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Program Notes The so-called baroque period of music spans over 150 years of music and includes the great masters Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Schütz, Bach and Handel, all of whom are featured on this evening’s program. This great span of music is seen simultaneously as a redefining period of compositional development and as one that borrows style and technique from the past, thus it is the first artistic period that builds upon the past while pioneering new forms and techniques. Around 1600, the common milestone of the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque, an incredible event occurred that would forever change how musicians would perceive their art. Simply put, with the recent invention of Opera (whose creation itself was actually a re-creation or a misunderstood rebirthing of dramatic forms from classical antiquity) music that had hitherto been conceived of mathematically now needed to provide an obvious and diverse palette of human emotion. In place of strict academic counterpoint, a hierarchical structuring of harmony meant to elucidate emotional rhetoric became the primary underpinning of musical form, onto which was forged a sophisticated and varied vocabulary of melodic gesture depicting feeling through the doctrine of the Affekts. This new paradigm came to be seen as the modern style, or “style moderno” in contrast to the older purely contrapuntal style that came to be called “style antico.” Thus there were now two manners of compositional process: the modern style that focused on the individual; emotionality; subjectivity and freedom, leading naturally into a desire for virtuosity and soloistic improvisation. The older style came to be seen as the method for objective, corporate statements of faith, with a marked focus on the archaic, and also became the style for intellectualism, academic enquiry and for depicting “the law” as referenced in the Hebrew bible. Indeed, all of the composers active during this 150-year period of compositional activity felt an equal affinity for both styles, and no serious composer would lack the skills to excel in both worlds. (This adherence to juxtaposing style antico with style moderno can be seen well into the 19th century as well, although by the late romantic period, the antico was seen solely as a rigorous form of training and not necessarily a practice that had an aesthetic value.) What then are some of the audible and noticeable differences between these two styles? I often like to compare the old style to that of a tapestry where different lines are interweaved into a distinct work of art – the individual lines of which are subservient to the larger picture. We hear many different lines of polyphony moving about – but no one could “sing back the tune” of strict polyphony, because the point of the music is not a melody or theme, but the relationship of the parts to each other. Robert Shaw always used to say that this type of music illustrated pure and beautiful “communism” – he then waited to see how this radical statement would ripple through his 1950’s choristers…but it is an interesting metaphor for style antico! The modern baroque style is easy to hear – lots of notes, melodies that are immediately recognizable, words that are easy to hear and emotions that are possible to grasp. This music focuses on the art of persuasion and can move large groups of people to feel the same thing at the same time – think of Handel’s Coronation Anthems and their feelings of joy coupled with militarism and pomp and circumstance – the earliest examples of musical propaganda! With the new baroque period came a rapid development of instrumental practice and virtuosity. Now that music had its own set of purely musical devices of rhetoric, it was possible for wordless music to have true meaning, and not just serve as occasional or ceremonial background music. The choice of instruments on this afternoon’s program focuses on the modern counterparts of the virtuoso instruments of Monteverdi’s San Marco Cathedral – the cornetti and sackbut consort, and of Handel and Bach’s world of the trumpet and trombone. The brass ensemble assembled for the concert will be playing music originally intended for their ancestor instruments but will also be performing transcriptions of music originally written for other instruments. This type of instrumental substitution was an incredibly common practice in the baroque period, borne out of necessity and circumstance, (whether for budgetary, practical or health reasons,) and we have carried this tradition into the 21st century with Beatus vir being offered by 2 trumpets in the place of solo violins and with Handel’s bizarre and archaic “Gloria Patri” from his Dixit Dominus being re-arranged for brass ensemble and organ! These transcriptions were made following the example of actual transcription practice of the period – and to prove the point we have programmed Bach’s own organ transcription of Vivaldi’s concerto for two violins and orchestra. We frame the program with two of Handel’s most well known works – Zadok the Priest and The King Shall Rejoice, both in the triumphant key of D major, and between them we have sandwiched 12 gems spanning the entire Baroque period. Audience members with a special sensitivity to key relationships will notice a coherent arch that an 18th century ear would appreciate, as we have attempted to create a symmetrical presentation of the works that follows the type of harmonic logic expected by a baroque listener. In a nutshell – the first half of the program examines the flat side of the circle of fifths ending up at C major before intermission, while the second half investigates the “sharp” side of the key world raising the energy until the return of D major with The King Shall Rejoice and Reilly Lewis’ great transcription of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” from Messiah. © Julian Wachner, 2010