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About eArly music todAyEarly Music Today embraces all those who enjoy playing, singing or listening to early music. It spans all aspects of the subject, with features on today’s top performers, issues of performance practice, innovative early music projects and festivals taking place all over the world.

Our news and views section keep readers up to date with the latest events and discoveries in the early music world, while our reviews of CDs, DVDs, books and performances are written by some of the country’s top early music specialists. Our listings section also offers comprehensive coverage of concerts happening across the UK.

For those looking for an introduction to early music right up to the conservatoire student, Early Music Today is the definitive guide to the early music scene.

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amaTeUr mUsIC-lOVers alIKe reaCh FOr TO Keep Up wITh The bUsy wOrlD OF early mUsIC. many COngraTUlaTIOns TO ThIs exCepTIOnal magazIne FOr ITs COnTInUeD sUCCess!’

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Why Advertise With eArly music todAy?established over 20 years ago, EMT actively engages with all aspects of early music making in the UK and abroad and boasts a readership ranging from ardent medievalists to baroque aficionados.

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www.earlymusictoday.com December 2014–February 2015 33

The 75th anniversary of Arnold Dolmetsch’s death on 28 February 2015 seems a good moment to reassess the legacy of the man many still think of as the godfather of the early music revival. The considerable interest still attending his name was apparent at the Horniman Museum’s Roots of Revival conference (reported on in the previous issue of EMT), when several papers and the final concert were devoted to themes relating to Dolmetsch. Yet recourse to comparison between Grove V (1954), where Dolmetsch is given in excess of two generous columns, with the present parsimonious entry in Grove Music Online may suggest a rather different story.

Let’s briefly remind ourselves of the biography of this remarkable polymath. Dolmetsch was born into a family of professional musicians in Le Mans on 24 February 1858, and learned keyboard instrument-making from his father and maternal grandfather. Following violin studies in Brussels, where his interest in early music was whetted by the concerts on early instruments originally inaugurated in 1832 by François-Joseph Fétis, Dolmetsch arrived in England in 1883. Here he enrolled in the newly opened Royal College of Music, subsequently becoming a violin teacher at Dulwich College. Six years later, his discovery of English viol music in the British Library proved to be an electrifying catalyst. Dolmetsch immediately set about

recovering and restoring the instruments necessary for the performance of the repertoire of the period: viols, clavichords, harpsichords and lutes. The first concerts on these instruments were given at his home in the 1890s.

The first decade of the new century found Dolmetsch undertaking sojourns in the US (where he made over 80 early instruments in partnership with piano firm Chickering) and Paris, before he returned to England to settle in Haslemere, Surrey. There he created an enclave devoted to early music, surrounding himself with fellow enthusiasts and acolytes. These included such notable names as George Bernard Shaw and William Morris, whose ‘Arts and Crafts’ movement became closely associated with Dolmetsch’s work and whose image would interestingly be mirrored some 50 years later by the open-sandals perception of the 1960s early music revival. In 1925 Dolmetsch started the Haslemere Festival, an event that involved a uniquely conceived series of early music concerts and one that still

exists; it may justifiably be thought of as the progenitor of the early music festivals that now proliferate around the world.

So how may we view the Dolmetsch legacy today? As noted above, he was not the first to revive old instruments and present concerts on them, while his increasingly dictatorial attitude and lack of diplomacy alienated many of those who might have worked with him toward an ever-greater understanding of old instruments and the music written for them. For me, Dolmetsch’s greatest achievement was his endless quest not just to build and play old instruments, but also to be one of the first to attempt an awareness of the performance practice that went with such an interest. In this he genuinely was a pioneer, with a lasting legacy in the shape of the book he published as far back as 1915, The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries. Within this context, Arnold Dolmetsch was the prophet who truly laid the foundations for the scholar-based early music revival of the second half of the 20th century.

He created an enclave devoted to early music,

surrounding himself with fellow enthusiasts

and acolytes

The legacy of Arnold DolmetschBrian Robins looks at the life and influence of this pioneering figure in early music

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www.earlymusictoday.com March–May 2015 15

UNSUNG HEROESFor me, early dance is about connections between people. I measure the success of a Playford’s Ceilidh by how many people I dance with; I measure the strength of one of my friendships by our ability to silently dance a Passamezzo! As a ballet dancer by training, I’ve always found the contrast rather enjoyable: there’s a sort of group co-operation required for most early dances that is not always present in a ballet class. In general, the steps in early dance are simpler than in ballet, and so the focus is less on individual perfection than on team effort and communication. The fun is in the floor patterns and the detailed devices, the contact between eyes and hands, and the measured spaces between bodies. Dances that would be impossible to dance alone look beautiful in a pair or group – it’s the connections that make it work.

