The Centre for Eighteenth-Century Performance Practice of the Institute of Musical Research (IMR) was established in September 2010 thanks to a generous two-year start-up grant awarded by Acting Dean of the School of Advanced Study, University of London, Mike Edwards. The principal aim of DeNOTE is to encourage a creative mixture of practical and intellectual approaches to the realization of eighteenth-century musical repertories. In particular, DeNOTE will spotlight practice-based research topics that move beyond notation itself and into the performative realm of sound – unbinding the music from the score (‘de-noting’ it) while simultaneously seeking to recapture, redefine and consequently to explain (‘denote’) the expressive practice of music as it was understood in the eighteenth century.
The Centre was launched at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama on 28–29 September. ‘The Intimate Mozart and the Performer as Creator’ explored performance practice in Mozart's three piano concertos of 1783 – k413, 414 and 415 – written in dual format, for either piano and orchestra or piano and string quartet. This event, which consisted of an open-rehearsal workshop and a public concert introduced by myself as the Director of the IMR, featured these works in the quartet format. Both period and modern performance practices were considered, and the role of improvisation by the pianist (thus going beyond Mozart's notated texts) was a key issue for discussion and experimentation.
DeNOTE's next events comprised a succession of three recitals of music by Mozart, Beethoven and Wanhal for clarinet and fortepiano given by Jane Booth and myself for the Kingston Chamber Concerts Society at Kingston upon Thames Parish Church (4 October), Morden College, Blackheath (14 October) and the University College London Chamber Music Society (19 October). These recitals were specifically designed to engage a wide variety of audiences in order to further the accessibility of the IMR's research remit.
On 26 October in Senate House DeNOTE held its first seminar, ‘Legacy and Legend – Historic(al) Performance in the 1980s’. Along with Trevor Herbert (Open University), Colin Lawson (Royal College of Music) reviewed the artistic and cultural aspirations, meanings and messages behind the burgeoning of period-instrument performances and recordings during the 1980s and looked at lessons to be learned. In DeNOTE's second seminar on 29 November Barry Cooper (University of Manchester), Roy Mowatt (Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Founteyne Editions) and Rupert Ridgewell (British Library) revisited the thorny question of urtext editions from a variety of perspectives.
In the spring of 2011 we held two London-based workshops and seminars at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the first focusing on the classical bow and led by former Head of Strings there, Jacqueline Ross. Pavlo Beznosiuk, leader of the Avison Ensemble and the Academy of Ancient Music, provided expert guidance to a student group in a workshop on early Mozart string quartets, while Jacqui Ross and Maggie Cole did the same subsequently in a session on Mozart violin sonatas. In between, we had an extraordinary series of presentations by Jeremy Brooker, Ibi Aziz and Shem Mackey on that peculiar baroque/classical instrument the baryton, much loved of Haydn's patron Prince Nicolaus Eszterházy. Guiding us through the repertoire, the playing techniques and the organological background, the players introduced the fascinated audience to an astonishing variety of sound possibilities and combinations (including baryton and viola da gamba). In the second seminar, at Senate House, Judy Tarling examined early nineteenth-century domestic song-making with guitarist Peter Lay, flautist Clare Beesley and soprano Kate Semmens.
Recent DeNOTE activity has taken on a regional focus, with events at Cardiff University (a workshop on Mozart's concerto k413), Bristol University (a chamber-music recital by myself and two members of The Orchestra of The Age of Enlightenment that explored Beethoven's own arrangement of his Septet for clarinet, cello and piano, together with an associated workshop), the University of Cambridge (a repeat of the Mozart workshop, which provided an alternative way, for some, of spending Royal Wedding Day) and the University of Hull (repeating the Beethoven project). Additionally, the Mozart workshop was given at Kings Place as part of its year-long ‘Mozart Unwrapped’ season. DeNOTE is becoming established as a key player in the IMR's promotion and facilitation of research, bringing scholarship to audiences beyond, as well as within, academe, and connecting scholars and performers.
John Irving was Director of the IMR from 2009 to 2011, where he founded DeNOTE. He is now Professor of Music at Canterbury Christ Church University <john.irving@canterbury.ac.uk>.
