wind and brass instruments appropriate to composers such as ELGAR and DEBUSSY. In this case, the performers are able to use actual instruments of the time, rather than have replicas built for music of earlier periods. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Romantique et Revolutionnaire have been particularly important in this respect, the latter making a video and audio recording of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique in the Paris Conservatoire where it was first performed, using the unconventional layout prescribed by the composer.
Richard Lang ham Smith
SEE ALSO:
OPERA; ORCHESTRAL MUSIC; VOCAL AND CHORAL MUSIC
FURTHER READING
Brown, Clive. Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750–1900 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998);
Page, Christopher, ed. Music and Instruments of the Middle Ages (Aldershot: Variorum, 1997);
Polk, Keith. German Instrumental Music of the Late Middle Ages: Players, Patrons, and Performance Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Anon: Holy Week and Easter at Benevento Cathedral (Marcel Peres); Love’s Illusion (Anonymous Four); Music for the Lion-hearted King (Gothic Voices);
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique 0ohn Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Romantique et Revolutionnaire); Messe Solennelle (Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra); Handel: Messiah (William Christie and the Arts Florissants Chorus and Orchestra); William Lawes: Psalms (Consort of Musicke); Ockeghem: Masses (Tallis Scholars);
Schubert: Piano Sonatas Nos. 4 and 20 (Malcolm Bilson); Vivaldi: Uestro armonico (Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music).
