Firstly, let me tell you what early music is NOT.

Early Music is not early

childhood music (ie. music for small children). It is also not music which is
performed in the early hours of the morning.
What it IS, is that music written or performed in Europe prior to the
early decades of the 19th century. I mean, music of the Middle Ages,
Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo and the early Classical eras. It also
encompasses music written before the Middle Ages, except that there is so
little music of the ancient cultures which survives, we generally forget to
include it. This merely reflects ignorance of this music, not a deliberate
attempt to exclude it.
So what we are talking about is at least 800 years of music, and possibly
thousands of years. It encompasses music from plainsong (sacred chant
performed by Monks in the Middle Ages), troubador songs from 12th
century France, bawdy songs written by Purcell and others in the late 17th
century, Bach's cantatas and passions, medieval music drama (Le Roman de
Fauvel, the Play of Daniel) plus music for a wide range of voices and
instruments, including flutes, recorders, viols, cornetto, early keyboards, and
lots of very early instruments such as shawms, racketts, gemshorns, vielles,
rebecs and many others. The music reflects the entire gamut of human
experience during those centuries.
In music history, defining precise changes or cutoff points is almost
impossible, except where some seminal event has changed the ethos of the
time very quickly. Defining the "end" of early music is likewise impossible.
For some it stops with J.S. Bach's death in 1750. For others, it is 1800. Still

others look at 1810, 1840 even 1900. What complicates this is the period
instrument movement which is strongly linked to the early music movement.
Dating the start of the early music movement is likewise very difficult. Some
might say it began with Mendelssohn's rediscovery of the music of J.S. Bach
in the 1830s. Others look to Arnold Dolmetsch, who did much pioneering
work for early music around the early 1900s, rediscovering instruments,
techniques, ornamentation and other practices. However, despite all his
work, the fledgling 20th century early music movement was generally
looked upon as an eccentric antiquarian pursuit for the first half of the
century.
There were other pioneers too: the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska springs
to mind. But it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that some really significant
performers and musicologists in Europe and America started to rediscover
sounds, instruments and manuscripts and make recordings. The English
musician David Munrow did a great deal to popularise mediaeval music
with many important recordings. The Studio for Early Music, NY Pro
Musica, and in Australia, the Renaissance Players, plus many other groups
and musicians around the world began to build and use instruments from the
period in which the music was written. They also began to research the
performance practices of the times. Some of the results were somewhat
peculiar to our ears now, but they were all important in the early music
movement finding its new feet (and its ears).
The use of period instruments in performance therefore arose more or less as
a result of the early music movement, and it makes a huge difference to the
sound and style, both for the performer (who often has to learn new

techniques) and the listener. However, I mentioned above that the period
instrument movement has complicated the issue of what is and what is not
early music, because it is so strongly linked with it. Instruments have
evolved gradually, with some changes taking place during the 20th century.
Some orchestras have now experimented with late 19th century and early
20th century works played on instruments specifically of that time, for
example, using gut strings or older style flutes or winds. In turn, they are
calling Elgar and other composers of this period "early". I would contend
that this is misleading, as the use of period instruments is not what defines
early music. Mediaeval or Renaissance music can be played on anachronistic
20th century instruments and still be early music (though not necessarily
historically correct in performance practice). However, to play 20th century
music on early instruments is likewise anachronistic, and does not make it
early music.
Highly respected journals such as "Early Music" (Oxford University Press)
have published articles on the use of period instruments in performing Elgar
etc. Personally, I don't think that is entirely appropriate for that forum,
though I have nothing against the concept of performing Elgar this way.
Just as it is difficult to make a cutoff point in terms of dates, there are other
problems with defining early music too. One of the many major problems
with early music research is the fact that we don't actually know what the
instruments sounded like in the 14th or 16th centuries. One way of trying to
find out is to find other cultures which have been more or less undisturbed
and uncontaminated. Often these are ethnic or folk cultures in isolated parts
of Europe, such as Turkey, Bulgaria etc. Today, CD shops would probably
class this music as "world music" or "folk music" for want of a better

description. Some early music performers sound more like "world music
performers" than you might expect from early musicians. Where does one
stop and the next begin?
Another problem with recreating music of earlier centuries is that we not
only don't know how it sounded to people of that time, but there is no way
that we could listen to it in the same way as they did either. Until the early
19th century, people listened to the music of their time. When J.S. Bach
died, his music was old-fashioned. The mood and fashion were changing.
The world was ready for the Classical era; counterpoint was out of fashion
and nobody much wanted to hang onto it. While there was popular music
and serious art music, the two did not form the dichotomy that we have
today. Serious composers such as Haydn, Beethoven and many others used
folk tunes in their works. (top of next column)

