Performing Early Music in the Low Countries

During the last few decades musicologists have abandoned the general philosophical approach in favour of more scientific investigations. Research into archive material has been undertaken on a large scale. As well as the works of important but almost completely forgotten composers, there has been a good deal of interest in texts on organology, musical practice, musical rhetoric and instrumental techniques. All this has brought about a revolution in the interpretation of ‘Early Music'. It all began in 1933 with Pro Musica Antiqua, the Belgian ensemble for Medieval Renaissance music founded by the pioneering American Safford Cape under the intellectual leadership of musicologist Charles van den Bonen. This article offers a brief survey of today' s specialists in Early Music.