When Jonathan Cweorth started an early music group two years ago, others who played early music came out of the woodwork, delighted to be able to join a group of like-minded, mostly amateur musicians.
The Rare Byrds has gone from strength to strength and now has eight musicians, several singers and an associated group of dancers who practise regularly and perform together from time to time.
Tomorrow night their Christmas Revel and Ball will be held in St John's hall in Roslyn, with feasting, dancing, fire performers and, of course, music.
"I think the more aspects of the period you adopt, the more interesting it is," Cweorth said.
"It does actually make a difference to play a piece wearing period dress, because your body moves differently and you feel different. It makes a difference when you can see the dance steps. In fact, a lot of the dance music makes more sense when you can actually see the dance it was designed for.
"So I think the more you explore the details of the period, the closer you get to what it might have been like originally. And, of course, having the right instruments makes a difference."
The group has a variety of early music instruments: recorders of five different sizes, a spinet which is like a small, portable harpsichord, a range of percussion instruments, early bagpipes, several viols and the exotic-looking nyckelharpa, a stringed instrument with keys, which is played with a bow.
In the pipeline are more viols, a lute, a hurdygurdy, a rauschepfeife and a portative pipe organ.
Families of instruments, such as different sizes of recorder or viols designed to be played together, are important in early music and the group is developing a specialist recorder consort and a viol consort, he said.
Anneloes de Groot, who plays wooden recorders, replicas of those made by Jean Hyacinth-Joseph Rottenburgh of Brussels (1672-1756), says people are amazed when they discover they are listening to recorders.
"All they remember hearing is the little white plastic school recorder playing Twinkle twinkle little star. They can't get over the fact is this really a recorder? Is this what a recorder can sound like?", she says.
Because the instruments are so unfamiliar, most people come up after concerts to see them and the group has a display board with information about the instruments and music.
Aart Brusse, retired from head of music at Bayfield High School and organiser of Saturday Morning Music Classes, plays recorders and viol with the group.
"Very few people have heard a viol before. They just think it's a little cello or something," he said.
Viols have six strings and are played with a bow which is tensioned by the fingers.
Viols come in several sizes and are gripped between the knees, hence their name viola da gamba (gamba is Italian for leg).
Viols and recorders disappeared from mainstream music in the mid-18th century when they were supplanted by the transverse flute and the violin family respectively, but composers like Handel still wrote for them, Brusse said.
The Rare Byrds plays mostly renaissance music (early 15th to early 17th centuries) but is planning to play more medieval and baroque music.
According to Simone Petrich, who plays the Swedish nyckelharpa, early music covers many centuries, from very simple, up-front dance music to sophisticated works.
Whereas classical music covers the past two and a-half centuries, they have six centuries of music from which to choose.
It varies from simple, catchy, toe-tapping melodies and dance tunes to polyphonic consort music, such as a six-part Byrd fantasia they played recently, where no single instrument dominates and every part is intricately interwoven, she says.
Jo Fielding, who plays the bass viol, says the consort is "small enough to allow everyone's voices to be heard, and to make each instrument's contribution vital to creating the overall sound, but big enough for each player to feel they are playing and working all together to create a piece of music that is far more beautiful than they could possibly play by themselves".
Medieval and renaissance music is now readily available on the internet from several university music departments, which is a huge gift to an ensemble like theirs.
With computer programs like Sibelius it was easy to rearrange it to suit the group, Cweorth said.
Brusse says it was similar, in a way, to how music would have been passed around in the period, and changed according to the needs of the group that was going to play it, so it was appropriate for them change things if they needed to.
While Cweorth was the leader, the group was fairly democratic, according to de Groot.
"That's where it's great. How do you like this, how do you like that? Should we play it faster? That's where the fun is playing in this group," she said.
"The music is not that complicated, but it's more about listening to each other and when the other one takes over you fall back. That's wonderful and we practise that a lot, and at some stage we get it slowly together. It's playing as a single entity rather than a group."
Because it's not known how medieval and renaissance musicians played and scholarship about performance styles is speculative, it means there is an enormous range of possibilities, which can be daunting but also exciting, according to Cweorth.
Brusse adds that although playing early music can take you to the top of your musicianship skills, it does not require the same skills as a really advanced cellist or violinist would have to acquire.
Cweorth agrees.
"Once you have the instruments, it's surprisingly accessible. A lot, particularly of renaissance court music, was written for amateur consorts, people in a household who would have instruments and play together."
But there is scope for ornamentation and improvisation, he says.
See them
Christmas Revel and Ball is at St John's Church hall, 373 Highgate, Roslyn tomorrow.
A dance class will be held at 6pm to which beginners are welcome, the feast starts at 7.30pm and the Renaissance ball at 9pm.
To book contact Jonathan Cweorth at ignatius@dunedinblog.co.nz or phone 453-1947. $20 adults and $10 children.
