Author: Simon Chadwick

Instruments, repertory, or interpretation?

Reviewing the whole idea of “early music” I was struck by how different areas of it focus on different things. I’m especially aware of a focus on instruments which comes in the historical harp field. I suppose that harps in general are quite rare instruments in modern Western culture, so a replica or reconstruction of a historical harp is all the more curious as a physical object. Many times at events people come up to me and want to know how old it is, and what wood it is made from. I doubt that jazz pianists get asked that very often!

The second area of focus is then repertory – given a carefully reconstructed and exhaustively described and explained instrument, what do we play? The search for historical repertory is an interesting activity to observe. There is a constant tension between the familiar and the exotic. People know certain old tunes and there is a temptation to overplay them. On the other hand, part of the attraction of reviving old music is the novelty, the thrill of discovering something new and exotic. Some old repertories sound very alien, and I often have people come up after an event to comment on how the music sounds oriental.

But I think that the most important aspect of our work ought to be expression and interpretation. The whole point of music is surely a communication between people, and so it is by definition happening right now, totally in the present. If it speaks of the past, all well and good; many conversations today reference history as a symbol or authority, with great rhetorical and symbolic weight. But the past is only that, a reference; the communication is entirely now between living breathing people, and so the expression and the communication have to be the most important thing.

Cathedral music in St Andrews


I am kicking off my summer series of medieval harp concerts in St Andrews Cathedral, with a programme of medieval church music from the 12th century.

The concert is on Tuesday 7th June, at 12.45pm, in the Priors House, a medieval vaulted chamber in the cathedral grounds in St Andrews.

Celebrating 850 years since building work commenced on the cathedral in 1161, this concert features a programme of sacred music from that time, from St Andrews, Inchcolm and further afield. As well as playing the Scottish monastic plainchant on my beautiful decorated replica of the Queen Mary harp, I will demonstrate other unusual medieval Scottish instruments during the half-hour concert.

The St Andrews Cathedral concert series will continue on the first Tuesday of each month through to September, with a different theme each month. To follow June’s sacred airs, July will bring ferocious medieval battle music, while August’s recital will present formal elegies and laments.

Further information is available at http://www.simonchadwick.net/cathedral/
This event is organised by Historic Scotland. Admission is free, but ticketed; tickets can be obtained from the Cathedral visitor centre, tel 01334 472563.

Installation of new bells in St Andrews

Here is a curious little film produced by the University. It starts with footage of the bells being lifted into the tower in the autumn of 2010, and an interview with the main donor who paid for them. Then there is footage of the religious ceremony which marked their installation. Finally, from 7:00 is footage of the bells being rung.

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/about/UniversityChapels/550/storyofthebells/

Symbolism of musical instruments

Nowadays music is considered somewhat neutral, as a pure art or as entertainment, but in the past it was much more embedded in wider life, with functional and symbolic significance.

One big reason for that was that before the rise of recordings, all musical acts were necessarily done in real time by a live human performer. This meant that the music was done for something, for someone, and not (as often now) just happening as background noise.

Because of this intentionality of performance, all aspects of music had purpose and meaning. I was particularly thinking of the significance of musical instruments recently. I think that certain instruments still do retain these symbolisms and resonances, but in a less clearly articulated way.

Musique mécanique

In 1930, the French periodical Revue Musicale devoted an entire issue to ‘musique mécanique’ – mechanical music. They were, of course, not interested in fairground organs, orchestrions, reproducing pianos, or music-boxes, though that’s what you’ll find if you google for musique mécanique now.

In 1930 the exciting new mechanical music was recorded music, but also broadcast music – both were seen as ‘mechanical’ because the sound came out of a machine, not out of the mouth or instrument of a performer. Of course, this kind of musique mécanique does start with the musical performance of a musician. But nowadays, emphasis is placed on the type of mechanisation. A reproducing piano, for example, captures the performer’s key-presses onto paper tape as a series of start and stop instructions that can be read back by a suitably equipped piano to produce the originally intended sound by striking the appropriate strings at the appropriate time. By contrast, recording or broadcast technologies captured the sound waves produced by the musician’s instrument or voice, and turned them into mechanical or electrical impulses, to be scored on a shellac disc or transmitted by radio waves; they are read back by being used to excite a membrane in a loudspeaker or gramophone, to approximately recreate the pattern of sound waves heard at source.

When looking for music online, we are used to making a big distinction between audio recordings and MIDI files. A MIDI file is the digital equivalent of the reproducing piano’s paper tape; an audio recording is the digital equivalent of a gramophone record. I suppose a live stream is the digital equivalent of a radio broadcast.

But I like the distinction drawn implicitly by the Revue Musicale. All of this is mechanical; we are listening, not to an instrument manipulated by a person, but to a paper cone manipulated by an electrically-controlled magnet.

Music is fundamentally about communication, and the most interesting music is live, person-to-person, in an intimate venue. Even better if there is sharing or discussion between people rather than a one-way communication between a ‘musician’ and ‘listeners’. I am thinking more and more that audio recording is best considered alongside notation, written description, and other memory aids – a way to help us to make better music, live, face to face, with each other.

School visit, Baldragon Academy, Dundee

Baldragon Academy in Dundee has posted on its website, photos of my visit to the school last month. I spent an hour with the Higher Music pupils talking about the old native idioms in music, and demonstrating some old Irish and Scottish repertory on the harp. I think they found the concepts and styles very thought-provoking!