Music Post: Why early music is the latest thing

Bach was at work three centuries ago - Josquin Desprez three centuries before that. But modern listeners have come to Renaissance music more recently than music of the Baroque. Like the hero of Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," who experiences his life out of order, the modern classical music listener has had the opportunity in recent years to hear good performances of music by composers who, as recently as the 1970s, were rarely mentioned even in books on music. This is nothing new. Bach was forgotten by the general public after his death in 1750 - his scores were still known to Mozart and Beethoven, but not to the public - until Mendelssohn led a Bach revival in the 1800s. The first edition of Bach's complete works was not published until the 20th century. Baroque music came back into public favor in the 1960s and is here to stay. Who, in the 1960s, knowing only Bach, Handel and Vivaldi, would have guessed that radio stations a generation later would routinely play Lully, Telemann and a dozen lesser lights, or that there would be dozens of CDs of Vivaldi that aren't the Four Seasons? Older music - Desprez, Palestrina, Monteverdi, Gabrieli, Tallis and Dowland - has actually followed on the heels of the Baroque revival, bringing to life these composers whom we formerly knew only from books, and not many books for the general public at that. Some of the recordings of these composers are downright exciting. If you would like to explore this era, start with a CD called "Terpsichore" by the Collegium Terpsichore [Deutsche Grammophon 289 469-2]. The performance on this double disc will take you to the 1500s. Saturday on my public radio show, in a fast-moving series of short tracks, I will take you from the Gregorian chants of the 1400s through the age of Bach in the 1700s, including Sting singing John Dowland's "Can She Excuse My Wrongs," Telemann's "Attack on the Windmills" from his Don Quixote Suite, the Mouret piece that became the theme to "Masterpiece Theatre," Wendy Carlos and the Swingle Singers. "Howard's Day Off" runs live 5 a.m.-7 a.m. Saturdays on Hawaii Public Radio, transmitted on KHPR Honolulu, KKUA Wailuku and KANO Hilo, available on Oceanic Digital cable, and streamed live on www.hawaiipublicradio.org . Facebook members can join the Howard's Day Off Appreciation Society organized by Max Cacas of Washington, D.C.