The connections early dance can inspire are especially powerful when they bridge cultural or linguistic gaps. I’ve been lucky enough to perform and lead early dance workshops in Morocco, often with schoolchildren whose English is almost as basic as my French. I’m amazed by how much can be shared through dancing together, even when words fail. I remember my first ever workshop in

Morocco, trying to explain to a teenage girl the poise necessary to make a pavan look good. I stumbled over the words and resorted to demonstrating again, at which point she asked ‘Comme une princess?’ – not only did she understand the point I was trying to make, but she summed it up in a way I’ve used many times since then! Between us, we bridged the gap. Despite linguistic differences, the workshops have resulted in some fantastic cross-cultural pieces, one of my favourites being a galliard mixed with pieces of street acrobatics thought up by the boys we were working with.

In a performance, early dance helps to connect the musicians and the audience by adding another dimension. For younger audiences in particular I’ve found dance, along with costume and explanations of the instruments, can bring the music to life. At its best, dance can physically drag the audience in – there’s nothing quite like a farandole to get people moving, and to challenge the conception that early music is a slightly stuffy type of culture, rather than the very living and lively art form that we love.

Early dance also makes a rather special connection with people through time. For me, nowhere is this more keenly felt than

in the silly dances, which I love. My favourites are those that play out like a game, with the dancers chasing and spurning and selecting bystanders to join the fun. It’s a side of history that sometimes gets lost. It’s easy to get caught up in dates of battles and names of kings and forget that the past was populated by people who, like us, played and danced for fun. By dancing those dances that are utterly, unavoidably ridiculous, we remind ourselves that our early modern antecedents weren’t just dour-faced merchants, having portraits made of them unsmiling in their best clothes. They, like us, laughed and flirted, and occasionally hand-jived (don’t believe me? Ask someone to dance Sweet Kate for you!). That connection is something pretty magical.

ANNIE HOYLE

EARLY DANCE

Early Dance Circle www.earlydancecircle.co.ukNonsuch History and Dancewww.nonsuchdance.co.ukNorwich Historical Dancewww.norwichhistoricaldance.org.uk

FURTHER INFORMATION

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www.earlymusictoday.com December 2014–February 2015 29

much the same way as dial-a-pizza!’ The Machaut project began with the

‘song-cycle’ generally regarded as Machaut’s masterwork Le voir dit, and this first volume in the series was received with considerable critical acclaim. The chansons within chart the course of a real or imagined love affair – Smith draws artistic comparisons with German Romantic song-cycles. Looking back, as we do through the distorting glass of history, we might fail to appreciate how original Machaut was as a multidisciplinary artist. Mark Dobell (tenor) points out that ‘his work was unrivalled for centuries’ and when Smith calls Machaut probably ‘the greatest singer-songwriter of all time’, Donald Greig (baritone) suggests – only half joking – that he might be viewed as ‘the James Taylor of his day!’

The interaction between the four current members of the group is relaxed and mutually respectful – the quality of their listening to each other in a social situation evokes their effectiveness as an ensemble. I suggested to them that Smith and Greig, as the two founding members, might seem to be gently in charge and asked whether in rehearsal the group behaves like a democracy. Smith responds: ‘Nobody is in charge – we are completely democratic, though Don and I may seem to have more to say about the group simply because we are the “originals”. We all put forward suggestions in rehearsals and, genuinely, we very rarely disagree. On those occasions that we do, we tend to take turns in giving way which is maybe why the group is still together.’

The chansons, in their various forms and layers of complexity (ballades, rondeaux, virelais, lais and motets), present multiple challenges for the singer, as well as technical, musical and linguistic aspects. I asked them if they prefer to perform these works in public prior to recording and how they plan their rehearsal schedule. ‘We don’t always manage to have public performances of every Machaut song before recording – there are a lot of them! But if there is an occasion when we can’t slip an item into a programme before the red light goes on, then we do make a point of doing trial runs in performance conditions. We also stagger the rehearsal process, holding

sessions some time in advance – not least so that we can report back and confer with the editorial team on decisions relating to ficta and so on – plus rehearsals nearer to the actual recording. The nature of this music also means that we do a lot of work on our own in between group rehearsals. For one thing, a lot of practice goes into our attempts to master the medieval French pronunciation!’

