Beauty, the Best Advocate

Charles T. Downey, Derek Jacobi and Folger Consort team up for evening of Shakespeare and Purcell
Washington Classical Review, October 2

Folger and Jacobi's 'Merchant of Venice'

Lo Sposalizio (Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli), King's Consort, R. King (Hyperion, 1998)

Charles T. Downey, In ‘Merchant of Venice,’ authentic music accents the Bard’s history (Washington Post, March 2)

Sometimes the mission of the Folger Consort, to present historically informed performances of early music, overlaps with the specialization of its host institution, the Folger Shakespeare Library. Over the years, the ensemble has collaborated with actor Derek Jacobi and stage director Richard Clifford to present adaptations of the plays of Shakespeare, combining excerpts of the play with appropriate music. After their version of “The Tempest” in 2010, these artists reunited for a program of “The Merchant of Venice,” heard Friday night at the Music Center at Strathmore in North Bethesda.

Three traditions came into play in the choice of music,... [Continue reading]

Folger Consort and Piffaro
With Derek Jacobi, Richard Clifford, and Samantha Bond
The Merchant of Venice
Music Center at Strathmore

SEE ALSO:
Rebecca Ritzel, Concert of late Renaissance music inspired by an unlikely source (Washington Post, February 24)

PREVIOUSLY:
The Fairy Queen (2007)
The Tempest (2010)

Folger Consort: 'To Caunterbury they wende'

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

P. Strohm, Chaucer's Tale: 1386 and the Road to Canterbury (Viking, 2014) Tidings Trew, Lionheart (Koch, 2003)

The Folger Consort's Epiphanytide concert at Washington National Cathedral is one of our favorite annual traditions. After not covering this concert for a couple of years, it was a pleasure to hear this year's selection of music from around the time that Geoffrey Chaucer was writing The Canterbury Tales, presented last night. Most of the notated music of that period, the end of the 14th century, is for voices, for which the male vocal ensemble Lionheart joined the five instrumentalists. As noted of the group's last appearance with the Folger Consort, in 2010, Lionheart still has a finely balanced, delicate sound as an ensemble, but the individual contributions tend toward the timorous and faded, especially among the higher voices.

A recently published book by Paul Strohm, a history professor at Oxford and Columbia, paints a vivid picture of London and Chaucer's life at that time, a portrait of the birth of one of the great works of English literature. Chaucer's masterpiece includes a number of references to music, only one of which was directly incorporated into this concert, the medieval carol Angelus ad virginem, sung by a lascivious clerk in the tale told by the drunken, vulgar Miller, along with an unidentified tune called "the king's note." No mention here, for example, of the chant Alma redemptoris mater learned and sung by the murdered boy in The Prioress's Tale.

Vocal highlights were the liturgical chant, which Lionheart performed with exceptional beauty, and the more austere polyphonic works, like the canon Sumer is icumen in, the Marian piece Venter tuus, and the harmonically surprising Kyrie Cuthberte (from Durham Cathedral, where the relics of St. Cuthbert, the holy bishop of Lindisfarne, ended up). One of the perennial delights of the Folger Consort's performances is multi-instrumentalist Tom Zajac, heard here singing and playing recorder and sackbut, as well as taking turns on the mouth harp and some type of droning hurdy-gurdy. The last instrument was used only in the final selection, the anonymous Song of the Flood, an unacknowledged connection to The Miller's Tale, where the scheming clerk tricks his gullible patron into believing that a flood like Noah's is about to strike England, so that he, the clerk, can lie with the man's wife.

The pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales are traveling to Canterbury Cathedral to see the famous shrine containing the bones of St. Thomas Becket. It was a nice touch to include pieces dedicated to the 12th-century Archbishop of Canterbury, whose brains were dashed out on the floor of his cathedral by agents of King Henry II, an act condemned severely in the Latin texts of these pieces. At the same time, it was difficult not to see the irony of hearing the words of these songs sung in the city's Episcopalian cathedral. After all, it was agents of Henry VIII, founder of the Church of England, who subjected Thomas Becket to a second act of murderous violence, destroying the shrine that contained his relics, along with the martyr's bones themselves, in an attempt to wipe out all memory of the beloved saint.

Folger Consort's Latest Renaissance Christmas

Christmas in New Spain, Folger Consort (Bard, 2014)

Charles T. Downey, ‘A Renaissance Christmas’ at the Folger
Washington Post, December 18, 2014

Some years, the Folger Consort’s Christmas concert is the best in the city, at least for those who are tired of the same old holiday chestnuts. Unfortunately, this is not one of those years, at least not as this selection of Renaissance music was executed Tuesday evening. And the amplification-enhanced reverb in the Folger Theater only detracted from the purity of sound.

