Early music

Term used, mainly since the 1960s, to stand not only for music of an earlier era but also for a particular attitude towards its performance. It is sometimes applied to music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (i.e. up to 1600), sometimes to the Baroque period too (up to 1750), but increasingly up to 1800, so including much of the Classical period. But the usage of the term for such concepts as ‘authentic’ or historically informed performance, extends up to more recent times and could (for example) comprehend playing Schumann's piano music on instruments of his day or Mahler's symphonies using the kinds of portamento favoured by string players of the early 20th century.

The ‘early music movement’ is particularly concerned with performing practice and the revival and use of period instruments as well as period techniques and understandings of such matters as notation, rhythm, tempo and articulation, along with the establishment of texts that conform with the composer's intentions. The movement may be seen as going back to the musical antiquarianism of the 18th century and the critical scholarship that arose from it during the 19th. Its true father figure is Arnold Dolmetsch who did much in the early 20th century to revive interest in early techniques and instruments; his pupils and followers continued the tradition. In the 1960s and 1970s, groups such as Concentus Musicus (Vienna), the Early Music Consort (London), the Studio für Frühe Musik (Munich), the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Basle) and the New York Pro Musica cultivated performance in period styles; their work has since been followed up by groups and individuals, particularly in such centres as London, the Low Countries and Boston. Most of these groups concentrated on Baroque music or earlier; with the work of the Academy of Ancient Music, the Collegium Aureum and the London Classical Players, the Classical and early Romantic repertories have also been examined in the light of period performance. The early music movement has been much fostered not only by scholars but also by modern builders of period instruments, by journals (notably the British quarterly Early Music, founded in 1973), by publishers (particularly of facsimile editions) and by the record industry. See illustration.

Some families of early instruments as shown by Praetorius in ‘Syntagma musicum’ (1620)