Boston Early Music Festival Research Articles

Review: Well-Tempered Woodwinds: Friedrich von Huene and the Making of Early Music in a New World, by Geoffrey Burgess

Book Review| April 01 2016 Review: Well-Tempered Woodwinds: Friedrich von Huene and the Making of Early Music in a New World, by Geoffrey Burgess Well-Tempered Woodwinds: Friedrich von Huene and the Making of Early Music in a New World, by Geoffrey Burgess. Publications of the Early Music Institute. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2015. xxviii, 290 pp. Kailan R. Rubinoff Kailan R. Rubinoff KAILAN R. RUBINOFF is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Recent writings have appeared in Twentieth-Century Music, Music and Politics, Early Music, and the edited volume Music and Protest in 1968 (Cambridge University Press, 2013). She is currently writing a book on the early music movement in the Netherlands. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2016) 69 (1): 247–253. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2016.69.1.247 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kailan R. Rubinoff; Review: Well-Tempered Woodwinds: Friedrich von Huene and the Making of Early Music in a New World, by Geoffrey Burgess. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 April 2016; 69 (1): 247–253. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2016.69.1.247 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search Geoffrey Burgess's biography of the German-American recorder builder, performer, and early music patron Friedrich von Huene is a niche book: it is not intended for musicologists in general but rather for recorder players and other early music practitioners in particular (as its inclusion in Indiana's Publications of the Early Music Institute series and book jacket endorsements make clear). Von Huene (b. 1928) is well known to early music aficionados, having played a central role in fostering “historically informed performance” (aka HIP)1 in the Boston area as a maker and restorer of historical woodwinds and as a founder of the Boston Early Music Festival. Since the 1960s historical performers (myself included) have flocked to von Huene's Early Music Shop of New England, the primary North American source for the purchase of instruments, facsimile editions, treatises, and other HIP “tools of the trade.” Though mainly focused on von Huene and the... You do not currently have access to this content.

Performing King Arthur

Performing King Arthur Larry Beckwith At the founding of Toronto Masque Theatre in May, 2003, we made it an immediate priority to produce the five major works of music theatre by the great seventeenth-century English composer Henry Purcell. These were the four “semi-operas” (Dioclesian, The Fairy Queen, The Indian Queen, and King Arthur), and the “opera/masque” Dido and Aeneas. We knew we wanted to produce one each year and to delve into the challenges and magic of the multi-disciplinary baroque “masque,” to illustrate the strength and beauty of Purcell’s music when placed in theatrical context. We were also confident in Purcell’s genius, not only as a first-rate composer, but as a composer with a theatrical flair whose works were eminently stage-worthy. What was not as clear—and ultimately became our biggest challenge—was how a production could reconcile disparate performance elements, retain a sense of balance, and be comprehensible to a modern audience. Our scheduling of these productions followed a sort of logic: we commissioned a companion piece to Dido and Aeneas, which needed at least two years to complete. So, Dido became the “centerpiece” of the five-year cycle. As artistic and musical director, I knew the score of The Fairy Queen well, and chose--with the collaboration of my artistic associates, Derek Boyes (stage director/actor) and Marie-Nathalie Lacoursière (choreographer/dancer)—appropriate scenes from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to complement the score. This would be a strong piece to “open” the cycle. Similarly, I was quite familiar with the score of King Arthur, and had seen the excellent staging of it at the 1995 Boston Early Music Festival. I somehow felt we would do well to delay as long as possible a production of King Arthur to allow us to develop a style and gain confidence with staging semi-opera. So, it was put at the end of the cycle, and [End Page 163] was to coincide with the 350th anniversary celebrations of Purcell’s birth in 2009. The two more obscure pieces—Dioclesian and The Indian Queen—were produced in the second and fourth years of the cycle respectively. In addition to Purcell productions, our first four seasons included stagings of other baroque masques: John Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Charpentier’s La Descente d’Orphée aux Enfers, Handel’s Acis and Galatea, and Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. We also presented twentieth-century masque-inspired repertoire (Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat), “variety” evenings on wide-ranging themes and newly-commissioned masques from Canadian composers and writers. By the time we turned our focus to a staging of King Arthur, then, we had close to twenty productions under our belts and approached the rich music of Purcell and first-rate poetry of Dryden with an assuredness of having learned from earlier productions what works and what is not essential in producing Purcell. We learned to be ruthless editors and to concentrate on presenting the elements of the story in a linear and direct way, eliminating extraneous characters and plotlines. We learned to approach the music, dances, and stories with sincerity and humility, keeping interpretations and contemplations of “sub-text” to a bare minimum and simply offering these pieces in a spirit of naturalistic warmth and charm. We learned to engage first-rate musicians, dancers, and actors who were open to the collaborative model we built for the company, artists who would revel in each other’s talents and radiate the joys of discovery. Indeed, in most cases the rehearsal periods were short and intense, often culminating in dress rehearsals where we were watching each other’s work for the first time! We learned to trust in our abilities to mount “historically-informed” productions, but not to feel hampered by notions of “authenticity.” We developed a strong yet simple visual element to our productions with the use of projections of images created by a Montreal visual artist, Caroline Guilbault. Most importantly, we learned of the tremendously entertaining and moving power of Purcell’s music, recognizing that it “fit” the dramatic situations it was seeking to complement brilliantly. For our...

