Early Music Today
Early Music Today was a London-published quarterly magazine devoted to the early music world — the performance, study and enjoyment of music from the medieval, Renaissance and baroque periods, played and sung in the historically informed style that seeks to recover how that music sounded in its own time. Published by Rhinegold Publishing, it described itself as the leading magazine devoted to performers and devotees of early music, and in its later years it was also promoted as the United Kingdom's only magazine devoted to performers and enthusiasts in the field. Each issue offered features about the early music industry, reviews of performances and releases, practical tips on technique, exclusive reader competitions and essential concert listings. In September 2017 Rhinegold let it be known that the quarterly was about to publish its last issue, and digital retailers subsequently listed the title as no longer publishing new issues, although back issues remained available. Its passing closed a distinctive chapter in British specialist music publishing.
A magazine for a distinctive musical world
Early music is a field set apart from the mainstream classical world by its questions as much as by its repertoire. Its performers debate the size and constitution of ensembles, the choice of instruments, tuning and temperament, ornamentation and the evidence left by treatises and other historical sources. A magazine serving that world therefore had to speak simultaneously to professional performers, scholars, students, instrument makers and enthusiastic listeners, and Early Music Today was built around that mixed readership. Its stated embrace was broad: it set out to embrace all those who enjoyed playing, singing or listening to early music, whether they were today's top performers or audience members discovering a festival for the first time.
That breadth shaped the magazine's tone. Alongside serious discussion of performance practice, readers found news, listings and competitions intended to keep them connected to a busy calendar of concerts and festivals taking place all over the world. In a musical niche where much activity happens through small ensembles, specialist festivals and independent record labels, a quarterly gathering place for news and ideas performed a practical function as well as an editorial one.
The publisher: Rhinegold
Early Music Today came from Rhinegold Publishing, the London specialist publisher whose stable of music titles included Classical Music, Music Teacher, Choir & Organ, International Piano, Opera Now and Teaching Drama, together with music education exhibitions in London and Manchester. Rhinegold's origins went back to the late 1970s, and the company grew by acquisition and launch into one of the most recognisable names in British classical music publishing. For a small, expert title such as Early Music Today, belonging to that stable meant sharing a home with magazines read by teachers, singers, pianists and organists whose interests overlapped with its own.
The connection was visible in the way the magazine was sold. Rhinegold offered Early Music Today on its own, with single copies priced at £4.95, and also offered readers the option of buying it as part of Classical Music magazine. Subscriptions were sold in one-, two- and three-year terms covering four issues a year. A year after Early Music Today closed, in 2018, the Mark Allen Group won the bid to acquire all the assets of the Rhinegold Group, and the surviving Rhinegold titles moved into that larger portfolio.
Publication pattern and formats
The magazine was published four times a year, on a quarterly rhythm reflected in issue titles covering three-month spans, such as the September to November issue preserved by digital retailers. Issues of around sixty or more pages carried the mix of features, reviews and listings that defined the title. As print publishing adapted to changing reading habits, Early Music Today also appeared in digital form: a dedicated app edition allowed readers to buy single issues and back issues, take out subscriptions of one issue per quarter, and read on phones and tablets, while a free e-newsletter service offered subscribers news updates between issues.
The digital edition carried additional enticements described by its publisher, including concert and festival ticket discounts, early-bird bookings with key venues and entry into competitions. Back issues remained on sale through digital magazine platforms after the title ceased, a reminder that the audience for writing about early music practice and repertoire does not date as quickly as general news. Retailers' notices that the title no longer published new issues marked the formal end of its run, but the archive continued to circulate.
Inside an issue: features and interviews
Feature writing sat at the heart of the magazine. Issues contained in-depth pieces about today's leading performers and ensembles, interviews in which musicians discussed their projects and working methods, and articles on innovative early music projects and festivals around the world. A surviving issue description gives a flavour of that range: the baroque ensemble Red Priest spoke about entering a third decade after a tumultuous twenty years; the vocal ensemble Vox Luminis discussed the importance of its international line-up; and a new festival devoted to baroque opera was reported from Israel. The same issue carried a tribute to the legacy of Paul Steinitz, founder of the London Bach Society, linking present-day performance to the pioneers of the modern early music revival.
