Camerata Musicale is a group of Japanese amateur musicians performing baroque music using period instruments. "Camerata Musicale" means Musical Comrade, and was named by Shin-ichiro Ichikawa, a founding member of the group and now a musicologist and Associate Professor at Hokkaido University of Education.
The group was formed in the mid-1970s by six students who had become acquainted with each other through their activities in the Keio University Baroque Ensemble, to pursue their ideal realization of baroque chamber music. A concert performed at Ueno, Tokyo in 1974 marked the beginning of this pursuit.
Nowadays, it is quite common to perform early musical works on period instruments in many countries. But, when we started our activities, there were few fixed groups that played in this style in Japan, even amongst professional musicians. Initially, we had some difficulty to obtain the appropriate musical instruments. We studied the theories and the conventions in the baroque era related to the performance of musical works through reading the literature of those days and listening to this music on LP discs. Many professional players of period instruments instructed us and often appeared as guests in our early concerts.
For our first decade, our main repertoire consisted of works for a smaller ensemble of three or four instruments. Thereafter, our growing membership allowed us to perform larger works, and these days we often perform on the stage many works for baroque orchestra, such as Concertos or Overtures (Suites).
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From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, along with the prosperity of the instrumental music, many new instruments appeared and each of them continued to change step-by-step. In the second half of eighteenth century, however, some of them were no longer used and the others had to be drastically reformed to survive, due to the great changes in the various environments surrounding music, i.e., the capacity and the acoustics of the hall or the performance space, the taste of the audience, and so forth.
Accordingly, we call the instruments in the old style "Period Instruments" including their replicas, to distinguish them from "Modern Instruments", which survived through reform and have changed little thereafter. "Period Instruments" originally meant the type of musical instruments that are contemporary with the works to perform. Therefore, the stricter sense of "period" often becomes an issue: for example, the difference between the early and late eighteenth century, or between Germany and France in the middle of eighteenth century.
If both a specific period instrument and a specific modern one is referred to by the same name, they will share the common basic structure and principle of making sound. There are, however, often many differences between them in shape, material and mechanism for tone control. For example, until the eighteenth century all the woodwind instruments were literally wood, having only a few keys if any.
While the violin, viola and violoncello in the early style have little apparent difference from those in the modern style, detailed observation will prove some inconspicuous but important differences between them in body structure. Besides, the shape of the bow changed remarkably. (In spite of general misunderstanding, sheep gut strings were used not only in the baroque era but also until the middle of twentieth century.)
The violins, violas and violoncellos made by old Italian makers such as Stradivari and Guarneri are very famous as masterpieces and often used by players of worldwide fame in concerts or recitals today. But almost all of them had been reconstructed so completely by the early nineteenth century that they cannot be regarded as the period instruments for baroque music. Although they are called "historical instruments", they actually are Modern Instruments.
These "improvements" in the musical instruments resulted in a more powerful, brilliant and homogeneous sound, wider range of notes, and changes in the playing method. Each of these improvements made it easy for players to display their virtuosity. Some instruments without room for such "improvement" because of their structural conditions, for example the recorder, harpsichord, lute or viola da gamba, could not catch up with the trend and therefore retired from the musical scene. On the other hand, the survived instruments lost their delicate tone and nuanced resonance in exchange for succeeding in "improvement".
You can see many old paintings representing various period instruments in the Gallery page.
Italian (meaning) English Flauto, or Flauto dolce (soft flute) Recorder Flauto traverso (transverse flute) Flute Oboe (high wood) Oboe d'amore (oboe of love) Oboe da caccia (oboe of hunting) Fagotto (bundle) Bassoon Violino (small viola) Violin Viola* Violoncello (reduced large viola) Violone (large viola) Contrabasso (counter bass) Double bass Viola da gamba (viola of leg) Viol Cembalo, or Clavicembalo (key striking) Harpsichord * "Viola" is the general term for old string instruments played with the bow.
We appreciate Ms Mary E. Mosley for her language revision of this page.
