Program
Program Notes
Biographies

Newberry Consort

Arcadia Revisited ~ A Garden of Earthly Delights

Saturday, January 23, 2010 8:00 pm Synod Hall

In the wake of fires, famine, war, and the beheading of their King, 17th-century Londoners sought solace in the utopian pastoral fantasy they called Arcadia. The beautiful music of Henry and William Lawes, Nicholas Lanier, John Wilson, and Henry Purcell spun stories of mythological drama and frolicking comedy that entertained nobles and commoner alike.

Newberry Consort

David Douglass, director and violin
Ellen Hargis, soprano
Grant Herreid, lute and cittern
Shira Kammen, violin and viola
Craig Trompeter, viola da gamba

Program

Arcadia Revisited ~ A Garden of Earthly Delights

Cockleshells	Anonymous
The Ballad of Daphane         ~to the tune of Daphane	Anonymous
Hornpipe on a ground When first Amintas sued for a kiss	Henry Purcell (1659 - 1695) Purcell
Masque music       Symphony ~ from The Triumph of Peace       Carileen ~ from The Triumph of Peace       Symphony ~ from The Triumph of Peace       Temple Masque ~ from The Triumphs of the Prince d'Amour       Country Dance ~ from The Triumphs of the Prince d'Amour	William Lawes (1602 - 1645)
Hero and Leander	Nicholas Lanier (1588 - 1666)

Intermission

Hench me Malie Gray I Kissed Her While She Blushed I Long for Thy Virginitie Stay, O Stay, Why Dost Thou Fly Me?	Anonymous Anonymous Anonymous John Wilson (1595-1694)
The Bear's Dance A Bill of Fare         ~to the tune of Daphane	Anonymous Martin Parker (pub. 1640)
The Duke of Norfolk A Light Heart's a Jewel         ~to the tune of Millfield	Anonymous Anonymous
Division on a Ground Love's Constancy The Queen's Jig	John Banister (1624 - 1679) Nicholas Lanier (1588 - 1666) Anonymous

Program Notes

Arcadia Revisited ~ A Garden of Earthly Delights

Program notes by David Douglass

The 17th century was a particularly difficult era for Londoners. The century began well enough with the golden age of Elizabeth I, but not too long after the end of her reign, no more than a couple of generations, Londoners would endure famine, plague, religious strife, the near annihilation of their city by fire, and a civil war that culminated in a truly unthinkable act, the beheading of their King. Individually any of these calamities would be terrifying, uprooting, and even life threatening catastrophes. It’s difficult to imagine the hellish world that resulted from all of them in succession.

The English Reformation begun by Henry VIII created a climate of religious intolerance that Elizabeth inherited, but the Queen was masterful at holding together her Protestant and Catholic factions. Upon her death, radicals of both the Roman Catholic and Protestant camps had high hopes that Elizabeth’s successor, James I, would champion their cause. James was disposed to be tolerant of the Catholics; He favored an end to hostilities with Catholic Spain. However, the Catholics radical plots to assassinate James and blow up Parliament turned the king against them. James banned Catholic priests from his realm, insuring a century of religious unrest.

King Charles I, like his father James before him, stuck to his absolutist beliefs that the rule of king’s is derived from God, while Parliament leaders demanded Charles assert his authority through that body. These growing political tensions, added to the religious unrest, eventually culminated in Civil War, a violent and chaotic period from 1642 to 1646. In the end, Charles was tried for treason in 1649, before a Parliament whose authority he refused to acknowledge. He was executed outside Inigo Jones' Banqueting Hall at Whitehall on January 30. It was an event that was beyond the belief of most Londoners because the King was synonymous with the Kingdom and country. Many were of the opinion – one held by Charles himself – that it was as though they were executing a God.

The ensuing Commonwealth and Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell was no mere change of leadership. In addition to bloody campaigns in Ireland and Scotland to quash dissent, Cromwell directed a cultural revolution in the name of Puritan piety that banned sports and closing the public theaters, rendering illegal most public entertainment. Religious services were pared down to the barest essentials as well, and the scars from that experiment are noticeable to this day. There are many magnificent church organs throughout England, but not one dates before 1650; Cromwell’s minions smashed every one.

Londoners had not long recovered from the excesses of political reform and the restoration of the monarchy (in 1660) when the scourge of plague returned to England. During the first half of the 17th century outbreaks of plague were mercifully short and relatively contained, but fortunes changed for the worse in 1665 when the bubonic plague descended on London with a vengeance. By springtime of that year, fear of the plague began to drive the residents of London to the countryside. The nobility left the city for their country estates. The nobility were followed soon by the merchants and lawyers. Then most of the clergy suddenly decided they could best minister to their flocks from far, far away. The College of Surgeons fled to the country, which did not stop several of its members from writing l earned papers about the disease they had been at such pains to avoid. The court moved to Hampton Court Palace. By June the roads were so clogged with people desperate to escape London that the Lord Mayor responded by closing the gates to anyone who did not have a certificate of health. These certificates became a currency more valuable than gold, and a thriving market in forged certificates arose.