Broadcasting and the wider culture of early music also featured. Lucie Skeaping, presenter of the Early Music Show, contributed writing examining unusual musical figures, and the magazine's pick of the best autumn festivals guided readers across the United Kingdom and overseas. The emphasis throughout was human as well as scholarly: performers' stories, anniversaries and working lives gave the magazine its narrative drive.
Performance practice and technique
What distinguished Early Music Today from a general classical magazine was its attention to the practical craft of historically informed performance. The publisher highlighted articles on issues of performance practice and early music technique tips as core elements of the magazine, and issues included accessible introductions to instruments central to the field. One such feature set out the basics of the fortepiano, the early piano whose lighter action and clearer register shaped the keyboard music of the late eighteenth century. For amateur players and singers, such guidance translated scholarship into usable knowledge.
Recording projects provided another route into practice. Features followed ensembles and their directors into the studio, as when the group De Profundis and David Skinner recorded the music of Bernardino de Ribera, teacher of the Spanish Renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria. Articles of that kind showed readers how questions of edition, scoring and vocal production are settled in real professional work, and why they matter to the finished sound.
Reviews: concerts, recordings and books
Reviews formed a major department of the magazine. Readers were offered reviews of the latest performances and festivals and of CD, DVD and book releases, helping them navigate a recording culture in which small labels and independent ensembles release a constant stream of unfamiliar repertoire. In early music, where a disc may represent the first modern recording of a recovered work, reviewing carries an element of reportage as well as judgement, and the magazine's coverage treated new releases as news for the field.
Concert reviewing and festival reporting served a similar purpose. Specialist festivals are where much early music is premiered, revived and debated, and readers who could not attend relied on the magazine's correspondents to describe what had been played, by whom, and how. Combined with the concert listings, the reviews made each quarterly issue a working reference for planning listening as well as understanding it.
News, listings and the festival calendar
Alongside its features, the magazine provided essential news updates and events listings. For a readership scattered across the United Kingdom and beyond, this service journalism mattered: early music events are often promoted locally, by ensembles and venues rather than by large marketing organisations, and a national listing brought them to a wider audience. The publisher's free e-news extended that role between printed issues, carrying concert and festival information to subscribers by email.
The festival coverage ranged widely, from established British events to overseas gatherings, reflecting the international character of the early music profession, in which British performers tour widely and foreign ensembles are regular visitors. By curating a pick of seasonal festivals, the magazine helped readers decide where to travel, and helped smaller events reach the specialist audience most likely to value them.
The end of publication
In September 2017 the classical music press reported that Rhinegold Publishing had let it be known that the quarterly Early Music Today was about to publish its last issue. No relaunch followed under new ownership: when Rhinegold's assets were acquired by the Mark Allen Group in 2018, Early Music Today was not among the titles listed as passing to the new owner, which took on titles including International Piano, Choir & Organ, Classical Music, Teaching Drama, Music Teacher and Opera Now. The magazine therefore belongs to the history of print, its issues surviving in back-issue catalogues and digital archives.
Its closure formed part of a difficult period for British classical music magazines, in which small specialist titles faced declining print sales and online competition. The later history of its former stablemates underlined the pressure: Classical Music magazine, which had gone digital-only in 2020, was itself announced for closure in 2026. Against that background, Early Music Today's run stands as evidence of how, for a time, a clearly defined niche could sustain a dedicated printed voice.
Legacy and place in early music life
Early Music Today mattered because early music is a community as much as a repertoire. Its readers made instruments, sang in choirs, directed ensembles, taught, promoted concerts and bought recordings, and the magazine addressed them as participants rather than consumers. By combining scholarship made readable, practical technique, reviews, listings and interviews, it documented a movement that had grown from a revivalist fringe into a central part of British musical life.
For researchers and enthusiasts today, its back issues preserve a record of who was performing, what was being recorded and which questions of practice were being argued over in its years of publication. That documentary value outlives the magazine itself. Although new issues are no longer published, Early Music Today remains the title by which a generation of British early music performers and devotees kept in touch with their world, four times a year, in print and on screen.
