Department of Music
The Collective for Early Music Performance and Research at Birmingham (CEMPR), is relatively unique within Europe, and a place where the highest levels of performance and academic research in early music are brought together.
CEMPR exists to co-ordinate and encourage all kinds of early music activities within the Music Department and the University, from lessons for beginners on Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque instruments and in early vocal techniques, through workshops, master classes and concerts, to postgraduate programmes in performance practice, international symposia and research projects.
If you are interested in early music - by which we mean not just the music of a particular period, but an approach to performing and thinking about music which asks 'What can we learn about the performance of music of the past, and how can this knowledge be used to enhance our understanding of that music?' - then CEMPR has something to offer you, from undergraduate to postgraduate level and beyond.
For further information, contact the Director of CEMPR, Andrew Kirkman: A.Kirkman@bham.ac.uk, or the Department Secretary, Sue Miles: S.Miles@bham.ac.uk.
The study of early music, which involves close critical reading of musical and literary texts as well as technical ability, is particularly suited to a university context, and many leading figures in the flourishing world of professional early music performance, including a number of CEMPR's instrumental and vocal tutors, began their careers at university.
The Department of Music at Birmingham has a long tradition of belief that the academic study of music should be informed by the experience of performing, and vice versa.
CEMPR builds on this by bringing together students, academics and performers to provide a rich environment in which received and new ideas about the interpretation of music can be explored and expressed through performance, editions and research leading to various types of academic publication.
Students working within the centre may choose to go on to undertake research in early music, to pursue professional careers as performers or to mix the two.
Andrew Kirkman studied at the universities of Durham, London (King’s College) and Princeton, and has worked at the universities of Manchester, Wales, Oxford and Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. He is currently Peyton and Barber Professor of Music at Birmingham. His research centres on sacred music of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and he has published and lectured widely on English and continental music of the period.
He is director of the award-winning 'Binchois Consort,' which records little-known Renaissance repertory on the Hyperion label. The group has made ten recordings, all on the Hyperion label. Its recordings and performances, of music by Du Fay, Binchois, Josquin, Busnoys and others, have received universally strong critical acclaim and many music industry prizes, including Gramophone ‘Early Music Recording of the Year’ in 1999 for its recording ‘Music for St James the Greater by Guillaume Du Fay.’ At Rutgers University he was director of the Collegium Musicum (a small Renaissance chamber choir), which under his directorship issued a number of CDs, and Musica Raritana, a baroque/ classical orchestra formed with the aim to provide students with learning and performance opportunities in baroque and classical performance styles, coached by major players in the field. Its recording of Early Works for Piano and Strings by Mendelssohn has recently been released on the Affetto label. At Birmingham since 2011, he has mounted similar projects with the University Chamber Orchestra, Birmingham University Singers, and the Early Modern Vocal Ensemble, as well as teaching on a wide range of topics from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. He has also had a busy career as a freelance violinist, and recently, with pianist Clipper Erickson, released a world-premiere recording of violin sonatas by Cyril Scott.
Contact: a.kirkman@bham.ac.uk
I specialize in seventeenth-century Italian singers, singing culture, vocal music and early modern gender construction. My approach to research is interdisciplinary, employing methodologies from art history, critical theory, gender studies, and performance studies.
It is worth noting that the best young performers in early music soon gain a wide experience on the international stage, as has been the case with a number of our recent graduates.
CEMPR prepares you for this in providing an international dimension to its performance and research by offering a rare platform in the UK for cross-fertilizing British, American and Continental European approaches to the interpretation of early music.
We have close links with many of the leading early music performers and ensembles around Europe and in the US, and with staff working in other early music institutes (such as the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Switzerland, and others in The Hague, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Venice and Berlin). Consequently there are frequent opportunities at CEMPR to attend workshops, lectures and masterclasses with some of the best performers and scholars of our generation. CEMPR has established a relationship with. Several CEMPR tutors play with the Britain's premier period-instrument orchestra — the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and other members of the Orchestra regularly visit the University to give workshops: one project with the Orchestra involved some 40 students in a Berlioz project, which culminated in performances at the Royal Festival Hall, London and Symphony Hall, Birmingham.
