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Episode 1000! With David McCormick

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[Begin Theme Music]

Welcome to Harmonia . . . I’m Angela Mariani.
We are hitting a milestone this week on Harmonia: this is program number one thousand. When this program began in 1991, I was studying medieval music with Thomas Binkley at Indiana University, and launching Altramar medieval music ensemble with several of my colleagues—so I’m “going medieval” this week—or mostly, anyway—and my guest is David McCormick, the executive director of Early Music America and member of the medieval music group Alkemie, spelled A-L-K-E-M-I-E. We’ll talk about current directions in the world of early music, and have some fun discussing the 21st-century medieval music that Alkemie has created for Obsidian Entertainment’s video game Pentiment.

[Theme music fades]

Saint Francis and the Minstrels of God
Altramar early music ensemble
Dorian Discovery DIS 80143
Tr. 6: Saltarello Sancto Antonio (4:21)

Saltarello Sancto Antonio, music based on a 13th century Lauda Spirituale, with a bit of improvisation here and there, played by Altramar medieval music ensemble, from the CD Saint Francis and the Minstrels of God, kicking off Harmonia’s program number 1000 with some medieval music from a recording that was released right around the same time that the program first became syndicated.

The theme of Harmonia’s Program Number One, when it was launched in October of 1991 on WFIU in Bloomington, Indiana, was the 13th century Cantigas de Santa Maria. Here’s Cantiga number one, Des oge mais, played by the Turkish medieval group Ensemble Galatia.

Ortaçağ Şarkıları / Medieval Music from 13th-15th Centuries
Ensemble Galatia
Kalan Müzik (ASIN:‎ B00EW7I7FC)
Tr. 9: Des oge mais (4:50)

Des Oge Mais, Cantiga number one from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, performed by Ensemble Galatia, from their CD [Or-tah-cha SHAR-ki-leh-di]: Medieval Music from the 13th to the 15th Centuries. Cantigas was the theme of the very first Harmonia program back in 1991—and this week we are celebrating program number one thousand. My guest is Early Music America’s executive Director David McCormick.

INTERVIEW SEGMENT 1

ANGIE: From the very start, we always had a really wonderful, and I certainly hope mutually beneficial relationship with early music America, and I thought what better way to celebrate the one thousandth episode than to talk with the executive director for Early Music America. [laughter] So, welcome, and I'm so glad that you could be here with us today. In what ways is it different than it was in the world of early music 32 years ago? What's different?

DAVID: I've been kind of thinking about this and wondering, you know, I've only been doing early music for maybe 15 years myself and only been listening to early music groups for maybe 20, 25 years at the most. I wonder if in some ways the things that I think are different are just a new generation kind of taking up the mantle, but certainly there's this sort of mainstreaming of early music that I think has come from, you know, having a prestigious program at Juilliard, and concert series taking us seriously, and putting us on us on traditional series. And all of that is great. But what was so cool about the origins of the early music movement was that it was sort of a counterculture thing. And how do we preserve the funkiness of early music while being taken seriously? I don't know if I have any answers, I try to embody that in my own career and get people to really be excited about early music while at the same time doing projects that are a little off the wall.

ANGIE: I understand completely what you're saying about the mainstreaming thing, and I think that that's absolutely true. It seems to me that as early music seemed to change its focus from medieval and Renaissance music to baroque and early classical music that invited a kind of mainstreaming, because it was closer to what a lot of players were doing before they went in the historical performance direction and it also was familiar to audiences. So do you think that that mainstreaming had a different effect on Baroque and classical music than it did medieval and Renaissance music?

DAVID: Yeah, there are two separate tracks here in a way. Right now, there are a ton of modern players who are very interested in trying a Baroque bow or putting gut strings on for that experience, and they're playing things that they're familiar with. And that is really exciting to them, and and has helped I think sort of grow the early music universe. But yeah, I mean medieval and Renaissance music is always going to be outside of the mainstream, I think, which I kind of enjoy--as a person who plays medieval music. I think we are doing new and interesting things with medieval music these days. I'm going to say something controversial: I think we might be more sort of “rule-breaky” about medieval music these days than 30 years ago. OUT

Alkemie Live 2019
Source: Bandcamp download
T.15: La Giloxia (2:39)

The medieval group Alkemie, with a performance of Il Giloxia, from a 15th century dance manuscript by Domenico da Piacenza. I’m talking with David McCormick, who is a member of Alkemie and also the executive Director of Early Music America.

