Friday, April 26, 2013

Final program, notes and translations for our season finale French Cantatas Mixed With Symphonies, 8PM, Apr. 27th 2013 at Heliconian Hall.


French Cantatas Mixed with Symphonies

Musette Jean-Baptiste de Bousset (1662-1725)

Piéces en Mi Mineur Marin Marais (1656–1728)
Prelude-Le Tableau de l'Operation de la Taille-Les Relevailles

Factum est silentium Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749)

Piéces en Sol Mineur Louis Couperin (c.1626-1661)
Prelude-Allemande-Courante-Sarabande-Passacaille

Sonate a la Maresienne Marais
Un peu grave-Legerement-Un peu gay-Sarabande-Tres vivement-Gravement-Gigue

Intermission

Piéces en Sol Majeur Robert de Visée (c.1655-1732/3)
Prelude-Menuet-Entrée Des Espagnols de M De Lully-Les Sylvains de M Couperin 

Semelé-Cantate Avec Simphonie Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729)

The Musicians In Ordinary
Named after the singers and lutenists who performed in the most intimate quarters of the Stuart monarchs’ palace, The Musicians In Ordinary for the Lutes and Voices dedicate themselves to the performance of early solo song and vocal chamber music. Soprano Hallie Fishel and lutenist John Edwards have been described as ‘winning performers of winning music’. A fixture on the Toronto early music scene for over 10 years, this year MIO became Ensemble in Residence at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto and next month they have been invited to give lectures and a concert at University of California, San Diego. They have concertized across North America and lecture regularly at universities and museums. Institutions where MIO have performed range from the scholarly to those for a more general public and include the Renaissance Society of America, Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, Grinnell College, the Universities of Alberta and Toronto, Syracuse, Trent and York Universities and the Bata Shoe Museum. They have been Ensemble in Residence at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. Their CD of Elizabethan and Jacobean songs on the topic of sleep, Sleep Wayward Thoughts, is available at intermission.

Christopher Verrette has been a member of the violin section of Tafelmusik since 1993 and is a frequent soloist and leader with the orchestra. He holds a Bachelor of Music and a Performer’s Certificate from Indiana University and contributed to the development of early music in the American Midwest as a founding member of the Chicago Baroque Ensemble and Ensemble Voltaire, and as a guest director with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. He collaborates with many ensembles around North America, performing music from seven centuries on violin, viola, rebec, vielle and viola d’amore. He was concertmaster for a recording of rarely heard classical symphonies for a recently released anthology by Indiana University Press, and most recently collaborated with Sylvia Tyson on the companion recording to her novel, Joyner’s Dream.

Philip Fournier is Titular Organist of the Toronto Oratory, Director of the Chant Schola & Oratory Children’s Choir. He specializes in Gregorian Chant, which he studied at Solesmes with Dom Saulnier. He gives solo organ recitals regularly at the Oratory, is guest organist of the Toronto Tallis Choir, artistic director and continuo player of the St. Vincent’s Baroque Soloists, and is active as a composer. His organ and harpsichord teachers have included James David Christie at the College of the Holy Cross, Russell Saunders, Paul O’Dette & Arthur Haas at the Eastman School of Music, and Robert Clark & John Metz at Arizona State. Mr. Fournier was the first Organ Scholar of the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester USA, and was subsequently named a Fenwick Scholar, the highest academic honour given by the College. He was one of the recitalists of the Chapel Artists Series there in 2011. He won the Historical Organ in America competition in 1992 and performed at Arizona State University on the Paul Fritts organ, and was awarded a recital on the Flentrop instrument at Duke University. Mr. Fournier was Organist & Director of Music at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Portland Maine, from 2000-2007, during which time he founded the Cathedral Schola Cantorum for the restoration of Gregorian Chant and Renaissance Polyphony to the Stational Masses of the Diocese of Portland.

Justin Haynes studied cello and viola da gamba at Harvard and the Royal Dutch Conservatory under Philippe Pierlot, Anneke Pols and Reiner Zipperling. Currently based in Toronto, he has performed with Folia, Scaramella, Tafelmusik and Opera Atelier, as well as with the Boston-based Arcturus Chamber Ensemble and Les Bostonades. He is also a founding member of the baroque chamber ensemble, L’Indiscrete. Justin’s interest in the viol includes the history and construction of the instrument itself. After making the viol he currently plays on, he was awarded a Shaw traveling fellowship to study instrument making in London and explore the great Northern European viol collections. He maintains an atelier in Boston, where he is curator of Harvard’s historical instrument collection.