The programming concept was strong, with contrasting examples of music written around the year 1500... [Continue reading]

A Renaissance Christmas
Music by Josquin Desprez, Loyset Compère, others
Folger Consort

SEE ALSO:
Tim Smith, Affecting music for the season from Evolution Series, Folger Consort (Baltimore Sun, December 17)

CHRISTMAS AT THE FOLGER:
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005

Folger Consort's Musical Heraldry

Charles T. Downey, Folger Consort presents Renaissance pieces (Washington Post, September 29, 2014)

Heraldry, the elaborate system of coats of arms that was an expression of family pride in past eras, remains as a tangible emblem of history. One possible musical counterpart, dances and songs written for and dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I and her courtiers, was the focus of the Folger Consort’s first program of the season, heard on Friday night, offered in parallel to the heraldry exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Four members of the recently formed Arcadia Viols joined their colleague Robert Eisenstein to perform dance pieces for viol consort, a family of instruments at the height of its popularity in the Renaissance... [Continue reading]

Folger Consort, with Arcadia Viols
Courting Elizabeth, with tenor James Taylor
Folger Shakespeare Library

Folger Consort's 'Christmas in New Spain'

Villancicos y Danzas Criollas, La Capella Reial De Catalunya, J. Savall (Alia Vox, 2004)

If you are looking for a Christmas concert without the music you dread hearing each December, the Folger Consort is a good bet. Their program this year, devoted to music from New Spain, hits all of those targets again, with a selection of music that is almost entirely unfamiliar, if without any major, life-altering discoveries. Heard at the first performance last night, this concert features six singers from Washington National Cathedral's ensemble Cathedra, supported by seven instrumentalists. It is a rather mellow affair, trading more on an easy, suave rhythmic vibe than on virtuosity or ultra-refinement.

A contrast between high and low musical cultures was built into the program, with examples of more learned polyphony, by Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (c. 1590-1664) and Pedro Bermudez (d. 1606), bookending popular villancicos and dance music. That such opposite styles coexisted, both composed by musicians who served in cathedrals in Mexico and Peru and elsewhere, reveals something about the mixture of cultures in the Americas. Oddly the opening work, Padilla's Exultate justi, sets a Latin text not proper to Christmas at all: its joyful tone, drawn from Psalm 32, was heard either in Easter or on feasts of apostles. Padilla drew out the exclamatory nature of the words through text painting, most notably in the phrase "Bene psallite ei in vociferatione" (sing well unto him with a loud voice). Like his setting of the Gloria, from the Ordinary of the Mass, Padilla's style was fairly simple and homophonic, effective but not all that striking. The most memorable of the Latin-texted pieces was the lovely six-voice Salve regina by Bermudez, in an alternatim style that paired elaborate and extensive polyphonic verses with a decorated form of the Marian antiphon's chant melody.

Other Reviews: Simon Chin, ‘Christmas in New Spain’ offers an evening of spirited, cheerful tunes (Washington Post, December 16)

This set the popular pieces in stark relief, with texts that seemed to mix vestiges of pre-Christian celebrations with the European traditions of Christmas. The frankness of racial identity ("Let's go, blacks of Guinea, to the manger alone, / Not with the blacks from Angola -- they're all ugly!") can be shocking, as can the transparent social stratification of colonial society ("I promise this little child that although born a little white / All of us are his family. We are not afraid of the white man"), but the infectious charm of the music, and the vivacious joy with which it was performed, were hard to resist. While many of these pieces are of humble cloth, musically speaking, a few were quite affecting, like the charming "Xicochi conetzintle" by Gaspar Fernandes (c. 1570-c. 1629) and "Las coflades de la estleya" by Juan de Araujo (1646-1712). Because too many of the singers are friends and people I have sung with before, I am not really offering any thoughts on the specifics of the singing, but the instrumental contributions were excellent, especially the improvisations on ground basses led by Charles Weaver on Baroque guitar.

This concert will be repeated several times, through December 22, at the Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill.

Cornago Mass with Folger Consort

Charles T. Downey, Folger Consort starts season with a polyphonic setting of Catholic Mass
Washington Post, September 30, 2013

J. Cornago, Missa de la mapa mundi, His Majestie's Clerkes, P. Hillier

A pop song as the basis for a musical setting of the Catholic Mass sounds like a peculiarly modern thing to do, but the practice can be traced back to the 15th century. One of the oldest examples, the “Missa Ayo visto lo mappamundi” by Juan Cornago, was the centerpiece of the first program in the Folger Consort’s new season, its 36th, heard early Saturday evening at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

It is a beautiful polyphonic setting of the Mass, for three male voices, with florid parts woven around the long notes of the Sicilian folk song “Ayo visto lo mappamundi.” Countertenor Martin Near, tenor Aaron Sheehan and baritone Richard Giarusso sang it mostly from a balcony above the stage, in a way that was evenly matched and blended, with just one rough patch in the “Sanctus” movement. [Continue reading]

Folger Consort
With Martin Near (countertenor), Aaron Sheehan (tenor), Richard Giarusso (baritone), and Emily Noel (soprano)
Folger Shakespeare Library

Folger Consort's Trecento Natale

Laudario di Cortona: A Medieval Mystery, Ensemble Organum, M. Pérès (1996) [Listen]

The Folger Consort's annual Christmas Concert has been on an international tour for the last several years: Spain (2011), England (2010), Germany (2009), and Spain again (2008). The ensemble, which has won the coveted Ionarts Christmas Concert Award more than once, took us to Italy this year, with a program devoted to trecento Florence, heard on Sunday afternoon. It is odd to have a program centered on that city in that century and not include any music by Francesco Landini, the greatest Italian composer of the era, but no sacred music by Landini has survived, which is a problem for a Christmas concert. Instead Italian polyphony was represented by a couple Mass movements, a rather wonderful Gloria by Johannes de Ciconia and some anonymous pieces.

