Early Music and the Conservation of Culture

We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

While everyday life feels rootless, cultural and artistic accomplishment stands as a steady anchor and source of pride and joy and discovery. Music, the most popular and beloved of the arts, connects us to something higher than us, perhaps a way of life and set of feelings that flourished before we were born. Music can be a window onto the past, to the feelings and sentiments and ideals of our forebears.

“Classical music” is one of those terms we tend to take for granted. Yet it is a recent concept as concepts go, dating back no farther than the early 19^th century. In brief, the concept of “classical music” came about when writers wanted to distinguish the new Romantic music from what was written in the generation of Haydn and Mozart. “Classical” started to be used to denote “old” or “historical” music as distinct from modern. Throughout the 19^th century interest in the music of the past grew. This was an entirely new development in the history of music, which up until then had been very much present-oriented. More and more, musical repertoire came to be conceived as a permanent body of great works—rather as is the case with literature, painting, sculpture, or architecture. The discipline of musicology developed hand in hand with the desire to rediscover music from past periods, issue it in correct editions with thorough musical scholarship, and most importantly perform it.

Music historians point to March 11, 1829 as a milestone. On that date Felix Mendelssohn led a performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, a work that had gone unperformed for a century. The performance spearheaded the Bach revival as well as the entire movement toward the restoration of the musical past. No longer merely ephemeral and occasion-based, music would become truly “classical”: a cultural heritage to be studied and preserved. Our modern concept of “classical music” came directly out of the German Romantic effort to keep the musical past alive and to make music into a serious, studious occupation. This was related to a broader preoccupation in the Western world generally since the Enlightenment with preserving cultural heritage, as seen for example in the birth of archeology, comparative linguistics, and other types of ordered study of the past. Audiences, for their part, showed enthusiasm for hearing great musical works of the past alongside those of the present.

In the words of musicologist Harry Haskell, Mendelssohn’s revival of the Bach Passion “struck many first-time listeners with the force of a revelation.” The Bach revival opened the door to the rediscovery of other past masters: Renaissance polyphony was revived by church choirs throughout the 19^th century, and so was Gregorian chant, which required study and research into the proper style of performance. Musicians and audiences came to realize that past music does not simply play itself, but that the performer must take responsibility to cultivate a historically-informed style of performance to bring the work alive. This requires study and knowledge; thus, the performer-scholar came into being, and the “authenticity movement” strove to bring the same scholarly knowledge and desire for historical truth to music that had been applied to other fields of culture like literature or archeology.

An important but often overlooked side of Romanticism was nostalgia for the past and the desire to relive or revive it. This was one way in which the Romantics rebelled against the Enlightenment belief in progress, and against some of the technological changes that were unfolding all around them as factories and machines replaced handicraft. The revival of “early” music was part of the overall revaluation of the past and of cultural traditions that was happening across Western culture in the 19^th century. Giuseppe Verdi once said “let us return to the past, and that will be progress.” Brahms was an early-music enthusiast, collecting scores by composers going back to his German forbears J. S. Bach and Heinrich Schütz. The Germans started to understand music as a Wissenschaft, a science or body of knowledge. As the musicologist Otto Jahn put it, “the philological, historical view that suffuses the culture of our time demands that the enjoyment of a world of art be founded on historical insight and evaluation, and that the work of art be presented exactly as the artist created it.”

Among other things, this new open attitude toward musical history and embrace of the musical past was a rejection of presentism. This bias had affected music for a long time, in contrast to other arts. In painting or literature, works of the remote past were always revered; music, by contrast, being a performance art that exists in the moment, tended to discard the past as irrelevant. Musicians of the late 18^th century had disparaged Bach, for example, as fusty and academic. Now he came to be seen as a cornerstone of the Western musical tradition. In effect, music was developing a historical consciousness, something it never truly had before. And in the process our modern-day concept of “classical music” was coming into being: the idea of music as a historical repertoire. Serious music was no longer to be a present-focused art dictated by the fashion of the moment, but a collection of timeless classics.

But whereas in painting and literature the canon of great works extends far back into the past—in many cases back to ancient times—in music the standard repertoire of “classics” only extended back 150 or 200 years at most. Over time, the absurdity of this became glaringly obvious, and music lovers saw the necessity of expanding their knowledge of the musical past as far as possible.

So how extensive is that musical past? It is commonly affirmed that Western culture began with ancient Greece; but we are unable to hear ancient music as we can read ancient literature and look at ancient painting and statuary. Although oral tradition has a role to play in transmitting music, the preservation of music over long expanses of time depends on the existence of notation, which was not fully developed until the medieval period. Thus, for all intents and purposes Western art music starts with the Middle Ages. Understanding this helps us place music history against the background of the history of Western culture as a whole.

