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< Back Camille Saint-Saëns Romance, Op. 36 for cello and piano Program Notes Previous Next

February 20, 2022 – Paul Huang, violin; Danbi Um, violin; Juho Pohjonen, piano CHRIS ROGERSON Afterword for two violins and piano February 20, 2022 – Paul Huang, violin; Danbi Um, violin; Juho Pohjonen, piano Chris Rogerson began playing piano at the age of two (!) and cello at age eight, but he found his true calling as a composer. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Yale School of Music, and Princeton University with renowned composers Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Jay Kernis, Martin Bresnick, and Steve Mackey. Rogerson’s music, praised for its “haunting beauty” and “virtuosic exuberance” (New York Times) includes Of Simple Grace for Yo-Yo Ma, a book of Nocturnes written for ten different pianists from around the world, and works for the Atlanta, Houston, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New Jersey, New World, and San Francisco symphonies, among others. The constant demand for Rogerson’s compositions has resulted most recently in a new piano concerto, commissioned by the Bravo! Vail Festival for Anne-Marie McDermott, and The Little Prince, a violin concerto for Benjamin Beilman commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony. Other premieres this season include Sacred Earth for mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges with video by National Geographic photographer Keith Ladzinski and two premieres with the Dover Quartet: Dream Sequence, a piano quintet also featuring Anne-Marie McDermott, and Arietta with bassist Edgar Meyer joining the quartet. As 2010–12 composer-in-residence for Young Concert Artists, Rogerson had works premiered in the YCA Series in New York at Merkin Concert Hall and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. He served in the same capacity for the Amarillo Symphony, which commissioned and premiered six of his works, among them his Dolos Sielut (Ancient Souls, 2017) and Four Autumn Landscapes (2016), a clarinet concerto for New York Philharmonic principal clarinettist Anthony McGill. Rogerson has also held residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Copland House, and won the Jacob Druckman Prize as a Fellow at the Aspen Music Festival. Rogerson’s numerous honors include the 2012 Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, ASCAP’s Morton Gould Young Composer Award, and prizes from the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts and the National Association for Music Education. Rogerson co-founded Kettle Corn New Music in New York City in 2012 and serves as its artistic director. Since 2016 he has also been a faculty member at his Curtis, his undergraduate alma mater in Philadelphia, where he lives full-time. Afterword for two violins and piano was commissioned by the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts and premiered in February 2020 by Danbi Um, Paul Huang, and Orion Weiss. Dedicated “to my great friend Jacob,” the piece owes its most ethereal sounds to a two-fold inspiration. Rogerson explains: “There is something noble, sweeping, and grand about looking back on life, reflecting on life’s triumphs, pains, joys, and mysteries. I composed this piece after Jessye Norman’s death, and listened to her sublime recording of Strauss’s autumnal Four Last Songs frequently. Strauss perfectly captures this feeling of contemplation, especially in the final song ‘Im Abendrot.’ In Afterword, I make subtle references to this song. “I also composed this piece while reading Hanya Yanagihara’s novel A Little Life, which is at its core a meditation on life’s sweetness and anguish. Without spoiling the novel, one of the characters experiences unimaginable pain. To me there is something particularly poignant about someone who reflects on a difficult life: the shortness of it, how cruel it can be, how ephemeral, how sweet.” © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

MARON KHOURY, FLUTE At age 20, virtuoso flutist Maron Khoury became the youngest musician to join the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. Born in the village of Tarshiha, Galilee, to a musical family, Khoury started playing the flute at the age of 11. Three years later, he was admitted to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia to study with renowned flutist Jeffrey Khaner. Prior to his enrollment at Curtis, Khoury studied with Eyal Ein-Habar and Uri Shoham (Israel Philharmonic), Sara Andon (Idyllwild Arts Academy), and David Shostak (Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.) Khoury is a recipient of several grants from the Curtis Institute of Music and the Charles M. Kanev Memorial Fellowship. In addition, he is a winner of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship and the Schoen Fellowship Grant in honor of Charlotte White. He performed under many notable conductors including James Levine, Riccardo Muti, Simon Rattle, Christoph Eschenbach and Daniel Barenboim. Khoury has performed numerous concerts and recitals throughout the U.S. and Europeand has a long list of invitations to lead workshops. He has performed with The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under the direction of the renown conductor Daniel Barenboim. Maron has also participated in the New York Mostly Mozart festival, The Lake Tahoe summer festival, and has performed as soloist with iPalpiti Festival among others.

