Pre-Early Music

Today we have a guest post from Chris:

For most of the 'revival' period of medieval music from the early 1970's it has been classed as a branch of classical music. For a brief period at the beginning it had a larger overlap with folk music in Britain. Then the 'Early Music' brand was invented, driven by a much needed rethink about performance practice of Baroque music with period instruments, and a general consideration of what the music was like at the time of writing. And so medieval music, being obviously 'early' was included.

But do 'Early Music' enthusiasts even like medieval music? In my experience the crossover is actually very small.

I believe that the greatest watershed in music occurred somewhere between say 1470 and 1525 - rather arbitrary dates - when Western music moved from essentially modal to essentially harmonic. (A recent comment by a well informed practitioner of medieval music I believe said it was all Dufay's fault.)

The modal nature of medieval music seems to have prompted many of our first-time listeners to say to us "it sounds 'Eastern' " and there does seem a much larger overlap with people interested in medieval music and the 'World Music' brand, particularly Balkan and Middle Eastern. This has probably done a lot to influence the performance of medieval music, perhaps often not for the best results. But the recognition of the modal style seems to be there.

Most people who like Renaissance music associate it with, and appreciate, its harmonic structure; whereas they find modal music difficult to fathom.

But given this watershed around 1500 can Medieval music be lumped together with Renaissance & Baroque?  I think not. I have often been involved in 'Early Music' projects and groups but found that it is overwhelmingly about the post-1500 music with pre-1500 music included to 'make the set' (often with us providing the first 500 years of the '1000 Years of Music'). If we are involved with 'Early Music' people the assumption is we also play post-1500 music Early Music.

So because I am getting a bit fed up with saying, 'no, we don't play harpsichords, and if we see or hear a crumhorn we want to scream', I now say we are not 'Early Music', we are Pre-Early Music.