Perspectives on Early Music in Flanders. From historically informed performance to historically informed experience
Bart Demuyt is senior innovation manager of musical heritage at the University of Leuven, and general director of the Alamire Foundation – International Centre of Excellence for the Valorization of Low Countries Musical Heritage in Leuven’s Park Abbey. Since 2009 he has been general and artistic director of AMUZ (Flanders Festival Antwerp) and curator of the early music festival Laus Polyphoniae.
Early music is big in Flanders. The situation has changed since the 1970s or 1980s, when early music was a niche repertoire that only appealed to connoisseurs: alongside the standard classical and romantic repertoire, it is now the most often performed segment in classical programming – and the one that attracts the biggest audiences as well. Pieter Mannaerts is staff member Research Coordination at the Alamire Foundation (University of Leuven). He studied musicology and philosophy in Leuven and Berlin. Besides his speciali zation in early music and a PhD on Gregorian chant, he also has a keen interest in music from the first half of the twentieth century.
21
Bart Demuyt & Pieter Mannaerts