Perilous Listening. Early Music, Historically Informed Listening, and the Sacrosphere of Spaces

Abstract

This essay deals with a musical performance at the 20th Haapsalu Early Music Festival in 2013, when the viol ensemble Phantasm played a concert entitled “Perilous Polyphony” consisting of works by William Byrd, Elway Bevin, and other composers of Elizabethan Britain. After a cursory overview of Haapsalu’s characteristics, the programme and the programme notes of the concert in question are discussed with regard to potential perils in the music as they can be observed in some contrapuntal details of the compositions. While the Early Music Festival is centred on concerts that feature period instruments and historically informed performance practice, it is questionable whether the audience, even if historically informed itself, is able to perceive the music’s perils as the audience in Elizabethan Britain did. But since the very performance situation is entirely different, the heading “Perilous Polyphony” turns out to rather be an atmospheric label.