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The next best thing to a time machine
Piffaro's "Renaissance Towns'
Tom Purdom
I've been writing about Piffaro, Philadelphia's Renaissance wind band, for 25 years, but I still meet people who've never attended a Piffaro concert. I even know music lovers who've never attended an early music concert played on period instruments.
For these novices, Piffaro's opening concert for its 27th season provided an entertaining introduction to Renaissance music while offering the group's veteran fans a refresher course in the shawms, crumhorns, dulcians and other Renaissance instruments played by Piffaro.
Piffaro often presents concerts that place Renaissance music in context by reproducing events such as court fêtes. This concert reversed the process.
Instead of taking their audience to the past, this time the Piffaro players brought a Renaissance wind band into the present, presenting the kind of concert the Renaissance music makers might have produced if they'd been asked to show off their wares for a 21st-Century audience engaged in the odd custom of sitting in neat rows, quietly listening to music that once sent feet and legs moving in the streets.
The concert was enhanced by a pre-concert lecture as well as a free 16-page booklet crammed with 16th-Century woodcuts that depicted the different types of instruments. Piffaro's instruments are actually modern copies based on originals that are now mostly stored in museums and collections.
How they sounded then
The instruments aren't the only challenge that Renaissance musicians have to master. They spend much of their professional lives studying performance styles, including minutiae like the different types of musical ornaments that were favored in different eras of the Renaissance.
But the instruments inevitably seize the spotlight at early music concerts, because they inform our ideas about the proper way to play the music. The instruments imposed limits on the Renaissance musicians who used them back then. They also created possibilities that can't be duplicated by the instruments that replaced them.
Our attempts at historical reproduction have their limits. We know how the original instruments sound today (assuming they're still playable) and we know how our copies sound. But we can't know how the originals sounded centuries ago, when the instruments and the music alike were new. Scholars can study musical instruction books and other historical sources, but we can never be certain that those sources give us a complete picture of historical performance practices.
Time machine fantasy
In one of my own science fiction stories, I once resolved this dilemma by loading a team of musicologists into a time machine that transported them back to the High Baroque, equipped with hidden recorders and cameras. Until that day arrives, scholars and musicians must settle for a process that resembles the restoration of a painting battered by accidents, natural deterioration and well-meaning attempts to improve it.
Piffaro is modeled on the town wind bands of the Renaissance, and the group combined its demonstration of the instruments with a program that ranged over all the types of music played by town bands, from tavern songs and street dances to the court processionals and the sacred music of the churches.
The recipe for a truly successful performance requires a nutrient that can't be supplied by research: musicians who can add spark and flair to scholarly expertise. Like their predecessors, Piffaro's players are professional entertainers who understand that their livelihoods depend on audience reaction. The program flowed along with the showmanly feel for pace and variety that has become one of their trademarks.
Interludes for ensembles composed of the same type of instrument, such as a consort of recorders, alternated with pieces that mixed harp, woodwinds and brass. Big, full-bodied pieces brought both halves of the concert to rousing conclusions— the first with a hymn to spring, the second with a grand finale for bagpipes, percussion, and guitar.♦
For videos and other information about the Renaissance instruments, click here.♦
To read a response, click here.
For these novices, Piffaro's opening concert for its 27th season provided an entertaining introduction to Renaissance music while offering the group's veteran fans a refresher course in the shawms, crumhorns, dulcians and other Renaissance instruments played by Piffaro.
Piffaro often presents concerts that place Renaissance music in context by reproducing events such as court fêtes. This concert reversed the process.
Instead of taking their audience to the past, this time the Piffaro players brought a Renaissance wind band into the present, presenting the kind of concert the Renaissance music makers might have produced if they'd been asked to show off their wares for a 21st-Century audience engaged in the odd custom of sitting in neat rows, quietly listening to music that once sent feet and legs moving in the streets.
The concert was enhanced by a pre-concert lecture as well as a free 16-page booklet crammed with 16th-Century woodcuts that depicted the different types of instruments. Piffaro's instruments are actually modern copies based on originals that are now mostly stored in museums and collections.
How they sounded then
The instruments aren't the only challenge that Renaissance musicians have to master. They spend much of their professional lives studying performance styles, including minutiae like the different types of musical ornaments that were favored in different eras of the Renaissance.
But the instruments inevitably seize the spotlight at early music concerts, because they inform our ideas about the proper way to play the music. The instruments imposed limits on the Renaissance musicians who used them back then. They also created possibilities that can't be duplicated by the instruments that replaced them.
Our attempts at historical reproduction have their limits. We know how the original instruments sound today (assuming they're still playable) and we know how our copies sound. But we can't know how the originals sounded centuries ago, when the instruments and the music alike were new. Scholars can study musical instruction books and other historical sources, but we can never be certain that those sources give us a complete picture of historical performance practices.
Time machine fantasy
In one of my own science fiction stories, I once resolved this dilemma by loading a team of musicologists into a time machine that transported them back to the High Baroque, equipped with hidden recorders and cameras. Until that day arrives, scholars and musicians must settle for a process that resembles the restoration of a painting battered by accidents, natural deterioration and well-meaning attempts to improve it.
Piffaro is modeled on the town wind bands of the Renaissance, and the group combined its demonstration of the instruments with a program that ranged over all the types of music played by town bands, from tavern songs and street dances to the court processionals and the sacred music of the churches.
The recipe for a truly successful performance requires a nutrient that can't be supplied by research: musicians who can add spark and flair to scholarly expertise. Like their predecessors, Piffaro's players are professional entertainers who understand that their livelihoods depend on audience reaction. The program flowed along with the showmanly feel for pace and variety that has become one of their trademarks.
Interludes for ensembles composed of the same type of instrument, such as a consort of recorders, alternated with pieces that mixed harp, woodwinds and brass. Big, full-bodied pieces brought both halves of the concert to rousing conclusions— the first with a hymn to spring, the second with a grand finale for bagpipes, percussion, and guitar.♦
For videos and other information about the Renaissance instruments, click here.♦
To read a response, click here.
What, When, Where
Piffaro: "Pieces for Renaissance Towns, Courts and Cathedrals.†By various composers, with arrangements by Piffaro and Grant Herreid. Joan Kimball, Robert Wiemken, artistic directors; Annette Bauer, guest player. October 13, 2012 at Trinity Center for Urban Life, 2012 Spruce St. (215) 235-8469 or www.piffaro.com.
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