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Milena Cord-to-Krax

Category: Thoughts

  • Training like a Renaissance musician would do it Part I — The Beginning

    In February/March 2021 I took an online course on Solmization, modes and psalmody, led by Isaac Alonso de Molina and organized by Escuela de Polifonía Opera Omnia. It was great! I participated because I had learned before what solmization is but not to actually do it. Studying at the conservatory I was really busy playing…

  • Historically Informed Creativity — subcategory to HIP

    I‘d like to introduce a subcategory to Historically Informed Perfomance Practice (HIP): Historically Informed Creativity (HIC). The creative aspects for musicians from the early music epochs (Middle ages, Renaissance, Baroque) included improvising, diminuting, ornamenting, arranging and composing. Studying the mentioned parts of music making from the original treatises, and thus obtaining knowledge on style, harmony–…

  • I want to play!

    I don’t live in the right place (Seville, in the very south of Spain), I know that, but where should I go? There are many very good early music professionals in Seville, but I’m missing professional players my age who want to play, play and play! Who want to rehearse for the sake of playing,…

  • Why did I publish my recording online with a CC license? Copyright vs Copyleft!

    When a recording gets published by a a record label, they reserve all the rights on that recording — to them. In most of the cases you got to pay for the recording (a lot), you studied, practiced and rehearsed the music, it was your idea, your project. Then you probably have to buy the…

  • Todd Boyd on playing someone else’s music

    As in the early music scene we like to point out the similarities between early music and jazz in terms of conception of the music (improvisations, variations, creativity, openness of the repertory…) would/should this statement have to refer to us as well? ‘If a Jazz musician plays someone else’s tune, he has a responsibility to…

  • C.P.E. Bach on ornamentation

    “It is not likely that anybody could question the necessity of ornaments. They are found everywhere in music, and are not only useful, but indispensable. They connect the notes; they give them life. They emphasise them, and besides giving accent and meaning they render them grateful; they illustrate the sentiments, be they sad or merry,…

  • Bruce Haynes on HIP

    ‘The harder we work to imitate the past, the more personal and contemporary the results will be.’ — Bruce Haynes in The End of Early Music

  • Schopenhauer on music

    ‘Music does not express this or that particular and definite pleasure, this or that affliction, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, or peace of mind, but joy, pain, sorrow, horror, gaiety, merriment, peace of mind themselves, to a certain extent in the abstract, their essential nature, without any accessories, and therefore without the motives for them.’…