Available on Boston Baroque’s Resource Library, a digital archive of select performance sources for over 230 musical works
BOSTON, MA—Boston Baroque is proud to add to its Resource Library five performing and critical editions, as well as cadenzas and ornamentation for various works, all created by Founding Music Director Martin Pearlman. These additions to the Resource Library represent a significant contribution to the early music field.
“It is a great pleasure to share these resources online,” says Pearlman, who is internationally recognized as one of the leading interpreters of Baroque and Classical music on period and modern instruments. “I hope that interested music lovers, musicians, and others in our field find them to be a valuable resource.”
A few highlights from the Resource Library include vocal ornamentation for arias from eight G.F. Handel operas, including Agrippina, Ariodante, and Semele, ornamentation for Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, a critical edition of Armand-Louis Couperin’s complete Keyboard Works, as well as a performing edition for Claudio Monteverdi’s opera L’incoronazione di Poppea. Coming later this season will be a new performing edition of Monteverdi’s opera Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria.
The Resource Library also includes program notes and orchestration charts, written and created by Pearlman, and Boston Baroque’s performance history for over 230 musical works. It is organized by composer with easily navigable sub-sections, with the editions and cadenzas & ornaments available to browse both by composer and by their own sections.
The Resource Library is available online for free on Boston Baroque’s website at https://baroque.boston/resource-library. Organizations or individuals that are interested in publishing any of the content in Boston Baroque’s Resource Library for public consumption, such as in program books or online, or are interested in purchasing performing parts for an edition, should contact Boston Baroque directly for more details at [email protected] or by calling (617) 987-8600.
ABOUT BOSTON BAROQUE
The six-time GRAMMY®-nominated Boston Baroque is the first permanent Baroque orchestra established in North America and, according to Fanfare Magazine, is widely regarded as “one of the world’s premier period instrument bands.” The ensemble produces lively, emotionally charged, groundbreaking performances of Baroque and Classical works for today’s audiences performed on instruments and using performance techniques that reflect the eras in which the music was composed.
Boston Baroque has expanded its reach globally through its partnership with IDAGIO, the world’s leading classical music streaming service. Its 2021-2022 Season was the first full season by a Baroque orchestra to stream on the platform, and brought together virtual audiences from across five continents (North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Australia) and over 17 countries.
Founded in 1973 as “Banchetto Musicale” by Music Director Martin Pearlman, Boston Baroque’s orchestra is composed of some of the finest period instrument players in the United States, and is frequently joined by the ensemble’s professional chorus and by world-class instrumental and vocal soloists from around the globe. The ensemble has performed at major music centers across the United States and performed recently in Poland for the 2015 Beethoven Festival, with sold-out performances of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 in Warsaw and Handel’s Messiah in Katowice.
Boston Baroque reaches an international audience with its twenty-six acclaimed recordings. In 2012, after a long relationship with Telarc International, the ensemble became the first American orchestra to record with the highly-regarded UK audiophile label Linn Records, and its release of The Creation received great critical acclaim. In April 2014, the orchestra recorded Monteverdi’s rarely performed opera, Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, which was released on Linn Records and received two nominations at the 2016 GRAMMY® Awards.
Boston Baroque’s recordings have received six GRAMMY® Award Nominations: its 1992 release of Handel’s Messiah, 1998 release of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, 2000 release of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, 2015 release of Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria, and 2018 release of Biber’s The Mystery Sonatas.
ABOUT FOUNDING MUSIC DIRECTOR MARTIN PEARLMAN
Boston Baroque founder, music director, and conductor Martin Pearlman is one of this country’s leading interpreters of Baroque and Classical music on period and modern instruments. In addition to Boston Baroque’s annual concert season, Mr. Pearlman tours in the United States and Europe and has produced twenty-six major recordings for Telarc and Linn Records. Mr. Pearlman’s completion and orchestration of music from Mozart’s Lo Sposo Deluso, his performing version of Purcell’s Comical History of Don Quixote, and his new orchestration of Cimarosa’s Il Maestro di Cappella were all premiered by Boston Baroque. In 2022, Mr. Pearlman was awarded the Samuel Simons Sanford Medal by the Yale School of Music, the most prestigious award conferred by the school, for his leadership and exceptional contributions to period instrument performance.
Highlights of his work include the complete Monteverdi opera cycle, with his own new performing editions of L’incoronazione di Poppea and Il ritorno d’Ulisse; the American premiere of Rameau’s Zoroastre; the Boston premiere of Rameau’s Pigmalion; the New England premieres of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride and Alceste; and the Beethoven symphonies on period instruments. Mr. Pearlman is also known for his internationally acclaimed series of Handel operas including Agrippina, Alcina, Giulio Cesare, and Semele. He made his Kennedy Center debut with The Washington National Opera in Handel’s Semele and has guest conducted the National Arts Center Orchestra of Ottawa, Utah Opera, Opera Columbus, Boston Lyric Opera, Minnesota Orchestra, San Antonio Symphony and the New World Symphony. Mr. Pearlman is the only conductor from the early music field to have performed live on the internationally televised GRAMMY® Awards show.
Mr. Pearlman grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, where he received training in composition, violin, piano, and theory. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University, where he studied composition with Karel Husa and Robert Palmer. In 1967–1968, he studied harpsichord in Amsterdam with Gustav Leonhardt on a Fulbright Grant, and in 1971 he received his Master of Music in composition from Yale University, studying composition with Yehudi Wyner and harpsichord with Ralph Kirkpatrick. After moving to Boston, he performed widely as a solo harpsichordist in the U. S. and Europe, and in 1973 he founded the first American period-instrument orchestra, Banchetto Musicale, now called Boston Baroque. He also served as Professor of Music in the Historical Performance department at Boston University’s School of Music.
Martin Pearlman is also a composer. Recent compositions include a string quartet, piano works, a comic chamber opera The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a three-act work on Finnegans Wake, as well as The Creation According to Orpheus, for piano, harp, and percussion with string orchestra. He has also composed music for three plays of Samuel Beckett, commissioned by and premiered at New York’s 92nd Street Y and performed at Harvard University.