Another musical attitude to be overcome was the “evolutionary” view of music history. Formerly audiences, musicians, and critics tended to believe that music was on a continuous course of improvement, meaning that the music of the present was superior to that of the past, and the music of the future would be even better. With the growth of the historical consciousness in music, this attitude was seen for the nonsense that it is. Music, and art in general, is not subject to Darwinian evolution, nor does it exhibit “progress” like material aspects of life. Cultures as a whole grow, come to a peak of excellence, and decay; that is all. In one sense, this is an enormously positive insight; it means that there are innumerable musical riches in the past waiting to be discovered.

As scholars and musicians delved into the musical past, a process of discerning quality came into play. The concept of “classical music,” understood as a fixed canon of masterpieces handed to us as on a silver platter, can disguise the fact that the history of art is a mix of the great, the good, and the mediocre. Music is a human practice like any other, and any era produces its share of poor music along with the great (and the same is true of literature or art). The early music revival forced music lovers to confront the fact of variability of inspiration, to recognize that not every work of the past stands the test of time and is worthy of preservation. Some musical works are simply “dated,” culturally time-bound artifacts. This process of discernment can only increase our maturity as appreciators of art and culture. There are reasons why Beethoven is a greater composer than Johann Nepomuk Hummel, for example; but understanding the general environment in which a great composer was working, and the conventions and aesthetic ideals of his day, will give us a fuller perspective on what made him unique.

As the 20^th century dawned, the quest to discover the musical past was aided and abetted by the new technology of recording. Recordings lent a sense of permanence to musical repertoire, allowing one to study, analyze, and collect it. Now countless musical pieces, from all periods of musical history, could be rediscovered and enjoyed. By freezing music in time, recording allowed for an intensive scholarly and contemplative study of music as a specimen of history and culture. For the first time, all musical scores could escape the fate of gathering dust on a library shelf and could become real music as intended.

Along with the unearthing of the musical works themselves from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Baroque eras, musicians revived the old instruments, either refurbishing surviving examples or building new ones, thus ensuring that the music would sound closer to how it sounded when new. The harpsichord, the lute, the viol, as well as even earlier instruments of the Middle Ages like the psaltery and the crumhorn, were pressed into service again. Naturally, musician/scholars had to conduct research and experimentation on how to master these new/old instruments, a learning process that has borne enormous fruit in our day. For example, research into the evolution of the violin family of instruments led players to fit instruments with gut strings to play Bach or Vivaldi. And while it is true that an obsession with historical authenticity can lead to sterile performances, at their best early-music specialists can bring the past alive with a combination of scholarly knowledge and creative intuition.

An awareness that music is a “language” that changes with time, along with a resistance of the temptation to reduce all music to a common denominator (which can easily happen when we think in terms of the generic blanket term “classical music”), led to an increased appreciation of the uniqueness of Western music of all periods. It is startling to realize that we can hear infinitely more music than Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven could. Our historical consciousness and our actual listening diet are larger than theirs could possibly be.

Musical historicism was based on the positive belief that the past could enrich the present. But on a sadder note, it also portended a vague feeling that the Western cultural tradition as a vital force was in decline. Many (certainly not all) listeners were disillusioned with the new directions contemporary music was taking. They were turning away from modern music toward music of the past, recent or remote. Slowly, gradually, historical curation was taking the place of a living creative tradition. This is an inevitable stage in the history of cultures, which flourish and then decay, leaving a great historical legacy in their wake. In a sense, this does not matter a great deal because we in the Western tradition have enough musical masterpieces of the past to last us until kingdom come.

And so, when it comes to musical repertoire, we have entered an age of postmodern eclecticism. The kinds of polemical discussions about musical style that raged in the past are no longer important. The emphasis is back on music as a source of delight and pleasure, not on questions of historical necessity or stylistic rectitude (e.g., tonality or atonality? Classical or Romantic?). Instead, everything is fair game and everything can be appreciated—or rejected, as the case may be. Individual taste is the main criterion. And the availability of all music has given more scope to individual choice and interests. One can truly listen to anything one wants, sample from the entire stream of historical musical achievement. As a music lover you may, if you like, stake out a claim or find a niche outside the rather stale and repetitive “standard repertoire,” which far from being a timeless absolute is (as we saw with the changing fortunes of Bach) a variable and time-bound construct.

Musicologist Harry Haskell suggests that musical revivalism is “simply another example of the yearning for roots that characterizes our deracinated society.” There is undoubtedly truth to this. While everyday life feels rootless, cultural and artistic accomplishment stands as a steady anchor and source of pride and joy and discovery. Music, the most popular and beloved of the arts, connects us to something higher than us, perhaps a way of life and set of feelings that flourished before we were born. Music can be a window onto the past, to the feelings and sentiments and ideals of our forebears. The revival of “early music” has given us a new cultural endeavor, one that helps us look at the past critically and understand it on its own terms—a perspective that can serve any number of disciplines, not just music. At its best, the study of early music provides tools of understanding to enrich our appreciation of all art and culture, past and present.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics as we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is “Interior with a Music Party” (between 1654 and 1675), by Circle of Gillis van Tilborgh, or attributed to Carel van Savoyen, and is in the public domain courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.