How did Bach and Vivaldi play their own music? Until somebody builds a time machine à la H.G. Wells, we'll probably never know for sure. But classical fans who attend some of this weekend's various early music concerts in Nashville may insist they know exactly how the old masters played, no ifs, ands or sackbuts about it.
This week, some of the country's finest period-instrument specialists are converging in Music City for the inaugural Nashville Early Music Festival. The event, which runs Friday and Saturday at Lipscomb University, will feature concerts as well as workshops on Baroque vocal and instrumental techniques. The adventure in early music will continue after the festival on Sunday, with Music City Baroque performing Bach at the Frist Center, and the Nashville Symphony presenting Vivaldi at the Schermerhorn.
"There's probably never been this much Baroque music in Nashville at one time," Belmont University lute teacher Francis Perry tells the Scene. "And best of all, those of us in Nashville who love this kind of music won't have to travel to Boston, San Francisco or Vancouver just to attend an early music festival."
Events like the Boston Early Music Festival and San Francisco's American Bach Scholars Festival and Academy are all the rage in classical music circles these days. These fests have vastly expanded the repertoire, having introduced obscure Handel oratorios, forgotten Rameau operas and other 18th century esoterica to the public. They've also changed our expectations about what Renaissance- and Baroque-era music should sound like. Almost everything you hear at an early music fest will be different from what you encounter at a traditional symphony hall (other than, of course, the names of a few top composers). Period-instrument groups, for instance, are generally much smaller than the more familiar philharmonics, resulting in performances of Bach, Handel and even Mozart that are delightfully bright and light.
Historically informed musicians, moreover, often play at tempos that have springy, dance-like qualities to them. They tune to a slightly lower pitch (Bach's "A" would sound more like an A-flat to us), and they play on facsimiles of 18th century instruments, which include everything from lutes and harpsichords to sackbuts (distant ancestors of today's trombones) and gut-string violins.
Its popularity notwithstanding, the early music movement has had detractors. The esteemed musicologist Richard Taruskin, for one, has argued that "early musickers" have more in common with museum curators than the musicians of Bach's time, whose creative impulses were more like those of today's pop musicians. Even many classical fans have heard period-instrument performances that seemed as dry as California's drought-stricken landscape, performed by musician-scholars whose most salient attribute was their pointy-headedness.
"The whole period-instrument thing can get pretty nerdy," says Dustin Williams, the owner of Williams Fine Violins on Music Row and the executive director of the newly minted Nashville Early Music Festival. Williams, a classical guitarist by training and luthier by profession, caught the early music bug after studying lute with Francis Perry. For Williams, the defining characteristic of early music isn't stuffiness but spontaneity.
"Francis would show me the notes that an early music composer actually wrote, and then he'd show me all the extra notes that the musicians would add during a performance," says Williams. "You quickly realize that these Baroque musicians were like great jazz improvisers."
When they're not playing Baroque music, Williams and Perry have long bemoaned the absence of a full-fledged early music festival in Nashville — indeed, in the entire Southern United States. The lack of such a festival in Tennessee seemed especially conspicuous, given that just about every other kind of music — from country, rock and pop to contemporary classical — has a prominent festival in the state. So Williams, who's been active in a variety of national violinmakers' associations and competitions, went home and outlined several things an early music festival would need to be successful in Nashville. Money and a venue were clearly necessities. So were great artists.
Lipscomb University's School of Music eventually came forward with funding as well as a venue (Collins Auditorium) and classrooms for workshops. Perry and Mitzi Matlock, a local publicist with ample contacts in the world of early music, helped locate the talent.
The festival opens Friday evening with the Cleveland-based L'Académie du Roy Soleil performing music of French Baroque composers such as Charpentier, Couperin and Clérambault. "Our ensemble takes its name from the Sun King, Louis XIV, and our program will reflect the splendor and grandeur of Versailles," says Margaret Carpenter, the group's soprano.
On Saturday, the festival will offer workshops on Baroque strings, winds, keyboards and voice, and it will also present morning and afternoon recitals. The festival closes Saturday night with a performance of Vivaldi's Gloria.
As luck would have it, both Music City Baroque and the Nashville Symphony have scheduled performances of Baroque music this weekend. Music City Baroque is opening its season with Bach's Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht ("Coffee Cantata") at the Frist Center, and the Nashville Symphony will perform Vivaldi's ever-popular The Four Seasons at the Schermerhorn.
"It's going to feel like an all-Baroque weekend," says Perry.
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