CEMPR also hosts concerts with foreign artists of the highest calibre. This is frequently in collaboration with other promoters of early music in Birmingham and in the region, in particular with the city-based organisation the Birmingham Early Music Festival and the Henry Barber Trust. Artists featured have included Fretwork, Anonymous 4, the Academy of Ancient Music, the Venice Baroque Orchestra, the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin, Sequentia, and Ensemble Gilles Binchois (to mention but a few) as well as leading European soloists. There are frequent guest lectures by leading early music scholars, and the thriving community of early music scholars and performers at CEMPR ensures lively discussions and debates.
CEMPR has a large number of quality instruments available for students to use, many of them from the finest instrument makers in Europe.
For those of you interested in Baroque music we have a complete range of baroque instruments including strings, flutes, oboes and bassoon. Keyboard and continuo players will enjoy using the Department’s ten early keyboards including three harpsichords, clavichords, virginals and two chamber organs, one of the latter an original eighteenth-century house organ by Snetzler.
The recent arrival of the spectacular reproduction Tudor organ by Goetze and Gwynne has added another important element to this collection. Brass players have the opportunity to play on exquisitely made natural horns and trumpets. For accompaniment and solo work we also have a Baroque guitar, an archlute, fine theorbo by Martin Haycock as well as medieval and renaissance lutes.
Other instruments available include two consorts of recorders (one Renaissance and one Baroque), cornetts, dulcians, crumhorns, two chests of viols and a consort of sackbuts made for us by a leading British maker, Frank Tomes.
If your interests lie in Medieval music, then you will have access to a whole range of string, wind and percussion instruments, including fiddels, rebecs, citole, a late medieval lute by Richard Earle, gittern, a wonderful hand-crafted plucked psaltery, bagpipes, harp, hammered dulcimer, portative organ and a set of shawms by Hanchet.
Katy Bircher is established as a specialist of early flutes and, as such, has worked with most of the UK based early music groups in repertoire ranging from Dowland to Wagner.
She has enjoyed a busy touring career playing in the world’s most prestigious concert halls and visiting wonderful and exotic places across Europe, the Far East and the Americas.
Katy teaches baroque flute, both as a principal study and as an ensemble option. The flute is not only a beautiful instrument (more mellow and soulful than its modern counterpart), but gives us very clear information about how to approach 18th century repertoire.
Alison Crum is one of the best-known British exponents of the viol. As teacher, performer, and moving spirit behind several well-known early music groups, she has travelled all over the world giving recitals and lectures and teaching on summer schools and workshops.
She has made over a hundred recordings with some of Britain's finest ensembles, notably with the Rose Consort of Viols.
Alison is the author of two highly acclaimed books on playing the viol, as well as a series of graded music books, and has been called the doyenne of British viol teachers.
She has a vast experience of teaching people at all levels, and will explain all the basics of playing in the first session so that you can play together in a consort from the very first day.
Martyn Sanderson is a Birmingham based trombone player specialising in historical performance and working with many of the country’s leading early music ensembles. Highlights include US tours with The English Baroque Soloists playing in venues such as Carnegie Hall and a European tour with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performing Bruckner’s 6th Symphony with Sir Simon Rattle.
As well as modern trombone tuition at UoB Martyn teaches individual sackbut lessons and runs the sackbut ensemble. Sessions explore instrumental and vocal music of the 16th and 17th centuries focusing on historical practices relating to articulation, ornamentation and interpretation of text.
One of Europe’s leading lutenists, Lynda appears on more than 100 commercial recordings, is principal lutenist with La Serenissima, Ex Cathedra, and the King’s Consort, directs the lute ensemble Chordophony, and works worldwide as a theorbo continuo player. She holds a PhD for her work on continuo lutes, and has written for the New Grove, Early Music and Apollo, plus numerous pedagogic articles for the UK lute society.
Lynda teaches lute, theorbo and baroque guitar, and runs continuo club, an informal class where we explore continuo playing - the key to two centuries of music! We start with simple harmony and bass lines, and learn to improvise in a stress-free fun way. Sessions are open to all, whether you sing or play a treble or bass instrument. Participants can bring music with a continuo part, or just bring your instrument and learn to play a continuo part, or improvise above it.
Anneke Scott is a leading exponent of historical horn playing. She is principal horn of a number of internationally renowned period instrument ensembles most notably Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and The English Baroque Soloists, ensemble Pygmalion, Dunedin Consort and the Irish Baroque Orchestra.
She is artistic director of The Prince Regent’s Band and a member of harmoniemusik ensemble Boxwood and Brass. Anneke is the historical horn tutor at the Centre for Early Music Performance Research at the University of Birmingham, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music. www.annekescott.com.
