Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment — Margaret Faultless Interview | Op. 17
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) is a period instrument ensemble based in London. Guest Margaret Faultless, co-leader of the OAE, discusses how Age of Enlightenment ideals influenced composers during the Baroque and Classical eras — and their impact today.
In this episode, you’ll:
Learn about the Age of Enlightenment’s ideals and how they affect the OAE
Discover the power of creating innovative educational programs to reach new audiences
Understand the importance of modern and period instrument musicians learning from each other
For the best experience, please watch the video at the top of the page.
Episode Transcript and Timestamps
DANIEL ADAM MALTZ: Grüß Sie and welcome to Opus 17 of Classical Cake – the podcast where we discuss topics relating to Viennese classical music and Austrian culture while enjoying a delicious cake.
I'm your host Daniel Adam Maltz.
If you’re new here, welcome!
The Age of Enlightenment’s ideals – centered around the power of reason – impacted art, philosophy, politics, and music of the Baroque and Classical eras.
So, in 1986, when a group of musicians created a period-instrument orchestra, they thought of no better name than… Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Also known as OAE, they have worked with the world’s top musicians and have grown to be one of the most well-known proponents of the historical performance movement.
Today, we're meeting violinist Margaret Faultless, co-leader of the OAE. Among many other roles, she is also Head of Historical Performance at the Royal Academy of Music — where we'll film our socially-distanced interview.
Maggie, thank you for joining me.
MARGARET FAULTLESS: You're welcome. It's a great pleasure, Daniel.
Featured Cake [1:19]
MALTZ: Our cake today is Victorian Sandwich Cake, an English specialty.
This light dessert consists of a layer of jam and cream sandwiched between two layers of fluffy sponge cake.
So, let’s dig in.
FAULTLESS: Well, it is quite light and quite fluffy, which is good.
The jam does definitely have some real fruit in it. It might have more cream and slightly less sugar for my taste. But, not bad.
Very typical example, I would say, of the genre.
The Age of Enlightenment’s influence on OAE [1:49]
MALTZ: So, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment...
FAULTLESS: It's not a snappy title, and it does actually get confused with ideas of New Age philosophy. There are some confusions along the way.
The name is very much centered around the idea of enquiry and reason and experimentation and open-mindedness, rather than focusing on a particular repertoire. Although, of course, the music of Haydn and Mozart is particularly dear to our hearts. But, I see the name as meaning a spirit of enquiry rather than of a historical geographical moment from which we spring out. I mean, in fact, we play music from Monteverdi to Mahler, at least.
But the spirit of enquiry, the idea of investigation, the idea of not taking fixed opinions for granted, but investigating how and why one does anything is really the spirit of the orchestra. Although, rather wonderfully, it does imply the music of the great Viennese Classicists: Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, of course.
MALTZ: And do you find that these ideals behind this Age of Enlightenment — reason, justice — have influence on all of the music that you play?
FAULTLESS: Yes, and, of course, what's interesting is that sometimes one plays repertoire where those ideals were not necessarily the ones in the hearts and minds of historical composers or performers but, nevertheless, looking back through history, peeling off the layers of the onion, the reception theory and practice of a lot of these great works enables us to bring the same spirit of enquiry.
Even if I imagine if one was in Monteverdi's Venice, not every performer was allowed to have opinions there, necessarily. I'm not quite sure, I'm just sort of guessing. But certainly the orchestras wouldn't have been full of women or of player-directors, scholar-directors, but we can bring all of that spirit of enquiry to everything we do really.
Holistic Approach to interpretations [4:04]
MALTZ: The idea that you're able to take the ideals from a type of era and find this good balance with today's world... We've obviously made great strides in some areas — and, perhaps, stepped backwards in others — but, perhaps there is a link between the two.
FAULTLESS: Yeah. I mean, certainly we're not in the business of recreating things. It's not a sealed lock society. We're not sort of playing out battles in silly costumes or anything like that. We're not imagining that you can time travel back to Vienna, for example, in the 1800s. But, I think that we are interested in examining what history meant for all sorts of people.
I mean, it's very interesting in 2020 to look at that when we're actually considering the different histories that different groups of people have experienced over the years. I think that there are clearly different histories for men than for women. There are different histories for rich people or poor people. There are different histories depending on the color of your skin. And we're very much aware of that.
I think looking at music with fresh eyes is also interesting that we look not just with the eyes of the moments in history in which we are but that we look back and see what we can bring to that.
MALTZ: Yeah, well, it is tempting to everyone who loves old music and the interest in historical performance of period instruments, it is tempting to sort of have a romantic longing for an era. But it's sort of, I think, more difficult to take ideals from an era and then look at your world.
