Many critics compare Bigaglia’s sonatas with the beautiful works of his more prolific contemporaries, Giovanni Bononcini, Benedetto Marcello, and Francesco Veracini. This Sonata in g minor is in four movements: Adagio, Allegro assai, Siciliana, and Giga. Here to perform it is Carolina Pro Musica, featuring Edward Ferrell, recorder.

Carolina Pro Musica performs Bigaglia’s Sonata in g minor:

Interior of Salzburg Dom. Photo by Miles Berry

Our featured composer for January is the 17^th century Bohemian composer, Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber. Biber was one of the finest violinists of his day and his violin sonatas continue to be performed with regularity. Biber also wrote a substantial amount of sacred instrumental and choral music, from which we will sample here.

Biber’s Missa Christi resurgentis was composed in 1674 while the composer was working in Salzburg. This mass, like so many of his sacred works, was originally meant to be performed in the Salzburg Cathedral, with different instrumental and vocal groups separated spatially throughout the church.

Biber (1644-1704)

Cambridge Concentus, (under the direction of Joshua Rifkin) performs the Gloria from Biber’s Missa Christi resurgentis in this live performance.

Podcast produced by Joshua Sauvageau

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Title page of Marais' first book of Pièces de Violes (1686)

Marin Marais was a virtuoso gambist, performing with the royal orchestra of Louis XIV and the Académie Royale de Musique under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Lully. His skill at composition was also well known in his lifetime; in Le Parnasse François, by Titon du Tillet we learn “one finds everywhere in them good taste and a surprising variety.” Marais composed a few operas and trio sonatas, but the bulk of his output was music for his own basse de viole. Between the years 1686 and 1725, Marais composed five volumes of Pièces de Violes, the most substantial body of work ever written for that instrument. It is from the third volume, published in 1711, that we hear this month’s selection.

This month’s selection includes four Pièces in A minor from the Troisième Livre de Pièces de Viole of Marin Marais. The performers are Les Grâces, a baroque ensemble from the San Francisco bay area, who have just this month released an entire album of music of the French Baroque, titled Les Grâces Françoises.

Les Grâces (photo courtesy Sheila Newberry)

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Podcast produced by Joshua Sauvageau

Julie Pinel, who lived from the late 17th to early 18th-century was one of those composers who found a welcome home in the Parisian Salon. Coming from a family of musicians who included Germain Pinel, court lutenist to Louis XIV, Julie Pinel published a complete book of songs titled Nouveau recueil d’airs sérieux et à boire. It is from this work that we have drawn today’s selection: “Cantatille: Le Printems”. The lyrics of this lovely air tendre are typical of contemporary salon composers, making several references to nature and pastoral life.

La Donna Musicale have released an entire album devoted to Julie Pinel and her contemporaries.

La Donna Musicale (photo by Rick Friedman)

Julie Pinel: “Cantatille: Le Printems“

Recitatif: Le Dieu du jour nous rend lumière féconde,

Son retour enchante nos yeux

Tout rit sur la terre et sur l’onde,

Tout semble renaître en ces lieux.

Le zéphir va s’unir a flore

Bientost de leur tenders amours

Nous allons voir éclore

Mille fleurs avec les beaux jours…

Air: Chantez, dansez jeunes bergères,

A l’ombre des ses frais ormeaux,

Unissez vos danses légères

Aux doux son de nos chalumeaux.

Que l’amour qui regne en nos âmes

Nous inspire de nouveaux sons.

Célébrons l’ardeur de nos flâmes

Par les plus aimable chansons.

Recitatif: Déjà la riante verdure,

Fruit de l’haleine des zéphirs

Embellit toute la nature, et rameine

En ces lieux les jeux et les plaisirs,

Tout ressent de l’amour la Suprême puissance,

Toy seule belle Iris par ton indifférence

Veux tu payer toujours les tenders feux

De mon cœur amoureux,

Ecoute les ramages

De ces heureux oiseaux

Ils t’invittent sous ces feuillages

A soulager mes meaux.

Air: Doux Rossignols chantez dans ces boccages,

Chantez votre bonheur, je n’en suis point jaloux.

Que vos chants amoureux deviennent les présages

D’un plaisir qui me rend aussy content que vous.

Attendrissez mon aimable inhumaine

Peignez lui l’ardeur que je sens

Qu’elle partage enfin ma peine

Redoublez vos divins accens.

