I’ve stopped pretending I’m going to get to concerts I don’t have specific commitments to. So it will be:
* Recorder relay at the Cathedral of Saint Paul. It starts at 9, but I won’t kill myself to get there on time, but will try to be there before 10.
* Judith Conrad Labyrinth concert at 3:45 at the Paulist Center.
* Ensemble Clément Janequin at 11 PM at Emmanuel Church.
I’ll probably spend some time at the exhibition between the recorders and the labyrinth.
They’re even better than I remembered them from 6 years ago. One friend said he thought they have more energy in live performance than comes across in their CD’s. Of course, I know a lot more about the music than I did then. And I think Jordan Hall might be a slightly better acoustic for them than Emmanuel Church; I’ll be able to tell you more about that after tomorrow’s 11 PM concert.
The “staging” of the concert was really nice; instead of cowering behind music stands or notebooks, they sat around a table littered with papers. They new the music well enough that they only needed to glance down now and then, and their faces were free to connect with the audience and their hands were free (in the director’s case, to keep the tactus with a green pencil).
The subtitle of the concert was “A palindromic banquet of Franco-Flemish music”. A woman in the ladies room wanted to know what a palindrome was; the two examples we were able to come up with were “Madam I’m Adam” and “A man, a plan, a canal: Panama”. I liked the program’s structure:
* A Prelude introducing the subject
* A grace before the meal
* Songs (and one lute solo dance) about the hunt (for women as well as beasts)
* A lament
* Intermission
* Another lament
* more songs about food, drink, and women
* Prayer after the meal
They used either the lute, the small organ, or both to accompany most of what they did. Obviously they’re capable of singing without it, and it wasn’t making a very large contribution to the sound of the group as heard by the audience, but it gave a sense of security that was among the many things that allowed the connection with the audience to be as good as it was.
As I remember it, 6 years ago Dominique Visse, the director, beat the tactus less than half the time; this time he was doing it all the time. I’m sure that was part of the amazing rhythmic flexibility they acheived, but I did find it a little bit distracting sometimes.
h3. Audience
It wasn’t the solid, whole audience rising as one, standing ovation I’ve experienced on a couple of occasions, but well over half the audience (including this reviewer) were standing at the final ovation. And the comments I overheard on my way out seemed to include a lot of words like “marvelous” and “fantastic”.
For reasons that are entirely obscure to me, Jordan Hall was half full or maybe even less. One recorder player I talked to hadn’t been coming to BEMF 6 years ago when they were here last, and I guess neither of those concerts then was particularly full, either. But it’s a shame they aren’t better known.
h3. You too can play the music.
This is a repertoire “my group”:http://www.laymusic.org/windband.html really enjoys, but hasn’t yet done as much of as will probably will soon.
But one of our members has requested that we sing “La Deploration de la morte de Johannes Ockeghem”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/189.html at her funeral. We joke that that is one of many reasons we hope that event will be far in the future — it’s going to take a long time to learn that one. We also have it in a “transposed version”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/118.html, for groups with good low basses and no sopranos.
In general, if you’ve been to the exhibition before, you know whether you should go again, because it’s quite similar. Some long-term exhibitors didn’t make it this year (OMI and Courtly Music are two that I miss). There are a lot fewer keyboard makers with a room. But there are chances to play most of the instruments you’ll hear this week, and to buy a lot of good music.
The thing I like about going on Wednesday is that it’s usually the least crowded day, and the vendors aren’t anything like as tired of dealing with the public as they will be later in the week. I usually save my serious purchases for Friday or Saturday, so the only thing I actually bought was a piece of recorder music which I’m currently working on from a borrowed copy. Mostly I just wandered around and played instruments that I have no intention of buying, but wanted to see what they were like to play.
Early brass is better represented than it has been at some festivals. “Musikinstrumentenbau Münkwitz”:http://www.trumpetmaker.com/ let me play a baroque trumpet. It’s actually no harder to play the in between notes on trumpet than it is to play the hard notes on a serpent. And the good notes slot better than anything slots on a cornetto. So if I had anywhere to play one, I would be lusting after one. And Lynn Elder has a cornetto, two sackbuts, and a serpent, as well as lutes, hurdy-gurdy’s, crumhorns… Unfortunately, I can’t play any of those instrurments, because I don’t do sackbut, and the other ones are all designed for people with bigger hands than I have.
“De Luna Harps”:http://www.delunaharps.com/ has a nice selection in a wide range of styles and price ranges. After I fumbled through the one piece I know by heart on 3 or 4 of them, I was starting to remember it better. The Camac pedal harp is definitely too high tension for a casual player, even if the player were rich enough to afford a pedal harp. I enjoyed hearing what a small harp the size of my harpsicle but costing 5 times as much sounds like.
