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Baroque Music: Alive and Well And Thriving at Juilliard By KENT TRITLE
So you want to play Baroque music? Do you have a Baroque bow? Can you sing "straight tone"? Are you able to manage the smaller keys of the harpsichord without getting stuck "in the cracks"? Should you even consider playing Baroque music on your modern instrument? Happily, the answer to this last question is yes! But if you miss the opportunity to be "historically informed," you can really do a disservice to the music. We are now in the best of all possible worlds when it comes to performing early music. The miracle of recorded sound has changed our ears forever. Excellent recordings of early music by period-instrument ensembles abound, and have become the standard reference recordings for musicians, music students, and the larger public. And historically informed performances on both period and modern instruments flourish right here in New York City. There is even a legacy, believe it or not, of historically informed early-music coaching and study here within the Juilliard community. Especially through the work of devoted and inspired musicians such as faculty member Albert Fuller, we have seen an about-face in Baroque appreciation in the two decades since I graduated from Juilliard.
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We are now in the best of all possible worlds when it comes to performing early music.
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Through his teaching and coaching, Mr. Fuller—more than anyone else in this country—has been responsible for converting modern instrument virtuosos into career period-instrument players. He has also had a profound effect on many conductors, including me. Thus Fuller's work and that of others—including Lionel Party and Michael White—has had far-reaching effects at Juilliard. Fortunately, every student at Juilliard with a desire to become "historically informed" has access to this knowledge.One of the opportunities singers and keyboard players have to address historical performance issues is found in the Oratorio Practicum, a graduate seminar at Juilliard. I am pleased to bring to this class my personal experience of conducting a broad spectrum of oratorio (a genre that lives for the singer somewhere between art song and opera). In particular, I have had tremendous positive experiences conducting great Baroque masterworks using modern instruments, but with keen observation of Baroque stylistic and expressive conventions. I am convinced that this approach works beautifully. But I am spoiled, because many in my orchestra—and certainly all my professional choral singers—have had experience in period-instrument ensembles, or even pursue a career in the period-instrument world. This kind of crossover is now expected in the professional freelance scene, and these stylistic practices are even entering the standard orchestral venues as well-known early music conductors—such as John Eliot Gardiner, Andrew Parrott, and Nicholas McGeegan—are engaged to conduct Baroque and Classical works with major symphony orchestras.In the Oratorio Practicum, we study many periods of repertoire simultaneously. Our class is a workshop for music performance. On any given day we may dive into works of Carl Orff, Giuseppe Verdi, Johann Sebastian Bach, and George Frideric Handel. For each era, we discuss conventions and idiomatic concerns. When we are working on repertoire from the Baroque era, we typically spend a little more time than usual getting to the things that make this music come alive.Wary voice teachers want to know, do I ask the singers to sing "straight-tone"? No. After all, the voice is the original instrument—and, fortunately for us, the qualities that set the virtuoso singer apart have changed little since the end of the Renaissance. What is truly important is the ability to communicate something personal through the voice. In Baroque music especially, this means we must create gestures with the voice, and hone the ability to latch onto the inherent rhetorical expressiveness ingrained in the score. Frequently, gestures are related to instrumental techniques, and we need to become familiar with the characteristics of, for example, the Baroque bow to understand how these sounded. Or, as another example, we may see that, even though there may be a general lack of dynamic variation indicated in the score, the composer has used the natural qualities of musical production to create inherent dynamics—lower is softer, higher is more emphatic, rising lines create crescendi, and so on. And so the music comes to life.
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Jerome L. Greene Concert: An Evening of Baroque Music
Alice Tully Hall
Friday, Nov. 12, 8 p.m.
For ticket information, please see
the calendar.
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So here at Juilliard, we do have tremendous opportunities for studying early music. The annual Jerome L. Greene concert—which will include vocal music this year for the first time—is but one of the more public events. And I am sure that, if demand exceeded the supply, the administration would support further opportunities for this study. If you love Baroque music, you must jump in with both feet. Don't be bashful. Find a chamber music coach or a classroom environment that will support your love of this music. It will doubtless help your career, whether or not you ever play a historic instrument. Juilliard has many ways for you to get involved, so do it today! You'll be glad you did.Kent Tritle has been on the faculty since 1996. He is organist of the New York Philharmonic and music director of Sacred Music in a Sacred Space, the choral music series at Manhattan's Church of St. Ignatius Loyola.
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