Liberating Baroque Music Through Knowledge

Founded in Ravenna in the early 1980s, Accademia Bizantina is now one of Europe’s leading baroque orchestras. Under the impetus of Ottavio Dantone, its director since 1996, the ensemble has gradually built a distinctive poetics: reading the signs of the past in order to make the music fully alive in the present. In this interview, the Italian harpsichordist and conductor looks back on the ensemble’s beginnings, its gradual immersion in the Baroque language, the importance of rhetoric and research, and the need to “liberate music” through knowledge. From founding slogans to ambitious recording projects, Dantone outlines a true anatomy of the Baroque, highlighting the importance of patronage in this musicological approach. Without forgetting the crucial role of communication in reaching new audiences!

Accademia Bizantina has been around for more than forty years and has gradually evolved over time. How did it begin?

Ottavio Dantone: Accademia was founded in 1983 as a chamber orchestra made up of young musicians, but it was not yet called Bizantina. The name was suggested by the pianist Jörg Demus, who told them: “You live in Ravenna, you have the Byzantine mosaics, why don’t you call yourselves Accademia Bizantina?” That is how the group was named. As for me, I met them in 1989: I was giving a basso continuo improvisation course in Milan and the director of the Accademia at the time, Carlo Chiarappa, who was interested in early music, asked their harpsichordist to come to me to improve his skills. He enjoyed the lessons so much that the ensemble asked me to take part in one of their projects. Eventually, in 1996, the orchestra asked me to take over as director: it wanted to move towards a philological approach with historical instruments and to specialize more in early music. This was at a time when important groups such as Il Giardino Armonico, Europa Galante and Concerto Italiano had already established themselves. At that moment, the orchestra seemed to be a compromise without a clear identity, because it played with modern instruments and Baroque bows, sometimes with gut strings, and its repertoire ranged from Baroque to Berio, and so on. At first there was a joint leadership, then Carlo Chiarappa stepped aside and I remained as the sole director.

How has Accademia Bizantina developed since you officially became its director?

O. D.: The orchestra needed to understand the language of early music. This language involves gestures, articulations, and not only trills, sound, or non-vibrato, but also connections and correspondences with language, with meaning, and therefore with rhetoric. I began with the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth century, because that was the historical moment when the search for correspondence with prose developed.

Enthusiasm and emotion are two key concepts for understanding the poetics of Accademia Bizantina, including in terms of communication with the public.

O. D.: Of course! At the beginning, our priority was not to communicate or to expand the audience: we first had to feel ready. Obviously, with time and especially in recent years, also thanks to the help of a sponsor, we have tried to communicate our poetics through videos and films in order to involve the public and help them understand the kind of work we do. But also to show how stimulating music—especially Baroque music—can still be today, particularly if one has the intellectual honesty and the expertise required to study this language. There is not just one possible interpretation. What is beautiful about Baroque music is that musical, expressive and emotional situations can be interpreted in different ways, without one being less correct than another. It would be wrong to begin from one’s own tastes, from personal impressions, because that would risk distorting its meaning. We have elements and treatises not only on interpretation but also on rhetoric that teach us how to approach reading and interpretation, in order to free ourselves from any personal inclination. The Baroque is a true universe; it is a language that, once you master its grammar, allows you to place yourself in the position of a musician or composer of the time.