Catacoustic's Twelfth Season: It was a very good year

The 12^th season of the Catacoustic Consort is winding down, and it’s time for a look back on perhaps the most successful season so far.  With the energetic leadership of a new Board—including an active, enthusiastic Advisory Board—we witnessed lots of firsts this year.  We may one day look back on the 12^th season as the tipping point—the year Cincinnati truly became a national center for early music, with Catacoustic leading the way.

The season had so many highlights.  Back in October, Catacoustic performed in Middletown for Middfest, and then brought that show to Cincinnati for the Constella Festival as well.  It was an exciting chance to welcome Elizabeth Motter to the stage on Baroque Triple Harp, in a beautiful concert of French Baroque music.  

In December we enjoyed the spectacular Stabat Mater concert.  Soprano Youngmi Kim set the rafters ringing with church music from 17^th century Rome.  For the first time, Catacoustic worked with a stage director, Omer Ben-Saedia, and the result was an incredible atmosphere and, to Artistic Director Annalisa Pappano, the musical highlight of the year.  

In February Cincinnati welcomed Matthias Maute, recorder virtuoso extraordinaire, with record-setting attendance.  If recorder were better known, Maute would be as acclaimed as Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, or any other superstar of a modern instrument.  His musicianship is among the best you will ever hear on any instrument, and he got an electric energy out of the audience that evening.  Not coincidentally, the surprisingly large local recorder scene turned out in force, and they were energized as well.  It’s clearly time for a re-birth of interest in this venerable instrument in our city.

Next up was another first—a collaboration with another local music ensemble.  The March concert with concert:nova of music inspired by Shakespeare was a huge hit with the two large audiences that were actually cheering by the end.  The Mercantile Library was a beautiful venue, and Jennifer Joplin of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company led us deep into a world outside our daily lives.  

We wrapped up with the annual candlelight concert.  This was an intense, complicated program of all John Dowland, and the audience was right with the performers the whole way.  Annalisa felt like she was playing with the best consort of viols of her life.  Another Shakespearean, Jeremy Dubin, helped put it all together.  And a Project Grant from ArtsWave helped make it possible.

Some spectacular music was made, right here in Cincinnati, that people in other cities may never get a chance to hear.  The rapidly growing audiences show how much this fact is appreciated.  Cincinnati is no longer just for Beethoven and Brahms—it’s clearly for Bach and Buxtehude as well.  Viol consorts perform at church services.  Historic instruments like harpsichords and Baroque organs are in use across town.  Early Music workshops have large enrollments.  Amateurs gather in each other’s homes to sing and play. The city’s universities are proving grounds for Renaissance choral music, Baroque opera, medieval chant.  Cincinnati Shakespeare Company recites at Catacoustic’s concerts, and Catacoustic plays for their productions in return.  It’s happening all around us.

Which leads us to another first for the year:  The Cincinnati Early Music Festival.  This February saw a ground-breaking attempt to corral the remarkable numbers of early music performers into a platform where they could be showcased properly.  The month was packed with events of all kinds, different venues, unusual instruments, music from a wide range of centuries.  Next year’s Festival, spearheaded by Catacoustic, is already in the planning stages.

This was also the third year for Catacoustic’s scholarship program.  The award this year went to Michael Zaret, who, after some years away, is returning to an old love:  the recorder.  We hope to hear great things from Michael going forward.

The real end of the season will be Memorial Day, May 27.  We are having our annual Yard Sale, the proceeds of which go toward the scholarship fund.  This year we will be on Upland, the most beautiful street in East Walnut Hills.  Please donate any goods looking for a new gig, or come by and find new treasures.  

Then head home and start counting down the days till the 13^th season.  It’s going to be great!

Elizabethan Poetry for Lachrimae

Many people have requested the text of the poetry that was read during the Lachrimae concert by Jeremy Dubin, our brilliant Shakespearean actor.  The selections were recommended by UC professor Trish Thomas Henley. (It takes a village to put on a really good concert.) 

