The summer months saw the demise of New York’s Fillmore East and Electric Circus, those Village pantheons of rock, and if the rest of the city’s musical vitality depended solely on the events of the summer seasons, the concert halls and opera houses would probably be converted into roller rinks. With many of the musical moguls off at their music-shed-equipped watering places, New York is not usually the place to look for the new developments in summer. But there was something rather remarkable this year: In June hundreds of fanatical musicologists and performers from this country, France, Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe, Israel and Iceland descended upon Lincoln Center, bent on a sort of musical campaign that appears to portend much for the musical art, and to confirm some evident trends of recent years.
The occasion was a gigantic five-day International Festival-Conference in commemoration of the 450th year since the death of one of the greatest of all composers: Josquin des Prés.
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