Ancient & modern

When Christopher Hogwood founded the Academy of Ancient Music 50 years ago his focus was firmly on the past, yet together they helped to propel music-making into a new era, as Nicholas Kenyon explains

- Nicholas Kenyon

On 17 September 1973, an intrepid group of orchestral players made their way to All Saints' Church in Petersham, London, to record Thomas Arne's Eight Overtures. Directed by harpsichordist Christopher Hogwood, the 22 players - assembled from various strands of chamber-scale early music-making as well as the chamber orchestras of the time - had never met as an orchestra before and were all performing on original historical instruments, which posed various degrees of uncertainty, challenge and risk. Would it work?

The Academy of Ancient Music, named by Hogwood after its 18th-century predecessor, was one of several 'period bands' emerging around 1973, but the first to be supported by a record company, thanks to the imagination of producer Peter Wadland, who had been charged by Decca with reinvigorating its historic L'OiseauLyre label. Little did the players imagine that afternoon, as they struggled with tuning, intonation and technique (combined with being under the Heathrow flight path) that - with the benefit of some expert post-performance editing this would turn out to be the start of a revolutionary endeavour that would change the musical world.