Fontes Musicae Antiquae

Fontes Musicae Antiquae is a series devoted to technically demanding 3-8-voice compositions for experienced recorder ensembles. It embodies some of the more tangible results of a continuing project at the Hoch's Conservatory, Frankfurt, investigating the repertory of instrumental ensemble music of the 15th through the 17th centuries. Having begun to chart the wealth of music contained in the original sources of this music — usually but not always in the form of practical "part books" — our interest was drawn gradually to the not inconsiderable number of contrapuntal works contained in tablature for organ. Many of these turned out to work well played on recorders, due certainly in part to the similarities in tone production of organ and recorder, but also surely due to a certain "abstract" quality of the old contrapuntal stile antico, which — as in much of J.S. Bach's instrumental music — would seem to lead an existence independent of a specific instrumentation. We found that performances of such works with a single recorder per part — in which an individual interpretation of each contrapuntal voice is possible — can do more to illuminate the complex structure of such works that a performance by even the most talented of organists.
A further confirmation of the validity of "recovering" ensemble music in this manner may be found in the practice of renaissance and baroque organists of intabulating contemporary ensemble music. As a result of this habit, many compositions, whose original performing materials — "part books" — have been lost, have been saved in such collections as the Pelplin and Turin organ tablatures. In this sense, many of the works in this series are not so much "arrangements for practical use" — adaptations from one medium into another — as attempts at a "reconstruction" of a hypothetical and/or historically documented original.