At the beginning of the 18th century, books with titles like ‘Cantates Françoises Melées de Symphonies’ started coming from French music presses. André Campra boasted that in his book of cantatas he had ‘mixed with the delicacy of French music, the vivacity of Italian.’ Many pamphlets on whether the elegant, even precious French style or the direct, dramatic Italian was ‘better’ were printed in this period and melding the styles became a goal for composers. François Couperin even published a book of chamber music callled Les Goûts réunis. This Couperin is the composer of Les Sylvains, arranged from the keyboard original for theorbo by de Visée. Couperin and de Visée played together with the viol player Forqueray, the violinist Rebel and the flute player Descôteaux in 1701 at a salon. De Visée’s main job, however, was playing a nightly concert for the king in his bedchamber.


In the middle of the 17th century, lute players like the Gautiers had set the trend for depictive music by applying titles like ‘The Beautiful Murderess’ or ‘Cleopatra in Love’ to dance pieces. The opera composer Lully found this useful for Tempest and Sleep movements in his works and this was one of the French traits that, as we will hear tonight, the style reuniters retained. The thunder and lightning of Jupiter’s approach is painted in Lullian style in Semelé. Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre was a musical prodigy at the French court at the tender age of five performing on the harpsichord. Later, she played public concerts in Paris and was the first to bring the exotic Italian cantata to France.



We hear the bagpipes of the shepherd in Bousset’s Musette. Pastoralism was having a last hurrah in 18th century France. Bousset was a minor nobleman who worked as the maître de musique in the chapel of the Louvre and published several books of Airs. The Bibliothèque nationale de France has begun digitizing their collections of music and making it available online. After poring through dozens of the books of airs, we made an edition from the original print (which is rather difficult to read in its pixelated form) so it may be that you are hearing the North American premier of this little piece tonight.


We procured the motet for St. Michael the Archangel the same way, and again there seems to be no other modern edition but ours. We are less confident about this being the first modern performance though, since Clérambault is one of the best known French composers of the period.  He worked as organist at a large Parisian church and as a household musician for the secret wife of Louis XIV, Madame de Maintenon.


In perhaps the most famous of French Baroque depictive pieces, Marais paints us an all too vivid tableau of the bladder stone operation he endured. This piece is often said to depict a gall bladder operation, but that procedure was not performed until the 19th century. The unsqueamish can find the Traite de Lithomie (the frontispiece of which is reproduced above) on Google books. Marais has the distinction of being played by Gérard Depardieu in the movie Tous les matins du monde where he is depicted as something of a social climber. Indeed he did rise from humble origins. The Sonate a la Maresienne sees Marais in a more Italianate mood.


Louis Couperin was uncle of the forementioned François. He also worked as a church organist and may have been the first ‘reuniter of the styles’ as he absorbed the Italian style through his musical mentor Froberger, who, curiously, was a German, into his suites of dances.



Friday, April 19, 2013



Hallie and I were rehearsing the other day and checking the editions we'd made of a Musette by Jean-Baptiste de Bousset for voice and a treble instrument and continuo and a motet on St. Michael beating the dragon in a fight. But we got bogged down.

Here's the probable repertoire for the Apr. 27th concert French Cantatas Mixed with Symphonies with 8PM, Apr. 27th 2013.
In his book of ‘Cantates Françoises Melées de Symphonies’ published in 1708, André Campra tells us he has “mixed with the delicacy of French music, the vivacity of Italian.” All composers of French cantata sought to meld the elegance of the Sun King’s court with the, well, flashiness of the Italian Baroque in both the vocal and instrumental (that is the ‘symphonies’ of the title) sections. Hallie Fishel, soprano and John Edwards, theorbo are joined by Christopher Verrette, violin, Philip Fournier, harpsichord and Justin Haynes, viola da gamba

Heliconian Hall, 35 Hazelton Ave. (near Bay Subway)
Single tickets $25/$20 students & seniors, available at the door which opens a 1/2 hour before concert time.