< Back AS LONG AS THERE ARE SONGS Stephanie Blythe will announce the program selections from the stage. No Program Notes Previous Next

December 18, 2016: Mariko Anraku, harp; Emmanuel Ceysson, harp CLAUDE DEBUSSY (1862-1918) Selections from Suite bergamasque, arranged for two harps December 18, 2016: Mariko Anraku, harp; Emmanuel Ceysson, harp Debussy was enchanted by the poetry of Paul Verlaine. Around 1890 he began composing a series of piano pieces that would become his Suite bergamasque , titled after a line of Verlaine’s famous poem Clair de lune . The poem had appeared in an 1869 collection entitled Fêtes galantes , which had been inspired by the paintings of Watteau and his followers. In these paintings, idealized landscapes of parks and gardens in the twilight are often populated by revelers in costumes of the tragic-comic characters of the commedia dell-arte—Harlequin, Pierrot, Colombine, and company—a form of theater that began in sixteenth-century Italy. Verlaine’s collection also provided texts for a number of Debussy’s songs before he returned to the piano pieces for revision and publication as Suite bergamasque in 1905. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the word bergamasque (or bergomask) referred to a fantasia or set of instrumental variations based on a folk dance—Shakespeare’s rustic characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream , for example, dance a bergomask. Presumably that folk dance had some connection with the Bergamo district in northern Italy. Further, the character of the Harlequin is described as a mischievous servant from Bergamo. By Verlaine’s and Debussy’s time there was no evident connection with the bergomask’s traditional tune or harmonic scheme, but the association with a folk dance and the commedia dell’arte lingered. Debussy’s Suite bergamasque consists of four movements, Prélude, Menuet, Clair de lune, and Passepied, of which we hear I, III, and IV, arranged for two harps by Matthieu Martin. The Prélude opens with unhurried nobility, achieving Debussy’s aim of sounding improvisatory. This introductory idea leads to a stronger, chordally moving main theme, followed by a delicately textured second theme. The middle section develops both themes, with a kind of recapitulation that deals only with the opening introductory idea and the stronger main theme. The outline of sonata form, however, remains secondary to the lovely sense of improvisation or “Impressionism” that Debussy creates. Originally titled “Promenade sentimentale” after another Verlaine poem, the third piece became Clair de lune (Moonlight) when Debussy polished the Suite bergamasque for publication in 1905. Since then the piece has taken on a life of its own, having become extraordinarily popular and, sad to say, trivialized. Its luminous qualities and inspired construction, however, should inspire listeners to look beyond its familiarity. That amazing opening—how it just hangs there then gently descends as silvery light from the moon—is pure genius. Its rhythmic freedom gives the feeling of floating as does the delay of the anchoring pitch of the home key. Debussy, like his contemporary Ravel, was justly famous for his water imagery. The rippling central section no doubt responds to the line in Verlaine’s poem describing the moonlight bringing sobs of ecstasy to the fountains. The ending is magical—Debussy fragments the theme as moonlight would be broken up by shadows and allows it to die away in a haunting final cadence. A passepied was a French court dance of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in triple time, much like a minuet but faster, with fairly constant motion in eighth- or sixteenth-notes. For his Passepied, Debussy opted instead for a moderate tempo and 4/4 meter, perhaps reflecting his original title, Pavane, which refers to a stately court dance. He most likely changed the name after deciding that his piece was too active for a Pavane, but also to avoid comparison with Fauré’s influential Pavane, op. 50. It seems he was not worried about comparison with another source of inspiration—the Passepied from Delibes’s pastiche of “ancient” dances for Le roi s’amuse , which had long been available in piano transcription. Whatever the case, Debussy’s piece, unfolding in a kind of modified rondo form, shows a fascinating mix of the constant motion of a passepied and a profusion of contrasting melodies, all bathed in a kind of modal sonority that hints at older times while proclaiming Debussy’s Impressionistic orientation. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

