The New Renaissance Ensemble of Toledo
September 3, 2004
Music from the 17th century and earlier has generally been performed either in conventional romantic arrangements for orchestra, such as Respighi’s “Ancient Airs and Dances,” or by specialists that study the performing style and principals of the period and perform on historical instruments. The New Renaissance Ensemble of Toledo aims down the middle, approaching the music with symphonic musicians on modern instruments, but basing our performance on historical principles. Almost all members have professional experience on period instrument.
Composers of the Renaissance treated their instrumentation generically. Instruments were never specified untilbeginning gradually around 1600, and most music was written to be performed by either instruments or voices, whether or not words came with the music. Instrument makers of the period came up with wild varieties of “consorts,” groups of similar instruments made in various sizes corresponding to vocal ranges. But any consort could play any music interchangeably, “orchestration” was a performer’s art, not the composer’s. Musicians of the time were almost all “doublers,” performers on multiple instruments, as are many wind players in the jazz world. The variety of instrumental sounds in the symphony orchestra may be small compared to the instrumentarium available in the Renaissance, but it also contains many “consorts” of instruments. Symphonic musicians can therefor approach this music in its original spirit. Since modern brasses are made to compete with strings in masses, we occaisionally resort to artifice to restore the balance.
Trombones and strings have probably changed the least of all orchestral instruments. Today’s program from the very end of the Renaissance (or beginning of the Baroque, depending on how you look at it), much of which specifies these instruments, is some of the first to to require specific instruments. The part taken by modern trumpet or cornet was normally played by the cornetto or the violin. The cornetto, played by sculptor Benevenuto Cellini amongst others, was a brass-woodwind hybrid and the most highly valued treble instrument of the 16th century. Its position was eventually taken over by the violin, not the trumpet as one might suppose. Likewise, the recorder has no “modern” equivalent, it existed alongside the flute, and most symphonies today use recorders when they were specified by the composer. Our organ is an artificial one, but produced by a “sampler”, an instrument that replays an actual digital recording of the original instrument when a key is pressed. Although you are not hearing a genuine church organ, you are hearing a CD-quality version, and it stays in tune!
The NRE style includes historical attention to tonguing and bowing, sound production, tuning (quarter comma meantonetemperament, which recognizes differences between enharmonic notes, such as Ab and G#), tempo, and improvisation. All musicians are free to ornament or improvise on their parts, and most will do so. Our keyboardist plays from a “basso continuo” part, a bass line with numerical chord symbols, so virtually everything she does with her right hand is improvised.
The NRE will perform at least two more programs this season featuring pre-symphonic repertory. Added to today’s instruments will be synthesizers controlled by MIDI wind controllers (electronic woodwinds), more samplers, voice, symphonic woodwinds, recorders, and percussion.
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