Ina Lohr (1903–1983) - Transcending the Boundaries of Early Music

<P>Although almost forgotten today, Ina Lohr played a significant role in Basel’s 20th-century musical world. In 1930, she became Paul Sacher’s musical assistant, helping in the preparations for performances of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, of which he was the director. Just three years later, she was one of the courageous pioneers who under the direction of Paul Sacher founded the now internationally renowned Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. As Ina Lohr was instrumental in creating its program, her work indirectly had an enormous impact on the Early Music Movement. Through her biography, we learn to see Early Music within the complex cultural and religious matrix of her time, forcing ourselves to transcend our own boundaries to understand her life.</P>

Gadamer and the Hermeneutics of Early Music Performance

The success of the early music movement raises questions about performing historical works: Should musicians perform on period instruments and try to reconstruct the original style? If a historically “authentic” performance is impossible or undesirable, what should be the goal of the early music movement? I turn to Gadamer to answer these questions by constructing the outlines of a hermeneutics of early music performance. In the first half of the paper, I examine Gadamer’s critique of historical reconstruction and argue that this critique sheds light on mistaken tendencies and misunderstandings within the early music movement, but it does not discredit the movement as such. In the second half of the paper, I attempt to show how Gadamer’s dialogical account of historical consciousness provides a framework for understanding what historically informed performance is seeking to accomplish, as well as its advantage over a Nietzschean approach.

Thomas Goff, Four Harpsichords, J.S. Bach and the Royal Festival Hall

During the 1950s and 1960s in London, in the Royal Festival Hall, an unusual series of concerts took place. These concerts stood apart from the usual offerings in London's post-war musical life. What they offered was early music, principally J.S. Bach's concertos for two, three and four keyboards, played not on the piano, as had hitherto been the case, but on the harpsichord. This article documents, for the first time, the facts, and the implications, of the Royal Festival Hall concert series: how it came about; the repertoire; the performers; and the performances. The article concludes that the Royal Festival Hall concerts were notable in the evolution of the early music movement in the UK, deepening its reach to a broader audience and nurturing an awareness of an issue that was increasingly to gain traction in the later decades of the twentieth century: the idea of historical authenticity in the performance of early music.

Twentieth- and Twenty-First–Century Interpretations

The performance history of Dido and Aeneas from 1950 can be divided into three distinct periods. The first (1951–80) concentrated on the establishment of an accurate score based on the earliest sources and was defined by two major performances in London in 1951. The second (1980–95), coincident with the growth of the early music movement, focused on a transition to historical instruments, performance practices, and vocal techniques and to smaller forces; it is represented by an abundance of audio recordings. The third period (1995–2016) is defined by scholarly and theatrical interpretations of Dido and Aeneas that consider issues of gender, race, sexuality, and colonialism. An array of recordings, videos, and scholarly writings demarcate this postmodern period of interpretation. Each of these periods is discussed in turn.

Ears-on Exhibitions

Between March 2013 and November 2014, the Amsterdam Museum had an installation that enabled visitors to compare a recent soundscape recording of the Dam Square with simulations of how the Dam sounded in 1895 and 1935. Constructing these simulations involved virtual acoustics software, recordings of historical artifacts, and research into the urban past. This paper critically discusses how the installation was made and received by comparing the acoustic authenticity ideal behind it with the aims of the early music movement. It concludes by reviewing alternative ways of using sound in history museums by reflecting on issues of framing, identification, sensory instruction, and embodiment.

Spreading the Gospel of Singbewegung

From 1931 to 1939, Franz Rietzsch, a German missionary, worked with the Nyakyusa in Tanganyika. He differed from most other missionaries in two respects: first, he was invested in the German Singbewegung, a movement that played a central role in the revival of early-music performance and scholarship; and second, he had a background in comparative musicology, which shared the ideals of the early-music movement by emphasizing authenticity and musical universals. Rietzsch observed that the tonal system of the Wanyakyusa is derived from overtones over one fundamental and set out to write music for the service in what he called “African style.” Yet even though his settings use the pentatonic system of the Nyakyusa, they sound as if they were written in the early fifteenth century. Rietzsch's story sits at the intersection of three seemingly distinct but surprisingly connected worlds in the 1920s and 1930s: that of the founders of comparative musicology; that of interwar Protestant missionaries; and that of the scholars and musicians working on early Euro-pean music. All three searched for the origins of music in an authentic mode and feared that hybrid forms of music (African-European or old music played in too modern a way) would be inauthentic.

The plague, a metal monster, and the wonder of Wanda: in pursuit of the performance style

The claim of having achieved "authenticity" in performance has today almost disappeared without a trace. However, Richard Taruskin's efforts to disprove the premise through a series of articles in the 1980s still beg important questions, such as exactly what are the origins of the early music movement's performance style and which performers had a role in its transmission? Taruskin contends that Stravinsky transmitted the "geometrical," or modernist, Bach to the musical world, and that Stravinsky might have learned it from Wanda Landowska. Taruskin's accolade exposes more than a bit of irony within the early-music revival, since Landowska is seldom, if ever, acknowledged as a significant contributor to the development of the early-music "style" of performance, even though Landowska's recordings reveal a performer with a modern style, one that foreshadows 1980s early-music performances. Due primarily to the sound of her non-historic harpsichord, Landowska's influence, however, has been diminished, and her significant role was negated in the post-"authenticity" early music movement. This paper traces Landowska's central influence through an investigation of her Varsovian musical education, Parisian residency, and recordings. It recognizes and advocates for the contributions made by Landowska before the advent of the "authenticity" era.

Cracking the Dutch Early Music Movement: the Repercussions of the 1969 Notenkrakersactie

The Notenkrakersactie of 17 November 1969 was a landmark event for Dutch musical life: a group of composers disrupted a concert of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, protesting against the orchestra's lack of contemporary music programming. Scholars have tended to interpret this protest as a watershed for the avant-garde, but historical performance – not just contemporary music – proved to be a significant beneficiary. Early Musicians, like New Musicians, had common political goals and appealed to the youth counterculture. Ensuing reforms to the federal arts subsidy system, state-funded music schools, and conservatories in the 1970s were also advantageous for the Dutch Early Music movement. During the welfare retrenchment of the 1980s and the subsidy restructuring of the 1990s, Early Music ensembles economized and had greater success with mainstream recording companies and audiences than new music groups. Nearly forty years after the Notenkrakersactie, traditional symphony orchestras have less influence on Dutch musical life, but recent cutbacks to arts subsidies threaten contemporary music and historical performance alike.