MIHAI MARICA, CELLO Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica is a First Prize winner of the “Dr. Luis Sigall” International Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile and the Irving M. Klein International Competition, and is a recipient of Charlotte White’s Salon de Virtuosi Fellowship Grant. He has performed with orchestras such as the Symphony Orchestra of Chile, Xalapa Symphony in Mexico, the Hermitage State Orchestra of St. Petersburg in Russia, the Jardins Musicaux Festival Orchestra in Switzerland, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Santa Cruz Symphony in the US. He has also appeared in recital performances in Austria, Hungary, Germany, Spain, Holland, South Korea, Japan, Chile, the United States, and Canada. A dedicated chamber musician, he has performed at the Chamber Music Northwest, Norfolk, and Aspen music festivals where he has collaborated with such artists as Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, David Shifrin, André Watts, and Edgar Meyer, and is a founding member of the award-winning Amphion String Quartet. A recent collaboration with dancer Lil Buck brought forth new pieces for solo cello written by Yevgeniy Sharlat and Patrick Castillo. Last season, he joined the acclaimed Apollo Trio. Mr. Marica studied with Gabriela Todor in his native Romania and with Aldo Parisot at the Yale School of Music where he was awarded master’s and artist diploma degrees. He is an alum of The Bowers Program (formerly CMS Two).

SETH MORRIS, FLUTE Seth Morris serves as Principal Flute with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and previously held the same position with the Houston Grand Opera and Houston Ballet Orchestras. He also was a member of the New World Symphony and West Michigan Symphony and has performed with ensembles across the United States including the Houston, Detroit, and Pacific Symphony Orchestras, American Ballet Theatre, Mainly Mozart Festival Orchestra, and the Dallas Winds. Seth was a Fellow of the Tanglewood Music Center, as well as a member of the American Institute of Musical Studies Festival Orchestra in Graz, Austria, and performed at the Bay View Music Festival. A laureate of multiple competitions, Seth won first prize in the National Flute Association's Young Artist Competition, the James Pappoutsakis Memorial Competition, the Myrna W. Brown Artist Competition, and both the Kentucky Flute Festival's Young Artist and Collegiate Artist Competitions. In 2015, Seth won the bronze medal at the Ima Hogg Competition where he gave the Houston Symphony premiere of the Carl Nielsen Flute Concerto; other concerto performances include the Boston Chamber Symphony, the Bay View Chamber Orchestra, and the University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra. In addition to performing, Seth has taught at numerous universities and festivals around the country including serving as guest professor at the University of Michigan and University of Texas at Arlington. He has been a Guest Artist or featured clinician for the Texas Music Festival, Texas Flute Festival, Houston Flute Fest, San Diego Flute Club, Long Beach Flute Institute, Floot Fire Houston, and Kentucky Flute Festival, and has served on the faculty for Carnegie Hall’s NYO-USA and the Houston Youth Symphony. His articles have been published in The Flutist Quarterly and The Floot Fire Book: Advanced. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, Seth went on to earn a Bachelor of Music and Bachelor of Music in Music Education at the University of Kentucky, a Master of Music at the New England Conservatory, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Flute Performance degree at the University of Michigan. His teachers include Paula Robison, Amy Porter, Fenwick Smith, and Gordon Cole. Seth is a William S. Haynes Artist.

