Old myths
Up late last night talking to Harvey, as Sonia worked downstairs. We compared recordings of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. I recently bought the Susan Graham version, very rich and operatic in comparison with the more familiar Emma Kirkby one. Harvey played Purcell songs, performed by Drew Minter. ‘Some people think he overdoes the intensity, but not me’ Harvey said. I wondered if the fuller sound of the Graham recording reflected a tendency to make early music sound warmer. It seemed thinner and reedier in the 80s. ‘We know much more about it now’ Harvey told me. ‘Ah’ I said.
I thought about that this morning. Probably objectivity in any area is impossible. When Sonia and I spent a month visiting innumerable mosaic sites around the Mediterranean, I really noticed the period quality of mosaic restoration. It was easy to spot changes in fashion, like knowing a cowboy movie is from the seventies because everything looks brown, or from the eighties because the actors all have bouffant hairdos. I might not have noticed it, without so many sites for comparison. You could see the tumbled marble decade and the sheerer, flatter, granite floor decade all laid out as versions of the past. Some of the Byzantine originals looked entirely nineteenth century – restoration with Victorian eyes. This is more of an observation than a moan. How can we avoid being of our time?
Happy Christmas mosaic artists!
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