‘I Love and I Must’

Helen Charlston – Mezzo Soprano

Julian Perkins – Harpsichord

Jonathan Manson – Bass Viol

William Carter – Theorbo

Friday 21 May 2021, 7.30pm

Live at St John’s Smith Square

Livestreamed and available on demand for 30 days at www.sjss.org.uk

London Festival of Baroque Music

Friday 21 May 2021, 7.30pm

Live at St John’s Smith Square

Livestreamed and available on demand for 30 days at www.sjss.org.uk

‘I Love and I Must’

Helen Charlston – Mezzo Soprano

Julian Perkins – Harpsichord

Jonathan Manson – Bass Viol

William Carter – Theorbo

Purcell Music for a while Purcell Oh Lead me to some peaceful gloom Eccles Restless in thought Purcell I love and I must

Corbetta Prelude – Canary – Chaconne

Purcell The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation Purcell O Solitude

Simpson Division in D major

Purcell The cares of Lovers Purcell I attempt from Love’s Sickness Purcell What a sad fate is mine D Purcell Morpheus thou gentle god

Blow Morlake Ground

Purcell If music be the food of love Purcell Evening Hymn

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A warm welcome to the 37th London Festival of Baroque Music, ‘Grounds for Optimism’, which brings together a combination of live concerts and online events over a long weekend as we emerge from lockdown. This year’s festival is split in to two parts. The first runs from 21st to 23rd May and this will be followed by a second part, from 18th to 20th September.

Grounds for Optimism is the title of a short feature of five online concerts, given by harpsichordist Steven Devine which pairs ‘grounds’ by Henry Purcell with other intimate keyboard music from England in the late 17th century. Also featuring in the online series are the Rosary Sonatas of Biber, played by Bojan Čičić, and also with Steven Devine; three programmes of Bach given by Amici Voices directed by Helen Charlston; and five programmes devised and performed by Tabea Debus and friends.

This first of the 3 live concerts sees Helen Charlston singing Purcell song, followed on Saturday 22 May with an intimate and improvisatory programme of 17th century music for viols and theorbo given by Newe Vialles and finally on Sunday 23 May, a programme of Purcell Verse Anthems from Tenebrae, directed by Nigel Short.

Following the uncertainty and disappointment surrounding the cancellation of last year’s festival, along with so many other events and much of what we hold dear, it’s thrilling to be able to welcome audiences back to live music and to see the return of this much-loved festival.

Operating at 15% of our usual capacity clearly presents enormous challenges. We therefore need your help to raise £10,000 to support this year’s festival. If you are in a position to help, please visit our Crowdfunder campaign here: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/lfbm2021

Alternatively, to give by text message, text LFBM 10 to 70450 to donate £10. Texts cost £10 plus one standard rate message.

We are immensely grateful to all of the festival’s Friends and supporters for enabling these events to take place and to all of you for joining us, whether in person or online. Thank you for your support.

Richard Heason, Director of the London Festival of Baroque Music

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Introduction from Helen Charlston

I recently watched the new BBC adaptation of The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford. The central characters, Fanny and Linda, are like chalk and cheese: Fanny spends her life seeking a safe and secure world, always finding the sensible path, led by reason. Linda is a slave to her heart, a romantic. She lives to find happiness, which she is convinced will come in the form of Love.

Tonight’s programme is an exploration of all the Lindas of this world – how they steer themselves through life with love and pleasure as the only possible guiding light, and how those around them see (and judge) their numerous encounters with cupid. Henry Purcell (1659-1695) and his contemporaries may not have longed to tell the tales of the sensible head (a celebration of the Fannys of Restoration England will have to wait for another time), but the world of flight and fancy they have created will not disappoint.

Join us as we fly in pursuit of love, through beguiling music, confusing pleasure, endless pain and aching beauty to celebrate every love story that has flourished or failed inconsolably.

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Notes on the Music

The Second of four movements of incidental music to Oedipus, Music for a While proclaims the healing power of music. Alecto, who torments the guilty with her hair of snakes and blood dripping from her eyes, cannot be stopped by any power other than music. It beguiles her, and calms her, releasing Oedipus from his servitude to guilt.

Purcell’s adaptation of John Fletcher’s play Bonduca (which dates from October 1695, just a month before the composer’s death) deftly contrasts the pull of both glory and tragedy that epitomised Boudicca’s rule. Oh, Lead me to some peaceful gloom is her final utterance, and closes the whole work. Here Boudicca looks to love as an escape from her inevitable demise, a shelter from the trumpets and tumults of war and a place to ‘soothe her pleasing pain’.

John Eccles (1668 – 1735) also spent a lot of time in the theatre writing incidental music for plays. Restless in Thought, disturb’d in mind was written to appear in She Ventures, She Wins, a comedy published by a Young Woman under the pseudonym of ‘Ariadne’ that tells the story of two young women who have had enough with the expected trials and tribulations of love. Intent on marrying someone who loves them for their minds not their money, they plot to test their suitors in a confusion of disguises and mistaken identities.

