The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century by Oxford University Press, USA

	Title: The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century Purchase Item Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA List Price: $35.00 Our Price: $24.43
Customer Reviews:
The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century by Oxford University Press, USA The Future of the Past....
Bruce Haynes has created a great book for those wishing to have a further understanding of not only what made baroque music "tick" in its own day, but what efforts are being made to keep it ticking today. His efforts to show how we are still searching for how baroque musicians actually thought about and played the music of their time through the hazy mist of Romanticism and modernism is an eye opener, right down to the unruly audiences at operas and the cheers during pieces while being played. Also the high degree of improvisation which was required for many pieces for them to truly take off as they were originally meant to. Plus, near and dear to my heart is the section on modern period composition and the mention of Vox Saeculorum, a modern guild for period composers. The future of "early" music is definitely moving forward, probably in ways that many have never dreamt of....
The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century by Oxford University Press, USA A frustrated baroque lover
As a dedicated music lover and activist, once I heard the gorgeous sonorities of baroque music performed in high fidelity sound I was hooked. I bit harder when I played viola in local ensembles, and when the great radio music host, Robert J. Luertsema (WGBH-Boston) began his comprehensive playing of all available G.P. Telemann oeuvre in 1981 - celebrating the tricentennial of Telemann's birth. Unfortunately, by that time the period instrument movement was taking over. It created an elite private domain for aficionados that excluded the general musical public. Soon the rewarding custom for virtuoso soloists (violin, piano, oboe, cello, etc.) to begin concerts with a baroque work disappeared, because failure to perform in antique modes would be noted archly as "conservative" by wet-finger-in-the-air newspaper critics. Cognoscenti: I respect your commitment but you may as well stop reading because mine is to the larger musical community. Bizarre practices flourished, like a vocal soloist with lovely restrained vibrato being accompanied by strings with ostentatiously vibrato-less, flat sound; the Keuken brothers played Geminiani works in similar manner - although Geminiani explicitly exhorted players in his violin method of 1752 to use vibrato. I grieved over the obscuring of beautiful melody with fussy, "correct" ornamentation, and the fragmentation of languorous slow movements with chopped notes. Now let me admit - I can't figure out from the encomiums of the publisher's review or the single personal reviewer where Haynes stands on all this. Is he going to call spades spades or digging implements? Is he going to unmask the ridiculous prohibitions on electronic amplification so fine baroque groups can go on the road and not just play where some mycaenas subsidizes performance? Is he going to allow us to take back the glorious development of the violin in the last 250 years? Does he really think Beethoven would have settled for a fortepiano if he had had a Steinway at his disposal? Somebody tell me more and I may buy the book!
The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century by Oxford University Press, USA Superb! Thought-provoking
Bruce Haynes latest book "The End of Early Music" is superb, and applicable to those of us in the Period music field, as well as to all classical musicians and classical music organization administrators. As we all struggle for audience and relevance, this book can provide context and challenge. Recommended without any reservation.
The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century by Oxford University Press, USA Product Description
Part history, part explanation of early music, this book also plays devil's advocate, criticizing current practices and urging experimentation. Haynes, a veteran of the movement, describes a vision of the future that involves improvisation, rhetorical expression, and composition. Written for musicians and non-musicians alike.