2024
Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival ~
Period Instrument chamber music from six centuries ~
~
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2024:
BAROQUE IN TRANSITION
The Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival returns for
the first time since the pandemic with three
programs of early chamber music from four centuries
performed on period instruments in Annapolis,
Baltimore
and on Capitol Hill inWashington, DC.
These programs illuminate an
evolving 17th century musical perspective in Italy
and France and throughout Europe in the context of
the music of earlier and later centuries.
"Renaissance" and "Baroque" instrumental colors were
very much in flux and existed side by side,
reflecting an evolving musical taste, with striking
contrast as they diverged through French and Italian
society with an exchange of ideas between the two.
Some instruments such as the transverse flute of the
Renaissance were slower to respond to trends in
vocal music as their qualities continued to suit the
requirements of the instrumental composers of the
day, before undergoing a rather drastic evolution
physically somewhat later in the 17th century, in
response to the new expectations of vocal
expression.
Early 17th-century works for violin
with Renaissance transverse flute with
both theorbo and baroque guitar
illuminate a central period
of transition between
Renaissance and Baroque,
followed by champions of Italian and
French baroque styles.
The canzona, having
appeared in the 1570's as a more
vocally inspired instrumental form
than the earlier ricercare, evolved
into the familiar sonata as it
became ever more instrumentally
idiosyncratic and virtosic. Wildly
new instrumental colors developed in
the later 17th century, with intense
discussion and disagreement between
proponents of the diverging Italian
and French styles, which are
illustrated here with music by
Corelli and Lully.
PROGRAM
(renaissance
instruments)
Tarquinio Merula (1595-1665)
— Canzon 3 "la
Bulgarina"
Marco Uccellini
(1603-1680)
— Sonata
Sesta
Marco Uccellini — Sonata
Ottava
Giovanni Legrenzi (1626-1690)
— Sonata Prima "La Cornara"
Dario Castello
(1602-1631)
— Terza Sonata
Giovanni Battista
Buonamente (ca 595-1642)
— Sonata Prima
Salamone Rossi
(1570-1630)
— Sonata quarta sopra
l'Arie di Ruggiero
(baroque
instruments)
Jean Baptiste
Lully (1632-1687)
Archangelo Corelli
(1653-1713)
— Sonata XII
Fantasia
11 by Giovanni Bassano (1585)
January 11, 2021
Three centuries of Dutch, Italian, French,
English, Scottish, Irish and Ukrainian
folk music, both sacred and secular, from
the Renaissance, Baroque and Romantic
periods on the plucked instruments and
transverse flutes of three centuries are
to be included.
In three parts, this program opens with
early 17th century settings of Psalms and
variations on folk melodies by the flutist
and carilloneur Jacob Van Eyck, performed
in part simultaneously with variations
from 1620 by the lutenist Nicolas Vallet,
on renaissance descant, tenor and bass
transverse flutes and lute. Then, early
18th-century Scottish and Irish folk tunes
as interpreted and embellished by early
18th-century composers Francesco Barsanti,
Turlough O'Carolan and others are to be
heard on baroque flute and lute followed
by music featuring a rare wire-strung
English Guitar made in London in 1861.
Finally, an Eastern European 7-string
guitar made in 1820 in Russia alongside an
eight-keyed flute made in London in the
same year bring to life popular melodies
of the early 19th century including Irish
airs and popular dances, as interpreted by
virtuoso flutists and guitarists of
Beethoven’s day such as Mauro Giuliani,
Louis Drouet, and Charles Nicholson.
Vocal music from the 16th through 18th
centuries is explored purely
instrumentally, as was common practice
particularly in the renaissance and
previous centuries.
This program features
Renaissance two-part settings of
16th-century French songs by Pierre
Regnault Sandrin, virtuoso diminutions
on madrigals, and selections from
Giovanni Paulo Cima's Concerti
Ecclesiastici and Jan Pieterszoon
Sweelinck's Rimes françoises et
italiennes for voices and/or
instruments. The luscious vocal airs
de cour of the time of Louis XIII and
Louis XIV influenced a fundamental
re-envisioning of wind instruments as
they assumed their "Baroque"
characteristics, which are to be heard
as interpreted by flutist Jacques
Hotteterre and will be on display in
favorite Scottish and Irish airs as
rendered by 18th-century
instrumentalists Turlough O'Carolan
and Burk Thumoth, alongside selections
from "The Seasons" by James Oswald and
"Les Goûts-réünis" by Francois
Couperin.
The
Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival has
since 2000 presented chamber music by
familiar as well as little-known composers
from the Renaissance through the present on
Capitol Hill in period instrument
performances which intend to shed new light
upon early performance practice as well as
contemporary works. Unpublished works from
the Library of Congress are given particular
attention, and many have received their
modern day premieres during these concerts,
in addition to premieres of works by
Slovenian composers. The Capitol Hill
Chamber Music Festival is a nonprofit
corporation in the District of Columbia and
an affiliate organization of Early Music
America.
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SSEMF
banner: detail from "Indeterminate
Landscape" by James C. Holl.
