Featured Double-Header Concert
Thursday July 25, 8pm
Live streamed for online participants
Quaver presents: Hiding and Seeking
As with all quaver programs, this presents a wide range of music rarely heard side by side. Some come from the core consort repertoire that gambists know and love. And much of it is music originally for other instruments—from voices and keyboards to orchestras, Hawaiian slide guitar, and more. What
unifies the program is a theme of hiding and seeking, whether it’s finding the complex fugue theme that’s passed around all the parts, or seeking a haunting melody to find comfort in loss.
Wildcat Viols presents: The Magnifick Consort of Four Parts
Roger North’s sobriquet “a magnifick consort of four parts,” refers to Locke’s suites, but could aptly describe each of these composers’ viol quartets. For Locke, Purcell, and Legrenzi alike, these are rare and exquisite products of exceptional circumstances. Locke’s suites, heirs to the fantasy-suite genre innovated and developed by Coperario, Lawes, and Jenkins, date from a politically turbulent time in which viols were all but eliminated from the public sphere, but irrepressibly flourished in private household settings. Purcell’s Fantazias, are of mysterious origin, written during the summer of
his 21st year, decades after the consort fantasy had fallen out of fashion; possibly the product of a self-directed course of compositional study, it is nevertheless hard to believe that works of such emotional deptch and subtlety were not meant to be played and enjoyed. Legrenzi’s sonatas for “quattro viole da gamba…”, published long after the viol had vanished from the Italian musical mainstream, were likely composed for the orphaned girls of Venice’s Ospedale dei Mendicanti to play on their new set of viols, purchased the same year as the sonatas’ publication (1673).
Featured Lecture with Kerry McCarthy
The Misadventures of Musicians in Renaissance England.
Monday July 22, 8pm
Live streamed for online participants
A lot of things can go wrong in live music. That was as true in Renaissance England as it was today, and plenty of documents have survived to give us the details. Musicians lost their way mid-piece because of insufficient lighting; they antagonized colleagues by blocking their view of the music; they engaged in (and lost) sight-reading contests; the theatrical (anti)-heroine Moll Cutpurse brought a bass viol along with her on her
criminal adventures; a cathedral musician collected medicinal recipes to ease “roughness of the pipes” and other woes; players and singers argued about where they should sit; one unfortunate performer lost his voice during a live show in front of the Queen, but saved the day by breaking the fourth wall. The 16th and 17th centuries are justly celebrated as a golden age of music, but we can also learn a lot from the failures, mistakes, and vulnerabilities of past generations of musicians.
Consort Cooperative Concert
Friday July 26, 8pm
​Live streamed for online participants
A concert highlighting the many talents of the Consort Cooperative members.
New! Curated Evening Playing Sessions
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings following the events.
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Happy Evenings Consort Club
Join Sarah Poon and friends for a curated evening of consort making. Our groups will have options to double or options to tap in, and with a range of difficulties, there is sure to be a group for you!