Music from the Middle Ages through the 18th Century
World-class concerts performed with historical instruments and with styles true to the period.

Boston-based La Donna Musicale is dedicated to the research and the historical performance of music by women composers. Their concert recreates the luxuriant environment of an intimate Parisian salon, replete with the sounds of voices in solo, duo, and trio settings, with flute accompaniment and supported by the captivating tones of the harpsichord, and viola da gamba.

www.ladm.org

Dubbed “The Bernstein of early music” (NPR) for his extraordinary charisma and outstanding ability to communicate with his audience, Egarr will perform from J.S. Bach’s monumental collection of preludes and fugues.

aam.co.uk/dsegarr.htm

Since its founding in 1996, Liber unUsualis has soared to prominence for its warm, compelling and assured performances of Medieval and early-Renaissance music. The American vocal quartet will set the tone for the season with a program of European Christmas music. liberunusualis.com

A fitting birthday tribute for England’s greatest baroque composer - England’s finest performing his songs and instrumental works. Fretwork, the viol consort, is joined by the radiant voice of mezzo-soprano Clare Wilkinson.

Fretwork.co.uk

Huggett and Savino return to Houston, this time with Bruce Dickey and musicians of Ensemble Galatea, performing a stunning program of seventeenth-century virtuoso Italian masterworks. Works by Marini, Castello, Buonamente, Rognoni and more!

sonnerie.org.uk/monica.php

concertopalatino.com/bruce_dickey

naxos.com/artistinfo/Richard_Savino/666.htm

I live in Austria where  I have studied ancient music. During summer I am going to be in Houston (August) with my husband, who is from Houston. Last time we were there, it was very difficult for me to find information about concerts or workshops in that area.

I would really appreciate it if you could send me some information about people that build recorders in and around Houston and whether there are concerts during that time. Or if you know about a good instrument-store. I would like to buy a tenor-recorder.

very many thanks in advance

Michaela Langwieser

(direct replies to info@HoustonEarlyMusic.org)

Houston Early Music              
Who:   LUCIDARIUM

When:   4:00 p.m.
Sunday, May 4, 2008

MUSIC AND POETRY OF THE JEWS OF RENAISSANCE ITALY

Houston Early Music will present the acclaimed Italian ensemble Lucidarium in a performance of La Istoria de Purim: Music and Poetry of the Jews of Renaissance Italy on Sunday, May 4.  The program, which won the European Association for Jewish Culture award for musical creation in 2004, is a reconstruction of the soundscape that would have accompanied a typical Northern Jewish Italian family through the liturgical year and life cycle. It combines sung poetry in Giudeo-Italian, Yiddish and Hebrew, traditional liturgical and paraliturgical music, and the lively songs and dances that would have been used to celebrate life’s transitions. The performance will be at First Unitarian Universalist Church, 5200 Fannin, at 4:00 p.m.

Founded in 1991, Lucidarium specializes in medieval and early Renaissance music with a special emphasis on unknown or little-known repertoires. The combination of meticulous preparation and creativity, which has opened up new perspectives in historical performance practice, has brought both popular and critical acclaim to the ensemble.  Lucidarium has toured extensively throughout Europe and North America and has performed in most of the important European early music festivals, including: Festival van Oude Muziek (Utrecht,) Festival Divina Musica Musica e Poesia a San Maurizio (Milan) and Freunde alter Musik Basel. Recently the ensemble won an unprecedented second EAJC award, as well as a grant from the Rothschild Foundation, for the creation and recording of Ain neues Lid, a project dedicated to the music of the German-speaking Jews from the 16^th century.

There will be a preconcert talk at 3:00 p.m. by Avery Gosfield, Co-director of Lucidarium.

Tickets are $30 for general admission, $25 for seniors, $10 for students, under 15 free. Tickets may be purchased at the door or by calling 713-432-1744. 

Houston Early Music is funded in part by grants from the City of Houston

through Houston Arts Alliance.

Gloria Moretti: voice

Viva Biancaluna Biffi: voice, viola d’arco

Enrico Fink: voice, narrator

Avery Gosfield: recorder, pipe and tabor

Marco Ferrari: recorder, dulcian, shawm, double flute

Francis Biggi: viola da mano, viola da penna, cetra, colascione

Massimiliano Dragoni: hammer dulcimer, percussion

PROGRAM

Prayer for the Removal of the Torah from the Ark (En Kamokha/Shema Israel)

Les Caterines / La Cara Cossa (La Folia)

Dos lid fun der sreyfe in Venedig

Anello

All Creatures in Heaven and on Earth (Kol Berue)

Bofo-Bukh

Buovo d’Antona

Moresca (sull’ Aria d’ottava)

Ishena at ani geor venodad

Tu dormi, io veglio e vo perdendo i passi

Tu dormi, io veglio a la tempesta e vento

Pass’e mezo a la bolognesa    

Saltarello a la bolognesa

Songs for the Celebration of Purim

   La Cansonetta di Purim

   La Istoria de Purim io ve racconto Moresca (sull’ Aria d’ottava)

   Meghillat Esther                 

Songs for the Celebration of Passover

    Ma Nishtana/Avadim Hainu

    Fuggi, fuggi, fuggi (Il Ballo di Mantova)               

    Khad Gadya / Un Caprett

    Khad Gadya, Khad Gadya                           

Music and Poetry of the Jews in Renaissance Italy.”

