Page 82 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year
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1 July 2019
The da Vinci code to Early Music Festival
By Charles Hutchinson
THE 2019 York Early Music Festival opens on Friday with the theme of
Innovation, The Shock of the New.
The “new”, in this case, being new 500 years ago, as the festival draws inspiration
from Leonardo da Vinci in a nine-day celebration of the composers, performers,
instrument-makers and thinkers who, over the centuries, have moved music
forward by daring to be different.
“The festival is delighted to welcome a host of the best specialist and innovative
performers and musicians of our day, musicians who themselves can be sure to
have something new to say about music familiar and unknown, proving that in
early music, as in all art, nothing stands still,” says administrative director Delma
Tomlin.
“In celebrating Leonardo da Vinci, surely one of the greatest innovators ever, we
are highlighting his time of political change, technical change, when the changes
to instruments and the ability to make them more ‘user friendly’ was so
important.
“Now the fortepiano was available to play, where before it was only the
harpsichord, and just because it was ‘new technology’ more than 400 years ago
doesn’t mean it isn’t worth celebrating.”
Typical of the 2019 festival’s focus will be Ensemble Lucidarium’s concert,
Leonardo: Music and Maths, at the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of
York, on Sunday at 7pm.
“Leonardo da Vinci and his contemporaries considered music to be a mirror in
which mathematical concepts could be applied and proven; polyphony in
particular was a field for experimentation where research brought tangible
results,” says Delma.
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