Ciconia was an oltramontano, but he worked in Italy for most of his life, albeit much of it in the quattrocento. The Gloria, like much of the music of this period, is for three voices in close range with one another, with hocket-like exchanges (pax, pax, pax) and plenty of complicated rhythmic details. The three singers joining the Folger Consort, the women of Trio Eos, gave the piece, and pretty much everything on the program, a delicate airiness, like the lacy wood carving of an altarpiece frame. Soprano Michele Kennedy, on the high part, was a little too transparent at times, while second soprano Jessica Beebe had a more full and rounded sound, still subtle but with substance. Her voice was featured prominently in the double-texted motet O Maria Virgo/O Maria maris stella, one of the more striking pieces along with a two-voice Sanctus, attributed to one Mediolano, with some ingenious hockets, or hiccup-like vocal exchanges of note and rest.

The polyphony was complemented by monophonic music, both learned examples (Verbum bonum et suave, a Latin sequence) and examples of the popular song known as the lauda, as well as some charming examples of the rarely notated instrumental music of the period. The laude go back to the 13th century, part of the wave of popular piety associated with the Franciscan and Dominican movements. The earliest manuscript is the Cortona laudario, from the 13th century, with more florid versions of the genre in two manuscripts from Florence in the 14th century, which I suspect were the sources for this performance. These rather homespun tunes, set to vernacular texts that are often childishly simple, in the way of popular piety, were written down by clerics, or others who understood the system used to notated Gregorian chant.

Other Reviews: Joan Reinthaler, For Christmas, Folger Consort performs for the lay people (of 14th-century Italy) (Washington Post, December 17) Andrew Lindemann Malone, Christmastime is Somewhere Around Here (DMV Classical, December 17)

It is impossible to know exactly how the music is to be performed, rhythmically speaking. Marcel Pérès took Byzantine chant and its cantillation as a model in his recording with Ensemble Organum, while Katarina Livljanić created a second voice to go along with the notated tune in her recording with Ensemble Dialogus. The Folger Consort and Trio Eos had two modes of performance for the selection of laude heard here, mostly a rhythmically free style for the singers with a sort of New Agey improvised accompaniment of harp and other plucked instruments, usually with a drone. I was far more convinced by two of the pieces that were given a more metered treatment, which brought this popular music into line with the medieval dance pieces, which is probably closer to the spirit of this repertory.

This concert will be repeated, at the Folger Shakespeare Library, through December 23.

Time Stands Still

Charles T. Downey, Folger Consort explores the tunes of 17th-century London
Washington Post, October 1, 2012

Dowland, The Collected Works, The Consort of Musicke, A. Rooley

The Folger Consort is presenting a musical tour of five European cities for its 35th season of concerts of early music. On Friday night, it began with a delightful survey of music in early 17th-century London, quite appropriately for a historically informed performance ensemble based at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Most of the credit for this concert’s success is due to the dulcet voice, rarefied diction, and pure intonation of tenor Aaron Sheehan. He excelled most artfully in the exquisite songs of John Dowland and Tobias Hume, accompanied simply by lute and bass viol, and in one case with choral parts sung quietly by the instrumentalists. Sheehan’s is a voice one is content to listen to all by itself, as he showed in an unaccompanied version of “The Northern Lasses Lamentation,” the most innocent of three less-than-lofty Broadside ballads. [Continue reading]

Folger Consort
With Aaron Sheehan, tenor
London: Music from the City of Shakespeare
Folger Shakespeare Library

Hildegard and Anonymous 4

Charles T. Downey, Anonymous 4’s voices ring in new year with Folger Consort
Washington Post, January 9, 2012

11,000 Virgins: Chants for the Feast of St. Ursula, Anonymous 4 The Origin of Fire, Anonymous 4 Love's Illusion: Music from the Montpellier Codex, Anonymous 4 Resonant Witness: Conversations Between Music and Theology, ed. Jeremy S. Begbie and Steven R. Guthrie (includes Margot Fassler, "Music for the Love Feast: Hildegard of Bingen and the Song of Songs," pp. 355-81)

The voices of Anonymous 4 are matched with no music quite as perfectly as they are with the complexities of the 13th-century motet. The esteemed quartet’s 1994 recording of selections from this body of music, transcribed from the Montpellier Codex, was one of its best, and more than a decade later, the group still dazzles in this repertory. Its presence Friday made the Folger Consort’s New Year’s concert, an annual tradition at Washington National Cathedral, an instant musical highlight of the year to come.

To unravel the medieval motet’s tangle of voices, a knot of different texts and languages, these performances often began with just one texted voice’s part, with the others layered on gradually in repetition. Crystalline intonation and clarity of diction, without fussy exaggeration of the Latin, rarefied the pieces into limpid delicacies. Four instrumentalists offered much simpler, strikingly understated performances of contemporaneous melodies, often the catchy tenors that were the basis of the motets on the program — an ingenious programming decision. [Continue reading]

Scholar Margot Fassler recently claimed that Hildegard von Bingen "has more securely attributable monophonic chants assigned to her name than any composer from the entire Middle Ages." She is also remarkable because "she is the only composer in the history of Western music who was also a serious and highly respected theologian." As noted in the review, it is her widespread influence as a theologian, because her visions and writings were taken quite seriously by popes and other church leaders, that sets her apart. It is also the reason that Pope Benedict XVI has decided to make her canonization official later this year, when she will also be named Doctor of the Church.