Notice that the first poem is by the Roman poet Ovid, ("Old Tears," a poem from antiquity) in a translation that sounds colloquial to us today, ostensibly as it would have sounded to the original Latin-speaking readers.  Then the same poem is presented again in a translation by Christopher Marlowe, in colloquial Elizabethan English ("Old Tears Renewed," an antique poem given a modern treatment--modern for 1580, that is.)

Lachrimæ Antiquae (Old Tears)

Book III Elegy III: She's Faithless.  Ovid (1 century BCE)

Gods exist, go on, believe it - she broke the promise

she made and is still as lovely as she was before!

The long hair she had when she wasn't a liar,

is just as long after she's offended the gods.

Her radiance was whiteness tinged with a rosy blush

before - the blush shines on amongst the snow.

Her feet were slender - her feet are delicately formed.

She was tall and graceful - tall and graceful she remains.

Bright-eyes she had - they are radiant as stars,

with which she so often deceived me with her lies.

No doubt the eternal gods allow girls to swear

falsely too, and beauty has divinity.

I remember she swore by her eyes the other day,

and by mine: look, it is mine that felt the pain!

Tell me, gods, if she cheated you with impunity

why did I deserve punishment instead?

But didn't innocent virgin Andromeda die by your order,

for her mother's crime of boastful beauty?

Not enough for you, that I find you worthless witnesses,

but she laughs at me, and you, playful gods, unpunished?

By my punishment do I redeem her lying:

shall I be victim, deceived by the deceiver?

Either a god's a thing of no account, an idle fear,

stirring the crowd through their foolish credulity:

or if there's a true god, he loves tender girls,

and allows them all excessive liberties.

For us Mars straps on his deadly sword:

for us the hand of Pallas lifts the unfailing spear.

For us the pliant bow of Apollo's bent:

for us Jove's lofty right hand holds the fire.

The gods, offended, are scared to offend these beauties

and, besides, they fear those who don't fear them.

And who should bother to burn incense on their altars?

We men it's true need to show more spirit!

Jupiter blasts his own groves and hills with fire,

and neglects to hurl his bolts at perjured girls.

So many deserved it - but poor Semele was burned!

Her punishment was of her own making:

but if she'd withdrawn from her lover's coming,

no father would have played mother to Bacchus.

Why complain and abuse all of heaven?

The gods too have eyes: the gods have hearts!

If I were a god, I'd let girls with lying lips

deceive my divinity without punishment:

I'd swear, myself, the girls were swearing truly

and I'd not be a god who spoke sourly.

Still, girl, you should use their gift in moderation -

or at least spare these eyes of mine!

Lachrimæ Antiquae Novae (Old Tears Renewed)

Christopher Marlowe's Translation of Ovid's BOOK 3, ELEGY 3 (ca. 1580s)

De amica, quae periuraverat
(Concerning his mistress, who has perjured herself)

What, are there gods? Herself she hath forswore,
And yet remains the face she had before.
How long her locks were, ere her oath she took:
So long they be, since she her faith forsook.
Fair white with rose red was before commix'd:
Now shine her looks pure white and red betwixt.
Her foot was small: her foot's form is most fit:
Comely tall was she, comely tall she's yet.
Sharp eyes she had: radiant like stars they be,
By which she perjur'd oft hath lied to me.
In sooth th'eternal powers grant maids society
Falsely to swear , their beauty hath some deity.
By her eyes I remember late she swore,
And by mine eyes, and mine were pained sore.
Say gods: if she unpunish'd you deceive,
For others faults, why do I loss receive?
But did you not so envy Cepheus' daughter,
For her ill-beauteous mother judg'd to slaughter?
'Tis not enough, she shakes your record off;
And unreveng'd mock'd gods with me doth scoff.
But by my pain to purge her perjuries,
Cozen'd, I am the cozener's sacrifice.
God is a name, no substance, fear'd in vain,
And doth the world in fond belief detain.
Or if there be a God, he loves fine wenches,
And all things too much in their sole power drenches.
Mars girts his deadly sword on for my harm:
Pallas lance strikes me with unconquer'd arm.
At me Apollo bends his pliant bow:
At me Jove's right-hand lightning hath to throw.
The wronged gods dread fair ones to offend,
And fear those, that to fear them least intend.
Who now will care the altars to perfume?
Tut, men should not their courage so consume.
Jove throws down woods and castles with his fire:
But bids his darts from perjur'd girls retire.
Poor Semele, among so many burn'd;
Her own request to her own torment turn'd.
But when her lover came, had she drawn back,
The father's thigh should unborn Bacchus lack.
Why grieve I? And of heaven reproaches pen?
The gods have eyes and breasts as well as men.
Were I a god, I should give women leave,
With lying lips my godhead to deceive,
Myself would swear , the wenches true did swear ,
And I would be none of the gods severe.
But yet their gift more moderately use,
Or in mine eyes, good wench, no pain transfuse.