It’s worth noting at this point that the Orlando Consort have form with Machaut, having recorded an extremely well-received disc, Dreams in the pleasure

garden, for Deutsche Grammophon’s Archiv label in 1997 (reissued 2007) with the group’s starting lineup. Smith relates that ‘working on that project, and the reception that it received, gave us the confidence that all-vocal performances of this repertoire can work very effectively.’

That they make it sound so easy is a tribute to their technical expertise and musical intelligence. Smith mentions that, on the first read-through, they come across passages about which they wonder: ‘Can that possibly be right? Experimenting with different approaches leads to the conclusion that if you just sing precisely what’s in the manuscript then it makes perfect sense.’ They seem also to be on a mission to reveal every possible effect the music will provide: ‘There’s a limited amount of notes at your disposal, but a great richness to be got from them’.

Volume two for Hyperion, The dart of love, is on the verge of release. Although they can’t predict how many discs will see the project to conclusion, they are happy to reveal that volume three is already in the can and that they are working on number four.

Gramophone magazine compared Smith’s singing of the unaccompanied Lay de Bon Esperance from volume one as a challenge akin to performing Wagner, and he has had to endure constant quips

from his colleagues about when they’ll get to hear his Brünnhilde. It was Martin Vogel (in 1962) who noticed the ‘Tristan chord’ in a work by Machaut without, of course, the harmonic implications that make it meaningful. That is amusing, but maybe Machaut can be compared to Wagner: a demanding, multi-talented creator of musical drama and a self-publicist, micro-managing every aspect of his work?

If, like me, you spent your youth plugged into a Walkman listening to David Munrow’s revelatory Ars nova recordings (to which Smith pays warm

tribute regarding the quality of the singing), you will recognise how far we have travelled in musicology and performance practice. Although, arguably, the use of instruments where appropriate might bring us nearer to Machaut’s ideal, these new recordings will provide a benchmark against which future a cappella interpretations will be measured.

The Orlando Consort’s The dart of love is reviewed on page 41.

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Materials such as Machaut’s Poésies (1372-1377) are available from the new digital resource

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The modernisation of Machaut

Academia and performers can work together to create a very valuable resource that can be appreciated on all sorts of levels, from casual

listener to expert musicologist

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www.earlymusictoday.com March–May 2015 25

performed for Porpora but not for Handel when they were both in London. I’m attracted to Porpora not only because he taught the great castrati – Farinelli, Caffarelli and Senesino – but because of the way his music is so full of passion. I adore the baroque theatrical style, full of light and pathos. There’s melancholy and there are such extreme expressions of human feelings. The music is technically very complex and very demanding.’

In an appealing flight of fancy in his own introduction to the Porpora CD, Fagioli writes of what he imagines each time he studies one of the arias: ‘It’s as if I were taking a singing lesson from Porpora in each of them – I like to feel I too am a pupil of his. What an honour, even today – so many years later – to learn from singing his arias; what a joy and what a challenge! Porpora’s special style of writing, full of trills, long coloratura passages – so emotional, so profound, so effective.’

Does Fagioli believe we are now enjoying a renaissance of singers who are able to perform his maestro’s works? ‘I hope so,’ he says. ‘No two countertenors ever have exactly the same sound, and that’s absolutely great. Everyone has a different way to sing and a different technique. The fact that we are not machines, but human beings – artists with a soul, a heart and a mind. I am really grateful to be able to work with these incredible things. It means that this sort of music will always be new and exciting.’

Franco Fagioli’s latest disc ‘Il maestro – Porpora arias’ is reviewed on page 38.

PORPORA timeline

– 1696Porpora enrols at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo in Naples; by 1699, his fees are waived and he is assumed to have been earning his keep as a student teacher.

– 1711 Porpora was described as maestro di cappella to the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, the general of the Austrian army in Naples, in the libretto of his second opera Flavio Anicio Olibrio.