For whatever reason, the notoriety of Hildegard's music has been attached to all sorts of ideas about her as a revolutionary, generally for the wrong reasons. Fassler goes to some length to show how Hildegard's compositions were made for the traditional celebrations of her convent, and other monastic foundations, mostly for the Divine Office and mostly for feasts of saints and the Virgin Mary. Fassler also demonstrates, with a thorough marshaling of evidence, that it is a mistake to take Hildegard's use of amorous imagery out of the context of the Song of Songs and its theological interpretation, or of the soul and its bridegroom, Jesus.

Fassler also notes that the florid style of Hildegard's monophonic compositions, far from being revolutionary, was similar to the prevailing style of new chant composition from the 11th century onwards. Many composers, not always known by name like Hildegard, were composing chants with a broader ambitus and more melismatic elaboration ("wildly elaborate," as Fassler puts it, "with magnificent leaps and long melismas"). Hildegard did tend to emphasize, quite intentionally, the high end of the human voice, giving her music a distinctly high feminine quality. She especially favored the traditional melodic motifs of mode 3 -- the scalar content you get if you play from E to E on the piano -- especially the sound created by the half-steps above both the final and reciting note (E-F and B-C), as heard over and over in some of the selections on this concert. She did use transpositions in the way the music was notated in some cases -- for example, putting the final on A so that she could use both B♭ and B♮ above the final. That practice was also known in other manuscripts, to capture some parts of very early chants, like the Te deum, that appear to have been composed before the modal system was in place, to be able to include F♯, which was not theoretically accepted.

Folger Consort's Latest

A New Song: Celebrating the King James Bible, Cathedra, Folger Consort (released on December 13, 2011)

The Folger Shakespeare Library marked the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible with an exhibit last fall, a suiting tribute to perhaps the most influential book in the English language. The Folger Consort also commemorated this landmark event with a concert of music setting King James texts. My review, based on a hearing of the first performance of this program, noted a few shortcomings, the sorts of infelicities that are generally ironed out in subsequent performances as the musicians relax and reach a greater comfort level. Happily for listeners, the group went on to make a recording of this music in the few days following the weekend of concerts, yielding a disc released last month on the Library's private label, Bard Records. The sound, captured in the gorgeous acoustic of the Library of Congress's Coolidge Auditorium, is excellent, and the program has benefited from further thought and performance. Highlights includes two impressively virtuosic pieces played by Adam Pearl on the chest organ, a Fantasia by Orlando Gibbons and a Ground by John Blow, and the particularly fine F major sonata by Purcell. The vocal selections are all good, especially those by Purcell and the concise, perfectly focused Hosanna to the Son of David by Gibbons, with outstanding performances by tenor Aaron Sheehan in solo pieces and sections.

Readers are warmly encouraged to attend the second performance of the Folger Consort's excellent New Year Concert, this evening at Washington National Cathedral (January 7, 8 pm). The four women of Anonymous 4 sing chants of Hildegard von Bingen and a selection of 13th-century motets from the Montpellier Codex. I heard the first performance last night, but my review will not appear until Monday, so consider this your advance notice.

Folger Consort's Spanish Renaissance Christmas

Adio España: Romances, Villancicos, and Improvisations from Spain, Circa 1500, Baltimore Consort

Charles T. Downey, Christmas in Renaissance Spain: The Folger Consort Presents “O Magnum Mysterium” (The Washingtonian, December 13):

Out of the burgeoning field of holiday concerts in Washington, the one offered by the Folger Consort seemed likely to be the best -- and not merely the least annoying. Having heard the group’s program of music from the Spanish Renaissance on Saturday night in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s garland-and-light-adorned Elizabethan theater, it’s official. If you’re tired of the same few carols assaulting your ears everywhere—on the radio, in store lobbies, from speakers while you put gas in your car—take an evening to go back four or five hundred years in time and listen to some old and less familiar music for Christmas. Most of it, except for a few pieces that are more widely known -- including the inevitable villancico Ríu Ríu Chíu, performed here in the best possible way -- you won’t have heard before.

[Continue reading]

This concert was reviewed only at Washingtonian.com.

Folger Consort and the King James Bible

See my review of the Folger Consort's latest concert in today's Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Folger Consort marks 400th anniversary of King James Version of the Bible
Washington Post, October 3, 2011

Verily, I say unto you: 400 years ago, the King James Bible was published, the translation of the Bible still most familiar to English-speaking Christians. The Folger Consort marked the anniversary Friday night with a concert in conjunction with the Folger Shakespeare Library’s new exhibit, “Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible.” Texts from the King James Bible, or earlier English translations, were presented in a selection of choral music from 17th-century England.

The 12 singers of Cathedra, the chamber vocal ensemble of Washington National Cathedral, performed the choral parts of these pieces with a limpid and finely balanced sound. Director Michael McCarthy focused his singers’ rhythmic ensemble with a clean beat, scaling the dynamics to the intimacy of the room and the closeness of the audience. This made possible many more gradations of soft sound, like the angelic piano moment at the words “Peace in heaven” in the middle of Orlando Gibbons’s “Hosanna to the Son of David,” heard, as it were, through a glass, darkly. [Continue reading]

SVILUPPO:
A little bird tells me that a recording of this program is in the works.

