To Awaken the Sun: Composing New Music for Historical Instruments

Abstract

In 2018, the University of Central Oklahoma’s Brisch Center for Historical Research received a grant to create a concert tour with the purpose of introducing elementary school students in Oklahoma to Baroque-era instruments and performance practice. A captivating story was written for which music would accompany, and a cast of instrumentalists was selected to perform. All that was needed was the original music. However, this would be no ordinary composition. The story called for modern instruments and historical instruments to play in concert. One major obstacle in accomplishing this task is that most modern instrumentation and orchestration texts do not include information on Baroque-era instruments. The other challenge is that the tuning of historical instruments and modern instruments is quite different. Research was performed under the instruction of Dr. Tess Remy-Schumacher, an expert in Baroque performance practice. Historical music methods provided by the Ted Honea Collection for Music Research and the individual input from musicians who specialize in historical performance yielded the answers to these compositional riddles. The result is a completely new musical work written for very old instruments.