Ensemble Performance

Transcript

• 00:05

  Baroque music is enjoying a Renaissance.And these musicians can claim much of the credit.Some compare Les Arts Florissants to a familywith American-born William Christie as its father figure.He set up the ensemble 30 years agowith the aim of shaking up Baroque, which he thought

• 00:26

  nobody at the time was playing very well.We wanted to do things differently.We weren't happy with what we'd heard.Which I think is legitimate.And I think every generation goesthrough this kind of questioning.Les Arts Florissants rarely ventureoutside the Baroque repertoire.But rather than limiting them, theysee it as a way of becoming very good at what they do.

• 00:49

  When you specialize in something, you learn tricks.It's just like an athlete, essentially.You're going through a set of exercises, you see.I have that satisfaction of doing what I really love to do.What he perhaps does best is makingpreviously unknown Baroque composersaccessible to listeners who wonder

• 01:10

  how they could've missed them for so long.What William Christie and Les Arts Florissants have doneis really to open up a whole new repertory, which in the pastwe used to think of as really quite weird and specializedand very difficult to penetrate.

• 01:33

  The ensemble's distinctive sound is key to its success.A sound that relies on period instruments as oldas the music itself.[SPEAKING FRENCH]

• 01:53

  The sound is subtle.Distinguished.It's never excessive and it always seeks to tell a story.And that's not bad after just three decades.William Christie will eventually pass on the baton,but there's little doubt that his ensemble will continue

• 02:13

  to set the tone in Baroque maybe for another 30 years or more.

Transcript

Transcript

An ensemble is a group of performers who pursue a joint musical goal through collective action. The term ensemble is also applicable to dance groups. Ensemble performance is an ancient form of human expression. The discovery of multiple flutes and whistles at several archaeological sites hints at the existence of instrumental ensembles in Upper Paleolithic times (possibly more than 40,000 years ago), with vocal and percussive ensemble performance presumably predating these early forms of joint music making.

Musical ensembles vary in terms of their composition and function. The composition of an ensemble refers to the number of performers, their roles within the group, and the types of instrumental forces that are employed. An ensemble's function is a matter of its role in the broader social fabric of a particular culture. Artistic ensemble performance generally entails individuals coordinating their sounds and body movements in order to communicate information about musical structure and expressive intentions to co-performers and audience members. When considered as a microcosm of human interaction, ensemble performance is a fruitful domain in which to study the social factors and psychological mechanisms that shape the dynamics of interpersonal coordination.