The Early Music Debate: Ancients, Moderns, Postmoderns

Abstract

This was the title of a symposium chaired by Joseph Kerman at the first Berkeley Festival and Exhibition: Music in History, presented in June 1990 by CAL Performances, the arts organization of the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with the Music Department and local musical organizations. The event took place in Zellerbach Playhouse on the Berkeley campus and was attended by about two hundred people; it consisted of statements from the panelists, Laurence Dreyfus, Joshua Kosman, John Rockwell, Ellen Rosand, Richard Taruskin, and Nicholas McGegan; a discussion among them, and questions from the floor. 113 Printed below is the prospectus that was circulated to all ahead of time, followed by the panelists' opening statements. The last two of these were not written out but delivered impromptu, and have been lightly edited from the recorded transcript. Highlights of the Festival were a Carmina burana program (Thomas Binkley), Monteverdi's Mass and Vespers of 1610 (Philip Brett), Jommelli's La schiava liberata (Alan Curtis), and Handel's La resurrezione (Nicholas McGegan-with Laurence Dreyfus playing the gamba part); some of these are referred to in the panelists' remarks.