FAULTLESS: Yes, I think one can certainly... actually it's really worth thinking about what the historical performer might have been able to offer this music.
We can imagine what some of the processes were on the part of the composer, if we have additional material: sketchbooks, a variety of editions, accounts of concerts, all sorts of things. So we think about what the composers' world might have been like.
We can investigate what the performers' world was like... Who performed this music? How were they educated? What was the breadth of their education and experience?
And, we can also, I think, consider the historical audience, as well. And that produces a lot of very interesting information. I mean, there's no doubt that if one plays music of the first half of the 18th century that includes dance movements, no 18th century audience would have needed much introduction to what the movements were and would have understood things like tempi and affect and characterization very easily. A modern audience has probably absolutely no idea and, frankly, neither do some modern performers.
So trying to understand what the historical performer and historical audience at least might have known — that's not the same as imagining that you can become them and get inside their skin. But, actually a knowledge of what their knowledge base was, I think is extremely important and interesting for us.
Again, well you're not going to just replicate that because we then add our experience, our education. That old thing: you can't undo knowledge, you can't undo learning. You can't unlearn the first time one went to see Tristan and imagine that harmony had not happened. But we can, I think, start to learn about history from the point of view of some more ordinary people actually, and not just — the ordinary performer, the ordinary listener — and not just the king and the count.
OAE’s mission [7:50]
MALTZ: So an early OAE mission statement says that the OAE aims to “avoid the dangers implicit in: playing as a matter of routine; pursuing exclusively commercial creative options; under-rehearsal; undue emphasis as imposed by a single musical director; and recording objectives being more important than creative ones." Are these still influencing the orchestra today?
FAULTLESS: I think we're pretty good, actually. Certainly, we're never doing anything as routine. You'll never find a bunch of OAE musicians who take stuff for granted and just play. There'll always be somebody who will stand up to say "Well why are we doing that? Why have we always done that?”
The lack of a single musical director is absolutely key. I think, to be honest, it might have been in some ways problematic for some promoters who like the peg of the famous conductor who runs the group. And we know many examples of those. Great examples, by the way, but just different. We've always wanted to invite the people we work with, whether they're people from the modern conducting world, from the period performance world, whether they're player-directors, singer-directors, or whether we, in fact, do a little bit of DIY — do it yourself — directing from within the orchestra, which is also very interesting.
What I'd like to say is that a lot of music — particularly from the late 18th century, early 19th century — actually is about the way certain sorts of leadership and suggestions... not of authority, but genuine leadership is actually shared between groups of people. I think there's a lot of the repertoire that's so very close to my heart at the end of the 18th century is actually demonstrating, particularly by Haydn actually — and Beethoven and Mozart to a lesser extent — ways in which collaborative leadership, invitations to comprehension, and an invitation to agree or not is actually written into the music. And, in an ideal world, I think that is the basis for harmonious relationships between people.
That's why I'm so passionate about Haydn and about the late 18th century. It's that I think what those composers have done through Enlightenment philosophy is to suggest how people might behave. To explain that people can behave badly but, actually, to explore the human condition.
I think Bach explores the human condition in relation to God and to things that are unknown to us.
But what Haydn doesn't tell us about how to converse with each other in the quartets, I really think is not worth knowing.
What drew Händel, Mozart, and Haydn to London? [10:43]
MALTZ: Composers Händel, Mozart, Haydn — among others — came to London. What was it about the cultural climate here that drew these people?
FAULTLESS: I think it was a fantastic melting pot and it still is in a way. I think that there were lots of different modes of music making, methods of music making. I think London was very open-minded, culturally.
I don't know whether that's something about the English language. We certainly weren't bereft of music. The land without music, I think, is really not appropriate. But there were a lot of different musics going on. There were a lot of entrepreneurs. It was a big city. It welcomed people from all over the world... a real melting pot, I think, and the spirit of adventure. You could have not one theatre, but there'd be two or three competing with each other. And a little bit of competition is never a bad thing, as we know.
Working with conductors and musicians known for modern instruments [11:49]
MALTZ: As you mentioned before, the OAE has worked with conductors and musicians known for working primarily with modern instruments, such as Sir Simon Rattle and András Schiff. What came from these cross-genre collaborations?
FAULTLESS: It's been really fantastic. I mean, I think people like Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Mark Elder, Vladimir Jurowski, Sir Charles Mackerras, I mean, the list is big. I'm going to forget people, I'm sure. Andrew Davis. A lot of people with whom we worked at Glyndebourne have been absolutely key in the development of the orchestra because they did give us a sort of contemporary and modern orchestral training that we didn't have as a bunch of freelancers. So I think there's been a lot of cross-fertilization.