The “Wolkenstayn”:http://www.wolkenstayn.de/ portativ organ was fun to play. It’s small enough to hold and work the bellows with one hand while you play with the other, or you can do what I did and leave it on a table with one person working the bellows and another person playing with both hands. There are ingenious little clips to hold down a key if you want it to be a drone.
h3. Facilities
The most obvious problem is the elevators. For some reason, although there are many vigorous people who would be much happier taking the stairs for a few floors than waiting 10 or 15 minutes for an elevator, which is then overcrowded when it comes, the Radisson Hotel does not allow non-emergency access to its stairwells. There are four elevators and they go up and down in sync, so if you hit the wrong time in the cycle, you can wait a long time.
This is more of a problem for the people who want to go to the 9th floor. The Mezzanine is accessible without elevator. There are an extra two elevators that go only as far as the sixth floor. Unfortunately, you have to call them separately, and it’s hard to keep an eye on all six even when all six have been called for the direction you’re going it. I expect the cooperative spirit of BEMF attendees will evolve a system for dealing with that problem, though.
I’m committed to:
* Judith Conrad Cabanilles concert at 10 AM in the Paulist Center.
* Orlando Consort at 5 PM at Emannuel Church
* Carolyn Sampson concert at 11 PM.
I will probably get to some or all of the Viola da Gamba masterclass at 3 PM at the Goethe institute, because I have a friend playing there.
I’d like to hear Ellen Hargis’ lecture at 1:30 PM at Emmanuel Church.
I want to get back to the exhibition, but may leave that until Friday.
h2. Dog walking, etc.
I’m posting this now before running off to the Wednesday evening concert because I clearly won’t be able to do all my blogging in the morning and get to a 10 AM concert. So I’ll probably come back home after that, and then go to the afternoon stuff. So the dog will have a very odd schedule, with his afternoon walk early and his evening walk late, and his bedtime walk either before the 11 PM concert, which is a normal time, but won’t be bedtime, or after it, which is quite late.
I didn’t get any practicing done today, and will likely do little or none tomorrow.
I should redo the serpent publications one sometime when I’m not doing all the festival stuff.
But I’m pleased with the way the “Blogging from BEMF”:http://www.serpentpublications.org/laymusic/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/blog.pdf flyer turned out. I figured Google images would give me an elegant person with a quill pen, and the first one who turned up was “Voltaire”:http://www.jasa.net.au/images/qpvoltaire1.gif.
If anyone had comments on the text, let me know.
In general I think people enjoyed it. It did seem pretty long; especially all the dancing and singing after the ??dénouement??.
Having a libretto by a good playright (Thomas Corneille, younger brother of Pierre) always helps to get a plot you can follow and characters you might care what happens to them.
The singing was good. It isn’t an opera with major arias that you go out of the theater whistling, but in general the BEMF opera directors are good at getting singers who not only sing well but sound good together.
The orchestra was good. It looked like the bulk of the recorder playing was actually done by the oboe players, with the (at least local) name brand recorder players (Tom Zajac, Héloïse Degrugillier, and Justin Godoy) playing the on-stage scenes but not sitting in the orchestra pit making the tone quality sound different when there were recorders doubling the violins. The trumpets sounded the kind of glorious you hope for in the opening fanfare (this year done inside the theater instead of in the lobby). Then they spent close to an hour sitting in the pit before their next ensemble, and it had some problems. There might have been two hours before their appearance at the end, and that had some intonation problems, too. It would be interesting to research what Lully and other baroque conductors did about this problem, but they might have just ignored it.
Some of the solo dancing was really wonderful. There was one male solo in the last act that everybody I talked to had been particularly impressed by, but we couldn’t figure out from the program who had been dancing what. The thing that looks like it happened at the right time was Gilles Poirier as L’Architecture, but I can’t say I noticed anything particularly architectural about the dance.
The dancer friend I had dinner with afterwards said she is always annoyed by the ??porte de bras?? of the BEMF dancers. According to her training, the arms should always move from the center and be much more articulated. I wish I’d had that conversation at intermission — I would have liked to see whether it changed the way I saw them. We all agreed that the solo dancing was generally more impressive than the groups. The demons in Hell were the best of the production numbers. I thought they could have made more of the flying (by Foy) — in general, they could have had their feet on the ground and looked about the same, although it did make better use of the space. People in the balcony reported that they couldn’t always see the flown bodies.
The sets were quite ingenious, using a folding metal fence to set up a foreground area. The four dancing chorus members who opened and closed it also provided commentary on the action, e.g., warning Psyché not to pull aside the curtain behind which Amour was sleeping.