INTERVIEW SEGMENT 2

ANGIE: I think the entire classical world right now is thinking about more ways to include more people in our audiences, in our educational situations, more ways for young people to have access not only to performances but to instruments and all this sort of thing. And I think that that's a very big concern in the early music world, as is representation in the things that we program. I've been so interested and encouraged and to see how much Early Music America is doing with that type of thing, so I'm wondering if you could tell us about some of the different things that early music America is thinking about, some initiatives in that area.

DAVID: We're definitely trying to think of solutions that are thinking about the life cycle of an artist, right? So we're thinking about little kids and seeing their first black Baroque violinist on stage, and going “ohh, I could do that too.” We are definitely wanting to support outreach initiatives that are BIPOC-led or include BIPOC artists, so that they have that experience . . . and also finding resources for K through 12 educators so that they are teaching about BIPOC composers and not just Mozart and Haydn. And then we're thinking about our high school and college students and providing the scholarships that they need to study for that first time-- touching a Baroque violin or a Baroque bassoon, and then early career mentorship. It's so hard to kind of break into things. One of the things that is great and problematic about early music is that a lot of it is who you know. You know, it's who you went to school with, who you meet along the way. It's developing these bonds, and that's been really it's really fun to play music with friends at a high level. That's a really great thing--but it can be you end up excluding folks by doing that.

But again, that world that isn't so audition based means that we can make a change immediately.

We don't have to wait for a tenure track position to come open an orchestra to make a change. We can actually, literally individually commit: I am going to start doing a better job in my ensemble. It's harder to kind of Make that change happen on a the level of like all of EMA's constituents at once. We can't just put a policy in place. It's every everybody has to kind of decide for themselves how they do that. But it the field is more flexible in this way and there's a real opportunity and a lot of my colleagues are taking advantage of that and and doing a really good job of not just putting BIPOC artists on stage, but actually giving them leadership opportunities and helping them make a name for themselves in the field. And I think that's really exciting.

John Holiday with Boston Baroque
Live concert performance 2017
Handel
Giulio Cesare: “L’empio, sleale, indegno” (3:13 plus applause fade)
YOUTUBE [You can listen to a version of this performance at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68jwFCZDZGQ]

Countertenor John Holiday performing with Boston Baroque, with the aria “L’empio, sleale, indegno” from Handel’s opera Giulio Cesare. Holiday was featured in 2022 in an article in Early Music America Magazine. This week on Harmonia, I’m talking with David McCormick, executive director of Early Music America. What’s coming up for EMA?

INTERVIEW SEGMENT 3

DAVID: Early music America is doing our very first in person Summit in Boston in October and I think we're going to touch on a lot of the stuff that you and I have talked about today, like “where is the early music field?” I think there are going to be a lot of discussions about that, a lot of discussions about the music that people are playing now, that they might not have been playing 30 years ago. Composers like Lusitano, we didn't have that music 30 years ago. It was lost. There are a lot of cool trends that are happening now that I think will be hot topics. What I love about the summit is that we're trying to bring all of the different elements of the early music world together. I think this is what makes early music America really different than other national organizations. We have professional performers, we have collegiate performers, we have adult. We have luthiers, we have scholars and all these folks are incredibly important to the ecosystem. Occasionally at EMA we get kind of overwhelmed at how many different constituent types . . .and someone will say, can't we just be a trade society for professionals and I go… Well, no, because we all depend on each other. The adult amateur community of early music makes the world go round in so many different ways. They are the audience for our professional concerts. They are in many cases, the donors. They're also just really curious and excited about things. Sometimes they're the discoverers of things because they had the free time to go look it up. Thank you.

ANGIE: Thank you! A lot of them are my listeners! And I wonder if any of my listeners are out there thinking, “I would love to join that.”

DAVID: It is as simple as going to Early Music America.org. There's a giant red join button on the top right corner. It opens up a whole world of access to be a member of early Music America. If nothing else, the magazine is full of content that inspires me on a regular basis to think about new things. And the summit is the same deal. It will be really easy to register for the summit when we, when that goes live in a couple of months. OUT

You mentioned the 16th century African-Portuguese composer Vicente Lusitano, whose music lay in relative obscurity for a long time, but who is also regarded as the first published European composer of African heritage. Here is his motet “Ave spes nostra, Dei genitrix,” from a 2022 recording by the Marian Consort.

