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Browsing: Baroque and Early

Baroque Montreal: A Scene to Reckon with

By Olivier Brault on 5 November 2018 Baroque and Early, Violin

In a little less than 50 years, Montreal’s Baroque music scene has produced a steady flow of activities. It has delighted itself by mining the past and taking cues from many a fine role model. Initiatives are so numerous that the scene is now bursting at the seams while consolidating its reputation as one of the best of its kind on the continent. I have come to this conclusion in my travels as violin solo of the Cleveland-based Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra. While Montreal may be far removed from the European soil that gave rise to this age-old music tradition,…

Baroque Passion

By Mélisande Corriveau on 5 November 2018 Baroque and Early

Baroque music, in my view, addresses the passions of humanity. In its heyday, it was a music of sophistication, elegance and exuberance, its essence profoundly humane. Those who expressed themselves through this medium were craftsmen who influenced its development, each honing his abilities according to whims and inspirations. As a genre, Baroque music is coded. There are certain ground rules, to be sure, but they are neither stringent nor imposing, simply understated. They constitute more of a framework for performers to engage with others with increased spontaneity and creative input. Ornamentation, dynamics, agogics, tempo, even the instrumentations themselves, are left…

Hank Knox, claveciniste

Hank Knox: The Paradox of Baroque Music

By Carol Xiong on 5 November 2018 Baroque and Early

One might assume a leading expert on Early Music to be esoteric. Hank Knox shatters this assumption. An entire side of Knox’s McGill University office is plastered with what he calls his “wall of shame,” posters of productions of students and himself, that by the looks of it, he had thumbtacked organically through the years on wherever there was still space. Knox has been director of the Early Music Program at McGill’s Schulich School of Music for more than 20 years. He is godfather of the school’s Cappella Antica (which is now directed by Grammy-award winning soprano Suzie LeBlanc) as well…

Soprano Hyunah Yu in the middle, flanked by players from Piffaro and Prism, at the premiere of “The Anchoress” at the Kimmel Center (Philadelphia); photo by Pete Checchia/Philadelphia Chamber Music Society

“The Anchoress” – Songs of a Soul in Solitude

By Charles Geyer on 4 November 2018 Art Song, Baroque and Early, Chamber Music, Classical, Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Experimental Jazz, Interviews, La Scena Online, Music Competition, Musical Theatre, Opera, Theatre, Vocal, World Music

REVIEW: of The Anchoress, a world premiere of a new musical monodrama/song cycle composed by David Serkin Ludwig with text by Katie Ford, performed by soprano Hyunah Yu, accompanied by saxophone quartet PRISM and ancient-instrument ensemble Piffaro; on Wednesday, October 17, at the Perelman Theatre of Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, and on Thursday, October 18, at New York City’s DiMenna Center for Classical Music (the latter performance reviewed here); and INTERVIEWS: with composer David Ludwig and poet Katie Ford. The impulse to retreat from the world in search of spiritual insight or purity has manifested throughout human history. Twenty-one centuries of Christianity…

Photo : Simone Poltronieri

Anne Azéma, A Devotion to Medieval Music

By Benjamin Goron on 31 October 2018 Baroque and Early

In a career spanning 30 years, soprano Anne Azéma has been one of the most significant figures in medieval music. As artistic director of the Boston Camerata, this singer and musicologist brings passion and rigour to her mission of promoting medieval music. Oct. 13: In the intimacy of Westmount Park United Church, Azéma shares a special moment with the audience. Alone, she sings stories of a past that resonates within us like the echo of renewed universal emotion. La Dolce chose plunges us into songs from 1200 to 1400, focusing on feminine figures. “We find the usual themes of medieval…

Bach and Buxtehude, 1705

By Benjamin Goron on 31 October 2018 Baroque and Early

In 1705, J.S. Bach trekked to the northern German city of Lübeck to meet Dietrich Buxtehude. This encounter, the only one between these two men, is a significant event in itself, if not a momentous one for the Baroque era. The latter was an organist basking in the limelight when the former was all of 20, his career still in the making. Call it a meeting of the minds, a rite of passage or a quest for truth: all conjectures are possible. All have been subject to some discussion at one time or another, more so in the last couple…

We Do Not Hear What They Heard – Tuning and Temperament Through the Ages (Part 1)

By Carol Xiong on 31 October 2018 Baroque and Early

The practice of using period instruments in Early Music has facilitated a general awareness of how Baroque pitch is about a semitone lower than modern pitch. Less commonly known are developments in temperament, tuning and pitch over the course of history. Their implications go beyond the concert experience. In many profound and surprising ways, they have influenced why composers wrote the music that they did. Definitions Tuning, temperament and pitch are not interchangeable. Pitch is the simplest to understand. It is the frequency at which sound waves move, when referred to in a musical context. Pitch can be measured in…

Passion baroque – The Musical Language and Aesthetics of the Era

By Gilles Cantagrel on 31 October 2018 Baroque and Early

Following Heinrich Wölfflin of Switzerland, the Catalonian art critic Eugenio d’Ors situated the Baroque between the execution of Giordano Bruno in 1600 and the death of Johann Sebastian Bach in 1750. […] Since one of the general features of Baroque music is the use of basso continuo, it is natural to observe that the continuo appeared around 1600 only to disappear shortly after 1750. This century and a half is subdivided just as easily into three half-century periods – Early, Middle, and Late Baroque – a division that is much less arbitrary than it may seem at first glance. Three…

Autour de la flûte – Period Instruments Brought Up to Date

By Benjamin Goron on 31 October 2018 Baroque and Early

Since its foundation by flutist Mika Putterman in 2004, Autour de la flûte has presented 13 seasons of concerts, bringing together renowned musicians and ensembles such as Suzie LeBlanc, Susie Napper, Les Voix Humaines, Discantus, Notturna and La Petite Harmonie. Without specializing in an era or genre, Autour de la flûte offers a flexible setting for thematic concerts based on the use of period instruments and covering repertoire from the Renaissance to today. Putterman studied at McGill University, the National Conservatory of Music of Paris and the Royal Conservatory of Brussels. She is active in the early music scene, having…

Nicandro e Fileno: a Historical Recording

By Benjamin Goron on 30 October 2018 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews

On the strength of last year’s production of Nicandro e Fileno by Le Nouvel Opéra and Les Boréades, ATMA Classics has now released this Italian pastoral opera, never issued on record before. Composed by Paolo Lorenzani to a libretto by Phillipe-Julien Mancini, Duke of Nevers, the opera was premiered in September 1681 at the Château de Fontainebleau, a retreat occasionally used by Louis XIV and his loyal subjects. For its time, the Italian style of the work was quite subversive. So much so that the king’s personal secretary Lully forbade its use. And if that weren’t enough, the subject matter…

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