Early Music America Summer 2013 - (Page 19)

musings By Thomas Forrest Kelly When the Music Becomes Ours EUROPEAN MUSIC, when it was When does the music become ours— new, got transported to colonies by if we’re the Guarani? When does the vioimmigrants, by missionaries, by settlers. lin become an indigenous instrument in What it sounded like there, in an old India? A scholar I know has found that world newly-found by Europeans, is the the some of the songs sung by the subject of a lot of research these days, Abenaki in Maine, songs that they claim and has been for some time. It turns out were taught them by missionaries, are there’s a lot of music to be discovered. indeed versions of Gregorian Kyries, Not just music copied in Europe and but so imbued with local style as to be carried to the New World, but music completely transformed. composed in the New Perhaps we practitionWorld, arranged in this ers of early music should Music can become hemisphere, and recycled so deeply rooted that think of ourselves as the Guarani or the Abenaki. and re-interpreted here. it doesn’t really There are other colonial Some interesting music matter which wind comes along from elsemusics from around the carried the seed world, where postwhere—in our case, from this way. colonial scholars have distant places and times— the complex problem of and we embrace it, we try recovering music that was once new, and to understand it, and we do our best to which may delight students of ancient perform it in a way that we think is true music, but which can also be seen to to those who brought it to us and at the same time will give us pleasure in represent the forcible inculcation of a hearing it. foreign culture by colonial powers. It’s hard not to wonder, however, how There is, for example, the music of faithfully we are transmitting it: that’s Domenico Zipoli, a successful Italian not our goal, after all, at least I think it’s composer of the 18th century. He composed organ music and oratorios, and in not—we are not trying to preserve one single and invariable performance tradi1716 he seems to have had a religious tion. And it may be, then, that the little conversion; he joined the Jesuit order changes we make for expressive or other and sailed for South America. He went to Cordoba, in Brazil, and studied for the reasons will gradually steer us, in tiny increments, towards a sound that is vastpriesthood but died of tuberculosis ly different from what this music was like before he could be ordained. In South America, Zipoli’s music was when it was new. It may take a while, sung and played all over the place, and but gradually we may make it almost the Guarani and other native peoples unrecognizable to anybody but ourkept on singing his music long after the selves. One wonders what CharleJesuits had been expelled. Zipoli was a magne’s singers would make of our particular favorite among the Indians of performances of Gregorian chant. Chiquitos, who still sing music they say But we are human, we like the music is by him on the feast of St. Ignatius we have received, we want to make it ours. And when we are making music we (founder of the Jesuits). It has changed are not being scientists, we are artists. a lot, and it has become their music, Humans make art: so let’s continue, their song. and with enthusiasm. Music does change over time, of course, and it changes as it travels. And it can become so deeply rooted that it Thomas Forrest Kelly is a professor of music doesn’t really matter which wind carried at Harvard University and a board member and past president of Early Music America. the seed this way. S OME I JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH THE ART OF FUGUE T Les Voix humaines Consort of Viols ACD2 2645 Margaret Little Mélisande Corriveau Felix Deak Susie Napper Johann Sebastian Bach’s The Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge), a masterpiece of Baroque contrapuntal style T The Art of Fugue will be released on May 28, 2013 AVAILABLE IN HD AT ATMACLASSIQUE.COM Early Music America Summer 2013 19 http://www.atmaclassique.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Early Music America Summer 2013

Editor's Note
Reader Forum
Sound Bytes
Profile: Christopher Jackson
Musings: When the Music Becomes Ours
Recording Reviews
Early Music, 21st-Century Style
The Indigenous Musicians of Cuzco
Bird Quills, the Art of Touch, and Other Pleasures
Pallade Musica: A Swift Rise, All'Italiana
Book Reviews
Ad Index
In Conclusion: Finding "Local Content" in the Music of New Spain

Early Music America Summer 2013