Paris revivals: two operas of Lully and Quinault

The possibility of two Lully operas being staged in Paris within the space of a month would have seemed remote even five years ago, and certainly fanciful 20 years ago. Yet, in January, Cadmus et Hermione was mounted at the Opéra Comique and in February, Thésée at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, showing that these works regarded as virtually unperformable a generation ago, are now becoming established in the repertory. There have, of course, been stagings elsewhere, notably at the Boston Early Music Festival, and other occasional productions in the UK, Australia, Canada and France. Significantly, the recent Parisian presentations were not single performances but short runs of five or six performances each, and were solidly booked out well in advance. These productions have laid a few myths to rest (for example, taken at appropriate tempo, they are not as long as many have imagined) while at the same time posing some questions that must be faced if audiences are to appreciate these works as their counterparts did in the 17th century.

Feast of the Gods

The 14th Boston Early Music Festival: Feast of the Gods (11–17 June) reached a new level of excellence with the North American première of Lully's 1678 Psyché. The opera, acclaimed by national and local press, became the hub of Boston's musical life and the point of departure for an exceptionally high level of festival programming. Centred on the major operatic production, a series of 14 concerts and an international exhibition, the festival week was enhanced by a multitude of concurrent events, including symposia, workshops, masterclasses and a ‘family day’. For many attendees, a highlight of the biennial festival is the ‘fringe concerts’, an opportunity for musicians from near and afar to perform and publicize their activities alongside the main events. This year's fringe was hardly marginal. Organizations such as the Boston Clavichord Society, Early Music America, the Lute Society of America and the Viola da Gamba Society of America each presented concerts, and a wide range of performers from across the country organized their own programmes, including ensembles as distinguished and diverse as Liber unUsualis, RENAISSONICS, the Fanfare Consort, the New York Continuo Collective, Trio Settecento, La Donna Musicale and the Texas Camerata.

Boris at Boston

Near the beginning of the 2005 Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition programme book James S. Nicolson traces the genesis of the festival. This biennial gathering of musicians, instrument builders, vendors and music lovers began 'one evening in 1979', as Friedrich and Ingeborg von Heune, themselves musicians and instrument makers, brought together a group of about 20 people 'to hear their vision of a European style instrument exhibition with attendant concerts to be established ... in Boston'. With the first festival taking place in May 1981, the entire world of early music has come to know the Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition as the premier platform for performers and instrument builders across the globe. Fans of the festival have become spoiled, expectingand getting-a lavish operatic production as the centrepiece of the week-long celebration of early music. Since 1997 the festival's artistic directors, Paul O'Dette and Stephen Stubbs, have set out, beginning with Luigi Rossi's 1647 Orfeo, to bring the audience through the history of Baroque opera, one decade at a time. This year (13-19 June) we were treated to the fifth opera in the series, a work composed in 1710. The clincher was that this opera, Johann Mattheson's Boris Goudenow, had never previously been performed. Indeed, those attending the gala opening (14 June) were treated to a world premiere (but see forthcoming correspondence-Ed.). Stephen Stubbs has previously explained in Early music (xxxiii/2 (May 2005), pp.283-92) how Boris was among a group of Mattheson scores returned to Hamburg in 1998, having previously been presumed lost during the Second World War. George Buelow brought the opera to the attention of the festival directors, and the rest is history: Jurgen Neubacher of the Hamburg Staatsund Universititsbibliothek provided microfiche and access to the manuscript, and, because the score was only Mattheson's first draft, the opera was reconstructed for the festival performances. J6rg Jacobi then put together the performing edition of the opera, now published by Edition Baroque of Bremen. Boris presented a number of challenges for its producers. Most importantly, how does one recreate an opera that has never been performed? Furthermore, this particular opera has over 70 numbers, a macaronic libretto with three confusingly interwoven romantic couples, limited opportunity for dance and, one might say, a 'B-list'

Howard Schott (1923–2005)