– 1720Porpora makes his mark as a teacher; from his private singing classes came the castrati Farinelli and Caffarelli. An anecdote about Caffarelli singing the same page of vocal exercises for five years suggests Porpora was keen on technique, his aim being ‘the development of absolute control of the voice, particularly with regard to agility, dynamics and colouring, through the use of regular and rigorous exercises’.

– 1725Back in Italy, Porpora works with Metastasio on Didone Abbandonata.

– 1733Porpora goes to London at the invitation of his English patrons. He writes five operas, including Polifemo, in which Farinelli makes his London debut; this is under the aegis of the Opera of the Nobility, a group formed in competition with Handel’s opera company.

– 1738After an absence of 12 years, he returns to Naples and revises Semiramide Riconosciuta for the king’s birthday the following year.

– 1747Porpora moves to Dresden, where he is appointed Kapellmeister in 1748 – only to see his rival Hasse appointed Ober-Kapellmeister in 1750.

– 1759Porpora returns to Naples, to the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto. Metastasio wrote to Farinelli, speaking of the misfortunes of their former master, asking him to excuse ‘Porpora’s irregularities’ and remember him as a man of ‘eminence and a friend’. Porpora’s last years were spent in poverty. His pupil Domenico Corri wrote: ‘Porpora kept so miserable a table that he was frequently driven out of the house by hunger to seek a dinner elsewhere.’

1686 –Nicola Antonio Porpora is born on 17 August

in Naples to a bookseller, Carlo, and his wife, Caterina.

1708 –Commissioned to write his first opera, Agrippina;

it was well received.

1719 –Porpora’s opera Faramondo is given

its premiere in honour of the nameday of the Empress Elizabeth.

1724 –Porpora visits Austria and Germany;

Damiro e Pitia is produced in Munich, but little else comes of this journey, the emperor in Vienna apparently finding Porpora’s music

‘too florid and ornate’.

1726 –Porpora takes up his most important teaching

post, at the Ospedale degli’ Incurabili, the famous music school for girls in Venice.

1735 –Porpora leaves London, less than a year before both companies collapse, and returns to Venice

and his old position at the Incurabili.

1744 –With the decline in demand for his operas, Porpora begins teaching singing at another Venetian conservatoire, the Ospedaletto.

1752 –Porpora travels to Vienna and gives composition

lessons to the young Haydn. David Wyn Jones writes, in The Life of Haydn: ‘Haydn was allowed

to accompany Porpora’s voice students on the piano and was also his chamber servant for a time. He admitted […] that with Porpora he

benefited a great deal in voice, composition and the Italian language.’ He also claimed to have

learnt ‘the true fundamentals of compositions from the celebrated Herr Porpora’.

1768 –Porpora dies in Naples on 3 March.

The musicians of Naples come together to perform, gratis, at his funeral.

Praising Porpora

Nicola Porpora

EMT_0215_R_Composer Spotlight_24-25.indd 25 12/02/2015 15:26:53

28 December 2014–February 2015 www.earlymusictoday.com

Synergy between scholarship and practical performance has been a defining feature of the early music industry, and it is exciting to report on a three-way partnership so potentially puissant that it may reposition our views and appreciation of one of the most original and prolific figures in the entire history of western music: Guillaume de Machaut. This is a collaboration that will ultimately result in a new edition of Machaut’s complete literary and musical works, and a series of quality recordings that will capture every surviving note he wrote.

Professor Yolanda Plumley of Exeter University has, with the support of the Leverhulme Trust, drawn together an international ‘dream team’ of academic

experts who promise exhaustive online and published resources that will bring the most up-to-date Machaut scholarship and his entire oeuvre within the reach of all. Although it’s early days, an impressive amount is already available via the project’s website (http://machaut.exeter.ac.uk). This is no dry scholarly exercise, however, as every one of Machaut’s works will be performed and all of his chansons will be recorded by the Orlando Consort and released by Hyperion, adding its enviable track record in medieval repertoire to the mix.