In its first visit to Houston, this noted Italian ensemble presents a reconstruction of the soundscape that would have accompanied a typical Northern Jewish Italian family through the liturgical year and the life cycle. It combines sung poetry in Giudeo-Italian, Yiddish and Hebrew, traditional liturgical and paraliturgical music, and the lively songs and dances that would have been used to celebrate life’s transitions. www.lucidarium.com

Tickets are $30 for general admission, $25 for seniors, $10 for students, under 15 free. Tickets may be purchased at the door or by calling 713-432-1744.

Leclair began his professional life as a dancer and dancing-master, but soon turned to the violin, completing his studies with G.B.Somis, a student of Corelli. Leclair’s opus 5 sonatas were published in 1734, dedicated to King Louis XV in gratitude for his appointment as “Ordinaire de la musique de la Chapelle et de la Chambre”, a position Francois Couperin had held for Louis XIV. Like all his music apart from opus 1, Leclair’s opus 5 was engraved by his second wife, Louise-Cathérine Roussel. Their marriage broke up after 28 years, and when he was found murdered some 6 years later, she was suspected of being behind the crime.

Boismortier was a hugely prolific composer of instrumental music, cantatas, opera ballets, and vocal music. Between 1724, the year he began publishing his music in Paris, and 1747 he produced at least 100 opus numbers of popular and commercially successful music, thus being able to live well without patrons. In his “Essai sur la musique ancienne et moderne” of 1780, J.B.de la Borde summed him up : “Boismortier appeared at a time when simple, undemanding music was the fashion. This gifted musician knew how to make use of this trend, and wrote countless Airs and Duets for the general public, to be played on flutes, violins, oboes, bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy… People said “happy Boismortier, whose fertile pen can produce a new volume each month, without stress”. Boismortier would only answer “I’m earning money”.”

Francois Couperin was the most distinguished of a highly musically successful family, several generations of which produced important composers and performers. The post of organist at the church of St. Gervais in Paris, which Francois took over in 1685, was more or less a family business: his father had held the position before, his cousin Nicolas would inherit it from him, and other family members would get their turn. More importantly, in 1693 Francois Couperin succeeded his teacher Jacques Thomelin as organist at the Chapelle Royale, with the title “organiste du roi”, the King in question being Louis XIV, the Sun King. In 1717 he became “ordinaire de la musique de la chambre du Roi”, which post involved playing regular chambermusic concerts in the private rooms of the King, who was a connoisseur of music. Couperin’s harpsichord music, and his famous book “L’Art de toucher le clavecin” (The Art of Harpsichord Playing), was highly regarded in his own time – a significant fan and disciple was J.S. Bach – and has retained its fascination for all sophisticated keyboard players since.
Arcangelo Corelli is perhaps the key figure in this program. In spite of a life spent almost exclusively in Bologna and Rome (there is no concrete evidence of him ever leaving Italy) his influence on the subsequent development of European music was considerable. By establishing a viable form for the concerto grosso he was the initiator of the entire modern history of the solo/orchestral concerto; and as the teacher of innumerable students from throughout the Western world, he can truly be said to have founded all the main modern schools of violin playing. His trio sonatas were a huge success throughout Europe and beyond – Francois Couperin flattered sincerely by imitating them in his “Apothéose de Corelli” - and his Opus 5 violin sonatas have never been out of print since their 1st edition dated 1st January 1700, an unusual distinction for baroque music. The title page of opus 5, like those of many collections of baroque sonatas, explicitly calls for accompaniment by cello or harpsichord, so today we are offering a still rare chance to hear the first suggested instrumentation.

Antonio Vivaldi, the “Red Priest”, died in Vienna in July 1741, leaving behind in Venice a vast collection of manuscripts (mainly of his own works, but also containing sacred music by other composero). By 1745 all these manuscripts were bound into the 27 volumes of the Foa and Giordano collections which today belong to the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, Italy. Oddly, these volumes contain few sonatas of any description, and none at all for one instrument and bass. One can only speculate over the fate of the sonata manuscripts: given that we have, so far, more than 500 concertos, 46 operas, plus numerous sinfonias and pieces of sacred music, it seems highly likely that he composed more than the 73 sonatas currently attributed to him. Of these, a significant group consists of 9 sonatas for cello and continuo. 6 of these were published in Paris by Le Clerc, as part of his reaction to an extraordinary vogue for the cello in Paris in the late 1730s (Le Clerc published at least 26 volumes of cello sonatas between 1738 and 1750). As we have heard, Leclair contributed to the new fashion with his obbligato cello part in the B flat sonata from op.5, and if the distinguished Vivaldi scholar Michael Talbot is correct in dating the Paris manuscript, on which the Le Clerc edition is based, to the 1720s, it may be that the influence was from Vivaldi on Leclair. Certainly Leclair, like so many of his contemporaries, adopted the Vivaldi 4-movement sonata form, not the 5-movement structure used by Corelli in the first half of his Opus 5.