Musette Jean-Baptiste de Bousset 1662-1725

Piéces en Mi Mineur Marin Marais (1656–1728)
Prelude-Le Tableau de l'Operation de la Taille-Les Relevailles

Factum est silentium Louis-Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749)

Piéces en Sol Mineur Louis Couperin (c.1626-1661)
Prelude-Allemande-Courante-Sarabande-Passacaille

Sonate a la Maresienne Marais
Louis XIV and his musicians, a big theorbo and a guitar.
Intermission

Piéces en Sol Majeur Robert de Visée (c.1655-1732/3)
Prelude-Menuet-Entrée Des Espagnols de M De Lully-Les Sylvains de M Couperin 

Semelé-Cantate Avec Simphonie    Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729)

Monday, April 1, 2013


The program and notes from the concert we just did for the The Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and the conference of Shakespeare Association of America. Katie Larson was special guest star as the Ariel in the Eccho song, singing from the hallway.

The 2013 William R. Bowen Concert
The Musicians In Ordinary for the Lutes 
and Voices

A Thousand Times Better and More Glorious

Emmanuel College Chapel
Mar. 30th 2013

Music from The Tempest
First Musick - Introduction-Galliard-Gavot Matthew Locke (c.1621-1677)
Dear, pritty youth Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Second Musick - Sarabrand-Lilk Locke
Come unto these yellow Sands John Banister (c.1630-1679)
Curtain Tune Locke
Dry those Eyes Banister
The First Act Tune-Rustick Air Locke
Full Fathom five Banister
The Second Act Tune-Minoit Locke
Where the Bee sucks Pelham Humphrey (1647-1674)
The Third Act Tune - Corant Locke
Adieu to the Pleasures James Hart (1647-1718)
The Fourth Act Tune - A Martial Jigge Locke
Eccho song Banister
The Conclusion - A Canon 4 in 2 Locke

Curtain Tune from Timon of Athens Purcell

Music from The Fairy Queen
If love’s a sweet passion Purcell
The Plaint Purcell
Chaccone Purcell
See, see even Night Purcell
Thus happy and free Purcell


Much of the music heard tonight comes from a 1674 adaptation of The Tempest by Thomas Shadwell. The play as adapted by Shadwell, an eyewitness tells us, was ‘made into an opera’. Well, opera starved 1670s Londoners might have thought that, but it was by no means a continuous music-drama such as we have come to understand the word. Certain attributes of Locke’s instrumental music, though, are depictive in the way that shows a familiarity with, and an eagerness to imitate the French opera of Lully. The Curtain Tune, especially, imitates the obligatory tempest movement of French Baroque opera with its smooth opening which moves into disquieting harmonies Locke had found left over from the English viol repertoire of the early 17th century. With directions in the score like ‘lowder by degrees’ ‘soft and slow by degrees’ and even ‘Violent’ we can say that this is not just instrumental music for the theatre, but fully ‘incidental music.’ Locke does give us plenty of dances, though, because as much as Charles II loved actresses, he hated ‘fancy music…to which he could not tap his foot’. A masque was added towards the end of the play with songs by Humphrey, who had studied in France, Bannister, who had led the king’s violin band, and the less notable James Hart. Songs for Caliban and other instrumental music by Giovanni Battista Draghi is lost. Purcell’s Dear pritty youth appears to be from a 1695 revival and led to the music for a very operatic 1712 production, complete with the added masque songs, being attributed to him from 1786 when ‘Purcell’s’ Tempest score was printed to the second half of the last century. Indeed many recordings of ‘Purcell’s’ Tempest are available and many undergraduate bass voice recitals include ‘his’ Handelian Arise ye subterranean winds’, though Dear pritty seems to have been all Purcell composed for the play. Poor John Weldon, the real composer. We know that at Dryden and Davenant’s Tempest there were members of the King’s Four and Twenty Fiddlers and ‘harpsicals and theorboes to accompany the voices placed between the pit and the stage’ which seems to imply that the string band and the ‘continuo’ instruments did not play together. Additionally, in manuscripts and printed sources of theatre instrumental music there are no figures in the bass part to tell the theorbist or harpsichordist what chords to play.

Though we present only the Curtain Tune for Timon of Athens, or The Man Hater adapted by Shadwell, Purcell composed the music for a masque complete with Cupids and lovers and ‘a Symphony of Pipes imitating the chirping of birds’ inserted into this play. The opera-buffication of Shakespeare seems to have been increasing.

With The Fairy Queen though, we see Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream dwarfed by the contribution of Purcell and the anonymous ‘adapter’. As if there were not enough scope for musical display with the fairies and country bumpkins, Purcell and the librettist add characters such as a Chinese Man and Lady, Green Men and a Drunken Poet. This character’s stammer and bibulousness might identify him as playwright Thomas D’Urfey so that slander can probably rule him out as author. In Purcell’s score for The Fairy Queen we see the strings becoming more integrated with the voices and their accompanying theorbist, even taking that role themselves in See see even night.