I enjoyed the costumes, particularly the sparkly white dress Psyché wore after intermission.
So my recommendation is to go see it if you’re interested in baroque opera, or French culture, or 17th century theater. But I wouldn’t run around telling everyone to go see it to *become* interested in any of those things.
h3. Theater
If you go, bring a heavy sweater and warm socks. My little black dress has a nice warm jacket to it, but the dressiest shoes I’m willing to wear for the amount of walking taking the T to downtown Boston implies are sandals, which I normally wear without socks, and my feet were freezing. A friend who was sitting in the balcony was just under a vent, and probably had it even worse.
My seat was at the back of the orchestra, and I enjoyed it better than the nosebleed seats I’ve had the last couple of times. In general you can see the orchestra a bit better from the balcony, but this was high up enough that I could see who was doing what pretty well.
One friend complained that there was no champagne and only California wine for sale in the lobby.
h3. Audience
Mostly seemed to be attentive and not restless. The people on the inside seats in our 6-person row had to leave before 10:30. I don’t know how long they had thought it would be. They were apologetic, but it seemed like an odd decision to make.
There’s always an international flavor to BEMF, and even to downtown Boston without BEMF, but I thought I heard more French than usual in the lobby.
A recorder playing friend I talked to before the opera had been to three of the fringe events I recommended and didn’t go to yesterday, and reported that he enjoyed them all, although by the end of the day they were starting to blur in his mind.
I sat next to Tom Prescott, the recorder maker, at the opera. He says he has to get to the opera early in the week, because later he has to spend his evenings fixing people’s recorders.
John Tyson said his workshop and concert went well. He had 15 people at the workshop (we had printed 16 booklets, so that was a good decision). He close to filled Williams Hall at the New England Conservatory. He would have rather used Jordan Hall later in the week, but he felt good about both the concert and the turnout. He confirmed that the program was almost identical to the April 30 BRS concert series program. I asked him if they’d changed their interpretation of the “Baldwin cuckoo piece”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/406.html any. He had said after the April concert that it was a bit in flux. He replied that it seemed to have reached a plateau at the moment. Another intensive rehearsal with really taking it apart and putting it back together might help some, but the right way to work on it at this point is to play a lot more Baldwin.
The two things I’m committed to doing today are getting to the exhibition and checking it out and leaving the flyers, and going to the ??Ensemble Clément Janequin?? concert tonight.
I’ll probably bring my two Tom Prescott recorders to him at the exhibition so he can oil and clean them; I don’t think they have any tuning problems.
I went to dinner with friends after the opera last night, so I’m low enough on sleep that I’ll probably decide to take a nap rather than see a lot of fringe events this afternoon, but if I were going to go to them, the ones I’d be interested in would be “Liber Unusualis”:http://www.liberunusualis.com/, the “Fanfare Consort”:http://www.fanfareconsort.com/ (on the grounds that they include a clarino, and that I like Doug Freundlich, the lute player), and the “Alamire Consort”:http://www.unh.edu/music/alamire (on the grounds that they include a cornetto).
h3. Dog-walking, etc.
Yesterday wasn’t bad. Sunny only got a walk around the block in the evening, but we stopped at the dog park on the way to the grocery store in the afternoon, so he wasn’t too neglected.
I went to Chinatown with friends for dinner after the opera, and I have two cartons in my refrigerator, which should be a couple of after-concert meals this week. The theater district restaurants all seem to be closed after the theater these days, which suggests that Boston commercial theater is probably pretty dead these days.
One of the reasons that people who spend a lot of their lives doing this kind of music look forward to BEMF is that they get to spend a lot of time talking to the other people who do the same things about what they’ve been doing.
I rode back to Cambridge on the train with a friend who plays viols and recorders and sings shape note and west gallery music. She had just spent 2 months in Oxford, England. She got to play with the viol players there, and also to go to a couple of shape note singings and one west gallery meeting. I especially wanted to know if she’d had a chance to sing West Gallery music with Edwin Macadam’s serpent, but he had been only conducting and not playing the meeting she went to.
Anne Kazlauskas writes:
I will just say right now that The King’s Noyse opened things with a bang.
Ellen Hargis sounded a little tired at times (probably hasn’t been sleeping
much since she got here 3 weeks ago) but sang with her silvery tone & total
concentration, looking relaxed & having fun (ditto the rest), then closed with
the heartrending anonymous lament of Elizabeth of Austria on the death of
Charles IX, followed by an encore of the lively Ton amour ma maistresse. Tom
Zajac added mightily to this performance of Jardin des Melodies as he did to
the CD of same. Various drums, pipe & tabor, pipe & triangle, 4 sizes of
tambourine. A special delight: Julie Andrijeski stepped away from her viola
long enough during the first half to make a surprise entrance with Ken Pierce
to dance two Phalese galliards round about the instrumentalists. This helped
ease the whole problem of King’s Noyse concerts: they should be given in a
resonant smaller hall where everyone can get up & dance even if they don’t
know the right steps.