By mid July over 1,000 deaths per week were reported in the city. It was rumored that dogs and cats spread the disease, so the Lord Mayor ordered all the dogs and cats destroyed. Author Daniel Defoe in his Journal of the Plague Years estimated that 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats were killed. Eliminating the dogs and cats also removed the natural enemies of the rats who carried the plague fleas, and the germs spread more rapidly. Throughout the summer the death rate escalated, reaching a high of over 6,000 per week in August. It was not until February of 1666 that King Charles thought it safe to return to the city. The best guess is that over 100,000 people perished in and around London, though the figure may have been much higher.

On the heels of the departing plague came another disaster. On the night of September 2, 1666, a small fire broke out in the premises of a baker's shop in Pudding Lane, London, allegedly started by the carelessness of a maid. It was a carelessness that had enormous and disastrous consequences, for the fire spread and soon the whole building was ablaze. In the close-packed streets of London, where buildings jostled each other for space, the blaze soon became an inferno. Fanned by an east wind, the fire spread with terrifying speed, feeding on the tar and pitch commonly used to seal houses.

Our best account of The Great Fire of London comes from the diaries of Samuel Pepys who was then Secretary of the Admiralty. He watched the course of the destruction from a safe position across the Thames, and called it, "a most malicious bloody flame, as one entire arch of fire... of above a mile long. It made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once, and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruin ...Over the Thames with one's face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops." After four days while helpless citizens stood by and watched the destruction of their homes, the wind mercifully died and the fire was stopped. Then the accounting took place.

When a dazed populace took stock of the damage, they must have wondered if Armageddon had come. Fully 80% of the city was destroyed, including over 13,000 houses, 89 churches and 52 Guild Halls. It was a physical disaster of unprecedented proportions. The spiritual hub of the city, Old St. Paul's Cathedral, was nothing but rubble. (Following the fire thatched roofs were banned from London; the sole exception in over 300 years was made for the Globe Theater reconstruction project completed in 1997.)

Whereas all music benefits in some way from being heard in its historical context, this is extremely crucial to music from England in the seventeenth century. Against this historic backdrop English music emerges as blissful, therapeutic, escapist fantasy, fantasy that held the power to reaffirm a world for which they longed. That is quite different from what you might perceive hearing this repertory isolated from its historical context. The mythological flights of fancy and fantastic allusions could seem to be frivolous and insubstantial, albeit entertaining, diversions.

Nearly all the Arcadia-inspired music on our program was published by John Playford and his son Henry in The Division Violin (1685), The English Dancing Master (1651), Apollo’s Banquet (1678), and Orpheus Britannicus (1698). The final two titles give away their connection to Arcadia, but the others are also filled with instrumental pieces alluding to Arcadian themes. John Playford was himself a Royalist and published many political tracts favorable to Charles I, in addition to numerous volumes of music. Many of those political tracts can be found at the Newberry Library, including one that is, allegedly, the speech Charles gave to the assembled crowd just prior to his beheading.

Much of the music survives as only simple tunes, as Playford indicates, “playable on the treble violin,” just as just as the ballads were published “to the tune of…” There is an assumption that the music would be created, for the most part, in the hands of the performers. I have arranged many of the pieces for our performance in three parts, for two violins and bass viol, and several of the pieces will be improvised for you, although even the composed arrangements will probably bear little resemblance to what you end up hearing. Improvisation and fantasies can be the instrumentalist’s escape from the world around her, just as the singer/storyteller can weave a better world of Arcadian delights.

   

Biographies

Newberry Consort

THE NEWBERRY CONSORT began as part of the Early Music at the Newberry Library series, founded by Mary Springfels in 1982. For over twenty years the Consort has set a high standard for inventive programming with the utmost attention to musical style and historical detail, bringing to light the vast music collections of the Newberry Library. The Newberry Consort is the longest-running and most successful early music ensemble in the Chicago area. In addition to numerous performances, free public lectures, broadcasts, and outreach events, the Consort is an ensemble-in-residence at both the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. David Douglass, a founding member of the Consort became Director in 2007, providing more of the rich and varied programming for which the Newberry Consort is famous.

DAVID DOUGLASS has been a leading figure in the world of Early Music performance for over 30 years. The New York Times has praised his playing for its “eloquence” and “expressive virtuosity,” and through his groundbreaking work in the field of the early violin he has developed a historical technique that produces “a distinctively ‘Renaissance’ sound and style for the violin” (Fanfare). This exploration culminated in the founding of his ensemble, the King’s Noyse, a Renaissance violin band. As Director of the King’s Noyse, and through his recreation of the improvisational repertory of the early violin band, he has received praise for his “enterprise and imagination” (Stereophile). A founding member of the Newberry Consort, and the Consort’s Director and Musician-in-Residence at the Newberry Library since 2007, David is much in demand as a writer and lecturer on early violin history, technique and repertoire. His chapters on the violin are published in Schirmer’s Performer's Guides to Early Music, and his essays on the early violin can be found in Strings magazine. David has recorded extensively for Harmonia Mundi USA, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Virgin, Erato, BMG, Berlin Classics, and Auvidis/Astrée labels. Recently he formed Noyse Productions, an online record company selling compact discs and editions of music, which can be found at www.noyseproductions.com.