Stile Antico in Washington Debut

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, British vocal ensemble Stile Antico makes stunning Washington debut
Washington Post, April 4, 2011

Song of Songs, Stile Antico [REVIEW]

In this age of recording, when an increasing number of people’s main experience of music is through earbuds, it is important to be reminded of the imperfections — thrilling if occasionally vexing — of live performance. This was true of the stunning concert by the young English choir Stile Antico on Saturday night, hosted in their Washington debut by the Folger Consort at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill.

The dry acoustic of this venue, with not enough stone to create a space for sound to hang in the air, was not ideal for a program of unaccompanied Renaissance polyphony. It exposed some deficiencies that can be remedied through multiple takes in the recording process, such as occasional non-unified attacks, minor tuning discrepancies or one early entrance. These did nothing to detract from the enjoyment of the group’s crystalline sound, balanced and rarefied in many different configurations down to one-on-a-part arrangements, if slightly treble-heavy when all 12 singers were at full volume. [Continue reading]

Chant and Polyphony from Song of Songs
Stile Antico
Presented by the Folger Consort
Lutheran Church of the Reformation

Seasons Come, Seasons Go

C. Simpson, Seasons: Winter (inter alia), S. Watillon et al. Cage, Seasons, American Composers Orchestra. D. R. Davies A. Vivaldi, Seasons, Concerto Italiano, R. Alessandrini P. D. Q. Bach, Seasonings, Royal P.D.Q. Bach Festival Orchestra, J. Mester

The Folger Consort's annual New Year concert, in the crossing of Washington National Cathedral, is a pleasing way to break the holiday concert fast each January. After recent programs centered on Monteverdi (the 1610 Vespers, in 2010), Vivaldi (2009), Victoria (2008), Dowland and Bird (2007), and Palestrina and Monteverdi (2006), this year's program brought together three rather different cycles of pieces depicting the four seasons -- the omnipresent one by Antonio Vivaldi, introduced by excerpts from sets by English viola da gambist and composer Christopher Simpson (c. 1602-1669) and modern American composer John Cage. It was the Cage piece, a short ballet score, that determined the form of the concert, which presented the three works grouped together by season. Cage's first work for orchestra, premiered with choreography by Merce Cunningham in 1947, begins with winter and proceeds through spring, summer, and fall before returning cyclically to the winter music. That this program was presented in that very season was a satisfying alignment of life and art.

Cage completed two versions of the score, for piano and full orchestra, which Folger Consort director Christopher Kendall, Olin Johannessen, and others arranged for the same Baroque string ensemble required for the Vivaldi concertos, plus synthesizer and percussion. As is always the case with such a reduction, not everything from Cage's score could be incorporated, but the result was something even more ethereal and atmospheric than Cage's orchestration. Repetitive, quasi-dissonant washes of sound in a sort of Klangfarbenmelodie style, reminiscent of Webern but with a touch of Broadway, evoked a sort of meditative melancholy. This repetition of pre-determined musical ideas, which Cage called gamuts, created the harmonic stasis he so admired in the music of Erik Satie: not surprisingly, Cage indulged in no cheap references to Vivaldi's famous precursor, as Piazzola did in Four Seasons of Buenos Aires, for example. The longest movement, Summer, which Cage said was associated with preservation (following an Indian tradition of the cycle of the seasons), had a particularly nostalgic tone, the tinges of marimba and vibraphone sounding like a half-remembered steel drum or calliope.

A chamber-sized ensemble of violin, two viols, chamber organ, and theorbo played only the initial Fancy movement of each of the Simpson pieces, making a rather small sound for the cathedral's vast acoustic. Nothing about any of these little showpieces seemed overtly programmatic, but their contrasting sections of varied character made intriguing introductions to the more substantial Cage-Vivaldi pairings. What likely brought most of the albeit somewhat sparse audience to the concert, those overplayed Vivaldi concertos, was the least exciting part of the evening. Violinist Julie Andrijeski was more graceful than dazzling on the solo parts, with the cuckoo runs in the first movement of Summer and the double-stops in the first movement of Autumn going a little sour. She was at her best in the slow movements, mostly taken at brisk tempi but with stylistically tasteful ornaments added on repeats of the melody.

Other Reviews: Joe Banno, Folger Consort (Washington Post, January 10)

Likewise, the string ensemble played the descriptive possibilities of the concertos close to the vest, by comparison to the closest reading of the score's accompanying sonnets, by Concerto Italiano. Spring's dogs, summer's insects, and winter's cracking ice were all on the timid side, although Andrijeski's joke in the first movement of Fall, pretending to fall asleep before the return of the final ritornello, came directly from the sonnet. Harpsichordist Joseph Gascho took advantage of the largely static slow movement of the last concerto to add vivid figuration to the continuo part, one of the highlights of the evening.

This performance will be repeated this evening (January 8, 8 pm), in Washington National Cathedral. For its next program, Ecco la primavera, the Folger Consort joins with the vocal ensemble Trefoil (March 11 to 13).