Vicente Lusitano: Motets
The Marian Consort (2022)
Linn Records ASIN:B0B82ZQTYR
Tr. 4: Ave spes nostra, Dei genitrx (actual time 4:48)

Ave spes nostra, Dei genitrix, a motet by 16th century African-Portuguese composer Vicente Lusitano, from a CD of Lusitano’s motets by the Marian Consort. We’re celebrating Harmonia’s one-thousandth program, and I’m talking with David McCormick, executive director of Early Music America. We’ll be back after the break with more from David and the medieval music group Alkemie.

[Theme music begins]

Early music can mean a lot of things. What does it mean to you? Let us know your thoughts and ideas. Contact us at harmonia early music dot org, where you’ll also find playlists and an archive of past shows.

You’re listening to Harmonia . . . I’m Angela Mariani.

[Theme music fades]

Pentiment (Original Soundtrack)
Obsidian Entertainment 2022
Alkemie
Tr. 8: Flight from the Library (actual time :58)

(fades out at :59)

Dalla Porta D’Oriente
Constantinople / Marco Beasley
Tr. 1: Nuove Musiche (Dalla porta D’oriente) (5:01)

Dalla Porta d’oriente, At the Gateway to the East, by Giulio Caccini, performed by tenor Marco Beasley and the group Constantinople—demonstrating the meeting of east and west with early 17th century Italian music played on a combination of instruments from east and west.

It’s Harmonia’s one thousandth episode this week, we’re celebrating with my guest David McCormick, executive Director of Early Music America. I wanted to open the second half of this episode with that piece, not only because it got a great response when we aired it a few weeks ago, but also because it exemplifies some of the “stepping outside the box” that’s happening in the historical performance world.

INTERVIEW SEGMENT 4

ANGIE: One of the things I wanted to talk to you about is your group, Alkemie, because of their very innovative and very creative approach and I want to talk about that. But before we do, I want to ask you about that whole idea of medieval music and some parts of Renaissance music being a little bit outside the mainstream . . . because with Renaissance music, you've got all of the polyphonic choral music that is very much part of Choral repertoire and has been for many, many, many years. Medieval music I think from the very start has attracted people who want to step outside the mainstream--people who want to experiment; I mean all the way back to the New York Pro Musica all the way back to Binkley . . . Tom Binkley . . . you have a lot of experimentation going on. It is a little bit harder to fit that into the Baroque series in some ways, because to a degree, I think it has a different audience. And I think one of the things that we might think about is have we accessed that audience? Have we reached out to that audience? Or do we find ourselves still trying to compete with chamber sonatas and something that might be more familiar to a classical audience concert goer?

DAVID: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there's probably a subset of that traditional audience that's going to be really intrigued by medieval music, but my own personal experience with Alkemie is that we've developed kind of a whole new audience for medieval music, sort of the Brooklyn hipster crowd. You know folks who are really open to new sounds; and for them, their frame of reference is sort of funky pop music. That's what they're comparing us to, and we're just a medieval rock band to them. And I love that. You know, we have a really enthusiastic audience. I suppose it depends on how you present yourself . . . a group like Les Delices presents beautifully polished medieval programs, and I think that the same folks that come to their Baroque shows come to their medieval shows and appreciate them. The Alkemie approach is a little more garage band. [fade laughter]

Alkemie Live 2019
Source: Bandcamp download
T.8: Como somos per consello (2:30)

Music from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, played by the group Alkemie, A-l-k-e-m-i-e, including my guest this week on Harmonia, David McCormick. How did the musicians of Alkemie come together?

