Lucinda Breeding

The Early Music America Collegium gave the University of North Texas its top award as soon as it could.

The UNT College of Music’s early music program director, Lyle Nordstrom, had been on the collegium board for several years. That made the UNT Collegium, a group that includes the UNT Baroque Orchestra and Collegium Singers, ineligible for the champion’s podium until now.

The UNT Collegium is one of two winners nationwide in the 2009 Early Music America Collegium Competition. The UNT group was chosen on the basis of a CD of its live performance of a concert of German music.

Nordstrom pointed out that the Early Music America has only been sponsoring the contest for four years.

“This year they did two awards because last year’s winner couldn’t go [to one of a few prestigious early music festivals] and relinquished the money,” Nordstrom said.

The title comes with a $1,000 grant, which is meant to be seed money to promote the winner and help it get to a festival, such as the Boston Early Music Festival. At festivals, students and professionals can learn more about baroque music, and they can hear some of the form’s top performers.

“For me, this is great, because this is my last year to go,” said Nordstrom, who’ll retire in the next year. “I’ll be gone, but I want to find someone who will take the program to the next stage. My goal was to establish an early music program for the school, and gradually that’s happening.”

Nordstrom has been at the helm of the program, teaching performance practices on baroque instruments and establishing a collection of baroque orchestra instruments for the college.

“Early music is growing. It’s becoming very, very important in the country. Juilliard [School] is starting an early music program, and [baroque violinist] Cynthia Roberts, from the faculty here at UNT, is on the faculty there. It’s quite important in the country at this point.”

Nordstrom said the early music field is starting to take off in North America — Canadian colleges are starting to get serious about baroque instruction — because both teachers and students are taking advantage of a growing body of understanding of how baroque music was meant to sound. Nordstrom said there isn’t as much guesswork in teaching and conducting as one might think.

“We’re at the point where people are really understanding the instruments and the music,” Nordstrom said. “It’s always amazing for me when I play Bach’s Brandenburg concertos with a baroque orchestra and an orchestra — the musicians are really hearing the difference, and understanding that the baroque instruments make an enormous difference. When you have a baroque instrument, it’s a right tool for the job and it brings the music alive. That has been recognized as the validity of it. It’s alive and it works.”

The UNT program has several aims. Not only do students — most of whom aren’t specializing in baroque music — study baroque music intensely, but the college offers a small scholarship so that early music students can get private instruction on the baroque instrument of their choice.

“At UNT, everyone is studying privately. We feel like it’s really important, because it’s really a new instrument for them. The private instruction really helps them. So all these people are studying, and I think that came through at the competition. They were musical and competent,” Nordstrom said.

The jury that evaluated university collegia for the 2009 award said the UNT musicians and singers were competent in the musicality demanded by the music.

If music buffs need any proof, the upcoming performance of George Frideric Handel’s Saul, conducted by Dallas Opera Music Director Graeme Jenkins, would present it.

“UNT is the only university that could pull off Saul at this point,” Nordstrom said. “This is a group that understands the expectations of the period, and they are musical. I don’t see any other university in the country being ready to do something like Saul, and that’s really satisfying for me.”

LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877. Her e-mail address is cbreeding@dentonrc.com.