Hearing Early Modern Music Through the Contemporary

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how contemporary music practice interacts with early modern1 aesthetics. Two projects, in which Georg Philip Telemann’s solo fantasias are interspersed with contemporary techniques and repertoire, serve as case studies. Firstly, the flutist Felix Renggli commissioned new pieces from 11 contemporary Swiss composers, to be inserted in between Telemann’s 12 Fantasias for Solo Flute. Secondly, violinist Aisha Orazbayeva performed a set of Telemann’s Solo Fantasias for Violin using extended techniques pioneered by Salvatore Sciarrino in his 6 caprices. In this text I use these two different approaches as case studies for how early modern music, exemplified by Telemann, can be communicated to a modern audience without relying upon the concept of historically informed performance, but instead communicates through the operation of semiotics in performance.