Lachrimæ Gementes (Singing Tears)

Shakespeare's Sonnet 8:

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.

Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,

Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?

If the true concord of well tuned sounds

By unions married do offend thine ear,

They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds

In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,

Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,

Resembling sire and child and happy mother,

Who all in one pleasing note do sing;

    Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,

     Sing this to thee: “Though single wilt prove none.”

Lachrimæ Tristes (Sad Tears)

From Thomas Wilson's The Teares of Fancie, or Love Disdained (1593) 

Sonnet VIII

Now Love triumphed having got the day,
Proudly insulting, tyrannizing still:
As Hawk that ceaseth on the yielding pray,
So am I made the scorn of Victor's will.

Now eyes with tears, now heart with sorrow fraught,

Hart sorrows at my watery tears lamenting:

Eyes shed salt tears to see harts pining thought,

And both that then love scorn'd are now repenting.
But all in vain too late I plead repentance,

For tears in eyes and sighs in heart must wield me:

The feathered boy hath doom'd my fatal sentence,

That I to tyrannizing Love must yield me.

And bow my neck erst subject to no yoke,

To Love's false lure (such force hath beauties stroke).

Lachrimæ Coactae (Forced Tears)

From Thomas Wyatt “Farewell Love” (pub. 1557)

Farewell, Love, and all thy laws forever.

Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more.

Senec and Plato call me from thy lore

To perfect wealth my wit for to endeavor.

In blind terror when I did persever,

Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh ay so sore,

Hath taught me to set in trifles no store

And scape forth since liberty is lever.

Therefore farewell. Go trouble younger hearts

And in me claim no more authority.

With idle youth go use thy property

And thereon spend thy many brittle darts:

For hitherto though I have lost all my time,

Me lusteth no longer rotten boughs to climb.

Lachrimae Amantis (Lover's Tears)
John Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning (pub. 1633)

As virtuous men pass mildly away,    

And whisper to their souls to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say    

The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,    
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys    
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,    
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,    
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love    
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove    
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,    
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,    
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,    
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,    
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so    
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show    
To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,    
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,    
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,    
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,    
And makes me end where I begun. 

Lachrimæ Verae (True Tears)

 A VALEDICTION OF WEEPING by John Donne

                LET me pour forth
My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,
For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,
And by this mintage they are something worth.
                For thus they be
                Pregnant of thee ;
Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more ;
When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore ;
So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.

                On a round ball
A workman, that hath copies by, can lay
An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,
And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.
                So doth each tear,
                Which thee doth wear,
A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,
Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow
This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolvèd so.

                O! more than moon,
Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere ;
Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear
To teach the sea, what it may do too soon ;
                Let not the wind
                Example find
To do me more harm than it purposeth :
Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,
Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.

Catacoustic by Candlelight: Lachrimae

We’re all pretty familiar with styles of drama popular in Elizabethan England—how many ways can you spell Shakespeare?  And most people can quote a bit of Elizabethan-era prose (“Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee…”) But what about their music?  What did they sit up late playing?  What did they hum as they went about their business?  What were the big hits of the day, in England and across the Continent?

