In an email to John Taylor thanking for a link to a recording of the lute played by Nigel North, I asked John what he thought Bach and Dowland would have made of modern performers, This is what he wrote.
I’m sure Bach, Dowland, and most of the composers of past centuries, would be flabbergasted to find that their music has survived at all, let alone that it’s still revered and regularly performed. They’d also be fascinated, and perhaps horrified, to learn that most people now experience music almost exclusively through the outlandish medium of recordings, instead of being there at live performances, or participating in it themselves in a choir or orchestra, or among small groups of friends, or just playing at home for solitary pleasure. I still spend a lot of my time wondering how much damage people like me are doing, by contributing to the idea of music as a consumer product – endlessly edited and polished to an almost inhuman level of perfection, so as to bear repeated listening to the same confected ‘performance’ every time – as opposed to the old concept of music as the ultimate expression of the transitory nature of life, something to be savoured in the moment because every note, whether perfectly executed or not, left behind it no trace except for a memory in the listener’s mind.
No doubt all those composers would find present-day performances strange in many ways, but they might also be impressed with the efforts that have been made, especially in the last 50 or 60 years, to recreate the sounds, playing and singing styles of the past. This process of rediscovery might have started as an academic exercise, but it’s quickly progressed to a point where many brilliant young musicians are bringing music of past eras to life for present-day audiences – not always by following the rules from old treatises (which they know very well) but sometimes going much further, such as adding the colours of modern instruments in bold, imaginative ways that still show deep respect for the old music. For example, try anything from Christina Pluhar’s group l’Arpeggiata, or this album…
These ones are nothing to do with me, by the way. As for Nigel North, I first met him back in the 90s when Barrington Pheloung got me to record some tracks for Inspector Morse, including a Vivaldi concerto for 2 mandolins played by him and Nigel. But it’s only in the last 15 years or so that I’ve been working with him regularly, the latest one being this selection of English duets for Renaissance (not baroque) lutes that you might feel like sampling, rather than listening all the way through…
(By the way, the track titles are all to cock on iTunes. One of them even has me credited as the composer!)
Anyway, enough for now. Hope your convalescence is going as well as it can be.
All best,
John