Francesco Maria Veracini was one of the most self-assured violinists who ever lived: “There is only one God, and only one Veracini”, he is said to have asserted! Nonetheless, he was quite clear about the importance of Corelli to him as player and composer: though it cannot be proven that he studied with Corelli, he rewrote the whole of Corelli’s Opus 5 as a work of homage, extending many of the contrapuntal passages and bringing the music to what he certainly believed was a new level of perfection to be presented to violinists and connoisseurs 50 years after Corelli’s death. For an Italian virtuoso and supposed “wild man” of the violin, Veracini was remarkably conservative in his composing techniques: he was fascinated by counterpoint, at a time when it was clearly going out of fashion, and he remained faithful to the Corelli 5-movement “sonata da chiesa” form long after his contemporaries had adopted the 4-movement Vivaldi form, or still later the 3-movement Tartini model. It is the combination of Veracini’s extraordinary violinistic imagination with these intellectual compositional tendencies which makes his sonatas so fascinating. His Opus 2 are called “Sonate accademiche”, meaning sonatas for the knowledgeable connoisseurs of the “academy”. As such, they are the peak of his surviving violin works. The last is a truly remarkable creation: like the last sonata in Corelli’s op.5, the famous “Follia”, it is based throughout on one ground bass. Veracini, however, succeeds in building a series of variations on his theme which explore its contrapuntal and harmonic possibilities to the limit; and at the same time he manages to remain true to the 5-movement sonata form of his mentor Corelli.

The conservative English commentator Charles Burney, writing a generation later: “Veracini and Vivaldi had the honour of being thought mad for attempting in their music and performance what many a sober gentleman has since done uncensored; but both these musicians happening to be gifted with more fancy and more hand than their neighbours, were thought insane”.
John Holloway

Program List

Sonata no.1 in A major, op.5                                                     Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764)
“à violon seul avec la basse continue ”
Adagio – Allegro – Aria grazioso – Allegro

Trio no. 5 in a minor, op.37                            Joseph Bodin de Boismortier (1689-1755)
Vivace – Largo – Allegro
Les Barricades Mistérieuses                                                     François Couperin (1668-1733)
from the 6th Ordre de Clavecin
Sonata no.4 in B flat Major, op.5                                                                                Leclair
Adagio – Allegro ma non tropo – Sarabanda: Largo – Chaconna
Sonata in e minor, op.5, no. 8 “a violino e violone”                       Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713)
Preludio: Largo – Allemanda: Allegro  – Sarabanda: Largo – Giga: Allegro

Sonata no. 7 in g minor, RV 42                                                Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741)
for cello and basso continuo   
Preludio – Allemanda – Sarabanda – Gigue

Sonata no.12 in d minor, op.2                         Francesco Maria Veracini (1690-1768)
Passagallo: Largo assai, e come sta, ma con grazia
Andante
Capriccio Cromatico con Due Sogetti, e Loro Rovesci veri: Allegro, ma non presto
Adagio
Ciaccona: Allegro, ma non Presto
Passagallo

Saturday, March 29, 7:30 pm
St. Philip Presbyterian Church
Tickets: $15, available at the door

Our annual collaboration with the Moores School of Music Collegium Musicum features Giocomo Carissimi’s vivid oratorio on the story of Jonah and the whale. Music of other rarely heard 17th-century Roman composers completes Ars Lyrica’s tribute to the eternal city.

More at Ars Lyrica

….Brazilian-Uruguayan countertenor José Lemos sang with appealing simplicity and directness. With a smooth sound that served the music, he could twist listeners around a vocal finger with sensuous melodies or, aided by the instrumentalists, make them fidget with energy.

Playing a wide variety of flutes, recorders, strummed and bowed string instruments (the crumhorn was ailing and couldn’t be used), the Consort had great fun producing spirited, polished music for the large audience in Midtown’s First Evangelical Lutheran Church, which is slowly becoming a location for performances of liturgical and early music as part of its overall rejuvenation.

Consort members noted that the ensemble is now in its 28th year of touring, but one took a moment to congratulate Houston Early Music on its 40th anniversary (it previously was known as the Houston Harpsichord Society). Because of the group, Houston has become a key stop for touring early-music performers, he said.

More at The dark side of ¡Cancionero! | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Chamber Music and More…

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