October 17, 2021: Adam Barnett-Hart, violin; Brook Speltz, cello; Roman Rabinovich, piano JOSEPH HAYDN (1732-1809) Piano Trio in G, Hob. XV: 25 (“Gypsy”) October 17, 2021: Adam Barnett-Hart, violin; Brook Speltz, cello; Roman Rabinovich, piano Ethnomusicology—the comparative study of musics of the world, music as part of culture, and music of oral tradition—has only been considered a formal scholarly discipline since the 1880s. Yet the study of non-Western music dates back to the Renaissance with occasional flowerings in subsequent periods. Liszt in the Romantic period, for example, published The Gypsies and Their Music in Hungary (1859). In this context Haydn’s “ethnomusicological” activities in the Classic era prove intriguing. Haydn biographer Giuseppe Carpani (plagiarized by Stendhal in his well-known Haydn biography, translated in 1817 by William Gardiner) reported: Some years after Haydn’s establishment at Eisenstadt, when he had formed his style, he sought food for his imagination, by diligently collecting those ancient and original airs, which are to be found among the peoples of every country. The Ukraine, Hungary, Scotland, Germany, Sicily, Spain, Russia were laid under contribution by him. Though this passage confuses Haydn’s arrangements of folk tunes for British publishers with his other real use of folk tunes, it does speak to Haydn’s genuine interest in folk song. He was particularly interested in Hungarian-Gypsy lore (and their food!), a natural result of the geographical position of Esterháza in Hungary. The Esterházys’ appreciation of Hungarian-Gypsy folk music is reflected in an engraving made in 1791 from a drawing by Carl Schütz of an elaborate ceremony at the Esterházy castle that includes a Gypsy band playing off to the side. Haydn’s love of Hungarian-Gypsy melodies manifests itself from the 1760s through the 1790s. Haydn made no distinction (as in Bartók’s later painstaking work) between Hungarian and Gypsy music, using the label “Rondo all’ongarese” in his D major Piano Concerto (c. 1780) and “Rondo, in the Gypsies’ stile” (so-labeled in the authentic Longman & Broderip print) in the present G major Trio (1795). Hungarian scholar Ervin Major noted that the folk tunes Haydn used in his Finale are of particular significance for the history of Hungarian music: the dance melodies woven into [the Trio] belong to our earliest hitherto known recruiting [verbunkos] dances: among our more notable records, only the Hungarian dances of József Bengráf (1790) and four Hungarian dances in the ‘Hadi és más Nevezetes Történetek’ are of an earlier date. Bibliographic details on the wealth of information about Haydn’s borrowed folk melodies can be found in H. C. Robbins Landon’s monumental multivolume Haydn study. Some of Haydn’s Hungarian melodies, with slight variances, are paralleled in an 1805 publication issued by the Vienna “Chemische Druckerey.” The variances seem to indicate that Haydn used them as he knew them, possibly from childhood, without referring to any publication. Haydn’s Gypsy Trio was one of Three Trios, op. 73, probably the last compositions he wrote on his final English sojourn. He dedicated them to Mrs. Rebecca Schroeter, a piano student of his in London who had helped him with certain business matters and with whom he kept up a correspondence after his return to Austria. His piano trios at that time were called “sonatas for pianoforte with the accompaniment of a violin and violoncello”; accordingly the piano part is most prominent though the violin occasionally dominates as in the E minor variation in the first movement and the middle section of the Poco adagio second movement. The cello almost always reinforces the piano’s bass line. In his use of a leisurely (Andante) movement to begin the Trio, Haydn followed his old sonata da chiesa (church sonata) pattern of the 1760s. This lovely set of variations is followed, however, by an even slower second movement that presents a different harmonic world. The triplet accompaniment pattern of the slow movement continues through the three sections of the A-B-A form; a nice touch occurs in the penultimate bar when the cello alone continues the triplet motion. Haydn’s use of a leisurely movement followed by an even slower one intensifies the effect of his brilliant “Gypsy” Finale, which made this Trio an enormous favorite in England and soon after on the continent. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