There were all sorts of people who were living and working in Europe and, without having a single director here, we felt we were all broadening our horizons by inviting these people over.
And, of course not everybody's ideas about music and particular repertoires appealed to everybody. But I think the answer is we just always, always embraced what it was, what we've got on offer.
We often worked with these directors and a bunch of single string players to go through repertoire to talk about 19th-century performance style — at a time when ideas about 19th-century performance were really new — about how we could bring the technology of the instruments and the playing techniques that came with that technology and use that to inform our playing.
And, indeed, for modern conductors to be able to hear what that sounded like and to realize that the composers were pushing those instruments absolutely to their limits a lot of the time. And so were we — and experimenting. That was really like stepping back in history a little bit, I suppose, hearing things for the first time again.
OAE’s focus on education [13:59]
MALTZ: The OAE puts a massive emphasis on education — which is, of course, very much in line with these ideals of the Age of Enlightenment. You've worked extensively with schools, performed in non-traditional venues such as pubs, and created many online videos and assets. How have these efforts benefited your audiences?
FAULTLESS: I think I'm hoping that there will be new audiences, and younger audiences.
Music education in England is at an absolutely perilous state with the lack of provision in primary schools: that's the first sort of schools. And I think a lot of professional orchestras just see that if they don't do it, it will just not happen at all.
We're now resident, our offices are now at a large inner-London comprehensive school called Acland Burghley and the staff, their headmaster, in particular, has embraced this move.
We're already looking at projects not only with the music department, but with arts, with science, with literature, with history, with dance, with everything you can think of. And it just shows that, I think, that the arts and culture need to embrace this idea of education with a capital E.
I think some of the online videos have received sort of 2.5 million views now, which is just fantastic. I think it sounds pompous to say that music needs to educate. But I think our nature as human beings is to be musical.
I think all human beings are musicians and, I think, actually, it is a sort of birthright to have some exposure to that. And, maybe not, education is a rather sort of prescriptive word. But I think everybody has the right to have the musician inside them brought out.
Non-traditional performance spaces [15:53]
MALTZ: So I'm particularly interested in one thing — what's called the Night Shift. Could you tell us a little bit about this? You head this don't you?
FAULTLESS: The Night Shift, yeah, that's one of my favorite things, except we can't do them now because pubs are closed.
Again, it was an idea of exploring a different demographic, a different venue from what are basically traditionally 19th century concert halls where you turn up like you do in church, you behave like you do in church, you sit back, something happens, sort of miles ahead of you. Everybody looks like a waiter in a penguin suit. And there's often a white man with a stick, apparently, telling everybody what to do. And that's only one small snapshot of what music can be.
In terms of sort of socializing and re-socializing classical music, there are lots of small gig venues in London pubs where many people under the age of 30 hang out and go and hear sets of music, not long concerts. And it just occurred to a bunch of people in the office one day that there would be no reason why those gig venues in pubs shouldn't have some classical music. And, actually it was our orchestral fixer, I think, who came up with the idea of calling it the Night Shift.
I'll never forget the first one, being asked to do a pilot. It was very clear it was only a pilot because everybody thought, well, we've no idea how this would play off. We went up the road from the then offices near King's Cross Station and I put together about a 45-minute set — actually it's quite a lot of music. We played Purcell and we played some of the most esoteric pavanes and fantasias that you could imagine, plus some jolly chaconnes and a few of the dance movements from Fairy Queen. But the thing, I don't know... now, looking back, I think why did I dare do that?
But what, for me, was completely life changing was the quality of the listening when we were playing the most painful dissonances and the quietest, slow-moving pavanes and fantasias. Because the audience were much closer together than you and I are — certainly no social distancing when we began this experiment over a decade ago. But it didn't matter what the music was. Clearly, what people heard and experienced and felt — it was a felt sense — was that they were as much part of the performance as the performers were.
It was quieter than I've ever heard the Wigmore Hall, even though we were all packed together in this sort of small room — and it was packed — and the quality of the dissonances and the harmony in the Purcell were... the pained interrelationship with the physics, if you like, of the music was tangible. It was... you could feel it in the air and you could hear it and feel it in people's listening.
I was absolutely blown away. I have never performed that music anywhere else that's had the effect that it has when we play it in pubs.
And the best thing is when we just simply go in there and play our music and explain it and don't attempt to make it into a comedy show or dumb it down. I'm very clear about that.
Suggested resources to learn more [19:13]
Visit the website for Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and check out the OAE YouTube channel.