VNITAS ET DIVERSITAS:
National styles in early music

In 1724 François Couperin, a Parisian harpsichordist, published a selection of Nouveaux concerts (new concerts) under a curious subtitle: “Les goûts reunis” (“reunited tastes”). This work brings together two of the main musical traditions of the Europe of that period, the French and the Italian. Two years later, Couperin published Les Nations, a collection of trio sonates and suites which also involves a fusion of styles from France (“La françoise”), Italy (“La piémontoise”), Spain (“L’espagnole”) and the Holy Roman Empire (“L’impériale”), which occupied a large part of Central Europe, including the current Germany. These collections reflect the existence of musical styles (underestood in the most restrictive sense as a combination of purely musical features) which characterized a town, region or country, and were sometimes associated to schools of composers. Although the concepts of style and school are artificial due to the constant overlap of traditions and they are more than a list of composers or formal elements, many composers and listeners have been aware of composing or listening to music in a diferent way, drawing on regional or national traditions and practices. Taking advantage of the celebration of the European Year of Cultural Heritage by the European Commission, the FeMAUB 2018 will address this issue and will offer a series of concerts in order to represent the differences between national schools, but also the links existing among them. The programme will also include a course devoted to the preparation of the performance of Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers (1610), a work which paradigmatically shows this combination of unity and diversity in early music.

Javier Marín
Director of the FeMAUB