Early adopters

The death of Gustav Leonhardt at the age of 83 brings to an end the career of one of the giants of the early music movement. As an organist, harpsichordist and conductor he was long at the forefront of the experiments and revelations that the drive to perform music on period instruments made possible. He will be remembered for being fearless in his single-minded pursuit of what he thought his chosen repertoires required. And he was producing peerless recordings of those repertoires right from the beginning which — one forgets — was in the late ’40s.

The term ‘early music’, and its demanding fellow traveller ‘authenticity’, have had a long innings. If one were talking in terms of the title of a revolution in modern concert practice one could say the battle has been won and the barriers taken down. As a more general remark it still has a useful application, though the point at which ‘early’ ceases to be early enough to qualify as being early is moot.