Where do you want me to sit?
Online via Zoom
7.30pm
Spaces for music and how early musicians used them
An illustrated talk for NEEMF by NEEMF’s founder, John Bryan
Since March 2020 most of us have been frustrated, unable to meet and perform music together in our usual ways, and with few ‘live’ concerts to attend. The need to keep a safe distance from each other during the pandemic has made us rethink many of our usual customs: now we sing in online choirs, sit in ‘bubbles’ in one third-full concert halls, play consort music outdoors, and so on.
This presentation investigates what we can tell about the spaces in which music was heard in the middle ages, renaissance and later periods, and how musicians used them, by seeking out a variety of types of ‘evidence’, from the way music was written down to iconography and written descriptions. Perhaps it is time to realise that the way we now usually hear the music we love is possibly some way removed from how its first performers heard it.
Organiser: NEEMF