Fifty years of debate in Early Music

Early Music, over the course of its 50 years, has become the prime forum for debate on music before 1800. The journal has fostered conversation, agreement and disagreement on a wide range of topics, the most hotly debated of which will be discussed here. Since its inception, Early Music has been a platform for musicologists to publish their research, for performers to discuss historical repertories and historical performance practices, and for both groups to review books, editions, recordings and events in the world of (primarily Anglophone) early music. This broad church of contributors, unique among scholarly journals, has meant that debate has ranged widely and beyond the usual confines of academic research. Also important has been the journal’s frequent issues (four each year) and variety of types of writing, including full-length articles, reviews and letters, which together have enabled debates to retain momentum and welcome the voices of anyone who has an opinion. The field of early music is perhaps especially ripe for debate, given that so much evidence has been lost and that any surviving evidence is frequently ambiguous, partial and contradictory. Key debates of the last 50 years have included the a cappella performance of medieval polyphony; the presence of falsettists in English 16th-century choirs; the performance pitch of Tudor polyphony and certain movements from Monteverdi’s Mass and Vespers of 1610; dotting in French overtures; the performance of conjunct quavers or semiquavers unequally outside of France in the 17th and 18th centuries; and the forces required to perform Bach’s choruses.