EarlyMusicNews.Org

A Gripping Account of One of the Great Forgotten Wars of History

ISBN: 9780195395235
Hardback, May 2011, 304 pp.
List Price: $27.95

“Alexander the Great conquered an enormous empire—stretching from Greece to the Indian subcontinent—and his death triggered forty bloody years of world-changing warfare. These were years filled with high adventure, intrigue, passion, assassinations, dynastic marriages, treachery, shifting alliances, and mass slaughter on battlefield after battlefield. And while the men fought on the field, the women, such as Alexander’s mother Olympias, schemed from their palaces and pavilions.  …
  

“Intended to reveal the talents of tomorrow, the competition is opened to the major vocal artists of any nationalities and any tessitura's, it rewards the best vocal interpretations the works of which are inevitably drawn from the directory of baroque period.“
  

EarlyMusicNews.org Weblinks Revisited

Informative hurdy-gurdy website portal authored by Xavier Aimé with the cooperation of many who are involved in the world of the hurdy-gurdy.

“How the saga of Italian unification in 1861 is being (half-heartedly) celebrated by opera composers.

 Since its inception in the early 17th century, opera is a divisive artform in Italy.
  

“John Playford (1623–1686) is probably best known today as publisher of The English Dancing Master (1651) which contains unharmonized melodies and instructions for the steps to several English country dances. 
  

“It wasn't clear which of the two debutants would upstage the other on Tuesday at the Wigmore Hall, where every inch of the stage was crammed with winged fortepianos.

“Medieval bestiaries combined descriptions of animals with religious and moral meaning.  These collections of stories were very popular in the middle ages, and musicians expanded on the idea, creating musical works referencing one or more animals.
  

The National Centre for Early Music posts its extensive early music listings for the autumn and winter 2011 calendar:

Monday 10 October 6.50pm for 7.00pm
Viols, Voices and Virginals: A Gala Concert presented in association with BBC Radio 3
NCEM, St Margaret’s Church, Walmgate, York YO1 9TL
Box Office: 01904 658338, Web: www.ncem.co.uk
Tickets £20.00 (including wine on arrival)

Viol consort Phantasm, Countertenor Iestyn Davies and harpsichord player Mahan Esfahani join forces for a celebration of outstanding English music including works by Gibbons, Byrd and Purcell. The concert will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 throughout the UK and to countries in the European Broadcasting Union. (Please be seated by 6.50pm)
  

BAROQUE BAND Adventures Through the Looking Glass

The Queen of Hearts
The internationally renowned early music soprano, Dame Emma Kirkby gives us the honor of opening this new exciting season of Baroque Band. Get lost in a world of wonders and mysteries with Chicago's period orchestra and one of the most remarkable voices of the century.
 

Vote for the Gramophone Artist of the Year 2011!

“Who would you like to see win?

Gramophone’s critics have already been engaged for some months in the rigorous judging process by which these prestigious classical prizes are allotted – and which this year are being presented in association with Steinway & Sons. But, as tradition dictates, one of the highest-profile awards – Artist of the Year – is decided not by our reviewers but by you.  …

“We are excited to rejoin Andrew Gant, music director and organist of the Chapel Royal, London, for three lecture recitals. This will serve as a ‘sequel’ to our 2009 collaboration in which music written for the Chapel Royal was featured. Further investigations of English church music will be explored, sung and played. Andrew Gant, as personal church musician to the Royal Family, is uniquely suited to present insight and humour to these singular events.“

In this latest issue appear the following articles:

“Vocal Technique: Boring Exercises That Will Make You a Better Singer” by Ian Howell
“Opera Corner: Young Artist Programs” by Nicholas Tamagna
“Countertenor Stephen Wallace Interviewed on RTE Radio” by Ian Howell
  

CAMBRIDGE EARLY MUSIC is pleased to announce details of our Handel Festival, which takes place on the weekend of 1-2 October 2011. 
  

“Rethinking the Baroque explores a tension. In recent years the idea of ‘baroque’ or ‘the baroque’ has been seized upon by scholars from a range of disciplines and the term ‘baroque’ has consequently been much in evidence in writings on contemporary culture, especially architecture and entertainment. Most of the scholars concerned have little knowledge of the art, literature, and history of the period usually associated with the baroque. A gulf has arisen. On the one hand, there are scholars who are deeply immersed in historical period, who shy away from abstraction, and who have remained often oblivious to the convulsions surrounding the term ‘baroque’; on the other, there are theorists and scholars of contemporary theory who have largely ignored baroque art and architecture. This book explores what happens when these worlds mesh. 
  

