Inside the world of musicians playing period instruments from history

Australia Broadcast Center

14-07-2025

People often say that classical music is a centuries-old tradition. But scratch under the surface, and you'll quickly discover that classical music has been around since before Bach and Mozart were alive, and has continued to evolve.
Instruments like violins and clarinets have changed more than you might think. Others from earlier times such as crumhorns, cornetti and shawms disappeared from most stages for centuries.
In one corner of the music world, a group of musicians known as period instrumentalists are dedicated to making music with historical research. Comprising players, academics and instrument-makers, they unearth manuscripts written centuries ago, learn to play using older techniques, even reproducing instruments from paintings and copies of museum pieces.
Baroque violinist Madeleine Easton says entering this world is like "getting in a TARDIS, going back in time and discovering all this different music, different instruments and different tunings."
Many Australian musicians who are drawn into period instruments have pursued their studies in Europe, where archives and old instruments are more readily available.
Some have founded groups of like-minded musicians to champion the music they love for Australian audiences.
When she discovered baroque violin during her university studies, Easton had to unlearn everything she thought she knew, from the way she was holding her instrument to using a baroque bow.
Similarly, historical clarinettist Nicola Boud says hearing Mozart's music played by a wind ensemble specialising in the music of his era was a revelation.
"It makes perfect sense to play the music of Mozart on the instrument that he knew," Boud says.
The clarinet during Mozart's time was a simpler instrument with fewer keys and constructed from a lighter type of wood than its modern counterpart.
"They're made mostly of boxwood, the same decorative hedges you see in gardens and plant nurseries," Boud explains. To play them, "you use something called cross-fingerings."
Concert venues were much smaller and instruments were softer in the 18th and early 19th-centuries. This means contemporary audiences at historical performances also have to listen differently.
"Audience ears often have to come towards the ensemble instead of the ensemble throwing out the sound," Boud says.
Easton says even though the violin's body remains the same since its conception in the late 15th-century, virtually every other part of the instrument has been modified.
"The neck, the fingerboard, the bridge and the tailpiece have evolved over the years," she says.
Easton specialises in playing music written during the baroque period between 1600 to 1750. So playing baroque violin as opposed to a modern instrument gives Easton a better understanding of the sound world of those times.
Boud says notes on the classical clarinet have more character, which is why it's her instrument of choice to play Mozart.
Many period instrumentalists are aware these slight differences might sound nit-picky to casual listeners so they try to balance their passion for historical accuracy with a sense of humour.
But ultimately they want to highlight how adding an understanding of history can enrich audiences' experience of music.
Pursuing his research of historical wind instruments took musician Matthew Manchester to libraries and museums across Europe.
"I spent an afternoon playing a pair of cornetti that were commissioned for James II's visit to Oxford in 1605," Manchester shares.
Manchester has also played other museum pieces, including natural trumpets from the late 17th century.
"[it's] like a long single pipe that loops back over itself before ending with a bell," Manchester describes.
To understand how these old instruments work, Manchester poured over archives of musical manuscripts, as well as letters and other documents written by musicians.
Interest in medieval, renaissance and baroque music rose in the latter half of the 20th-century, with makers reconstructing surviving instruments. They even recreated instruments from paintings.
Manchester owns copies of bagpipes historically found in Germany, Belgium and England. These places aren't known for bagpipe traditions, but the bagpipers were featured in paintings and documents across Western Europe.
"Bagpipes don't keep particularly well because they were literally made from guts of animals, so they tend to wear out," Manchester says. "But there's a whole repertoire of amazing dance music that survives."
There were trials and errors with modern reproductions.
"Modern makers used to 'fix' what they thought were problems when they were making copies," Manchester says. "But actually, those problems turned out to be the things that give those instruments their characters."
Sometimes, instruments from the past can even make a comeback.
"The plastic recorders we all played as kids are copies of a really great baroque recorder," Manchester says.
There are several ensembles in Australia dedicated to specific periods in musical history or championing works by particular composers.
Easton is the Artistic Director of the Bach Akademie Australia, an ensemble which almost exclusively perform the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
"There are more than 300 dedicated Bach ensembles around the globe, more than any other composer," Easton says.
It takes a certain kind of player to play Bach's music the way Easton envisions, which "requires you to be a little bit Buddhist."
"You need to have someone who is super nerdy, but who also has the capacity to play straight from their heart to the audience," Easton says.
Manchester regularly performs with historically-informed ensembles and choirs in Australia and the UK.
He says although we can never recreate exactly how music in the past sounded, the sharing of research and knowledge has its own rewards, including rediscovering music which hasn't been heard for centuries.
"There's hundreds of years of western music before the romantic revolution got into the groove with the [classical] cannon," Manchester says.
Boud, who is currently touring Australia, regularly performs with European ensembles specialising in the classical and romantic periods of music history. She has made the Netherlands her home.
"I went on to study with the historical clarinettist from the Mozart concert I attended all those years ago," Boud says.
"[After he retired], I took up his position teaching in The Hague."
Nicola Boud is touring Australia with Musica Viva in July. Hear her Melbourne concert on ABC Classic later in 2025.