University of Virginia Library

MUSIC

Renaissance In Their Blood

By TERI TOWE

The problems inherent in
the performance of the music
of the Middle Ages and of the
Renaissance are almost
insurmountable. Nevertheless,
there are those scholarly
musicians in this world who
have made sense out of forms
of musical notation that have
not been used since the 15th.
century, learned the technique
of the difficult "obsolete"
instruments of the period, and
have revived the almost
completely forgotten
performance practice of the
Middle Ages.

One of the finest groups
performing Medieval and
Renaissance Music today is the
Early Music Quartet of the
Studio der Fruken Musik of
Munich, which gave a superb
concert in Cabell Hall Tuesday
evening. The group, two of
whom are singers as well as
instrumentalists, enthralled
their audience for two hours,
and managed, in that short
space of time, to give a
thorough sampling of all of the
various types of Medieval and
Renaissance music except the
major choral works.

Vibrance And Depth

So often this music sounds
dry and uninspired, as though
it were an artifact drawn from
a dusty storeroom to be
examined and scrutinized for a
few moments and then
returned to obscurity. The
Early Music Quartet gave the
pieces that they performed life,
vibrance, and depth and amply
supported its contention that
Medieval Music is possessed of
the "characteristic forms of
expression which are timeless
and which are understandable."

Unerringly Musical

The members of the Early
Music Quartet have the spirit of
the Middle Ages and of the
Renaissance in their blood, and
theirs were unerringly musical
and emotionally correct
interpretations which breathed
life into artistic expressions of
centuries that, at least
musically, are quite dead to
most of us.