INTERVIEW SEGMENT 5

The long story is four of us met at Case Western in Collegium. Deborah Nagy was our teacher, so we learned kind of that way of doing medieval music, that our first concert sounded like the Case Collegium, except we had Nicolo Seligman. And they come from a very different aesthetic, and brought a little bit of that counterculture sound to what we do. And over the years, we've just really morphed into wanting to push boundaries and just do what the music is is telling us to do. And part of it is that everybody except me loves to acquire new instruments. I'm the black sheep of Alkemie now-- I have just my vielle! [laughter] Everybody else comes to the gig with, you know, instruments tucked under both arms, which means we have just an enormous sound palette to choose from, and some of them are pretty sounds inherently; some of them are sort of gruff, rough sounds. We've got every percussion instrument you could imagine, and we just…I think we really lean into the folk elements of medieval music. And when you really get into folk music it's it's gritty. You can play--excuse me for skipping centuries here-- but you know, you can play Playford dances in a very respectable way and make it sound like the rest of your Baroque program. . . or you can really go for it and make it sound like you're at a country dance.

ANGIE: Yes, I understand exactly what you're talking about. The first time I heard your group, I said to someone: that's the future right there of medieval performance.

DAVID: . . . wow.

Alkemie Live 2019
Source: Bandcamp download
T.1: A poste messe (4:05)

A poste messe, a 14th century Italian caccia by Lorenzo di Firenze, performed by Alkemie. I’m talking with David McCormick, executive director of Early Music America and a member of the medieval group Alkemie – A-L-K-E-M-I-E. One of Alkemie’s coolest recent projects was creating and and recording the soundtrack for a video game.

The “featured release” this week is the discussion about Alkemie’s music for the Pentiment video game.

Pentiment (Original Soundtrack)
Obsidian Entertainment 2022
Alkemie
Tr. 1: TITLE SCREEN music (actual time 2:18)

INTERVIEW SEGMENT 6

DAVID: I am not a video game person, so I had no idea how cool this project was when we first were approached, we had a board member who recommended us to this company, and it was a pandemic project, primarily. We're recording, you know, one track at a time at home in our respective homes. I thought it was cool that we got to do it, but I had never heard of Obsidian Entertainment-- and then, as the project went along, it became clear that this video game was a big deal. It's been written about in the New York Times in the last few weeks. And now that it's out in the world, it's it's really one of the big games of 2023, and people are talking about the music of the game as an important element of it. I believe it's set in like the early Renaissance is the deal and it's it's a Renaissance murder mystery story. They've thought about it very authentically. The visuals are very authentic. You can see like illuminated manuscripts in the animation and so forth. And then the music is our take. We aren't just playing Medieval music straightforwardly; everything has been arranged, in some cases deranged. [laughter]

If you, if you know that we're playing Hildegard, you're going to recognize a little bit of Hildegard in there. So it's it's a medieval soundscape, but it's very Alkemie, you know. We get a chance to play with different sounds. I know that I wasn't actually part of the last bit of recording, but I know that Tracy and Sean spent a lot of time in front of the microphone making sounds with various objects to add to the soundscape. Because it's a video game--and there have to be those sounds that evoke what's happening.

Pentiment (Original Soundtrack)
Obsidian Entertainment 2022
Alkemie
Tr. 19: “The mob pursues the abbott” (medieval saltarello) 1:27
Tr. 20: “A Deer’s End” (based on Josquin’s “Mille regretz”) 1:43

We’re listening to excerpts from the soundtrack of the video game Pentiment, and I’m talking with David McCormick, who is a member of the medieval music group Alkemie, a-l-k-e-m-i-e, who created the soundtrack for the game.

INTERVIEW SEGMENT 7

DAVID: One of the cool things about this project that is just kind of mind blowing to me--not only is the soundtrack available on Spotify, but sometime in in the next year or so they are putting the soundtrack on vinyl. The video game folks are so excited about the soundtrack that they're promoting it as a special thing. It's not just one of these cases. Where like we're background music for a game and nobody ever thinks twice about who it is we're being talked about. We're being profiled as the composers and the performers of the soundtrack. I really still cannot believe it's going to be on vinyl. It's great for us.
ANGIE: Well, thank you so very much. I so appreciate it, and I'm very excited about what Alkemie is doing, and very excited about what early music America is doing. Thanks for coming!
DAVID: Thank you. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you.

Pentiment (Original Soundtrack)
Obsidian Entertainment 2022
Alkemie
Tr. 23: “The Duke’s Forces” (L’Homme Arme) (:52)

[Fade in theme music]

Harmonia is a production of WFIU and part of the educational mission of Indiana University.
Support comes from Early Music America: a national organization that advocates and supports the historical performance of music of the past, the community of artists who create it, and the listeners whose lives are enriched by it. On the web at EarlyMusicAmerica-dot-org.

