ArsAntiguaPresents.com

 

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This month’s program (10 minutes and 32 seconds) explores the music of Giovanni Battista Lully. In 1646, at the tender age of 14, Lully was pressed into service for the French Chevalier de Guise as a dishwasher. Just seven years later, his fame as a dancer, comedian and composer had grown enormously and he had risen to the position of Louis XIV’s in-house composer, the compositeur de la musique instrumentale.

In 1670 Lully collaborated with the playwright Molière on a comédie-ballets called Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the featured work for this month’s program. Of particular note is the March pour Le Grand Ceremonie des Turcs that opens this work, which reflects the then-current trend for “les turqueries”- all things related to the Ottoman Empire. This month’s performance features Ars Antigua under the direction of Jerry Fuller.

 

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This month’s program (10 minutes) features Jeff Noonan and two plucked instruments common in the 17th century, the theorbo and the Baroque guitar. The theorbo is a long-necked member of the lute family that features a set of bass strings that extend all the way up to a second pegbox. Not only do these strings extend the range of the theorbo, but they also resonate with the upper strings, giving the instrument a harplike quality to its sound. Our first selection is Girolamo Kapsberger’s Toccata Arpeggiata for theorbo.

The episode continues with a set of variations on a ground, “Il Kapsberger.” Kapsberger was a virtuoso performer on the lute, theorbo and chitarrone, and played a seminal role in their development into solo instruments.

This month’s episode concludes with a little bit of Spanish music from around the turn of the 17th century. Gaspar Sanz, the dominant figure in Spanish Baroque music, was a composer whose effect on modern composers is perhaps most evident in this Pavan and Canarios; Joaquin Rodrigo used part of it as the central theme in his famous Fantasia para un Gentilhombre.

 

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This month’s program (8 minutes and 45 seconds) celebrates the life of Franz Joseph Haydn, who passed from this earth 200 years ago this month. Though he never had children, the composer is often referred to as “Papa” Haydn, and his fatherly guidance was essential in the development of the
symphony and string quartet. We’ll hear first a cassation, a form that was usually part of wedding entertainment. In this Cassation in G, one can hear many of the elements that Haydn would incorporate into his symphonies.

From a little later in Haydn’s life, we’ll then hear a menuetto from an early symphonic masterpiece of Haydn, subtitled “the Night,” or “Le Soir.”

 

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In this episode (12 minutes and 57 seconds) we’ll hear the winners of the 2009 Ars Antigua-Midwest Young Artists competition, generously sponsored by Walgreens.

Amy Pikler, a sophomore at New Trier High School, began playing music at the age of 5 and now studies violin and viola with Desiree Ruhstrat and recorder with Patrick O’Malley at the Music Institute of Chicago. In addition to winning competitions on both the regional and national level, she has appeared as soloist with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra, the North Suburban Symphony, the Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest, the Knox-Galesburg Symphony, and several more across the U.S.

Evan Fojtik is 15 and a sophomore at Lake Zurich High School. He began his music studies at age 10, and currently studies flute with Diane Horban and plays in the Midwest Young Artists Symphony Orchestra and chamber music program. Honors include first chair in the District 7 IMEA honors band the past three years, first place in the Junior Division of the Chicago Flute Club student competition, and placement in the senior division. Evan has been featured in the Pilgrim Chamber Players Stars of Tomorrow recital, and also in recital at Ravinia. Like Amy, Evan has received high honors at the Walgreens Concerto Competition on numerous occasions.

For this performance, Evan Fojik and Amy Pickler are joined by David Schrader at the harpsichord for Telemann’s Concerto in e minor for Flute and Recorder.

 

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Our program “Marche Madness” ( 8 minutes and 16 seconds) features five festive marches for baroque orchestra:

• “Marche en Rondeau” by Jean-Joseph Mouret (1628-1728)
• “Te Deum Prelude Marche” by Marc-Antoine Charpantier (1643-1704)
• “March from The Island Princess” by Jeremiah Clarke (1674-1742)
• “March” by Jan Brentner (1689-1742)
• “Marche pour Le Grand Ceremonie des Turcs” by Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)

 

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In our program “De Profundis” (9 minutes and 5 seconds), Ars Antigua celebrates its lower range with performances of:

• The “Passamezzo Antico” by Diego Ortiz (1510-1570) performed by Jerry Fuller, violone; Neal Richardson, virginal and Jeff Noonan, theorbo; and
• “Balleto et Corrento per il violoncello agionta la spinetta” performed by Marina Nielsen, violoncino; Jim Lambert, violone; Jim Oxyer, virginal and David Dolata, harpsichord

Spanish composer Diego Ortiz worked form 1555 to 1570 at the vice-regal court of the Duke of Alba in Naples. His treatise on viol playing is an astounding source of Renaissance ornamentation and improvisational practice. His techniques led to the English ‘divisions on a ground’ and the improvisatory viola bastarda style.

