Concert Archive

The Amorous Flute

Sunday 1 June 2008 — 2:00 pm

Potter Museum of Art — University of Melbourne, Swanston St., Parkville

Part of the Past Echoes Autumn Music Festival 2008

An intriguing and intimate musical journey through the solo repertoire for recorder and transverse flute, from the early 17th century to the late 18th century.

Greg Dikmans will play 6 different flutes and recorders and talk informally about the music, the composers and the instruments.

Jacob van Eyck (c.1590–1657)

Der Fluyten Lust-hof (Amsterdam, 1649)

• Variations on Doen Daphne d’over schoone maeght
• Variations on Engels Nachtegaeltje

Anon

The Bird Fancyer’s Delight (London, 1717)

• Tunes for the Woodlark and East India Nightingale

François Couperin (1668-1733)

Troisième livre de pièces de clavecin (Paris, 1722)

• Le rossignol en amour (Lentement et très tendrement)

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Flute Partita in A minor (BWV 1013)

• Sarabande

Violin Partita III (BWV 1006)

• Bourée
• Gavotte en Rondeau
• Gigue

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)

Fantasie per il Traverso senza Basso (Hamburg, 1732/33)

• Fantasias

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

The Magic Flute (premiered Vienna, 1791)

• Aria: Ach ich fühl’s, es ist verschwunden!

10th Blackwood River Chamber Festival

A moveable feast of chamber music in the heart of the South West of Australia

25-27 April 2008
Bridgetown, Western Australia

Greg Dikmans (flute), Lucinda Moon (violin), Laura Vaughan (bass viol) and Donald Nicolson (harpsichord) performed the following works in 5 concerts over the 3 days of the festival:

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)

‘Paris’ Quartet No. 6 in E minor from Nouveaux quartors… (Paris, 1737/38)

flute, violin, bass viol and basso continuo

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)

‘Paris’ Quartet No. 2 in A minor from Nouveaux quartors… (Paris, 1737/38)

flute, violin, bass viol and basso continuo

Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764)

Deuxième Récréation de Musique, op. 8 in G minor (Paris, 1737)

flute, violin and basso continuo

François Couperin (1668-1733)

Huitième Concert dans la goût théâtral (Paris, 1724))

flute, violin and basso continuo

Marin Marais (1656-1728)

Sonnerie de Ste. Genevieve du Mont de Paris (Paris, 1723)

violin, bass viol and basso continuo

Parisian Soirée

Thursday 24 April 2008 — 6:30 pm
St Paul‘s Anglican Church — Latrobe Terrance, Geelong

Greg Dikmans (flute), Lucinda Moon (violin), Laura Vaughan (bass viol) and Donald Nicolson (harpsichord).

The music in this program displays the intimacy, delicacy, refinement and, above all, the douceur (‘sweetness’) of the chamber music written during the age of Louis XIV and Louis XV. This is the music of elegant conversation that, with the natural charm and sensitivity of its melodies and the classical beauty of its forms, delights the intellect and moves the heart.

François Couperin (harpsichord), Marin Marais (bass viol) and Jean-Marie Leclair (violin) were among the finest and most celebrated instrumentalists and composers working in France in the first half of the 18th century, performing in the private apartments of the king at Versailles and in the salons of the nobility in Paris.

Georg Philipp Telemann made a triumphant visit to Paris in 1737. He was at the height of his fame in Germany, but still lacked international recognition and to achieve that he had to succeed in Paris. For this visit he composed his justly famous ‘Paris Quartets’. He realised his music had to adapt itself to the taste of the Paris salons and concerts, as well as flatter the musicians who performed it and provide enough originality to keep the interest of the quickly satiated society. With the Nouveuax Quatuors Telemann not only fulfilled these aims, but also produced some of the finest chamber music written in Europe in the first half of the 18th century. The quartets combine elements of the French, Italian and German styles (the goûts-réünis) and many of the movements clearly point to the new galant style that was to be brought to its culmination in the works of Haydn and Mozart.

