Cincinnati Early Music Festival 2017 Wrap-up

A few thoughts at the close of Cincinnati Early Music Festival 2017.

The numbers: 24 different groups, made up of 368 musicians, entertained audiences totaling 1690 people, at 11 venues, in 8 neighborhoods around the city and northern Kentucky.

Range of music played: The oldest piece was performed by Harpers Robin, a Viking-derived Nobilis

Break it down, boys

Humilis from the 1100s (at least). The newest was some music snuck in by Fleurs de Lys composed  in 1924. Unless you count a couple of outbursts of improvisation, which happened at Harpers Robin and again at Classical Revolution (Chris Wilke and Bill Willets). Then you get a true millennium of music, a full 1000 years.

Collegium Vocale

Most featured composer: This would have to be Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672). This greatest of the pre-Bach Germans was given an airing by the Cathedral Choir during Christ Church Evensong, by the Knox Choir, and by Collegium Vocale. The music was beautiful, a Renaissance-Baroque hybrid that conveyed both the lyrics and the emotions equally well. A favorite moment came at the Evensong when the line “He has scattered the proud” focused on the word “zerstreuet” (scattered). Thrown out asynchronously by the various voices, all those sibilances ricocheted off each other and painted a perfect sound picture of catastrophic scattering.

Jaap ter Linden

Most unexpected appearances by an instrument: This would be the cellos. They were everywhere! Colin Lambert with the Caladrian Ensemble, Jennifer Jill Araya with Fleurs de Lys, Christina Coletta with the Knox Choir, Erik Anderson with the Bach Ensemble, David Myers with Collegium Vocale, and Tom Guth with Collegium Cincinnati, who tackled Bach like a boss. Although unplanned, the cello cohort fit in well with this year’s superstar guest, the magnificent Jaap ter Linden. Along with Catacoustic Consort, he brought the house down with his effortless command of all the tricks up the cello’s sleeve, his entire Bach suite played from memory, his evident delight in playing duets with Annalisa Pappano on viola da gamba, a combo that doesn’t happen every day. Or, in the case of Cincinnati, ever. Cellos rule!

Chris Wilke & Rod Stucky

Performer with the fullest dance card: Chris Wilke, no contest. Over the course of the month, Chris partnered with violinist Jennifer Roig-Francoli, soprano Fotina Naumenko, lutenist Bill Willits, and guitarist Rod Stucky. We are glad to have him in town.

Some favorite moments:

                --The audience hanging over the balcony railings at the Cincinnati Art Museum when Schola Cincinnati wafted into that Renaissance music that the echoey Great Hall loves. Come for the art, stay for the music!

                --The energetic treatment of Passacaglia della Vita by Jackie Stevens and the Shakespeare Band, as she gaily reminded us of our approaching ends:  Bisogna morire!

                --The charming selection Mein Gläubiges Herze from Bach’s Cantata 68. It was lovely, and can I just say how good the Bach Ensemble of St. Thomas sounded this year?

                --The final piece of the final event was the eternally spectacular Pianto della Madonna by Sances, sung by Danielle Adams with Elizabeth Motter, WeiShuan Yu, and Annalisa Pappano. This is exactly the kind of music that early music lovers wish the rest of the world knew about.

John Powell, music historian and lecturer

John S. Powell is an expert in French Baroque opera. He prepared the performance score for La Feste de Ruel. He will be in town during the week of the performance, and will give a public talk on the opera and its rediscovery.

Dr. Powell is a widely published author on the French Baroque, music, dance, and theatre. He has also worked with a long list of specialists around the world to revive long-forgotten works for the stage. We asked him a little about himself.

What led you to your field of expertise?

My PhD dissertation was on music in the theater of Molière, which I came to after having seen a production of Le Misantrope in Seattle. I wondered if there might be any music for these plays, and it turns out that there was. From Molière’s comédies-ballets I became interested in French opera.

How do you think opera in France was different from other opera at the time?

Two ways:  its heavy emphasis on dance (the roots of French opera lay in ballet de cour) and its allegory. All French opera of the 17th century aimed to glorify Louis XIV, who was equated with the hero of the opera. In the case of La Feste de Ruel, the praise of Louis XIV is even more fulsomely obvious.

What is your favorite thing about Baroque opera? Do you like conventional opera, too, or does Baroque opera stand apart in your mind?

