Second Monday Music: Boulder’s fall concert of Baroque music

Suitable for church

By Chuck Smythe

The fall concert season has struck, and with it the latest offering from the Seicento Baroque Ensemble. This is a group formed by Evanne Browne, kappellmeister of Boulder’s First United Methodist Church. She is a noted scholar of early music, and seems to know everyone in the field.

Evanne Browne

    Those who follow these pages may recall my report last spring, of our offerings from the French Baroque (in French Latin, a strange creature), and the fall concert of selections, mostly never before performed, from the archives of a monastery in Prague.

    The recent offering was titled “Celestial Music: Celebrating the Music of Henry Purcell and the Great Comet of 1680.” I was especially eager to take part; my only previous exposure to Purcell was some of his compositions for recorder. I liked these very much, and was eager to learn what else he had written. Purcell was possibly the most important native-born English composer before modern times, described by his contemporaries as “our musical Shakespeare.” Born in 1649, he was a prodigy, and was appointed a composer for the royal court by age 18. Like Mozart, he composed at a furious rate, then died at age 36. He composed for the church, the theater, the chamber, and the pub. His best known work is the opera Dido and Aeneas.

    The pre-concert lecture was by Eliot Young, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, who talked about comets in general, about the Great Comet (“Newton’s Comet”) that appeared in 1680, striking terror into the hearts of the gullible.

    The concert was narrated by Charlie Sampson, the classical DJ for Denver’s NPR station.

We opened with a theater piece, “Welcome to all the pleasures,” from “Ode for Saint Cecilia’s Day.” Later, we did “We must assemble a sacrifice,” from the opera Circe, which spoke of the “demons who do range across the sky.” Also, in this vein, we did the Welcome Song from “Celestial Music.” The music for these was wonderful, but the libretti were rather ponderous, courtly things, full of references to Apollo, Orpheus, and other classical creations. The liveliest sang of Phyllis, whose voice left Philander “ravished in his ear,” an interesting concept.
    The best music of the concert were the sacred works. My favorite by far was “Hear My Prayer, O Lord.” It is full of delicious dissonances, more imaginative than anything else I know before Bach. I learned from a fellow chorister that the modern Nordic composer Sandstrom wrote a modern take on this piece. Check it out:

    Second best was his Funeral Music for Queen Mary. This was performed at his own funeral only ten months after he composed it. Again, marvelously adventurous harmonies.
    Finally, we did a set of catches (drinking songs related to rounds). We were confined to those suitable for church: “‘Tis Women Makes Us Love,” “Five Reasons to Drink,” “A Catch upon Port Wine.” A pity: one of his others features a young lady pondering her harpsichord lessons, studying a musical figure known as a “long prick.” Right.
    I wish you’d all been there to enjoy it. I certainly did.
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Copyright © 2013 by Chuck Smythe

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