The international early music community lost one of its greatest advocates on 23 June 2005. Howard Schott died during a brief hospitalization just a few days after his beloved Boston Early Music Festival. Born in New York on 17 June 1923 and raised in the suburb of White Plains, Howard received early encouragement in music from his parents, both non-musicians. Upon completion of high school at 16, he was accepted by both Harvard and Yale, but chose Yale because of an interest in the harpsichord. Yale, as well as his father, insisted that he wait a year, during which he studied piano with Hans Neumann in New York. While at Yale, Howard majored in French, although he also found the time to study harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick. Howard was drafted into the Second World War at 19, during his third year at Yale. At first he was stationed in Wisconsin in order to teach reading and writing to draftees from Appalachia, but he was later transferred to Ann Arbor for intensive study of German. At Ann Arbor, he sent for his typewriter, enabling him to complete his undergraduate thesis on Baudelaire and to graduate in 1944. He then went to Camp Ritchie in Maryland, where he met Henry Pleasants and worked for the US Army Military Intelligence Service. While abroad during the war, Howard was involved with translation and prisoner interrogation and co-authored a Glossary of German administrative and political terminology. Following his war service (1943-6) Howard returned to New Haven to attend Yale Law School, where he also taught French to undergraduates and was able to resume study with Kirkpatrick. After graduating in 1948 he worked for a number of organizations, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs under Felix Cohen, the Atomic Energy Commission and Shering Pharmaceuticals, for which he travelled extensively. Howard passed the New York State bar examination with the highest points in the state, a distinction that won him a monetary award which he used to pay for piano lessons. When preparing Playing the harpsichord in the late 196os, he remarked that, if the manuscript were accepted by a publisher, he would pursue a doctorate in musicology. The book, eventually released in 1971, was accepted, and Howard began study at Oxford in 1968. His dissertation, A critical edition of the works of J. J. Froberger, led to the DPhil in 1978. Like Playing the harpsichord, his edition of Froberger for Heugel remains in wide use today. After a brief return to New York Howard moved to

1999 Boston Early Music Festival

The tenth Boston Early Music Festival, 'Music of the Mediterranean' (8-13 June) offered so many attractions, truly an embarrassment of riches, that a reviewer could barely keep up with just the concerts and principal events sponsored by the festival itself. To cram such a fortnight's worth of attractions into just six days was a miracle of organization, for all went remarkably smoothly. The centrepiece was another handsomely staged production of an important Baroque opera, five showings of Francesco Cavalli's Ercole amante, premiered in Paris in 1660. (The opera was subsequently presented at Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony's beautiful summer home, and also at the Utrecht Festival.) The performances of the opera were complemented by two substantial symposia, one dealing with research and production issues, the other with its importance in the evolution of opera in France. A varied baker's dozen of concerts of music from the Mediterranean lands presented largely unfamiliar fare, much of which came as revelatory indeed. Ten masterclasses by prominent early music performers who participated in the opera and concert performances were also open to festival attendees. A pair of symposia, whimsically entitled 'Brewing your own' and 'The wheat from the chaff, with the participation of leading artists, recording engineers and producers, were dedicated to the making and marketing of compact discs of high quality. The CD has become the calling card and advertisement of early music performers, now that one can be relatively easily and cheaply produced. A symposium on musical instrument collections brought together makers, restorers, curators and conservators for a most enlightening couple of hours. One wished that the topics and issues discussed might have been granted an entire day. Why this symposium should have been listed under 'Trade topics' is puzzling; even more so its mate under this rubric, 'Early music and healing', a discussion of the special therapeutic value claimed for this broad category of repertory in particular. A major component of the Boston Festival is the exhibition, where this year 116 makers of instruments and accessories, recording companies, retailers, early music service organizations, publishers and music dealers displayed their wares and offered their services. As before, 27 of these exhibitors, including all but a few keyboard instrument makers and restorers, were installed in individual conference rooms at the Park Plaza Hotel. The remainder were

Boston Early Music Festival 1997

Journal Article Boston Early Music Festival 1997 Get access Howard Schott Howard Schott Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Early Music, Volume XXVI, Issue 2, May 1998, Pages 367–369, https://doi.org/10.1093/earlyj/XXVI.2.367 Published: 01 May 1998

Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition 1995

Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition 1995 Get access Howard Schott Howard Schott Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Early Music, Volume XXIII, Issue 3, August 1995, Pages 527–530, https://doi.org/10.1093/earlyj/XXIII.3.527 Published: 01 August 1995

EVENTS

Journal Article EVENTS Get access Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition 15-20 June 1993 Howard Schott Howard Schott Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Early Music, Volume XXI, Issue 4, November 1993, Pages 665–669, https://doi.org/10.1093/earlyj/XXI.4.665 Published: 01 November 1993

EVENTS: Boston Early Music Festival

Journal Article EVENTS: Boston Early Music Festival Get access HOWARD SCHOTT HOWARD SCHOTT Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Early Music, Volume XV, Issue 4, November 1987, Pages 585–587, https://doi.org/10.1093/earlyj/XV.4.585 Published: 01 November 1987

Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition 1985

Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition 1985

The Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition Boston, Massachusetts 24-30 May, 1983

The Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition Boston, Massachusetts 24-30 May, 1983

The Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition Boston, Massachusetts 24-30 May, 1983

The Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition Boston, Massachusetts 24-30 May, 1983

Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition. May 26-31, 1981

Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition. May 26-31, 1981

Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition. May 26-31, 1981

Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition. May 26-31, 1981