A history of the Academy of Ancient Music, one of the world’s foremost period-instrument orchestras, celebrating their 50th anniversary year.
Hardback book
Released 19 October 2023
Best Books of the Year 2023 – Financial Times
Winner – Presto Music Book Awards 2023
£25.00
Using first-hand testimony from artists, critics, collaborators and supporters, Richard Bratby brings the history of this trailblazing orchestra to life, from its early days to its contemporary achievements.
"If like me you have derived deep and abiding pleasure from the Academy of Ancient Music, then this superb account of how that glorious institution came into being will give you deep and abiding pleasure too. Impossible to read without leaping for your collection or streaming platform and reminding yourself of just how magnificent the AAM was, is, and – we have good reason to believe – will continue to be." Stephen Fry
Founded in 1973 by Cambridge harpsichordist Christopher Hogwood and record producer Peter Wadland, AAM quickly achieved global fame by lifting period instrument performance from the fringes of 1960s counterculture and putting baroque music into the pop charts. However, as the classical record industry faded and 1970s radicals became the 1990s establishment, the AAM faced a new challenge: reinventing itself to meet the artistic, social, and economic conditions of a musical world transformed by its own revolutionary achievement.
Fifty years after its foundation, it’s time to assess the full, trailblazing impact of the Academy of Ancient Music. Author Richard Bratby comments: “Writing the history of such an unusual orchestra presented challenges beyond the purely practical difficulties of using archives during a pandemic. As the Academy celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, it has accrued a rich and complex history as well as an unrivalled discography. The book draws on interviews with a wide range of individuals who played a role in the foundation and progress of the AAM, including Dame Emma Kirkby, Sir Roger Norrington and the late James Bowman CBE. The result – as far as we know – is the first full-length history of a British period instrument orchestra.”
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