After having musical education in Japan, Canada and in Germany, Miki has won the first prizes at two prestigious early music international competitions and started her career as a soloist/chamber musician.
Miki is currently the leader of Feinstein Ensemble, St. James’s Baroque and performs with her own ensemble, 2 to Link (Violin & Viola Duo) and Turini Ensemble. (More info at www.mikitakahashiviolin.com)
In the baroque violin group lessons and through the chamber orchestra coaching, I’d like you to expand your view of how to approach early music. We’ll learn how to play the baroque violin and the “language” of early music, which is vital for anyone who wishes to become an accomplished musician. This will help you to understand not only the baroque music but also the musical style which came after the baroque era.
Richard has played with the major UK period instrument ensembles and regularly tours to Europe and beyond. Highlights have included touring the three Monteverdi operas with Sir John Elliot Gardiner and Beethoven Ninth Symphony with the Australian Chamber Orchestra.
Richard teaches natural trumpet and cornetto at the Royal College of Music and Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Repertoire covered includes 17th century solos through to orchestral works of Bach and Handel. This repertoire can be studied using period or modern instruments, as requested, and mixed instrumentation chamber coaching in period performance is also available.
Yeo Yat-Soon studied Music and Historical Musicology at King’s College London, and Harpsichord and Conducting at the Guildhall School of Music, where he won the Raymond Russell Prize for Harpsichord.
He performs widely across the UK, France, Germany and the Far East. He has broadcast for BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM radio and BBC1, BBC4 and Channel 4 television.
At the University of Birmingham, Yat-Soon teaches harpsichord, coaches chamber music, lectures on historical performance practice and leads a course on basso continuo.
He also holds regular informal classes giving opportunities for all students, regardless of subject or specialism, to perform on the wide variety of early keyboard instruments owned by the university.
Undergraduate and postgraduate students working within CEMPR, take tuition on voice and instruments and in ensemble performance, and follow academic courses in the history and performance of music.
Tuition is available in strings, wind and brass instruments from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Baroque and early Classical periods. Vocal tuition is available for music in all of those periods. Singers should particularly note that, if you have a good natural voice, to receive training in early music singing also equips you to sing contemporary music, as well as folk and jazz (whereas training in the traditional nineteenth-century method rather restricts you to a narrow range of musical style and career prospects).
All CEMPR's instrumental and vocal tutors are professional performers of international calibre (see select biographies, below). Most initial technical training is done in groups, and students can learn early instruments or voice as an ‘extra’: that is, you do not have to forgo lessons on modern instruments in order to try your hand at an early instrument. But you will find that you have more time to develop your technique if you substitute training on an early instrument or in early vocal technique for one of the two sets of lessons that are offered as part of the Music course. If you do take up a new instrument you will be assessed on the progress that you have made over the year. You may already have in mind an instrument or a family of instruments on which you would like to work — violinists might like to try their hand at a Baroque violin or a medieval fiddel, and guitarists can readily learn to play the theorbo — but there are other, less obvious, choices: if you play the trumpet, you can tackle not only the natural trumpet but also the cornett; if you play trombone, then you will easily master the sackbut. If in doubt, ask. In the past few years students have been presenting final-year recitals of first-class standard in early instruments and voice while others have included early music as part of their recital.
There are ensembles of all kinds: Medieval and Renaissance vocal ensembles; viol consorts, sackbut and cornett ensembles, recorder ensembles, Baroque string orchestra, Baroque flute ensembles, and a variety of other chamber ensembles involving different combinations of instruments and/or voice. The Centre puts on a number of lunch-hour concerts each year in which CEMPR student soloists and ensembles are showcased. There are also possibilities to partake in larger-scale CEMPR projects, involving choir and Baroque orchestra: recent performances have included Bach’s St John Passion, and Handel choral and instrumental works, in which students are trained by the professional performers on the CEMPR staff who also perform (or direct from an instrument) in the concert. For instance, the St John Passion performance was led by cellist Richard Tunnicliffe, and the Handel concert by harpsichordist and continuo player David Roblou.
CEMPR remains part of the Music Department at Birmingham, and undergraduates in particular are encouraged to gain a broad musical education and to take advantage of other departmental strengths such as contemporary music. However, within the Music Department's new BMus syllabus there is ample opportunity to follow your interests in early music history, editing, performance and performance practice. The Department also has an early music pathways on its Music MA, and opportunities to focus on early music on its Musicology and Performance Practice PhD/MA by Research programmes.
