Temporary notice

This website is under construction. Right now the following pages have some content:

The Instruments - The Music - About NMEI - How you can contribute - Links - Instrument: Cornetto

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New Music for Early Instruments

The mission of this project is to encourage and equip today's composers to take advantage of the rich sound world of early instruments, and the distinctive skill set of early music specialist performers. For performers, this website is an opportunity to share their knowledge and experience with a broader community, and to fuel interest in early instruments. This project is founded fundamentally on collaboration.

There are many excellent sources of information about early instruments on the Internet, and websites for individual instruments (see the links page). The specialized purpose of this website is to familiarize composers with early instruments, and to house a detailed library of orchestration information for reference. These pages (see navigation bar above) will address timbre, range, playing techniques, and other technical topics which are essential to composers who would like to write for early instruments.

The second purpose of this website is to collect information about work being done in contemporary music, Early Music, and where they meet. News and articles of interest will be featured on the blog, and the music page offers a growing list of groups and composers who are working in this area, their creations, and available recordings.

It is my hope that New Music for Early Instruments will expand, and in the long term we may organize a workshop and/or a composition showcase, potentially culminating in live performance(s) and a published recording. Being a young aspiring composer myself, I hope to emphasize the involvement of student composers and performers in these endeavors.

So please enjoy the website! Feel free to email me at nell@earlyinstruments.org if you have any suggestions for improvement. If you would like to contribute to the project, please visit this page.

-Nell Shaw Cohen
Founder, New Music for Early Instruments

Frequently Asked Questions

What are "early instruments"?

For the purposes of this web site, “early instruments” will be defined as instruments used in Western Europe primarily before 1750, especially during the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods, and the performance techniques that are associated with them. The most common of these instruments are:

The bowed strings viola da gamba, baroque violin, viola and cello, viola d'amore, vielle and related instruments; the plucked strings lute and theorbo/chitaronne, vihuela, baroque guitar, cittern, and harps; the keyboards harpsichord, fortepiano, and portative and positive organs; the brass instruments cornetto, sackbutt, natural horn, and natural trumpet; and varied winds such as recorder, baroque flute, shawm, and crumhorn.

The pages on this website may also be concerned with performance practices that extend to vocal music and ensemble playing, such as improvisation, ornamentation, basso continuo, etc, insofar as these topics are relevant to the composer (i.e. if the composer would like the performers to elaborate on a written part as they would in a piece of Baroque music).

For more information on where early instruments came from and who plays them today, visit The Instruments.

Why write new music for early instruments?

First and foremost, early instruments have a unique timbral quality distinct from their modern orchestral counterparts. A work written for cornetto, theorbo, viola da gamba and harpsichord is going to have a drastically different sound when performed on trumpet, guitar, cello and piano. Generally, the cornetto & friends sound warmer, darker, quieter, and less dense, with much less vibrato. For some of us, this sound is very appealing and can achieve certain moods or effects that the modern ensemble could not (and vice versa, naturally). Of course there are more specific distinctions which individual instruments may have.

Secondly, there are many wonderful musicians who perform exclusively in Early Music ensembles, and who have developed a different skill set and approach from performers of modern music. Performers of Early Music deal with ambiguous interpretative territory – that is, they would virtually never have an explicit indication from a composer of 1500 or 1600 of how to perform a work (early scores are not marked with dynamics or tempi, and oftentimes do not even specify which instruments should be used). Perhaps partly because of this, Early Music performance attracts and develops highly creative interpretative minds, and ears which are accustomed to understanding certain musical tendencies that are not encountered in modern classical. This can be a great asset for some contemporary composers.

Finally, as a composer I feel that writing new music for early instruments is simply an interesting project which may produce exciting and refreshing art. I love listening to Early Music, and I am fascinated by the prospect of borrowing some of what is so great and distinctive about Early Music and reinventing it for a new time and place. Contemporary composers have yet to really mine the world of early instruments, and hopefully this website may help facilitate further experimentation.

To learn about previous work that's been done in new music for early instruments, visit the music page.