This changed in the 19th century. The first histories of music were written
by Charles Burney and Sir John Hawkins. By the time Arnold Dolmetsch
was beginning to rediscover early music, orchestras were playing music of
earlier centuries. With the 20th century has come so many styles of music:
atonalism, serialism, aleatoric music, neo-classicism, jazz, ragtime, swing,
pop, rock, bubblegum, rap, house and so many other styles. We have had
television, radio, video, film and muzak. Our ears have heard music from all
of these, plus music of other cultures - India, Chile, Japan, Bulgaria, Africa,
Indonesia - that we can only hear with modern ears. Even if we were sure we
were hearing an exact recreation of the sounds of the 16th century, we still
cannot hear it as people then would have.

Then there's the question of authenticity. This was very much a keyword of
the early music movement. Treatises were unearthed and their instruction
reproduced to the letter in some cases. Pictures were studied for bow holds,
embouchoures, how to hold instruments etc. Letters and other primary
documents scoured for any word on how something might have sounded. All
very laudable efforts too, I might add.
However, over time, most early musicians have come to realise some of the
limitations on this. For example, there was much artistic license with
painting and sculture. Much of the performance practice which was
documented may well have been experimental. The meaning of words has
changed over centuries. We now think of the word "artificial" as being
uncomplimentary, but 300 years ago, it meant "full of artifice" - in fact
good!
Music is subject to fashion, just as clothing is and has always been. Just look
at pop music of the past 25 years. What was fabulous in 1730 was well dead
and buried by 1755. What was radical and innovative in 1830 seems very
normal now. The same goes for performance these days. Listen to a work
recorded in 1975 and another recording of the same work recorded in 1988,
and perhaps another in 1999. You will be amazed by the differences. Most
early musicians who were recording 15 or 20 years ago now say that they
would approach that work entirely differently now. This is due to several
things: new research, new influences and the change of fashion in
performance practice. The same was probably true in the 16th and 17th
centuries. When has anything ever stood still?

My own feeling is that early documents and pictures are very important to
the musician to study and be fully aware of. There are excellent treatises
available from early centuries, but there are also poor and misleading books
too. It behoves every musician to do their research so that they can make
their decisions based on knowledge, not just instinct or current taste. I also
believe that musicians should use facsimiles (exact reproductions) of early
publications in order to avoid editorial decisions which may obscure the
music rather than illuminate it. But one must also strive for musicianship
rather than strict authenticity, and if the words of the 17th century writer,
musician and cleric Thomas Mace are to be believed, you should
attempt the Striking of your Strings; but before you do That, Arm your self
with Preparative Resolutions to gain a Handsom-Smooth-Sweet-SmartClear-Stroak; or else Play not at all.*
If achieving this means abandoning strict observation of past performance
practices, then I think we should do so, and that doing so is to be authentic in
spirit. So much of early performance practice as revealed in treatises was
clearly experimental, and I think that musicians of that time would have
been amazed at us trying to recreate what they had discarded as inferior.
What we tend to find, though, is that our own practice changes over time.
Nothing has ever been fixed in music, and it probably should never be.
Flexibility of thought and approach was obviously important in earlier
centuries, and it remains so now, though it may be often forgotten.
This should tell you that the term "early music" covers a VERY wide range
of sounds, ideas, cultures, styles, instruments and genres. What it also
suggests to me is that the term "early music" is actually rather irrelevant. It is

so wide as to be meaningless, and in many cases it becomes a term of

separation rather than inclusion. It has served a purpose in one way: people
can get interested in "early music" and study it now, where back in the 1960s
and before, music before Bach was hardly recognised by mainstream music
institutions and musicians, or dismissed as primitive rubbish. But in future
decades, what we all have to realise is that what we call "early music" is in
fact mainstream. We can't designate music of the 19th century as "Music"
and prevent that of the 14th century from being called "Music". Music is
music whether it was written in the 12th century or the 18th or 20th
centuries, and I believe that ultimately we should think of it that way without
segregating parts of it by means of clever terms and titles.
Patrice Connelly
* Thomas Mace. Musick's Monument (1676) [Original spelling and italics
used].