Angus Smith, founding tenor of the Orlando Consort, describes this collaboration as ‘a hugely impressive statement of the way academia and performers can work together to create a

very valuable resource that can be appreciated on all sorts of levels, from casual listener to expert musicologist’. The four members of the consort, who self-deprecatingly refer to themselves with reference to their artificial creation over 25 years ago by the Early Music Centre of Great Britain (forerunner of the National Centre for Early Music) as ‘the first early music boy band’, are clearly fascinated and compelled by Machaut. Smith admits: ‘In the beginning we had to approach everything from scratch – working by instinct and intuition’. He is also quick to point out that they have a symbiotic relationship with the world of musicology: ‘We found out pretty quickly that one could dial-a-scholar in

The Orlando Consort: ‘the first early music boy band’

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The modernisation of MachautRebecca Tavener explores the ways in which a new digital project and recordings from the Orlando Consort are opening up the work of Guillaume de Machaut to the 21st century

EMT_0115_F_Feat 2 Orlando Consort.indd 28 12/11/2014 16:46:07

24 March–May 2015 www.earlymusictoday.com

We have a chance encounter with Pergolesi’s Stabat mater in an Argentinian CD shop to thank for Franco Fagioli’s blossoming career as a countertenor. The singer was an 18-year-old piano student who had never even heard of a countertenor when he bought the disc, simply to get an idea of tempi for a choir he was accompanying. ‘I got home, put on the CD and when I first heard it, I thought, “there’s the soprano” – it was Emma Kirkby – and “there’s the alto, my goodness, sounding exactly like I do

when I pretend to be a mezzo-soprano” – and it was a man, James Bowman. I was astonished because I’d never heard such a thing before and that was exactly how I had been singing for fun ever

since I stopped being a boy soprano. Suddenly, I realised it was possible for men to sing in this range – it was a very exciting moment.’

As a child, Fagioli, now in his early 30s, had performed in choirs, as a soloist and as one of the three boys in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, but he never sang as a tenor or as a bass. His vocal studies took him to the Instituto Superior de Arte at Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colón, where he was taught by baritone Ricardo Yost and soprano Annelise Skovmand. He moved to the international stage in 2003, winning the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Neue Stimmen

International Singing Competition and quickly became a familiar face in the opera houses of Europe.

Fagioli began 2015 with Handel’s Riccardo Primo in Karlsruhe in February,

before moving on to Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice at three venues in France in April. Performances in Vienna and Wiesbaden precede a run of Vinci’s Catone in Utica at the Opéra Royal in Versailles in June. ‘I am very, very happy with what I am doing,’ he says contentedly, at the Covent Garden flat where he lived for his Royal Opera House performances of Idomeneo last autumn.

With a range of three octaves and a technique which flies through positively instrumental writing, Fagioli is still enjoying the praise from his role of Idamante in the controversial ROH production of Idomeneo, and also the positive press for his CD, ’Il maestro – Porpora arias’. ‘London is wonderful for me,’ he says. ‘It’s the first time I have visited. My Wigmore Hall recital went very well and I have so enjoyed Idomeneo. Working with the conductor Marc Minkowski was a dream. The controversy over the production? Well, all productions don’t have to be the same, do they?’ he says with charming diplomacy. ‘What I actually thought was controversial, and interesting, was the fact that my role of Idamante, which Mozart wrote for a man, was actually being sung by a man for the first time in modern times. It brought a new emotional dynamic to the opera and for me, yes, it worked – absolutely.’

Fagioli is missionary in his zeal to bring his hero Nicola Porpora back into mainstream baroque circles. Though a little-known figure today, Porpora, who was born in Naples in 1686, was both an influential teacher and a popular opera composer, rivalling Handel in his day. ‘He was big in London and wrote almost 50 operas, oratorios, serenatas and cantatas,’ explains Fagioli. ‘The way he developed vocal techniques to enrich emotion and melody was absolutely outstanding. Some of the greatest performers – indeed, Farinelli –

It’s as if I were taking a singing lesson from Porpora in each of them –

I like to feel I too am a pupil of his

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Praising PorporaCountertenor FRANCO FAGIOLI talks to Rhian Morgan about his appreciation for the teacher of the great castrati – Nicola Porpora

EMT_0215_R_Composer Spotlight_24-25.indd 24 16/02/2015 11:01:27

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and a Palestrina-centric programme, Musica della Cappella Sistina – which seem to have the strongest claim to a Carwood-catalyst.

So, to mark the passing of their first quarter century, I went to visit Andrew Carwood at St Paul’s Cathedral in London – where he is the first non-organist to hold the post of choirmaster since the 12th century – and asked him to tell me a little about the origins of The Cardinall’s Musick and their sound, and his own influences in early music.

