What makes a composition a masterpiece? Is it the ornate signature? The monumental publication series? Or the cultural value that we assign to it today? We gaze (and listen) with sighs of admiration at untouchable masterworks like Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, and Bach’s Goldberg Variations. But do we also dare to challenge the hierarchy of memory?
After all: who decides which music is heard everywhere, and which nowhere? What do the hits of an era tell us about the people who lived then? Masterpieces never arise in isolation; they emerge at the crossroads of social ethos, cultural identity, and political power dynamics.
Later, they often become museumkunst, detached from their original context. But perhaps we underestimate their strength: true masterpieces endure. Even when Vivaldi’s Four Seasons is played on a hurdy-gurdy (in an authentic eighteenth-century arrangement, of course) or music of the virginalists is performed on the Estonian kannel.
This edition of Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht has its own hall of fame, featuring Corelli’s Concerti Grossi, Rameau’s Pygmalion, Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo, and many more. Even the Mona Lisa makes a brief appearance.