Soprano ELLEN HARGIS is one of America’s premier early music singers, specializing in repertoire ranging from ballads to opera and oratorio. She has performed with many of the foremost period music conductors of the world including Andrew Parrott, Gustav Leonhardt, Paul Goodwin, Monica Huggett, Jane Glover, Simon Preston, Daniel Harding, Paul Hillier, Harry Bicket, Craig Smith and Jeffrey Thomas. She has performed with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Virginia Symphony, Washington Choral Arts Society, Long Beach Opera, CBC Radio Orchestra, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Teatro Lirico, Tragicomedia, New York Collegium, The Mozartean Players, Parthenia, Piffaro, Fretwork, Emmanuel Music and the Mark Morris Dance Group, and has become regular performer with Chicago's Music of the Baroque, the American Bach Soloists, Seattle Baroque and the Portland Baroque Orchestra. She has appeared at many of the world's leading festivals including the Adelaide Festival (Australia), Utrecht Festival (Holland), Resonanzen Festival (Vienna), Festival Vancouver, The Monadnock Festival, Tanglewood, the Berkeley Festival and New Music America Festival. She has been featured in successive seasons of the Boston Early Music Festival where she has sung Aeglé in Lully's Thésée, the title role in Luigi Rossi's L'Orfeo, Queen Pasiphae in Conradi's Ariadne and Irina in Johann Mattheson's 1710 opera, Boris Goudenow. Lully's Thésée and Conradi's Ariadne were recorded for CPO and were nominated respectively for 2007 and 2006 Grammys.

GRANT HERREID is a versatile musician/director/teacher on the early music scene. As a multi-instrumentalist and singer he performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings and voice with Hesperus, Piffaro, and My Lord Chamberlain's Consort, and he plays theorbo and lute with the baroque ensemble ARTEK and New York City Opera. Active as an educator and coach, he teaches classes in Renaissance music and 17th century continuo song at Mannes College of Music in New York, and he also directs the New York Continuo Collective. He performs and teaches at many workshops, including Amherst Early Music Festival, Madison Early Music Festival, Pinewoods, and the Western Wind workshops in a capella singing at Smith College. Grant has created and directed several theatrical early music shows, and he devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of medieval and early Renaissance music with the groups Ex Umbris and Visceral Reaction. He has recorded for Archiv, Dorian, Koch, Maggie's Music, Ex Cathedra, Lyrichord, Musical Heritage Society and Newport Classics, among others.

Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist SHIRA KAMMEN has spent well over half her life exploring the worlds of early and traditional music. A member for many years of the early music Ensembles Alcatraz and Project Ars Nova, and Medieval Strings, she has also worked with Sequentia, Hesperion XX, the Boston Camerata, the Balkan group Kitka, the Oregon, California and San Francisco Shakespeare Festivals, and is the founder of Class V Music, an ensemble dedicated to performance on river rafting trips. She has performed and taught in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Israel, Morocco, and Japan, and on the Colorado, Rogue and Klamath Rivers. Shira happily collaborated with singer/storyteller John Fleagle for fifteen years, and performs now with several new groups: a medieval ensemble, Fortune's Wheel: a new music group, Ephemeros; an eclectic ethnic band, Panacea; as well as frequent collaborations with performers such as storyteller/harpist Patrick Ball, sopranos Anne Azema , Susan Rode Morris, medieval music expert Margriet Tindemans, and in many theatrical and dance productions. She has played on several television and movie soundtracks, including 'O', a modern high school-setting of Othello. Some of her original music can be heard in an independent film about fans of the work of JRR Tolkien. The strangest place Shira has played is in the elephant pit of the Jerusalem Zoo. She hopes to spend more time playing music of all kinds in the wilderness.

CRAIG TROMPETER, baroque cellist and violist da gamba performs and teaches throughout the United States. He is principle cellist with Baroque Band, Chicago’s period instrument orchestra which was recently named Ensemble in Residence on WFMT Chicago. He performs regularly with the Newberry Consort, Chicago Opera Theater, Music of the Baroque, Third Coast Viols, Cal Players, and the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society. He has also performed with the Central City Opera, Lyric Opera Chicago, Musica Maris, The Catacoustic Consort, Parthenia, and the Oberlin Consort of Viols. He has recorded for Harmonia Mundi USA, Cedille, Clarion, and Centaur discs of Elizabethan music, Marais, Mozart, Handel, and Biber. He is on the faculty of the Music Institute of Chicago and has taught at numerous early music workshops in the USA and Great Britain. In 2003 he founded the Feldenkrais ® Center of Chicago where he teaches Awareness Through Movement ® and Functional Integration ®. He has taught the Feldenkrais Method as guest lecturer at Columbia College, Northwestern University, Valparaiso University, Northeastern University, DePaul University, and the Longy School of Music.