Musica Reservata (early music group)

Musica Reservata was an early music group founded in London in the late 1950s by Irishman Michael Morrow and the musician, conductor and composer John Beckett.

Michael Morrow and John Beckett left Dublin for London in late 1953 and settled in Hampstead. Morrow, who originally was interested in art, had become interested in early music and had learned to play the lute. In his spare time, he began to transcribe old music from a variety of sources found in libraries and museums in London. Over the years he became a formidable musicologist and scholar. As he had become rather dissatisfied by the performances of early music on gramophone records and the BBC Third Programme, he turned his attention to European and non-European folk and art music, in which he believed medieval traditions had been preserved. He was also aware that many of the instruments used in medieval and Renaissance music had been brought to Europe from the east, as a result of the Crusades, trade through Constantinople and the Moorish occupation of Spain. He also believed that voice production had been eastern and folksy; in European religious paintings, angels were frequently depicted singing with tightened throats and mouths barely open. He therefore felt that much of the music of the medieval and early Renaissance periods should be performed in a more brash manner than what we are used to in modern times, though he was aware that any attempt to perform this music in a definitive 'authentic' manner was next to impossible.

Morrow decided to call his group Musica Reservata because he considered it to be unlikely that any performance of early music could be a true reproduction of the original sounds. According to Morrow, the name summed up the problems encountered when performing early music.

The group evolved during the 1950s; at first Morrow, Beckett and the recorder player John Sothcott performed privately, sometimes with the counter-tenor Grayston Burgess. One of the first concerts was a performance for The Fellowship of the White Boar, later renamed The Richard III Society.

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