Tallis Scholars and Folger Consort Together Again

The Tallis Scholars Sing William Byrd Taverner, Missa Gloria Tibi Trinitas, Tallis Scholars

The first time that the Tallis Scholars performed in the United States, it was on a concert with the Folger Consort, twenty-five years ago this past weekend. After the planned guest choir for this year's Folger Consort Christmas program, the Augsburg Cathedral Choir, had to cancel because of visa issues, the Tallis Scholars agreed to replace them. (I was happy to break the news in the Washington Post, where at the end of a review of another Folger Consort program, I called it "one of the most fortunate performer substitutions in recent memory.") The somewhat heterogeneous program at times seemed like it had been cobbled together, as if selections from the originally planned concert were fitted in between pieces the Tallis Scholars were ready to sing. A few minor blemishes notwithstanding, this was an extraordinary performance, and a Christmas concert of discoveries rather than dreary revisitings to boot, heard on Saturday night at Georgetown University's Gaston Hall.

Not much of the concert featured the ten singers of the Tallis Scholars on their own: just a mammoth Taverner motet (Gaude plurimum -- for Marian feasts, possibly specifically for Assumption, judging by the quotation of the Assumpta est Maria antiphon at one point) and Byrd's somber Nunc dimittis, neither of which is technically proper to Christmas. In the latter piece, the arching phrase "Lumen ad revelationem gentium" cycled several times through the various voice parts, providing an ingenious example of the intelligent type of singing that makes the group so good, performance that benefits from the understanding of form and compositional technique. Gaude plurimum showed that the group's sopranos have nerves of steel, flying high as the treble part is often so distant from the lower parts. Most of the selections that combined voices with instruments -- viols, recorders, lute, organ or harpsichord -- were even more pleasing, especially two unusual Christmas anthems, Orlando Gibbons's See the word incarnate and Byrd's From Virgin's Womb. The latter -- which I have studied in score but never heard performed live -- alternates between a low treble solo and a four-voice, all-treble quire, or refrain, in rollicking triplets. Even better, although the Tallis Scholars have recorded music by these composers, this was the first time their performance of these pieces reached my ears.

Other Reviews: Tom Huizenga, In the end, Tallis Scholars rock the Renaissance at Gaston Hall concert (Washington Post December 13)

Two settings of the Hosanna filio David text, derived from an antiphon proper to Palm Sunday (the shouts of the crowd as Jesus entered Jerusalem), by Gibbons and Weelkes, could conceivably apply to Christmas, although there is no liturgical tradition of such an association. In both versions, the sound of the instruments and voices together blossomed in fullness. That conclusion was preceded by a rare piece of liturgical music by Henry Purcell, a setting of Laetatus sum (Psalm 121, I Was Glad) -- written not for Christmas but for the coronation of King James II. Between laughing lines expressing joy and an intensely contrapuntal doxology, the words "O pray for the peace of Jerusalem" were set to austere homophony, a pious entreaty. The instrumental selections, at their best, added rhythmic zest to the program, as in the charming romp of Purcell's Hornpipe on a Ground and the pairing of an ornamented instrumental version of the tune Greensleeves with a simple, shortened performance of Thomas Ravenscroft's Remember O thou man. The overwhelming heat in the hall, counteracting a very cold night, played havoc with the intonation of the instruments, in spite of lengthy attempts to tune them. William Billings's Judea made for a merry encore.

Violinist Julie Andrijeski leads a Baroque instrument orchestra for the Folger Consort's New Year concert (January 7 and 8), which brings together several sets of instrumental pieces that depict the four seasons.

At the Court of Henry VIII with Folger Consort and Lionheart

Read my review published today in the Style section of the Washington Post:

Charles T. Downey, Folger's music presentation is fit for King Henry's court
Washington Post, October 4, 2010

Lionheart, Paris 1200: Chant and Polyphony from 12th Century France

The Folger Consort's latest program of Renaissance music, "Pastime With Good Company," lived up to its name. This outstanding selection of secular and sacred music from around the reign of King Henry VIII, heard Saturday evening, was timed to coincide with the upcoming production of Shakespeare's "Henry VIII" at the Folger Theatre. It was music worth hearing, most of it not familiar, performed with sensitivity and polish.

Sacred music for the Chapel Royal, performed by the six-man vocal ensemble Lionheart, was the most strikingly beautiful. Movements from the "Meane Mass" of John Taverner and some of the Proper chants for Trinity Sunday provided a framework like that of a Mass. The polyphony was balanced among the six voices, generally distributed among three or four parts, with bass Kurt-Owen Richards providing a solid but not growling foundation.

The sole countertenor (Lawrence Lipnik) was occasionally weak at the top of the texture, but that made the inner voices easier to distinguish. Most impressively, the ensemble switched effortlessly between the flowing, unmetered style of chant and the measured harmonies of unaccompanied polyphony, like William Cornysh's gorgeous motet "Ave Maria Mater Dei." The Renaissance English pronunciation of Latin observed by the singers, although justified by research, was jarring. [Continue reading]

Pastime with Good Company
Folger Consort and Lionheart
Folger Shakespeare Library

'Tempest' in the 17th Century

Locke, Music for The Tempest, Il Giardino Armonico The Tempest (music by Locke and others), Folger Consort The Enchanted Island (Music for a Restoration "Tempest"), Musicians of the Globe, P. Pickett [Buy new at Arkiv]

The Folger Consort appended a special program to their 2009–2010 season, heard in its second performance on Friday night in the Music Center at Strathmore. If you are a regular reader here or of my weekly concert picks column at DCist, you heard about the special discounted tickets available for this performance and hopefully took advantage of the offer. As expected, it turned out to be the best concert of the Folger's season, for the strength of the musical selections and the accomplishment of the performers, both musical and dramatic.

