Featured Double-Header Concert
Thursday July 27
Live streamed for online participants.
LeStrange Viols Presents: Copraritopia!
John Coprario's 5-part fantasias have long been a favorite repertoire for those who love to play English consort music, but the pieces are strangely underrepresented in concerts and
recordings. Likely composed between 1590 and 1610, perhaps during Coprario's sojourn in Italy, the 5-part pieces are nearly all furnished with Italian titles and may have been texted. Whether they originated as true madrigals or not, though, they work beautifully on viols and were cherished as consort music in England for at least half a century after their composition. LeStrange Viols will perform a selection of Coprario's 5-part fantasias drawn from a new recording to be released in July 2023.
William Hunt presents: William Byrd – Father of the Consort Anthem
.jpg)
The ‘verse anthem’ is a broad umbrella term covering English sacred music in verse style, a form which emerged in the last decades of the sixteenth century under Elizabeth I and had its most spectacular flowering in the reign of James I in the early seventeenth century. It is arguably one of the finest artistic creations of the English Reformation and the 'consort anthem’, where the voices are accompanied by a consort of instruments (as opposed
to the more normal organ), is its most elaborate expression. In the teeth of puritan opposition to the distractions of music in the new liturgy, this peculiarly English musical idiom achieved remarkable success, not only through attracting contributions from many of the greatest composers of the era, but because of its ability to fulfill a principal Reformist aim: to make worship accessible in language that was both direct and clearly understandable. By the simple device of alternating sections for solo voice on the one hand and chorus on the other, we are conveyed, as it were, into a theatrical space where a drama unfolds, enabling the listener both to be swayed by the persuasive powers of an orator and to identify with a communal response. William Byrd is the undoubted father of this form, and his few surviving examples, of which we will hear some that are newly reconstructed, served as models for many to follow, through to Orlando Gibbons and beyond. Of none is this more true than his iconic and much imitated anthem ‘Christ rising’, which extracts elements both mystical and dramatic from the Book of Common Prayer's text for Easter Day - a glorious union of pulpit and stage.
Featured Lecture by William Hunt
The Consort Anthem: “A Trove of Many Treasures”
Monday July 24
Live streamed for online participants.
The ‘verse anthem’ can fairly be described as one of the great artistic achievements of the English Reformation, and its most sophisticated form, the ‘consort anthem’, is a treasure trove for viol players today that remains too little explored. Through the highly effective format of alternating verses for solo voice and answering sections of chorus, it fulfills reformist ideals of making devotional text newly accessible and persuasive, often using rhetorical and dramatic techniques that are in origin secular.
Faculty Spotlight Concert
Friday July 28
This concert features our Conclave faculty in selections from our most beloved consort repertoire!
Happy Evenings Consort Club
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings at 9 pm
​
These consort reading sessions are for viol players at all levels including beginners. Jessica Powell Eig will lead the group, boosted by advanced viol players and faculty. Sign-up sheets will be made available onsite.