February 8, 2015 – David Finckel, cello; Wu Han, piano SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891–1953) Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Major, Op. 119 (1949) February 8, 2015 – David Finckel, cello; Wu Han, piano In 1936, after nearly fifteen years spent living in Paris and traveling worldwide, Sergey Prokofiev, admittedly “patriotic and homesick” and longing to “see the real winter again and hear the Russian language in my ears,” moved back to the Soviet Union with his non-Russian wife and two sons. Relocating during one of the most savage political and social periods in Russian history, Prokofiev was set on establishing himself as one of Russia’s greatest composers. Rachmaninov had his hold on America, Stravinsky claimed Europe, and Shostakovich had just been censored by Stalin. Prokofiev kept his passport to tour without having to petition, but upon routine inspection it was confiscated without return, grounding Prokofiev in Moscow for the remainder of his life. The late 1930s saw very few public debuts of Prokofiev’s works, save the Cello Concerto op. 58 (1938) and Romeo and Juliet (1936), both met with negative criticism. In the years following World War II, seeking to recover the Soviet “socialist realism” ideal of art, Andrey Zhdanov, the leading Soviet cultural policy maker, passed a series of resolutions affecting literature, art, film, and finally, in 1948, music. This decree stunted artistic growth in the Soviet Union until Stalin’s death, lasting out the remaining years of Prokofiev’s life. The elderly composer grew ill and deeply insecure. Much of his work had been banned from public performance, and though still composing, he hardly was living the pampered lifestyle he had anticipated returning to Russia. Prokofiev’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, remarkably, was permitted by the Committee of Artistic Affairs to receive a public premiere. It was debuted in 1950 by cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and pianist Sviatsoslav Richter, with the first movement bearing the quote, “Mankind–that has a proud sound.” Despite the sheer horror that besieged Prokofiev at the time of the work’s composition, the work remains remarkably expressive. The first movement, marked Andante grave, opens with a resounding call by the cello, followed by a short call-and-response folk melody between the cello and piano. A throbbing interlude brings the main theme, a cheery and flippant duet. The movement slows as the cello rings out a beautiful harmonic cadence, and the second theme enters much more heavily mechanically than the first. The second movement, a playful Scherzo and Trio, follows suit. A percussive pizzicato entrance transmutes to a complacent romantic trio section. The final Allegro ma non tanto remains timid, with melodies and chordal structure based heavily on Russian folk music. The movement lacks not energy nor drive, yet each climax, rather than developing in timbre and expressive nature, actually becomes more simplistic; sometimes diminishing down to a single note piano melody. The coda recounts the opening resonant notes of the cello in a grand duet statement, marking a turbulent and virtuosic conclusion. ©2013 Andrew Goldstein Return to Parlance Program Notes

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October 30, 2022: EMERSON STRING QUARTET JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) String Sextet No. 2 in G, Op. 36 October 30, 2022: EMERSON STRING QUARTET Brahms’s Sextet in G major might be called his “Agathe” Sextet, because it is linked, whether as a salve to his conscience or as a farewell, to Agathe von Siebold, whom he had recently loved but rejected. Brahms wove a musical spelling of her name (or as close as he could get) into the continuation of the first movement’s beautiful second subject. The letter T is not available in musical terms so Brahms spelled it A–G–A–H–E (H is B-natural in German). Some have argued that he spelled it A–G–A–D–E, with the D coming out because it is so prominent in another voice, and that A–G–D is woven in elsewhere as well. In any case, the Sextet is a lovely tribute, though perhaps not as “Romantic” as, and certainly less exuberant than, the first Sextet in B-flat. The whole Sextet, in fact, has a veiled or mysterious quality, projected from the outset by the chromatically juxtaposed rising fifths of the first subject and the continuous oscillating half step of the viola accompaniment. The interval of a fifth and its inversion, the fourth, are thematically important to all four movements. The second movement is the Scherzo, but a scherzo in 2/4 rather than the customary triple meter. Brahms breaks into triple meter for the Presto giocoso trio, which is a thematic outgrowth of the Scherzo theme. The slow movement unfolds as a theme and variations, a form that held great fascination for Brahms ever since his student days with Eduard Marxsen. Brahms’s obvious examples in the form are his Haydn, Handel, Paganini, and Schumann variations and Fourth Symphony finale, but he also used variations frequently in his chamber music. The work ends with a turbulent sonata-rondo, in which the interval of a fifth is particularly exploited in the second theme. Brahms completed the first three movements in September of 1864 and the last movement in May 1865. The first public performance took place in Boston at a Mendelssohn Quintet Club Concert on October 11, 1866; the first European performance took place over a month later in Zürich. The performance in Vienna on February 3, 1867, which is often cited as the first, drew censure from the critics and indifference from the public. Brahms’s circle, however, was enthusiastic and subsequent performances convinced the public of the work’s great merit. © Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes

April 7, 2024: Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI LE NUOVE MUSICHE: The Baroque Revolution (1550 - 1660) April 7, 2024: Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI This afternoon’s program offers an overview of great composers who lived in different European regions and straddled the Renaissance and the Baroque periods, a time when sixteenth-century compositional forms and techniques coexisted with those of the new century. The musica nova (new music) stemmed from Monteverdi's seconda prattica (second practice), which appeared in the world of instrumental music as well opera. The new music could be completely unknown or reappear like an old friend, who changes over time while maintaining characteristic features. The selections are ordered chronologically starting with three Renaissance pieces, collected in the first edition of Capricci in musica a tres voci (1564) by Vincenzo Ruffo (1508–1587) and here arranged in a small suite. Ruffo, from Verona with a musical career in Northern Italy, was appointed maestro di cappella of the Cathedral of Milan. The following year he dedicated his collection of Capricci , the earliest known instrumental pieces to bear that designation, to Marc’Antonio Martinengo, Marquis of Villachiara. He also sought to introduce himself to the local nobles, who were voracious consumers of instrumental music. La Gamba and La Disperata are joined by La Piva , a fast dance of popular origin that stemmed even from the fifteenth-century and which, although apparently absent from the choreographic world of the sixteenth century, appeared sporadically in instrumental music collections. The cameo appearances here of the Rappresentazione di Anima e di Corpo (Representation of soul and body) and the Ballo del Granduca (Ball of the grand duke) from the intermedii of La Pellegrina by Emilio de’Cavalieri (c.1550–1602) recall the invention par excellence of the new century, namely opera. The second of these had an incredible circulation and, by belonging to the cycle of intermedii , represents that exceptional moment of artistic ferment and experimentation that would lead to the birth of opera. The first belongs to a composition that vies with Peri’s Euriydice for primogeniture in the new musical genre. A very prevalent dance between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is the gagliarda , built on a basic scheme of five dance steps on six beats of music (in modern terms, 6/4 with the fourth note elongated), which could also be varied in a very virtuoso way choreographically. It was usually preceded by a pavane , a dance of slower, processional character. The gagliarda was very popular both as dance music and as a purely instrumental form. The Earle of Peembrookes Galiard , by the London composer and soldier Tobias Hume (1569–1645) appeared in the collection Poeticall Musicke (1607) together with Start ; this collection constitutes the first repertoire composed for lyra viola (a kind of viola da gamba), the real protagonist of Hume’s songs. Other gagliards are offered during the program with more specific connotations: the Gagliard Battaglia (Battle gagliard) by German composer Samuel Scheidt (1587–1654) and the closing Gallarda Napolitana by the blind Neapolitan composer Antonio Valente (c. 1520–c. 1580). The famous anonymous Greensleeves to a Ground reminds us of another element very present in the musical practice of the time throughout Europe—namely the composition on a basso ostinato (a ground, in English), on which the other parts propose a series of variations. We will return to other variation forms later in the program. Another important presence is that of the canzona , a term that developed largely in Italy around the seventeenth century. It is described by Michael Praetorius (1571–1621) as “a series of short fugues for ensembles of four, five, six, eight, or more parts, with a repetition of the first at the end.” Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643) dedicated himself on several occasions to this type of instrumental composition. The Canzon we hear this afternoon appears in his collection Il primo libro delle canzoni a 1–4, bc, accomodate per sonare [con] ogni sorte de stromenti (The first book of canzonas for one to four voices, basso continuo, accommodated to play [with] all sorts of instruments), published in Rome in 1628. Frescobaldi’s edition was prepared by his pupil Bartolomeo Grassi who, as he explained in the afterward of the work, gave each of the thirty-seven canzonas a dedicatory name inspired by the names of gentlemen from Lucca. We hear the Canzon terza, a due canti, which means that it is essentially a three-voice fugue with two instrumental upper voices and an instrumental bass voice (played by a sustaining bass instrument doubled by keyboard that also supplies harmonies, or basso continuo). We then proceed to the ciaccona , whose presence is already attested to in Spain at the end of the sixteenth century. Traditionally accompanied by guitars, tambourines, and castanets both in Spain and in Italy (and especially in Naples), the ciaccona was often introduced in theatrical performances of the commedia dell’arte. The Italian variant is more exuberant than the Spanish, with a faster tempo and multiple nuances. The Ciaconna by Andrea Falconiero (also known as Falconieri) (1585–1656) is from his collection Il primo libro di canzone, sinfonie, fantasie, capricci, brandi, correnti, gagliarde, alemane, volte, 1–3 vn, va, or other insts, bc (First book of canzone, sinfonias, fantasies, etc., for 1–3 violins, violas, or other instruments, and basso continuo) (Naples, 1650). In this piece the three instrumental parts launch into a passionate back-and-forth. One of the earliest known references to the lively guaracha , likely of Spanish origin, stems from the Mexican singer, viol player, and composer Juan García de Zéspedes (1619–1678). He includes one—as well as uses the term—in his mid-seventeenth-century song/carol Convidando está la noche (Inviting is the night). Its distinctive rhythms foreshadow the song form that later became popular in Caribbean colonies. We turn now to a later incarnation of the variation form, the folia . Though the folia originated in Portugal as a dance or dance song—often for guitar—it wasn’t until the last quarter of the seventeenth century that the harmonic pattern and melody became somewhat standardized. In Italian sources the earliest use of folia was by Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (also known as Kapsperger) (c.1580–1651), who wrote four books of works for the theorbo or chitarrone (bass fretted lute) (1604, 1616, 1626, and 1640). The form is also represented on this program by Diferencias sobre la Folía (1660) by an anonymous Spanish composer. Falconiero appears again on the program in another variation form closely related to the ciaccona or chaconne —the passacalle (also called passacaille , passacaglia , and other variants) from the above-mentioned collection. Falconiero’s Passacalle consists of thirty-two variations on the stepwise descending four-note bass line. We can compare this with the Passacaglio by virtuoso violinist and composer Biagio Marini (1594–1663) from his collection Per ogni sorte di strumento musicale (For all sorts of musical instruments) (Venice, 1655). In this set of variations some delightful harmonic crunches appear over the ground bass. Based mostly in Cremona, Tarquinio Merula (1595-1665) was one of the most progressive composers of the Venetian School in the generation after Monteverdi. His Chiaccona from his Canzoni overo sonate concertate per chiesa e camera (Concerted songs for church and chamber) (Venice, 1637) begins in lilting style, becoming remarkably virtuosic as the vriations progress. To close the program we are treated to Valente ’s Gallarda Napolitana (mentioned above) from his Intavolatura de cimbalo (Naples, 1576), which was one of the earliest publications of the Naples school of keyboard composition that flourished in the late sixteenth- and early-seventeenth centuries. For this piece and other variations types such as folías and ciacconas, writes Jordi Savall, “both composition and successful performance require a succession of freely virtuoso elaborations over a preexisting bass line, pattern, or melody,” which in the performance by Hespèrion XXI leads to delightful creative moments. Finally a word about the viola da gamba, which in different sizes and different combinations is the protagonist of the evening. Born around the fifteenth century, the viola da gamba has conquered a particular space for its ability to propose itself in consort, in homogeneous ensembles, or mixed with different instruments, and then for the possibilities as a soloist, pushed to virtuosity. Today’s program, in addition to letting us experience the musical richness of early seventeenth-century instrumental pieces, also enables us to hear all the different shades of the viola da gamba’s voice. Text curated by Francesca Pinna in collaboration with the Dipartimento di Musicologia e Beni Culturali, Università degli Studi di Pavia, sede di Cremona; adapted by Jane Vial Jaffe Return to Parlance Program Notes