Bringing Baroque Music to Life
CFA Prof Martin Pearlman re-creates music of the 17th and 18th centuries with Boston Baroque.
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When Martin Pearlman became a College of Fine Arts professor of music and director of the historical performance program in 2002, he brought more than his expertise as a conductor. The orchestra he founded in 1973, Boston Baroque, also joined the school of music as a resident professional ensemble. The collaboration enables graduate students in the historical performance program to work alongside professional musicians.
The preparation and performance of little-known music presents a challenge to conductors, especially in re-creating the music as the composer imagined it. Because instruments and methods of musical notation have evolved over time, Pearlman’s historical interpretation of a Baroque piece may differ considerably from a standard modern interpretation. For example, in order to perform a work like Vivaldi’s only surviving oratorio, Juditha Triumphans, composed in 1716, Pearlman must first find a suitable score. He must then check it against the original manuscript, if it still exists, and against reproductions made over nearly three centuries. Compiling various scores and choosing the best among them involves painstaking detective work and considered judgment.
Determining the piece’s instrumentation can also be arduous. Contemporary instruments differ — often drastically — from their Baroque predecessors, and some manuscripts refer to instruments that no longer exist. Ensembles that perform music in its historical form must determine what sorts of instruments the composer originally wrote for — is a salmo, for example, related to the Baroque chalumeau, an ancestor to the modern clarinet? Pearlman might review recent literature by music historians to determine whether a similar instrument exists or whether it has to be specially constructed. Finally, he must find performers proficient in these nearly obsolete instruments.
Historical performance graduate students not only learn to play such instruments, they also observe and do research leading up to a performance. Understanding how a conductor decides to assign an instrument to a specific part prepares students for careers in ensembles like Boston Baroque.
Pearlman says he aims to avoid merely presenting audiences with a history lesson. They should be captivated, unaware of the months of preparation needed to perform a piece of music in its historical form. “In the end,” he says, “a performance can’t be about the research.”
This article originally appeared in Boston University’s Research 2007 magazine.
Amy Chmielewski can be reached at amyechm@bu.edu.
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