Additional resources come from the William and Gayle Cook Music Library at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

We welcome your thoughts about any part of this program, or about early music in general. Contact us at harmonia early music dot org. You can follow us on Facebook by searching for Harmonia Early Music.

The writer for this edition of Harmonia was Angela Mariani. Special thanks this week to David McCormick, executive director of Early Music America, and to the medieval ensemble Alkemie.

Thanks to our studio engineer Michael Paskash, and our production team: LuAnn Johnson, Aaron Cain, and John Bailey. I’m Angela Mariani, inviting you to join us again for the next edition of Harmonia.

[Theme music concludes]

David McCormick

David McCormick, executive director of Early Music America. (Courtesy of Early Music America.)

This episode originally aired on May 22, 2023.

We hit a milestone this week on Harmonia: this is program number one thousand! When this program began in 1991, I was studying medieval music with Thomas Binkley at Indiana University, and launching Altramar medieval music ensemble with several of my colleagues—so I’m “going medieval” this week—or mostly, anyway—and my guest is David McCormick, the executive director of Early Music America and member of the medieval music group Alkemie. We talked about current directions in the world of early music, and had some fun discussing the 21st-century medieval music that Alkemie has created for Obsidian Entertainment’s video game Pentiment.

PLAYLIST

Saint Francis and the Minstrels of God
Altramar early music ensemble
Dorian Discovery DIS 80143 / 1996
Based on 13th century Lauda Spirituale
Tr. 6: Saltarello Sancto Antonio (4:21)

Segment A:

MUSIC:
Ortaçağ Şarkıları / Medieval Music from 13th-15th Centuries
Ensemble Galatia
Kalan Müzik (ASIN:‎ B00EW7I7FC) 2013
Cantigas de Santa Maria
Tr. 9: Des oge mais (4:50)

[INTERVIEW SEGMENT 1]

MUSIC:
Alkemie Live 2019
Alkemie
Source: Bandcamp download
Manuscript by Domenico da Piacenza
T.15: La Giloxia (2:39)

[INTERVIEW SEGMENT 2]

MUSIC:
Handel “L’empio, sleale, indegno” from Giulio Cesare
John Holiday with Boston Baroque
Live concert performance 2017
YOUTUBE [You can listen to a version of this performance at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68jwFCZDZGQ]

[INTERVIEW SEGMENT 3]

Vicente Lusitano: Motets
The Marian Consort
Linn Records (2022)/ASIN:B0B82ZQTYR
Tr. 4: Ave spes nostra, Dei genitrx (actual time 4:48)

Theme Music Bed: Ensemble Alcatraz, Danse Royale, Elektra Nonesuch 79240-2 / B000005J0B, T.12: La Prime Estampie Royal

:59 Midpoint Break Music Bed:
Pentiment (Original Soundtrack)
Obsidian Entertainment 2022
Alkemie
Tr. 8: Flight from the Library (actual time :58)

Segment B:

MUSIC:
Dalla Porta D’Oriente
Constantinople / Marco Beasley
Glossa 2020
Giulio Caccini
Tr. 1: Nuove Musiche (Dalla porta D’oriente) (5:01)

[INTERVIEW SEGMENT 4]

MUSIC:
Alkemie Live 2019
Alkemie
Source: Bandcamp download
Cantigas de Santa Maria
T.8: Como somos per consello (2:30)

[INTERVIEW SEGMENT 5]

MUSIC:
Alkemie Live 2019
Alkemie
Source: Bandcamp download
Lorenzo di Firenze
T.1: A poste messe (4:05)

Featured Release:

Pentiment (Original Soundtrack)
Obsidian Entertainment 2022
Alkemie
Tr. 1: TITLE SCREEN music (actual time 2:18)

[INTERVIEW SEGMENT 6]

Pentiment (Original Soundtrack)
Obsidian Entertainment 2022
Alkemie
Tr. 19: “The mob pursues the abbott” (medieval saltarello) 1:27
Tr. 20: “A Deer’s End” (based on Josquin’s “Mille regretz”) 1:43

[INTERVIEW SEGMENT 7]

Pentiment (Original Soundtrack)
Obsidian Entertainment 2022
Alkemie
Tr. 23: “The Duke’s Forces” (L’Homme Arme) (:52)

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