Program

François Couperin (1668-1733)

Huitième Concert dans la goût théâtral (Paris, 1724))

flute, violin and basso continuo

Marin Marais (1656-1728)

Sonnerie de Ste. Genevieve du Mont de Paris (Paris, 1723)

violin, bass viol and basso continuo

Jean-Marie Leclair (1697-1764)

Deuxième Récréation de Musique, op. 8 in G minor (Paris, 1737)

flute, violin and basso continuo

Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)

‘Paris’ Quartet No. 6 in E minor from Nouveaux quartors… (Paris, 1737/38)

flute, violin, bass viol and basso continuo

Nexus: The Songs of Solomon

A concert of Jewish Baroque Music

Sacred and secular vocal and instrumental works by Salamone Rossi and Louis Saladin

Sunday 17 October 2004 - 5.00pm
Temple Beth Israel — 76 Alma Rd, St Kilda

e21
directed by Stephen Grant

This special concert brings together the talents of two of Melbourne’s finest early music ensembles: the Elysium Ensemble and the vocal ensemble e21. Sacred vocal and secular instrumental works in the Italian style by Salamone Rossi—a Jewish composer active in Northern Italy at the time of Monteverdi—are contrasted with the Canticum Hebraicum by Louis Saladin—a festive divertissement commissioned by the Jewish community in Avignon to celebrate the circumcision of an infant boy—written in the French style of the court of Louis XIV in Versailles.

About the program

Against the background of a very conservative and restrictive theological tradition, the music in this concert may seem all the more surprising. The European Jewish communities of the Baroque period were restricted in their civil rights and living space, and were bound by religious law, yet still managed to absorb many influences of the dominant Gentile culture.

Salamone Rossi was the most gifted member of a clan of musicians working in and around Mantua in the early seventeenth century (his sister or wife, known as Madame Europa, sang the title role in Monteverdi’s opera Ariana). His secular music (madrigals, dances and sonatas in the new baroque style) was so highly regarded that the Gonzaga prince dispensed him from the obligation to wear the yellow Jewish star. Rossi, a violinist, also directed an orchestra of Jewish musicians that performed outside the ghetto and he is an important figure in the development of the trio sonata.

Rossi made a lasting contribution to Jewish liturgical music with the publication in 1622 of The Songs of Solomon, a series of psalms, hymns and prayers in Hebrew composed in the musical idiom of contemporary Italy. Even though they are cast in a more conservative late-Renaissance mould, they still met with resistance within the Jewish community, which clung to its tradition of unaccompanied monodic chant. It is in this form that some of Rossi’s melodies have survived and are still sung today.

Around 1670 a Jewish notable of one of the ‘Four Holy Communities’ of Avignon commissioned an otherwise unknown local composer, Louis Saladin, to set several religious texts to music for performance during the festivities associated with a circumcision ceremony (Brit Milah). Saladin used the texts to create a festive divertissement titled Canticum Hebraicum that combines airs (songs), choruses and courtly dances (bourrée, rigaudon and gavotte). It was performed several times and the melody of the final section survived to the end of the eighteenth century as a monodic traditional chant in the local collection of special prayers.

Canticum Hebraicum is composed in the French style popular at the court of Louis XIV in Versailles. Its subtitle ‘divertissement’ is a term that could apply to a simple pastorale or to entire months of celebration. Divertissements formed part of larger works, such as operas, or were commissioned for special events such as victories or royal births. The rhythms and galant character of the French courtly dances pervade the entire work, adding to its charm.

Joel Cohen, in his notes to the first recording of Canticum Hebraicum by the Boston Camerata (Musique Judeo-Baroque, Harmonia Mundi HMA 1901021), makes the following observation about the choice of musical style in this work: ‘Perhaps the proud parents were making efforts to please the Gentile neighbours invited to the ceremony: if the Hebrew text was unfamiliar, the music was certainly comprehensible and appealing. Surely an affront to the most intransigent members of both communities, this music seems to make a plea for harmony, friendship and understanding among neighbouring peoples. Ken ya’aseh adonay—may the Lord have it so!’