We’ll find out at the next Catacoustic concert.  Bring a hankie.  

Humans are a contrary bunch.  When times are tough, we try to cheer ourselves up, we seek out comedy, we look on the bright side.  But when things are going well, sometimes we wallow in invented sorrows; we imagine the worst as though that were preparation for it.  During the decades between roughly 1560 and 1620, life in England became stable and prosperous.  Business started doing pretty well.  Money began to pour in from the new American colonies. Peace and progress became the norm. So naturally the fashion in music was Melancholy.  

And nobody did melancholy better than John Dowland.  One of the most brilliant lutenists of his day—with a college degree in music to prove it! — Dowland hoped for a brilliant performance career.  But he failed to get a place at court.  He took a job instead with the English ambassador to France, and from there spent much of his adult life in Europe.  He worked for years in Denmark and Germany, and travelled in Italy.  All of this matters to us because it was his composing, not his performing, that made his fortune, and his travels facilitated the dissemination of his music.  His published books of lute songs, starting in 1597, were very well known and widely used across the continent. And although his contemporaries considered him a fun-loving, pleasant companion, his songs simply drip with melancholy.

One of his most popular was called “Flow my Tears”: 

Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!
Exiled forever, let me mourn;
Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings,
There let me live forlorn.

Down vain lights, shine you no more!
No nights are dark enough for those
That in despair their lost fortunes deplore.
Light doth but shame disclose.

Never may my woes be relieved,
Since pity is fled;
And tears and sighs and groans my weary days
Of all joys have deprived.

From the highest spire of contentment
My fortune is thrown;
And fear and grief and pain for my deserts
Are my hopes, since hope is gone.

Hark! you shadows that in darkness dwell,
Learn to contemn light.

 Happy, happy they that in hell
Feel not the world's despite.

It was such a huge hit that he re-worked it in 1604 into a more elaborate piece for five viols and lute, with each movement using the original tune.  A bigger piece needs a fancier name, so he put it in Latin, “Lachrimae” (“tears”).  The gorgeous melody is put through its paces, somber sections alternating with lighter movements.  It became the “Yesterday” of the early 1600s:  played by everyone, copied, arranged for different instruments, parodied, “improved” upon, played again, and again; an instantly recognizable theme no matter where you went. 

We must be glad the people of Europe had one generation of peace.  Terrible times were ahead of them.  Some historians call the later decades of that century the real first world war, or a time of general crisis. Our Elizabethans’ futures, and their children’s futures, saw horrific wars of religion, the final excesses of the Spanish Inquisition, civil wars, constant fighting in the colonies, pirates, plague.  And a mini ice age to boot.  We, the People of Hindsight, must leave them in ignorance of that future. We will let them play for now at being sad, let them romantically imagine themselves collapsing from sorrow.  When real tragedy knocks at their doors, they will find no leisure for collapse. They will be too busy trying to survive, or throwing each other out of windows, or burying their dead. 

But all that lies ahead. For now, let the tears flow across silver notes and aching melodies.  Let the dissonances suspend and then resolve, let the variations mount up through despair and transform into joy, let the music transcend the melancholy.  As Dowland said, “Though the title doth promise tears, unfit guests in these joyful times, yet no doubt pleasant are the tears which Music weeps, neither are tears shed always in sorrow, but sometime in joy and gladness.”

A true consort of viols will perform:  Annalisa Pappano (Artistic Director), James Lambert, Julie Jeffrey, Larry Lipnik, and Gail Ann Schroeder.  They will be joined by David Walker, lute, and a member of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company reading poetry of the period.  The sanctuary, itself over 100 years old, will be lit only by candlelight, the sound amplified only by stone.  Silence your phone, slip away from the clamor of the 21^st century, and enter into the dreams of the 17^th. 

