The festival’s present focus on music before 1800—historically informed and using instruments of the era (or replicas)—first entered the picture after Cooper, then a 35-year-old music professor at Butler University, was hired as artistic director in 1973. Tussles with the musicians’ union helped nudge the emphasis toward original instruments, making it unnecessary to hire a local alto saxophonist—as the union insisted—only because his instrument’s range was about the same as the oboe d’amore called for in Bach.