‘The biggest influence on me was my first choirmaster – I mean we wouldn’t be sitting here today if it wasn’t for what he did.’ Fred Goodwin was a founding member of The Clerks of Oxenford and as a result Carwood heard their records. He also remembers George Guest at St John’s College, Cambridge as, ‘absolutely phenomenal … the most astonishing musician! He cultivated this boys’ sound – we used to call it “continental”, not very usefully, to distinguish from the King’s tone – a much more exciting, lively sound. I’d already been exposed to that when I bought my

first Tallis Scholars recording.’After graduating from Cambridge, and

his choral scholarship at St John’s under Guest, Carwood took up a lay clerk position at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford where he began to work with David Skinner on a liturgical reconstruction of Taverner’s Missa Mater Christi to be recorded under Stephen Darlington. It was out of this musical partnership that The Cardinall’s Musick

was born. ‘It was very much a product of that and the fact that my ideas were starting to develop on performance style, and I was not happy with two recordings: there was The Tallis Scholars’ Byrd, which I’d listened to often and didn’t like … and I’d got some of Christopher Hogwood’s

Mozart symphonies and I didn’t like them either because I was too wedded to Karl Böhm and the Berlin Philharmonic.’

But there was more to it than dissatisfaction with prevailing performances. Carwood was inspired by the sound of St John’s under George Guest and became increasingly interested in founding an early music group to reflect their style: ‘A more visceral, less perfect, more emotional approach to music-

making. It seemed to me, with the exception of The Taverner Consort, that most of the choirs out there were doing the King’s College, Cambridge thing – their perfect crystalline, slightly white sound.’ Carwood describes the first track of the Tallis Responds as recorded by

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Department of early music? Or department of historical performance? When it comes to choosing a university, does it really matter how a music department styles itself? Can a potential student read anything into the name or expect to find any major differences between these two kinds of departments? There is a definite distinction between the two, believes Peter Collyer, who teaches at both the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (GSMD) and at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance, and specialises in baroque and classical viola.

For Collyer, as he tells his students, early music is, ‘medieval and Renaissance, music with no continuous performing tradition’ while historical performance is the new buzzword to replace the authentic instrument movement. Conservatoires and universities are increasingly moving towards the historical performance model – a description which perhaps implies a more research-led, contextual interpretation than simply the performance of early music.

Jane Booth, a specialist in the early clarinet and chalumeau as well as head of historical performance at GSMD, believes the current position has evolved over the past few decades: ‘We certainly used to call them early music departments,’ she says, ‘with the focus on music which was earlier than standard. Now it’s a more varied approach, with departments recognising that there is a difference between the traditional approach and looking at the context of a piece before performing it. It’s about interacting with the score rather than taking a word-for-word approach.’

At GSMD, historical performance studies embrace a broad chronology from the Middle Ages to the early romantic period. The department has growing associations with the Academy of Ancient Music and The Sixteen.

Collyer, a former head of performance and early music studies at the University of Southampton, worked on a major research project looking at the historical performance practice implications of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century string chamber music editions. He gives

an excellent example of how a historically informed performance can shed light on misconceptions which have arisen from nineteenth-century practice.

‘Schumann has long been considered a poor orchestrator,’ he says, ‘but when we came to perform a Schumann symphony we found that the balance – which is what is often criticised – was improved simply by using period instruments. There was a clearer sound, less clouding.’ So by attempting to recreate what was done at the time, not simply playing the notes on the page, many prejudices can be peeled away and the resulting performance is far closer to what the composer intended.

All the London conservatoires have strong offerings in the early music/historical performance area. At Trinity Laban, instrumental and vocal students are urged to ‘explore the exciting repertoire and extraordinary sound worlds opened up by historically informed interpretation,’ whether performing on modern or period instruments.

At the Royal College of Music’s historical performance department, students flourish under Florilegium’s Ashley Solomon. The college has a large collection of early keyboards as well as an extensive collection of manuscripts and early printed editions.

At the Royal Academy of Music, where the violinist Margaret Faultless is head of historical performance, there are two baroque orchestras — one is a period instrument ensemble, the other a modern instrument group which performs in a style appropriate to its repertoire. Following the successful Bach Cantata series on Sunday mornings, the academy is now planning to perform all

The changing face of higher educationRhian Morgan explores the changing identity of early music in university and conservatoire departments

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