 7:30pm, Saturday, April 20, 2013

 St. Thomas Episcopal Church
100 Miami Avenue, Terrace Park, OH 45174

Tickets: $20 general, $5 student. Children 12 and under are always free. Tickets are available at the

door or in advance by calling 513.772.3242 or at www.catacoustic.com .

Concert Preview: "A Common Thread," March 17 & 18

This month will see a new venture for Catacoustic.  After many successful collaborations with institutions around the city, Catacoustic will for the first time collaborate with another well-known music group in town.  Concert:nova is an innovative chamber group specializing in the unexpected aspects of contemporary chamber music.  Since the unexpected is part of Catacoustic’s mission as well, the partnership seems a natural fit.  Local audiences who are up for a challenge or are looking for a new experience have found that both these groups fit the bill.  

To marry the Renaissance to the modern world, a universal is required, and one has been found:  the works of William Shakespeare.  For 400 years Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets have inspired artists in every creative field, and composers are no exception.  This concert will explore music based on the work with pieces written during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and pieces written as recently as 2004.  

Shakespeare filled his plays with music and songs, some well known to the Elizabethan audience, some written by himself. The clowns sang comic songs, the mad sang perceptive nonsense, the amorous sang of love, the cynical sang satire. Today we see these songs as words on the page, but at the time these would all have been sung on stage, probably with instrumental accompaniment.  The tunes were composed by Shakespeare’s own contemporaries, men like Thomas Morley, Anthony Holborne, and of course the adaptable and accomplished Anonymous. Viols and lutes were well-known to the Bard—he mentions both many times. Catacoustic performers Annalisa Pappano and David Morris on viol, and David Walker and Brian Kay on lute, will re-create not just the tunes Shakespeare would have known, but the soundscape he would have recognized.  

Shakespeare doesn’t belong only to the Elizabethans, though.  Each generation throughout the centuries has offered its own take on the themes and characters that populate his familiar world.  Concert:nova will play some of the more contemporary expressions his work has inspired.  Here’s a sample:  Amy Beach, 1867-1944, was an American pianist and composer.  Best remembered for her songs, she composed music for several of Shakespeare’s lyrics.  Ned Rorem, born in 1923, has frequently written with Shakespeare in mind.  The cello suite After Reading Shakespeare was composed in 1980. Erich Korngold is best remembered for his film scores, but before there were movies there was incidental music for plays:  his Much Ado About Nothing was composed in 1919. Igor Stravinsky loved to compose for unusual combinations of instruments, and Songs from William Shakespeare, 1953, was written for mezzo-soprano, flute, clarinet, and viola.  Performing for concert:nova are Ted Nelson, cello, Minyoung Baik, violin, Heidi Yenney, viola, Randy Bowman, flute, Ixi Chen, clarinet, and Avedis Manoogian, piano.

Singing with both groups will be acclaimed soprano Youngmi Kim.

There is also a third participant in this collaboration.  Jennifer Joplin, a member of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, will be on hand, reading from the plays and sonnets, knitting together the two worlds separated by 400 years of changing fashions in music but united by the greatest wordsmith in history. A highlight of the program will be a condensed, one-woman version of The Tempest, as illuminated by two composers at either end of the spectrum.  Robert Johnson, 1583-1634, is the only person we can say with certainty composed for the original stage productions of the plays—in other words, he was an actual collaborator with the playwright himself.  And Paul Morevec, a composer working on Long Island, NY, won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Tempest Fantasy.  So we have the very first composer to set Shakespeare to music, and perhaps the most recent. 

The Mercantile Library will play host to "A Common Thread."  With luck, the sunlight will stream through the tall windows and the wood will glow.  The playwright, the composers, the musicians, and the actor will all conspire, and here will we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears.  And by that music let us all embrace.

Sunday, March 17, 3:00pm, and Monday, Marcy 18, 7:00pm, at the Mercantile Library, 414 Walnut St. #1100 45202.  $25/advance | $30/door | $10/students w ID.  For tickets go to http://cncatacoustic.eventbrite.com/