While out for a drink with Samuel Pepys, impresario and actor Tom Killigrew boasted that ‘the stage is now by his pains a thousand times better and more glorious than ever heretofore.’ Might we think Restoration theatre ‘more glorious’ than we presently give it credit for being if we heard more of the original music played in those entertainments?


The Musicians In Ordinary
Named after the singers and lutenists who performed in the most intimate quarters of the Stuart monarchs’ palace, The Musicians In Ordinary for the Lutes and Voices dedicate themselves to the performance of early solo song and vocal chamber music. Soprano Hallie Fishel and lutenist John Edwards have been described as ‘winning performers of winning music’. A fixture on the Toronto early music scene for over 10 years, in 2012 MIO became Ensemble in Residence at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. They have concertized across North America and lecture regularly at universities and museums. Institutions where MIO have performed range from the scholarly to those for a more general public and include the Renaissance Society of America, Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, Grinnell College, the Universities of Alberta and Toronto, the Kingston Opera Guild, Syracuse, Trent and York Universities and the Bata Shoe Museum. They have been Ensemble in Residence at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Christopher Verrette has been a member of the violin section of Tafelmusik since 1993 and is a frequent soloist and leader with the orchestra. He holds a Bachelor of Music and a Performer’s Certificate from Indiana University and contributed to the development of early music in the American Midwest as a founding member of the Chicago Baroque Ensemble and Ensemble Voltaire, and as a guest director with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. He collaborates with many ensembles around North America, performing music from seven centuries on violin, viola, rebec, vielle and viola d’amore. He was concertmaster for a recording of rarely heard classical symphonies for a recently released anthology by Indiana University Press, and most recently collaborated with Sylvia Tyson on the companion recording to her novel, Joyner’s Dream.

Patricia Ahern has a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Music from Northwestern University, a Master of Music from Indiana University, and performer’s diploma from the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland. She taught baroque violin at the Freiburg Conservatory in Germany and Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute, and has given masterclasses at McGill, York University, Wilfrid Laurier, University of Windsor, Western, University of Wisconsin, Grand Valley State University, and University of Toronto. She has concertized throughout Canada, the U.S., Europe, Asia, Australia and South America and performed with Milwaukee Baroque, Ars Antigua, Chicago Opera Theater, Kingsbury Ensemble, Aradia, I Furiosi, Newberry Consort, Musica Pacifica, and the Carmel Bach Festival. Tricia has recorded for Sony, Naxos, and Analekta, and joined Tafelmusik in 2002.

Eleanor Verrette studied violin in Toronto with Gretchen Paxson and Aisslinn Nosky, then viola in Montréal with Pemi Paull and Anna-Belle Marcotte. She graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor of Music in viola performance from McGill; she was a member of the McGill Baroque Orchestra for several years, including their performance in the Young Performers' Festival at the 2011 Boston Early Music Festival.  In addition to appearing with the Musicians In Ordinary in Toronto, she has recently been featured on the newest album releases by Montréal folk-pop artists Corinna Rose and Lakes Of Canada.

The new Artistic Director of the Academy Concert Series and a recipient of the Margarita Heron Pine String Prize and the Beryl Barns Graduate Scholarship, cellist Kerri McGonigle graduated with a Masters of Music degree in cello performance from the University of Alberta. While studying in Paris, she won Premier Prix with unanimous distinction in violoncello and chamber music from the Gennevilliers Conservatory. Having completed an Advanced Certificate in Baroque Performance with Tafelmusik through the University of Toronto, Kerri is based in Toronto and performs regularly as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician and orchestral cellist.

The CRRS Annual William R. Bowen Concert
During the Directorship of Renaissance music historian Professor Bowen, the CRRS expanded its operations in many new directions. The William R. Bowen Fund was established in his honour to create an endowment earmarked for an annual concert of early modern music.

The Musicians In Ordinary would like to extend their sincere thanks to the following:
Mike Schreiner for lute construction and maintenance
Alexandra Guerson for the MIO website design
Katie Larson for liasing
Lisa Wang for transportation.

The Musicians In Ordinary are supported by the Spem In Alium Fund of the Toronto Community Foundation.  

The Musicians In Ordinary are Ensemble-in-Residence at St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, which generously supports MIO’s research and performance.