Early Music

History

The Early Music Seminars were launched in 1976 by Egida Sartori, a celebrated harpsichordist and teacher at the conservatories in Rome, Venice, and Milan. In these summer seminars Egida Sartori offered not only young harpsichord players but also musicians of other instruments the chance to perfect performing techniques and interpretation by studying with illustrious Italian and foreign masters. For the purposes of this project, Egida Sartori founded the Italian Harpsichord Association in Rome, which, together with the Giorgio Cini Foundation, then promoted and organised early music courses and concerts on the Island of San Giorgio for twenty years.
Most of the courses were for harpsichord and regularly featured musicians of the calibre of Kenneth Gilbert, Gordon Murray, Bob van Asperen, Scott Ross, Davitt Moroney, Edward Smith, Alan Curtis, and Christopher Stembridge, in addition to Sartori himself.
Two major musicology events were also held as part of the early music courses. The first was a seminar on performing the music of Girolamo Frescobaldi, moderated by Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, in August 1979. The second, held in June 1989 and entitled “Which A?”, was an international seminar on the problem of tuning in early and modern music.
On the grounds of age and health, in 1996 Egida Sartori handed over the directorship of the early music courses to Laura Alvini, whom he considered to be his best student from the Milan Conservatory.
In May 2007, the seminars started up again under the guidance of Pedro Memelsdorff, an internationally renowned musician and conductor, who was invited to direct the seminars after the death of Laura Alvini in January 2005.