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Interviews | Tess Knighton (Editor of Early Music and Early Music advisor at London's South Bank Centre)
Issue 5:
May 2002
Interview with
Tess Knighton
(Editor of Early Music and Early Music advisor at London's South Bank
Centre)
Introduction: Tess Knighton ("TK") is a Cambridge
musicologist who specialises in the Renaissance, although perhaps she is best
known as the Editor of the academic quarterly Early Music. Tess has also
collaborated with her husband Ivor Bolton's Handel performances at the Lufthansa
Baroque Festival, and is currently Early Music Advisor at London's South Bank
Centre (SBC). David Vickers ("DV") spoke to her about the SBC's recent
"Discovering Handel" concert series, and her enthusiasm for Handel.
DV: What is your role at the South Bank, and what does
this actually involve?
TK: I was appointed Early Music
Adviser to the South Bank Centre last October. They've never had such a person
before, but they wanted to raise the profile of early music at the SBC and to
give the programming more coherence. Currently the programming is based around
the in-house artists, that is the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE)
and the New London Consort. The OAE will continue to put together their series,
and Philip Pickett (director, New London Consort) will continue to do his annual
mini-festival in September, but both will be in contact with me, and already I
have been involved in the planning of the OAE Haydn series for next season.
DV: How have you contributed to the structure of the
Handel series?
TK: The Handel programme was already fixed when I was
taken on, so I worked with the SBC on ways of promoting the Festival, pulling
out themes etc, and was chair for the Handel Study Day which I put together with
the OAE. I advise about other EM groups that might be booked, and overall
programming in general.
DV: Have you had any thoughts about Handel's life and music while preparing
the program notes and study day?
TK: Yes, many - where to start? I
think the main thing I have been thinking about are the performing traditions
for Handel. His is an absolutely exceptional case, because in a sense the
performing of Handel's music - at least a certain clearly defined number of his
works - has been continuous, essentially uninterrupted since his own day. I am
thinking of Messiah, possibly Judas Maccabaeus and Israel in
Egypt, but also the Water Music, "Zadok the Priest" - all those works
that have entered the national consciousness.
DV: Can you tell me about the recent OAE study day?
TK: The study day was meant to be a
forum for people interested in Handel and who love his music rather than for the
scholarly community. Clearly there are many of these: it was sold out for weeks
in advance of the event! It was basically organised by the OAE, and I was
invited to chair the day. I invited Ruth Smith to speak as she has so much
insight into the oratorios and what they meant to people in Handel's own day. So
the morning consisted of me giving an overall introduction to the Handel series
at the South Bank and a brief disquisition on performing traditions in Handel,
followed by Ruth talking about some of Handel's patrons, librettists and other
colleagues.
DV: Was this supported by live music?
TK: In the afternoon, members of the OAE illustrated
the instruments they use to play Handel's music (with live examples of trio
sonatas etc), and then there was a final discussion session. As you know, I'm
not a Handel scholar, though I am generally very interested in performance
practice and recently gave a similar talk about performing Bach. Ruth is a
Handel scholar, and she is also a great communicator which is probably equally
important: we, the lucky few, who can spend our lives thinking about such things
should communicate whenever possible, and especially with those outside the
academic community but who are genuinely interested in wanting to appreciate the
man and his music that bit more. So the study day was a great opportunity. The
OAE have done several of these study days before, and they're obviously quite
popular, and I think it's a great way for the South Bank to enrich the
audience's musical experience.
DV: You are a Renaissance music scholar, so what is your "take" on Handel?
TK: Yes, I work on music in the
Iberian Peninsula and the New World in the Renaissance and Early Modern periods.
My take on Handel is very much what I've described above in terms of wanting to
know more about the context for Handel's music, what did he have in mind, what
was he trying to do, what did listeners then make of it all? Both performance
and listening practice, I guess. The other thing which is perhaps still more
important is that I, like so many people, just simply love his music.
DV: What is your earliest memory of Handel's music?
TK: My first introduction to it was learning to play
his flute sonatas as a child, then hearing and playing in local amateur choral
society performances of Messiah and singing excerpts at school (in an all
girls' choir!) - all experiences almost everyone with any involvement in
classical music shares. Then, while I was Artistic Director of the Lufthansa
Festival of Baroque Music, we put on a different Handel oratorio every year (for
15 years now!), and since the early 90s my husband Ivor Bolton has been
conducting Handel opera and oratorio everywhere, but especially in Munich,
Florence (fascinating that Florence has a very long Handel tradition too!) and
Paris. I have thus been lucky enough to hear a great many of the operas and
oratorios many times in some truly great performances. And I never, ever tire of
the music, it has so much depth, so much humanity to it.
Relevant Links:
The South Bank Centre:
http://www.rfh.org.uk
Tess Knighton's Introduction to the Discovering Handel
Festival: http://www.oae.co.uk/handelintro.htm
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment:
http://www.oae.co.uk
Early Music:
http://www3.oup.co.uk/earlyj
The Lufthansa Baroque Music Festival:
http://www.lufthansafestival.org.uk
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this page and all other pages at this site are Copyright © 2015 by David
Vickers and Matthew Gardner
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Last updated:
August 30, 2020
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