French baroque opera is a total Gesamtkunstwerk (to borrow Wagner’s term -- I like Wagner too):  music, dance, stagecraft, costumes, acting, gesture, allegory. I like all opera, all periods. I teach a course on the Mozart/da Ponte operas, and another course on Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen. For a few years I taught a course on Wagner and Tolkien, comparing Wagner’s Ring with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I have also taught a course on the Faust legend in music and literature.

Why is Charpentier a favorite? What is his appeal for you?

I first encountered Charpentier’s music in 1974 when he was comparatively unknown, especially in the U.S. I was looking for a topic for my Master’s thesis, and so I settled on his secular cantatas (which were unpublished, unperformed, and unrecorded). As a grad student in the mid-1970s I organized two concerts of these works.

What are some interesting things you’ve run across in your research?

 

One interest of mine is music that was brought to Nouvelle-France, which included French Canada and all of the Louisiana Purchase. This topic arose from a course I taught at the Université de Nancy, for which I read many of the accounts of the early French explorers. I have gone to archives in Quebec, Montreal, and New Orleans to investigate this music, which was mostly brought by the Jesuits. One thing I found amusing was a set of Lully opera scores in Montreal that had engravings of lady opera singers with low-cut tops…and some Jesuit (I presume) filled in their bodices with ink.

Dr. Powell's talk is free and open to the public.

7pm, Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Downtown branch of the Cincinnati Public Library

Huenefeld Tower Room

800 Vine St.

Cincinnati, OH 45202

Le Reniement de Saint Pierre

La Feste de Ruel is an opera -- technically a pastoral, since it concerns shepherds in the fields -- but it is less than an hour long. We will therefore pair it with another work by Charpentier.

You've got the wrong guy

Le Reniement de Saint Pierre (The Denial of St. Peter) is an oratorio (although some call it a motet.) An oratorio is the telling of a story from scripture using chorus and soloists. And it’s a big deal, because the French did NOT write oratorios. Remember how Lully declared himself free of all foreign influence, but Charpentier proudly displayed the musical education he had received in Italy? A perfect example of this difference is in the Italian-style oratorios Charpentier wrote. He was a master of it, and loved the form. He was alone in this work, though, and the French oratorio died with him.

Never even heard of him

This episode is beloved of artists of all kinds. It tells of a moment immediately after Jesus' arrest. Peter lurks on the grounds of the government building, hoping for word. Among the bystanders gathering around a fire, he is recognized as being an associate of the of the accused. First a woman, then a man, point their fingers and draw the attention of the crowd, while Peter resolutely denies he has ever even met Jesus. Three times he states what he knows to be more than a lie, but a betrayal. Good-hearted, overzealous but well-intentioned Peter, Jesus' rock -- even he has a moment of monumental weakness. Jesus knew it was coming, perhaps because he knew that all humans have a sliver of imperfection inside, but Peter is horrified to learn this truth about himself.

Many consider this particular oratorio to be Charpentier's greatest. Using bits from the various gospels, he pieces together a story of astonishing emotional drama. The accusations around the fire grow in intensity,

I'm telling you I don't know the man!

Peter’s denials become ever more frenzied, at the climax everyone is singing over each other – and then in the release of tension following the rooster's cry, all that remains is Peter’s bitter weeping. 

This piece is well-known, but Catacoustic will be performing a newly reconstructed score with instrumental music that has never been performed before.

1685

What sort of a world was it, in 1685? 

Queen Christina of Sweden

For starters, the absolutely strong monarchy of France was a bit of an anomaly. Only Sweden and its Queen Christina rivaled Louis' France in size and power. Neither Italy nor Germany had yet coalesced into nations; both were a patchwork of principalities. Spain was a complete mess, and even England was living through the turbulent Stuarts – 1685 saw the end of Charles II and the beginning of James II, who would make it through only three years before being booted off the throne much as his father had been. Louis of France was the only king sleeping soundly through the night in 1685.

The turmoil in England meant less than the usual brilliant literature, although Dryden and Locke were publishing. Eighty years before, the novel had been born in Spain with Don Quixote; it would be another 30 years before the first important English novel was written (Robinson Crusoe, 1719). 