The performance was a two-hour distillation of Shakespeare's enigmatic and excellent play The Tempest, arranged and directed by Richard Clifford. Carefully chosen excerpts from the play gave the bare outline of the story and touched on some of its most powerful language. As read (from scripts rather than recited) by Clifford and Derek Jacobi, Shakespeare's words sounded both plain and quotidian and yet grandly poetic. It was not only a well-trained awareness of the meter, which fits with the Shakespearean accentuation of "The Duke of Milan" (with the name of the Italian city pronounced like the last two syllables of MacMillan), for example, but the sort of expertise with the words and phrasing that comes from a lifetime in the British Shakespearean tradition.

Clifford gave a rough-hewn voice and crude gestures to the bestial character of Caliban, an interpretation that somehow recalled the leading academic interpretation of the play, as a deconstruction of colonial exploitation of master-slave relationships. The most memorable readings, no surprise, were by Jacobi, especially the last roar of Prospero and the magician's tender, resigned epilogue, but also a hilariously drunken Stephano. Local actress Holly Twyford filled in for the late Lynn Redgrave, taking the parts of Ariel, Miranda, and Trinculo. The amplification problems that bedeviled the Thursday performance were thankfully resolved (for the most part, other than a few odd noises that crept into the sound).

This unusual story, often comic but not exactly a comedy and sometimes tragic but certainly not a tragedy, has inspired many musical settings, including incidental music to accompany the play by Arthur Sullivan, Sibelius, and many others, as well as several operatic adaptations, the best and most recent of which is by Thomas Adès. Matthew Locke's extensive collection of musical pieces, composed for Thomas Shadwell's quasi-operatic adaptation of the play in 1674 (using the version of the text put together by John Dryden and William Davenant), is among the best, which deserves a chance to be heard with a more complete staging of the Shakespeare original. This pleasing music, infused with Baroque dance rhythms and sounding cut from the same cloth as Locke's approximate contemporary Lully, outshone most of the vocal selections by the other composers involved in that massive 1674 production (John Banister, Pelham Humphrey, and Pietro Reggio).

Other Review: Joan Reinthaler, The Folger Consort's 'Tempest' with Sir Derek Jacobi (Washington Post, June 11)

The small orchestra fielded by the Folger Consort suffered from a slight lack of ensemble -- especially between the violins, not always in unity of tone and intonation and separated on one side by the continuo group, and the violas and cellos on the other side -- due to the lack of a conductor. The winds, on the other hand, sounded excellent both as part of the whole texture and in their outings as a solo group. Adam Pearl should be commended for stepping in at short notice to replace Webb Wiggins at the harpsichord: the substitution caused a few minor delays as cues were sorted out with the singers, but he played well.

D. Daniels, Sento amor, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, H. Bicket

Baritone Robert McDonald's voice was more brash than smooth and mellow, which unbalanced some of the duets with his vocal partner, the outstanding countertenor David Daniels. Most of the vocal selections were forgettable and squandered the talent of both singers: dramatic recitatives (like Prospero's spell Arise, ye subterranean winds, by Reggio) and little duo couplets (like My Lord: Great Neptune, for my sake, by Humphrey). Some were worth discovering, especially the airs for Ariel, like Banister's Come unto these yellow sands and Humphrey's Where the bee sucks, sung by Daniels with clarity and humor.

Two selections taken from Handel's operas were marginally related to the story: the graceful but anguished slow aria Qual nave smarrita (from Radamisto, in which Daniels starred at Santa Fe Opera a couple years ago) and the dizzyingly virtuosic fireworks display Furibondo spira il vento (from Partenope, which Daniels recorded on his album Sento amor). The texts, like most arias written in the 18th century, are meant to be dramatic spare parts, so that singers or composers could take them from their original context and plug them into unrelated operas where the sentiment was similar: the words compare the character's unspecified personal suffering to the tossing of a ship or the lashing of fierce winds. Truthfully, the only reason they were included was that one of the world's leading Handelians was on the stage, and that's good enough for me.


Handel, Furibondo spira il vento, from Partenope
(David Daniels, Sento amor)

Banquet at the Folger

Tom Zajac (with musette)

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

The Folger Consort concluded its season of 1610 -- with a performance of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers as the centerpiece -- this weekend with a tribute to another great publication from that year (heard at the Saturday, 5 pm performance). In that year Robert Dowland, the son of lutenist and composer John Dowland, published a collection called A Musicall Banquet, which included music by his famous father, as well as other composers, including some Italian pieces in the latest Baroque style. The menu was filled out with some amuse-gueules, dances with gastronomic names from John Playford's 1651 collection The English Dancing Master. The best of these were the dances featuring the always versatile Tom Zajac, especially on the musette, or Renaissance bagpipe, like The Punchbowl and Lumps of Pudding. Zajac, who is usually credited as a multi-instrumentalist, earned his keep throughout the evening with performances on tenor recorder and various sizes of traverso, filling out parts, as well as the most virtuosic performance of the evening, his own adaptation of the divisions of Caccini's Amarilli mia bella by Jacob van Eyck. For Robert Johnson's Sir Francis Bacon's Masques, he even played both the drum and a one-handed penny whistle -- simultaneously.

