DIALOGUS

Early Music: These two words evoke an era, specific instruments, paintings and beautiful places steeped in history. At the same time, they also put forward interesting questions, continually challenging an audience of passionate music fans. How old should a piece of music be in order to be defined as “early”? Why is Vivaldi classified as “early” music, but Beethoven isn’t?

The answers lie in the general consensus that the study of the performance practice of the age on the part of musicians and musicologists, through the analysis of treatises, documents, sheet music, and period instruments, has made it possible to revive a way of playing that had once seemed lost. “This” way of playing and approaching music is the early music of today: even Beethoven would become early music if he were rediscovered through the musical instruments used during his life. If, five centuries from now, someone were to reconstruct the way that contemporary jazz musicians now play or they way they played in the last century—without the use of recordings and movies—they would find only a few simple melodic lines written in a book: it would be just as difficult for them to reconstruct the sound of jazz as it is for us to reconstruct the Baroque sound. It is interesting to note that contemporary jazz musicians are demonstrating a growing interest in early music. Why? What unites jazz and early music? In two words: dialogue and improvisation. In order to improvise together, one must first know how to listen, to know when to let another instrument play and just provide accompaniment, and how to inspire each another, improvising on cue. Dialogue is the mutual foundation of these seemingly disparate musical worlds.
 

For us, for Antiqua 2012, dialogue is hope. It is the poetry of music par excellence and the main means of disseminating and developing ideas; it is the duality of speech and hearing; it is the postulate of understanding. Dialogue in music is voices and instruments in juxtaposition, speech and sound vying to be heard: it is the juxtaposition of aural and emotional contrasts, give and take, tension and relaxation. It is a virtuosic duel between instruments in the same ensemble as well as the comparison of musical language from epoch to epoch. We hope that in this age of individual solitude, which is also a time of globalization of ideas, even what is known as “art music” can once again become the key to understanding, to coming together, a common code for the peoples of many different cultures.