In this article series, together with Sustainable EEEMERGING and its partners, we explore Early music across Europe – and the challenges faced by young artists in various countries across the continent. What is the condition of Early music today?
This article was supported by Riga Early Music Centre.
Operagoers attending modern productions of Baroque opera are sometimes heard to complain that the demands of Regietheater and modern costuming are a distraction. Why cannot singers be dressed in historical costume? The solution to this problem is to be found in Latvia, where a small but distinctive Early music community has a penchant for historical stylings in Baroque opera.
This July, Vivat Curlandia!, the annual summer festival of Collegium Musicum Riga and the Riga Early Music Centre, returns with a new staging of Alessandro Stradella’s La Susanna. With concerts often held by candlelight, expect ruffs, bodices, stomachers and doublets. “The festival lasts for two weeks in the Bauska region, which is very close to the Lithuanian border,” the Collegium Musicum’s Aija Dimza tells me. “Kind of a countryside, border-side festival.”
The Collegium has recently been performing in Helsinki with soprano Monta Martinsone, who is also performing on several occasions at the summer festival in July. The ensemble also organises the Riga Early Music Festival in September, and will make an appearance at London International Festival of Early Music in November.
The Collegium is also fortunate to have its own concert space in old Riga, where it regularly hosts concerts. “We still don’t have a large acoustic concert hall in Riga, which is a pity,” Dimza says. “But we have many wonderful places to play Early music,” such as the Small Guild, in Riga’s old town. (Meanwhile, Riga’s Congress Centre, originally built in the 1980s by the Communist Party for meetings, and still used for concerts today, is due to be transformed into a new acoustic concert hall in the future.)
Dimza and Martinsone say that Early music is more popular in Latvia than in the other Baltic states. Martinsone lives and teaches in Vilnius, Lithuania, but is frequently performing in her home city of Riga. “Definitely Latvia is more open minded for Baroque music,” Martinsone says. “In Lithuania there is a singing teachers’ saying: don’t sing Baroque because you will ruin your voice. In Lithuania you are a ‘good’ singer if you have huge voice – if you are vibrating a lot, then you are perfect, if you can control it.”
“I’m playing Baroque flute and I have been through all the stages of music education in Latvia,” Dimza says, “and I wouldn’t say that for flute playing we are more open minded! I don’t know how it is in Lithuania…” “There are no Baroque flute players in Lithuania,” Martinsone chimes in. “Well, one – but he’s a self-made genius and plays in Latvia!”
For outsiders, the relative rarity of collaboration between the Baltic states can sometimes be surprising. Latvia, being situated between the countries, is arguably more conducive to collaborative initiatives. Indeed, Dimza points out, “the latest Baroque baby in Latvia, as I would like to call it, is the Baltic Baroque Orchestra.” Formed in 2024, from a mixture of musicians from across the Baltic states, it also includes musicians from Finland, Italy and Japan. “What is good for us in Riga is that we are totally in the middle.”
The old Duchy of Courland was also “in the middle”, so to speak, which under the Kettler Dukes became a relatively prosperous mercantilist state from the end of the 16th century. The Baltic German nobility attracted musicians to their court, including Johann Fischer, a student of Lully – “German composers composing in a truly French style… Our summer festival Vivat Curlandia is dedicated to the music of the period of the Kettlers, music from the Medieval to Renaissance and Baroque periods.”
Later musical figures to appear in the Court include Johann Adam Hiller, appointed Kapellmeister in 1780s. He also has the distinction of writing the first sacred music with a Latvian text – some of which was only recently discovered, in the archives of Liepāja Holy Trinity Cathedral. Hiller also pioneered Singspiel, which the Collegium Musicum has taken up as well, performing his 1770 comic opera Die Jagd (The Hunt) in Latvian. As comic, satirical operas “with texts in Latvian, they can make allusions to political situations or local jokes”, Dimza says.
Hiller’s operas were admired by Goethe and Wagner (who himself turned up in Riga in the 1830s, early in his career, as the chief conductor of the Latvian National Opera). Hiller will also be familiar to Leipzigers as the first conductor of the Gewandhausorchester, and as Thomaskantor, the same position once held by JS Bach. He was, in other words, serious business.
Still, the Early music community in Latvia and across the Baltics is small and still nascent. “Early music often stays as a side job,” Dimza says. Projects and festivals are taken on individually. “It is still our dream to have a fully supported Baroque orchestra as a normal job.” Martinsone, as well as combining performing and teaching, also specialises in contemporary music. “If you are quite good at singing Baroque and Early music, you probably will be good at contemporary music too,” she says. It’s a combination that sometimes extends to the Collegium Musicum, who are planning this autumn to combine Vivaldi with live electronics, collaborating with Mantautas Krukauskas, head of the Lithuanian Composers’ Union (and Martinsone’s partner).
Singing continues to play a crucial role across all the Baltic states. Latvia, like Estonia and Lithuania, went through a ‘Singing Revolution’ in the 1980s as traditional choral repertoire emerged as a vehicle for political independence. Song Festivals remain important to this day, and alongside a plethora of choirs, a few choral groups interested in Early and Medieval music are active. Vocal ensemble Schola Cantorum Riga, founded in 1995, specialise in Medieval vocal music and Gregorian chant, often presenting it in new combinations. Founded more recently in 2013, Ars Antiqua Riga also perform Medieval and Renaissance polyphony, and also combine their work with contemporary composers. Estonia’s well-known Hortus Musicus, established in the 1970s by Andres Mustonen, was a pioneer in this kind of activity – commissioning new music from Arvo Pärt as well as performing Medieval and Renaissance European music, as well as music from India and Arabia.
Dimza is also active in choral music and has hopes to establish a historically-informed choir, “to sing Jāzeps Vītols as it might have sounded 100 years ago.” Vītols, composer and a key figure in the development of Latvian classical music of the early 20th century, gives his name to Riga’s Academy of Music. Choral singing remains a major way young people first encounter classical music in the Baltic states.
Most young music students in Latvia are only likely to encounter historically-informed performance practice and Baroque instruments later in their training. As a traverso flute player, Dimza hopes that schoolchildren might be able to take up the instrument – suggesting that 3D-printed traverso flutes are of good enough quality, and inexpensive enough, to be widely adopted. “I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve tried these instruments and they are super well made. I can’t hear the difference, and they cost only €400-500.” I recall the plastic recorders we played as schoolchildren in the UK. “It’s definitely another level than that. And for some it could really be a solution.”
Martinsone was lucky in her early musical education, being given Baroque music to sing from an early age. “I hated it! I said: ‘I will never sing Baroque!’ Because I didn’t understand how it had to be performed. I thought that all Baroque singers had such small voices.” Fortunately, she found her community in the form of the Collegium Musicum, who she was invited to sing with 13 years ago. “When I came to that first rehearsal, for the first time in my life with a real Baroque orchestra, I heard how it was played. I fell in love with Early music and Baroque completely.”
It’s an experience that emphasises the importance of first-hand contact with music-making. Making historical music available to school-age musicians has to be the way forward. And if a glut of harpsichords and Baroque string instruments cannot be found, then maybe Dimza’s proposal of 3D-printed traversos could be the answer. In the meantime, for the entertainment of children and adults alike, the Collegium Musicum will don ruffs and doublets for Galliards and Bransles in the countryside this summer.
See upcoming performances of Early music in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
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This article was sponsored by Centre culturel de rencontre d’Ambronay.