I agree with all of that. The King’s Noyse is a good dance band with very fine musicians who aren’t normally playing as soloists, but producing a group sound. When dance bands like that started playing in concert settings, the next thing that happened was the Variety Show, which added singers and dancers and comedians to just the dance music, which was fine if you could dance to it, but got boring to just listen to.
The King’s Noyse tried all those variety show things:
* Ellen Hargis singing was the most successful in the most sustained way. Her ornamentation of a simple anonymous tune ??Laissez la verte couleur?? was the best illustration of how to use the _easy_ ornaments in Ortiz that I can remember hearing. (And I get illustrations like that at my recorder lessons with John Tyson regularly). I thought the balance was better when she was singing with the lutes and guitars than with the whole band, which could have been the tiredness Anne refers to. But on the more dramatic lament at the end, she was certainly having no trouble holding her own.
* The galliard with the dancers was clearly the best crowd-pleaser of the evening. I was especially impressed with Tom Zajac’s jazzy percussion introduction of the Galliard rhythm. Ken Pierce’s athletic improvisations were also quite impressive. If you ever decide you want to know more about early dance, he’s who teaches it in Boston, and I”ve really enjoyed his ability to get non-dancers improvising right off the bat. I assume the reason they didn’t use that for the encore was that Ken took his bow and left the building, although they probably also wanted to use Ellen in the encore.
* There was even a bit of a comic turn with one of the lute players pretending to be confused about where he should sit when he wasn’t being center stage. Peter Schickele has nothing to worry about, but it was nice that they weren’t taking themselves too seriously.
* Paul Odette’s guitar solo on the tiny little Renaissance guitar rang throughout Jordan Hall with exemplary clarity.
I thought the best thing about the concert was how well the program was constructed, mixing the dance music with songs and madrigals, and going from exciting to gay to sorrowful without making the audience feel disconcerted by violent shifts in mood.
Their decision about mixing singers and instruments was to have Ellen sing only the solo songs, and to have the strings play the madrigals, like ??Aupres de vous?? and ??Susanne un jour??. One unfortunate consequence of this decision is that the program notes included words and translations for the songs Ellen sang (with excellent diction), but not for the vocal music that the violins played. The violin playing on these vocal numbers was much more nuanced and voice-like than on the dance music. I particularly liked the duet between David Douglass and Robert Mealy on the two part setting of ??Aupres de Vous??
h3. You too can play this music
Another thing I liked about this concert was that it included a number of pieces that can be and often are played by amateur groups. Several of them are available for free download from this site:
* The pieces the program lists as “Pierre Attaingnant” are listed on this site as “Claude Gervaise”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/bycomposer.html#59. I believe the “Bransles de Champagne”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/318.html suite they played is the same one I have. They didn’t play the “Basse Dance”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/413.html version of ??Aupres de vous??, but if you’re playing the Sermisy, you might want to look at it.
* ??Aupres de vous?? by “Claudin de Sermisy”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/bycomposer.html#42 is available in the “two”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/193.html and “four”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/412.html part settings that they played at the concert, and also in a fairly odd “three part setting”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/192.html for more or less equal voices.
* The “Lassus”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/bycomposer.html#25 setting of “Suzanne un jour”:http://www.laymusic.org/music/sp/html/pieces/294.html
h2. The Audience
At the “equivalent concert”:http://laymusic.org/wordpress/?p=25 at the last festival, I was struck by how much of the audience had just arrived in town for their big vacation of the year, and was really excited and up for a good concert. This year, it seemed to a casual observer that the audience was more the local early music afficionados, up for the event, but not really in a vacation mood.
The people in front of me were discussing how much they were looking forward to ??Psyché??, on the grounds that they thought ??Thesé?? had been the high point of previous BEMF opera productions. I agree with that.
A voice behind me exclaimed, “That’s a Bach Chorale!” when they started the Sermisy ??Il me souffit??.
h2. Disclaimers
Anne Kazlauskas studied voice with Ellen Hargis for several years.
Tom Zajac was one of my favorite coaches when I used to go to the Amherst Early Music Festival, and since he’s moved to Boston and I’ve been involved in running the BRS, I’ve been hiring him for as much coaching there as his busy schedule allows him to do. If you want to see why, he’ll be coaching the “July 25 meeting”:http://www.bostonrecordersociety.org.
LayMusic.org 