Molière

The strong French court gave the arts room to flourish, as we have discussed. Molière worked for years with Lully creating the incidental music for his plays. When they fell out, he began working with Charpentier. Molière died in 1673, rather spectacularly. He often starred in his own plays, including his last, The Hypochondriac. When called on to cough in the play, he began coughing in earnest, hemorrhaging blood from his tubercular lungs. Once he got that under control, he declared that the show must go on and finished the performance. Afterward, though, his attack began again and he died that night. Lully himself died in 1687, also giving his life for his art. While conducting the court orchestra, he slammed his giant ruby-encrusted baton down on his own toe. Infection became gangrene; he refused amputation because he so loved to dance, and died. (Charpentier survived into the 18^th century, apparently dying quietly in his bed.)

Louis had a busy year, including the legalization of slavery in the French colonies and the outlawing of Protestantism in France. It was a bad century for human rights. He also around this time secretly married for a second time, to the devout Mme de Maintenon who greatly influenced him for his remaining decades.

Stradivari in his workshop

In music, 1685 was a very interesting year. Stradivari was busy in his workshop in Cremona. Seventeen-year-old François Couperin got his first paying organist job. Pachelbel, Biber, and Buxtehude were going full bore in Germany, as were Corelli and A. Scarlatti in Italy and Henry Purcell in England. Telemann, Rameau, and Vivaldi were all small children at this time, preparing to make their marks in the new century. And 1685 is famous for its births. Within these 12 months were born Handel, Domenico Scarlatti, JS Bach, and Lodovico Giustini, whom you probably haven’t heard of but who would be the first composer ever to write music for the newly invented piano in 1732.

Fun fact #1: Most of you reading this can hum the first movement of the Suite in D by the otherwise obscure composer Jean Joseph Mouret (born in 1682!), because it's the Masterpiece Theatre theme song and has been since 1971. Likewise, most people in Europe can hum a rondo from Charpentier's Te Deum, because it's the Eurovision Song Contest theme song and has been since 1954.

Mlle de Guise

In the quiet of his rooms on Mlle de Guise’s Paris estate, Charpentier wrote and wrote and wrote. (Fun fact #2: the Lilly Library in Bloomington, Indiana has a manuscript in Charpentier’s own hand!) Out of all the wars and anguish of a difficult century, it’s the arts that have survived and have the most meaning for us today.

The Opera, La Fête du Ruel

“La Feste de Ruel” is a far cry from Mozart’s complicated shenanigans or Verdi’s epic dramas. This was to be a political piece with a very pointed message:  I, Armand, have a bodacious garden, and you, Louis, are the Best. King. Ever. 

If you were less annoying, maybe. But I doubt it.

The shepherdess Iris is in love. Not with her handsome swain Tircis, who pleads in vain for her attention, but with the outdoors: “I love the sweet songs of the birds, I love our flowered fields, I love the rippling of the waters, the eternal greenness of these gardens.” Other characters try to talk her round, but in a startlingly modern move, she rejects love-making for landscaping. “One will sooner see the sun stop in its tracks, before I might subject my fate to the capricious whims of an annoying husband.” Presumably she lives happily ever after.

Pan

 Then -- unexpected plot twist -- the god Pan arrives! Even more unexpectedly, he doesn’t care what the shepherds get up to. Let them live their own lives! (I’m telling you, this opera was way ahead of its time.) He has his own message: the garden is green and the world is safe enough for shepherds, all because of the great Sun King. He has vanquished the enemies of France and brought peace. He has built giant canals across the land and brought prosperity. He has created palaces for himself and brought glory. O happy subjects, to live in such a time, with such a monarch!

Louis as celestial object

Plot-wise, meh. The libretto was probably written by a friend of Armand’s. The frequent sun references are hardly even allegorical. “But I see the Sun appearing, all nature adores him, how brilliant he is, how he inspires love!” It doesn’t take an English major to winkle out the hidden meaning here. 

 Charpentier, though, took the project seriously. (Of course it’s never a bad idea to butter up a king with jobs to hand out.) He gives Iris and Tircis some lovely music to sing. A chorus of shepherds echoes Pan’s paeans to Louis. Charpentier takes care that a forgettable libretto won’t be so quickly forgotten when the most powerful man of his age is listening to it.  Too bad Louis never heard it.

This little piece of art is a fascinating snapshot of life 1685, in the world inhabited by Armand, Charpentier, and Louis.