EarlyMusicNews.org

“Musicians have warned that the works of Purcell, Handel, Vivaldi and Bach may never again be heard as their composers intended – because of EU rules to stop people catching "mad cow disease" from their instruments.
  

“It's official, the holidays are here! ArkivMusic has gifts of classical music as well as music for the holiday season ready to ship. Once again this year, we have limited editions and exclusive items you won't find anywhere else.”
  

“The Toronto Consort celebrates Christmas with a Latin flavour on December 9 and 10 at 8:00 pm and on December 11 at 3:30 pm with A Spanish Christmas at Trinity-St. Paul's Centre. One of the Consort’s most popular programs, variations on A Spanish Christmas have been performed every two seasons since 2007.
   

December 2-5 2011, church squares of Alcantara, Bacabeira and San Luis, Maranhão, become the stage for music and dance of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
  

Anton Höger has made available his lute intavolations to those who are interested. Anton has been kind enough to make these available through downloads on the Mediafire website.

Le Baroque Nomade ...

XVIII-21 aims at finding other kinds of music :  music that is exotic or different ; music that is listened to in other ways, by other kinds of people. This pursuit sometimes involves violence, restrictions or confrontation. But it also makes way for an encounter, a fundamental, liberating passion.

December Concert Listings …
  

Folger Consort celebrates the holidays with a rich treasury of Christmas music from 16th-century Spain. These spirited songs—including stunning works by Victoria, Morales, and Guerrero—offer a fresh and festive celebration of the season in the Folger's beautifully decorated theatre.
  

“For our first course of this musical feast, we’ve assembled merchants from 17th-century London. The voices of merchants hawking their wares served as the inspiration for a generation of English composers and formed the basis for a genre of works now known as the cries.
  

Reminder that the S. Glickman Collection of Early Istruments is for sale. You may visit the website and view the many musical instruments still available for sale. Visit the http://www.allmusicalinstruments.net  website for more information.

Call for Papers: Annual Meeting of the South-Central Chapter of the American Musicological Society, March 2-3, 2012.

Deadline for Submissions: Saturday, January 7, 2012.

The South-Central Chapter of the American Musicological Society (AMS-SC) is pleased to announce its 2012 Annual Meeting, to be hosted by Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. The meeting will begin on the morning of Friday, March 2, and will conclude by noon on Saturday, March 3. Proposals for presentations, special sessions, papers with a performance component, and panel discussions are solicited on any topic related to historical musicology.
  

The New York Times Holiday Gift Guide has been sent out on its newsletter lists. It features titles from harmonia mundi and its distributed labels. You may find some titles of interest to you.

Visit the New York Times Holiday Gift Guide web page to view/read the list.

“The directors, singers, dancers, and instrumentalists of the Boston Early Music Festival have been hard at work preparing our fourth annual Chamber Opera Series production, featuring La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers, as part of a Marc-Antoine Charpentier double bill.
  

“Arion presents its programming for Croque-Baroque : an exciting year of chamber music in store!

All concerts will take place at the magnificent Tudor Hall, first concert hall in Montreal renowed for its exceptional acoustics, located on Ogilvy's 5th floor. At noon, we offer intimate concerts with talented artists as well as a light and delicious lunch to fill your sails for an afternoon back at work. A soothing pause in Montreal's first ever concert hall, built in 1928.”
  

“ … In very readable prose, [Bruce] Haynes traces the evolution of period performance and asks several questions about the goals of today’s performers of historical music, and also about the ‘authenticity’ of trying to recreate sounds we really have no way of imagining. 
  

At the latest Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society (10-13 nov 2011), a number of awards were presented. 

“The American Musicological Society was founded in 1934 to advance research in the various fields of music as a branch of learning and scholarship.  3,600 individuals and 1,100 institutional subscribers from over forty nations participate in the Society.“
  

On this edition of the BBC Radio 3 Early Music programme, “Catherine Bott explores the three settings of the Mass written by William Byrd.“
  

“Messiah Season” is once again upon us. As you have most likely observed, regardless of where you may have set up residence, there is a production of Handel’s Messiah being performed. The scale of production may differ from city to city and you may want to pre-plan the production that you most interest you. Those of you who may be lucky enough to live within distance of a larger metropolitan center, may be able to attend more than one production before the season closes.

In the meantime, for your pleasure, we include three short videos from Tafelmusik’s famous “Sing-along Messiah”* to tease you into the mood. 
  

News from Lotus Duo that: “LOTUS won the 2nd prize of the Premio Bonporti 2011, which took place in Rovereto (Italy) on October 21-23.

In its 16th and final edition, the awards of this prestigious International Chamber Music competition were voted by the public present at the finals; LOTUS was warmly received by the audiences in those 3 days and received high praise for being a true duo. “

Details of the 2012 Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music make their appearance in the latest festival newsletter. A quick look at the list follows below:
  

Recently Google jumped into the music selling business with Google Music (store). The following is an article comparing the services of the three largest music download services on the Internet. (Editor)

“Google opened its new music store to all comers in the US this week, touting its partnerships with music labels and indie musicians, and its broad reach thanks to the Android Market. The new store has millions of songs for sale, but whether it's a game changer, serious competition for iTunes and Amazon MP3, or the best online music store out there is another question entirely. Let's take a look at each service based on its features.