What is Early Music?

Early Music is music from the mid-18th century and before, music from the Baroque, Renaissance and Middle Ages.  From the Gregorian chant to Bach’s organ works, Handel’s operas, and Vivaldi’s concertos, it is the most beautiful and exciting music from our Western heritage. Early music experts strive to revive forgotten masterpieces of past eras and give us a glimpse of how this music was performed: “what are those angels singing and playing in medieval paintings…what did queen Elizabeth I dance to, what entertained Louis XIV at dinner?” (Forrest Kelly, Thomas. Early Music: A Very Short Introduction. New York:  Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.) Early music is performed on historical period instruments (or their replicas) because they produce livelier and more authentic sounds than their modern equivalents.