The cello in 17th century Venice came in two sizes–the violoncello, was rather larger than today’s standard cello and was used to play the more static bass lines of polyphonic music while the violoncino, being smaller was given to rapid virtuosic solo music. Marieta Prioli’s Balletto et Corrento is for this smaller instrument, and contains a rather acrobatic Corrento.

 

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Our program, Music from Jeremiah Clarke’s “The Island Princess” (12 minutes and 9 seconds), features eight selections from this dramatic opera or semi-opera. Semi-operas developed in England between 1673 and 1710 and were performed with singing, speaking and dancing roles. When music was written, it was usually for moments in the play immediately following either love scenes or those concerning the supernatural. Jeremiah Clarke (1674-1707) was an English baroque composer and associate of Henry Purcell. Clarke was a pupil of John Blow at St Paul’s Cathedral. In “The Island Princess”, a group of Euopean voyagers travel to the Spice Islands and are astounded by the alien culture they encounter. The music, written in 1699, contains the first appearance of what has become known to us as the “Trumpet Tune” of wedding and graduation fame.

The incidental music for “The Island Princess ” includes:

• First Musick/Jig
• Minuet
• Second Act Tune
• Third Act Tune
• Winter Dance with a stove, a Dutchman and an old miser
• Spring Dance for Girles with Nosegaus
• Summer Dance by Blacks
• Autumn Dance by a French Clowne and a Country Woman in Wooden Shoe

 

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Our program this month features three Baroque compositions by women composers, performed by the Ars Femina ensemble.

The first work on our program is Componimento for violin and continuo, composed in Venice in 1622 by Lucrezia Vizana. Vizana entered the convent of St Christine in 1598 at the age of 8, where she was trained in music. Her compositions are characterized by virtuosic ornamentation, as we’ll hear in this performance by violin soloist Katie Whiteside.

Next on our program are Two Dutch Carols by Anna Ovena Hoijer. Both carols were composed in Rotterdam, the first in 1617, and the second in 1622. Although Hoijer was Dutch, she wrote in German to reach a wider audience. In this performance, the mezzo-soprano soloist Julie Hartwein sings in German, and the chorus is sung in English.

The final pieces on this program are Two canzonas for duo violins, composed in Regensberg , Germany in 1600. These instrumental pieces were discovered in the bindings of a set of choirbooks used at the Regensberg Cathedral, with the composer only identified as “La Contessa.” Thanks to recent scholarship, the mysterious composer has finally been identified as Maria Paterina.

 

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Our program (10 minutes and 4 seconds) features “Singet Dem Herrn”, for soprano with violin obbligato by Dietrich Buxtehude (c. 1637-1707). The organist Dietrich Buxtehude is widely considered the most important German composer of the mid Baroque period and “Singet Dem Herrn” is one of his most beautiful works. His style strongly influenced many composers, including Johann Sebastian Bach.

The motet “Singet Dem Herrn” by Dietrich Buxtehude with soprano soloist Tamara Miller-Campbell; William Bauer, violin; and Neal Richardson, harpsichord.

 

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Our program (10 minutes and 23 seconds) features the modern premiere of the “Intrada” and “Trezza” by Johann Heinrich von Schmelzer (1623-1680) as well as the”Turkische Intrada” by William Brade (1516-1630), the “Intrada” from “Banchetto Musicali” by Johann Hermann Schein (1516-1630) and the In Nomine “CRYE” (cry) by Christopher Tye (1505-1573).

Johann Heinrich von Schmelzer was the Kapellmeister to Leopold I and a renowned violinist across Europe. Schmelzer is often regarded as the first composer to integrate the tunes of the Viennese street musicians into sophisticated instrumental court music. His “Intrada” and “Trezza” performed here were recently found among a set of Austrian pieces deposited at the Uppsala University in Sweden. This vast collection contains over 2,000 musical works in manuscript from the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and was donated to the Uppsala University Library in 1732 by Anders von Duben. This broadcast is the modern premiere of this work.