Choir & Organ, May 2023

Rebecca Tavener

Across the land, early music enthusiasts will be greeting this magnificent tome with heartfelt cries of ‘Where have you been all my life?’ The book one has longed for without realising it, opening its pages might provoke an attack of passionate bibliophile. Andrew Parrott contemplated a compendium of early music writings for many years, amassing a mountain of lore, when he had a lightbulb moment, realising that ‘all narrative text might simply be discarded’; so here we have an astonishing library of six centuries of material straight from the pen of practitioners, organised under three main headings: Music & Society, Music & Ideas, and Music & Performance, with thematic introductions by Hugh Griffith. It isn’t something to read from cover to cover, being simultaneously a bran tub into which one can dip for random nuggets of knowledge and a resource which amply rewards a search for particular enlightenment. A casual dipping session might introduce you to Oxford shopkeepers in a medieval jam session; Leopold Mozart discussing violin technique; a Kirk session in Elgin forbidding Christmas revelries; Thomas Harrison deploring the state of an organ in Worcester Cathedral; Georgio Anselmo beating time for medieval choristers with his foot; Praetorius organising his concertante groups; and Thomas Brown imagining what Blow might write in a letter to Purcell. It’s addictive, essential, uplifting and massively comforting in these distracted times. 

A superb gallery of 560 images fully justifies the printing on heavy, glossy art-paper. Any art-lover, musical or not, might get happily high on this rich cocktail of visual stimuli. Maybe you’re looking for insights into one particular genre/person/thing? You’ll find them and then many more delights that you didn’t know that you needed to know. Unfiltered through today’s opinions, these ‘authentic’ voices speak directly across time. One’s copy may be loud to destruction, especially in the very heavy paperback format which may not survive excessive affection, but there is also a hardback version. Place it somewhere within reach, both as a luxurious distraction and a true companion that will never disappoint. Surely no one who is not a librarian would ever think of shelving it?