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Podcast produced by Joshua Sauvageau

Musica Pacifica perform English Country Dances:

(Video courtesy of Musica Pacifica)

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Podcast produced by Joshua Sauvageau

Importing an Italian performance style, Matteis became a key figure in the development of violin playing in England and his compositions displayed a variety of bowings that exceeded any found in English music up to that point. Matteis’ major contribution to the literature was four books of Ayres for the Violin, published between 1676 and 1687. Today, we will hear two movements from his Suite in d minor from Book Four of that work, performed by The Wayward Sisters. First is a melancholic adagio marked “A Grave Thing”. This is followed by a dancelike “Ground with Several Divisions”.

The Wayward Sisters (courtesy of Anna Steinhoff. Photo by Alyse Liebovich)

The Wayward Sisters:

Beth Wenstrom-baroque violin

Anne Timberlake-recorder

Anna Steinhoff-baroque cello

John Lenti-theorbo

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Podcast produced by Joshua Sauvageau

On this edition of Ars Antigua Presents, we’ll hear selections from Shakespeare’s Songbook: music and dialogue from the Bard’s plays.

Popular songs of Elizabethan England played an important role in many of Shakespeare’s plays. Shakespeare frequently chose to insert these songs to reveal the thoughts and emotions of his characters or to help set the scene. Today’s selections provide a rare sonic glimpse at the rich soundscape of Shakespeare’s theater.

Robert Johnson, an English composer and lutenist, was a contemporary of Shakespeare. We will hear two of his best-known songs, “Full fathom five” and “Where the bee sucks,” which are settings of dialogue from the Bard’s final play, The Tempest. Following these, we will hear a brief ‘Shepherd’s Dance’ by Dutch composer and music publisher, Tielman Susato. This festive, early-16^th century tune would have provided a fitting accompaniment to the shepherd’s scene in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

We hear now, in these performances, members of the Chicago Early Music Consort.

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Podcast episode produced by Joshua Sauvageau.

Social and political conditions in France during the 16th century were particularly favorable to the growth of popular music. During the long reign of Francis I (1515-47), French composers developed a uniquely new song form, the chanson, which was distinctly national in both poetry and music. While chansons were typically written for voices in polyphony, in the mid-16th century hundreds of chanson transcriptions for the lute and arrangements for solo voice with lute accompaniment were also published.

One of the most prolific and versatile of all 16th century composers, Roland de Lassus [1532-1594] penned over 150 chansons. Covering subjects as diverse as nature, biblical themes and bawdy narratives, Lassus’s chansons were popular in his native France as well as the Munich court, where he spent most of his career. Today we’ll hear his setting of “Bonjour mon coeur,” with text by a French contemporary of Lassus, the poet Pierre de Ronsard [1524-1585].

After “Bonjour mon coeur,” we will hear an anonymous chanson, arranged for solo lute, “Branle simple,” followed by “Changeons propos,” by a master of the Renaissance chanson, Claudin de Sermisy.

In these performances we will hear members of the Chicago Early Music Consort, under the direction of Gary Berkenstock:
Gary Berkenstock—recorder
Stephanie Sheffield—soprano
Phillip W. Serna—bass viol
Joel Spears—lute

Podcast episode produced by Joshua Sauvageau.

Both are examples of the ternary “da capo aria” form, in which the first “A” section returns near the end, sometimes with a great deal of embellishment and ornamentation improvised by the singer.  Vocalists and divas of Handel’s time loved the opportunity to put their prowess on full display, and audiences delighted in filling opera houses like the Queen’s Theater and the Covent Garden to take in the spectacle.

This performance is presented by Ars Antigua under the direction of Jerry Fuller with Kathryn Mueller, soprano.

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JJ has been enrolled in MYA since the Fall of 2007, and is a member of Quintethero, MYA’s top woodwind quintet.  It’s a group that has been featured on WFMT’s Introductions and on NPR’s From the Top, and was also selected as the winner of the 2010 Chicago Chamber Music Competition.  JJ was chosen as Principal Bassoon of the 2010 Illinois All-State Honors Band as well as Principal Bassoon of the MYA Symphony Orchestra and District 7 Illinois Music Education Association Festival a number of times.

JJ plans to attend either the Conservatory at Oberlin College or the Juilliard School in the fall, majoring in bassoon performance and microbiology.

Here is JJ Sechan performing the first movement of Mozart’s Bassoon Concerto with the orchestra at Midwest Young Artists.

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