The songs on the program were performed by tenor Mark Bleeke, who was at his best in comic songs like John Dowland's Fine knacks for ladies and Playford's hilariously smutty Watkins Ale, as well as more quick-paced songs that featured his voice's agile side, like Thomas Morley's See mine own sweet jewel and the charming birdsong imitations in the anonymous This merry pleasant spring. Slower songs that required a more mellifluous legato, like Dowland's Farre from triumphing court and Caccini's Amarilla mia bella, did not always suit him very well, bringing a raspy uneven sound, close to breaking at points as he seemed to pressure the sound into a smooth line. Exceptions were Dowland's gorgeous Flow, my tears, with lutenist Charles Weaver singing the bass line, and Caccini's lovely Dovrò dunque morire, with Weaver accompanying alone on therbo.

Weaver's work on lute, theorbo, and guitar was the other highlight of the concert's instrumental side, especially a sweet little anonymous piece called Rossignol (that Eisenstein did not mention the piece in his otherwise thorough program notes makes me wonder about the origin of the work), arranged for two lutes and performed with lutenist Christopher Kendall, and a quiet solo lute turn on Dowland's Lord Chamberlain's Galliard. Robert Eisenstein's audible suffering from a cold was likely the cause of a concentration lapse that set him off his violin part for a time in Giovanni Coprario's suite.

The final program of the Folger Consort's season, recently added to the calendar, may turn out to be its best: a performance of incidental music for Shakespeare's The Tempest by Matthew Locke and others (June 10 and 11), which will be accompanied by readings from the play by Derek Jacobi, Lynn Redgrave, and Richard Clifford. The ensemble has also announced its 2010-2011 season, centered on a program combining music on the theme of the seasons by Vivaldi, Christopher Simpson, and John Cage. Collaborators include Lionheart, the Augsburg Cathedral Boys' Choir, Trefoil, and soprano Jolle Greenleaf.

Ballets and Branles and Love Songs

This review is an Ionarts exclusive.

Country dance (drawing by John Evangelist Holtzer, 17th century), from The Dance: Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D.

The Folger Consort's season thus far has been, well, not exactly a disappointment but not quite in the same category as some of the ensemble's notable successes of recent years. Last night's performance of their new program, Ballets and Brawls: French Music of Court and Countryside (a title reminiscent of a 2007 program), may not merit a rave review, but the selection of music is generally of considerable interest, and the musical quality high enough for me to recommend attending one of the remaining performances. The season takes its theme from the year of publication of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers, which was the centerpiece of the group's program in this year of the publication's 400th anniversary. For this concert the Folger Consort focused on French music from and around the year 1610, including instrumental pieces intended for various kinds of dancing and love songs performed by two of the group's favorite singers, soprano Rosa Lamoreaux and baritone William Sharp. In addition to some charming comic moments, with plenty of raised eyebrows and winked eyes, the two singers collaborated on some serious songs, the most beautiful of which was Thomas Crequillon's mournful Quand me souvient/Ung triste coeur.

Lute songs celebrating courtly love or the other kind -- with all those couples going for lie-downs on the grass that get them covered with dew -- were the best part of the program. Lamoreaux's silvery, clear voice was ideal for pieces like Etienne Moulinié's Enfin la beauté que j'adore and Pierre Guédron's Un jour l'amoureuse Sylvie, with the gentle accompaniment of lutenist Christopher Kendall. Sharp had his own charming solo moments, showing the expressive side of his voice in Dans ce beau séjour de plaisir, also by Guédron, as well as his hilarious skill as a comic actor with a performance of Gabriel Bataille's drinking song Qui veut chasser un migraine, in which the singer became more and more audibly inebriated. These are pieces in a style that is often forgotten even by specialist performers, too late for the Renaissance and too early for the high Baroque. The only reservation was that occasionally fake reverberation, which appeared to be piped through the sound system's speakers above the stage, ruined the natural acoustic of the Folger's beautiful theater.

The instrumentalists -- founders Kendall and Robert Eisenstein, joined by Gwyn Roberts (recorder and traverso), Dan Stilman (dulcian and recorder), and the multi-talented Tom Zajac -- had their best moments in the second half, as a recorder consort on a suite of dance music arranged by Michael Praetorius and a fantasie by Claude Le Jeune. For some reason, the less heterogeneous instrumental combinations were troubled by intonation issues. This was especially true in the first half, when lute, viol, and transverse flutes just did not generally come to agreement for whatever reason. In the second half, one of those odd-duck combinations (sackbut, dulcian, bass recorder, and viol) did have a beautifully tuned, mellow-toned moment in a fantasie by Eustache Du Caurroy. Also, the transverse flutes did blend better with the recorder, viol, and lute in another Praetorius set, the delightful Ballet de la Comédie, and Zajac had some more wonderful turns with the bagpipe in two sets of branles, one arranged by Attaingnant and the other by Praetorius -- the country dances that gave the English form of their name, brawl, to this pleasing program.

This concert will be repeated today (March 20, 5 and 8 pm) and tomorrow (March 21, 2 pm), at the Folger Shakespeare Library.