A Royal Musical Association Study Day in association with the Sixteenth-/Seventeenth-Century Music Network (SSMN):

Domestic Music in Recusant Circles in Elizabethan and Jacobean Times
A Forum for Students, Performers and Researchers
Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge on 26 November 2011
Guest speaker: Kerry McCarthy (Duke University, USA)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Some exceptional music was created during the Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods, and some of it was inspired by the religious uncertainties and suppression that existed at the time. The wealth of music was possible in part through the interest and generous patronage provided by many of the wealthy, educated and influential English Catholics who retired from court to their country estates where they cultivated the arts in the freedom of their privacy. This forum is an attempt to bring together research into the many aspects of domestic music in the network of English Catholics.

“Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO) is delighted to announce a new publishing opportunity for doctoral students at the dissertation level. The OBO Music Graduate Student Article Award is an annual competition aimed at offering experienced doctoral candidates an opportunity to contribute an OBO article based on their dissertation research. This invitation-only competition is a way for graduate students to draw attention to their work while also adding a peer-reviewed publication to their CVs.
  

Franz Liszt: Mirror of a European Society in Evolution
Organized by the Universities of Rennes, Dijon and Strasbourg, France

As part of the bicentenary celebrations of Liszt’s birth, the universities of Rennes, Dijon and Strasbourg organize a tribute to the most representative European composer of the nineteenth century. Three symposia in three different cities will give new insight into three different aspects of Liszt s artistic, literary and political personality and seek to (re)define his status in the cultural world of his time.
  

“The final weekend of the Indianapolis Early Music Festival (IEMF) featured one evening of music by an up-and-coming group and one evening of Chinese and Italian music.

“As our current season draws to a close in August, we announce details for concerts and events in September – December which can be downloaded from our website.
  

Catalan Organ Music from the XVIIth century from the Trito catalogue.

   

“Autour du clavecin d'autrefois”: A Tribute to Kenneth Gilbert in Montreal ”
McGill University, Montreal, Canada, 15 to 17 June 2012

Perhaps more than any other leading figure in the field of early keyboard music, Kenneth Gilbert has engaged with both scholarship and performance with equal success. He has made over 50 recordings of international keyboard repertoire that spans the Renaissance to the Enlightenment; he has written numerous articles and reviews; he has edited new publications of music that constitute a treasure for generations of early music scholars and performers; and he has profoundly influenced, through his teaching, many of the top harpsichordists in the world.
  

News from “Early Music New York” ensemble of their 2011-2012 exciting season offerings. The following are the concert descriptions. Do plan on attending as well as plan on purchasing your tickets early as some of these events may sell-out early.

BURGUNDIAN RENAISSANCE: Sacred & Salacious Polyphony
EARLY MUSIC NEW YORK, Frederick Renz, Director

EARLY MUSIC NEW YORK'S chapel concerts within NYC's great gothic Cathedral, are the ideal setting for the masterful motets and saucy chansons by Josquin Desprez and his 15th-century Lowlands contemporaries. The epitome of Renaissance polyphony, intricate interwoven chant and secular melodies are spun into rich tapestries of unsurpassed beauty. EM/NY's singers are joined by dueling lute virtuosi.

Saturday, November 5, 8 PM
Sunday, November 6, 2 PM

Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street
New York, NY 10025
#1 Subway to 110th Street

Visit the Early Music New York website or call Box Office 212 280-0330 for more information regarding ticket prices and subscription discounts.

Hear Rosalyn Tureck play various works by J.S. Bach.

Rosalyn Tureck, renowned musicologist, inspired many to study Bach on many keyboard platforms (piano, harpsichord, clavichord) and founded the Tureck Bach Research Institute, Inc. in 2001.
  

“This dissertation is an analysis of Giovanni Antonio Terzi's lute intabulations contained in his two Venetian lute books of 1593 and 1599. These works are discussed in relation to other lute intabulations in sixteenth-century Italian prints and manuscripts. The dissertation discusses the origins of lute intabulations, its philosophical background and performance practice. Terzi's style of ornamentation in comparison with his contemporaries is central to the discussion.
  

New additions to the Symétrie catalogue: 

“French Society of Musicology: scores of Esther and Athalie”

Esther

Penultimate tragedy of Racine, Esther was written for the “Demoiselles” of the royal house of Saint-Cyr, founded at the initiative of Madame de Maintenon, wife of Louis XIV. It opened in this institution a short-lived tradition of theater with musical interludes. The music involves a three-part instrumental ensemble (prelude, overture, interlude), a choir of girls from Esther’s retinue, solos and vocal ensembles. This edition displays for the first time the declaimed text, preserved in old spelling, and the entire music drawn up from ​​sources contemporary with the creation of the work.

Full score (foreword in French and English, 12 fac-siimiles)
156 pages
ISMN 979-0-56004-025-7

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