The obsession of infatuation in I love and I must is characterised by a repeating idea first heard in the continuo and exactly repeated in the voice. Again and again, we hear this one bar motif as a fight plays out between the heart and the mind: “how should it be so easy to men, yet so hard to me”. This song appears in Purcell’s handwriting with a subtitle ‘Bell Barr’ which has yet to be fully explained. Some scholars suggest this title simply refers to this repeating musical idea, which has a chiming character to it, like a bell. In some recordings, performers have taken it upon themselves to show off this subtitle by adding a chime to Purcell’s score played by the singer.

The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation sets words by Nahum Tate (the librettist of Dido and Aeneas) based story from Luke’s Gospel of a young Jesus disappearing for three days in Jerusalem from the perspective of an anxious Mary in her moment of realisation that she cannot find her young son. Tate’s words are extraordinary – Mary’s love for her son and fear of the situation sees her often abandon reason, as she hopes Jesus has found herself in the desert with tigers as these wild animals are mild than the tyrant Herod. Her struggle is one of heart and head, but also of faith and doubt as she tries whole heartedly to live out her trust in God despite the terror she feels.

We move to the first ‘song upon a ground’ for the evening: O Solitude. The ground bass is a short, harmonically driven phrase which is here is repeated without any variation at all. The bass line remains a constant four bar phrase above which Purcell weaves an extraordinary vocal line, full of irregular phrase lengths, the first words sung by the voice suddenly appear halfway through the 3rd bar of the first ground. New ideas overlap with new entries of the bass so that listener and performer get lost within the structure and solitude’s hypnotic inevitability takes over. Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant’s poem La Solitude focuses on this transformative power of retreating from the noise of everyday life. Katharine Phillips chose, seemingly at random, three verses of this extended poem to translate which became the text for Purcell’s extraordinary song. The phrase ‘O solitude’ is repeated eight times as an interrupting refrain, always falling, and often at very chromatic intervals – falls of a seventh and a diminished fifth appear within the first eight bars alone. Purcell perfectly encapsulates the pull between the rewards and disappointments of this adored solitude: it is both pursued and hated.

Purcell’s incidental music to Thomas Shadwell’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens, appears in the form of a masque in which Cupid and Bacchus (the God of wine) argue over whether love or wine is more important. The cares of Lovers is Cupid’s contribution to the dispute. With their alarms, sighs, tears, charms, sweet torment and pleasing pain, surely love must win the day.

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I attempt from Love’s Sickness to fly is, perhaps, one of Purcell’s most well-known songs both as part of The Indian Queen and as a solo song in its own right. Originally written for the 13 year old Laetitia Cross the aria is sung by Queen Zempoalla, as she finds herself stuck in the fever of love. Purcell’s opera remained uncompleted upon his death in 1695. His brother Daniel, from whom we hear more shortly, wrote a masque for act V to bring it to a close.

Ruminating upon the consequence of that fevered love, we return to another song built on a ground, again characterised by musical simplicity and heightened poetic emotion. What a sad fate is mine exists in two versions – one which appears in manuscript as just the vocal part, the other as a fully formed song which we hear today. The ground bass itself it very short – just 9 notes (3 bars) long and repeats 31 times.

Like his brother before him, Daniel Purcell (1664-1717) joined the choir of the Chapel Royal as a teenager, before being appointed organist of Magdalen College, Oxford. He came third (behind John Wheldon and John Eccles) in the competition to set William Congreve’s Judgement of Paris to music, clearly marking him as an important player in the musical London at the end of 17th century. In Morpheus, thou gentle god Purcell sets words by Abel Boyer in a stereotypical ‘mad song’ fuelled by jealousy and revenge. The spurned lover calls to Morpheus for help, asking for sleep and death to escape the loss of love. There is no easy way out here: “I must my rival or myself destroy”.

As we reach the end of our journey through the flights and fancy of a heart governed by love, Music returns as the ultimate language for all things amorous. With words by Henry Heveningham building on the first line of that famous passage from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, If music be the food of love exists in three settings by Henry Purcell. The first and second are closely linked – both setting the words in a strophic form (the same music for each verse) – but the third version, heard today is more mellifluous and improvisatory. Music itself slowly comes to life, from an exploring tumble of semiquavers to a dance like refrain as it proudly declaims “that you are music everywhere”.

Our final ground, Now that the sun hath veiled its light or An Evening Hymn, is one of complete perfection. Throughout those months of the first lockdown in 2020 this was one song to which I kept returning. The joy it radiates, the peace and ease with which its prayer is evoked kept circling around my head. So, it is with great joy that I am able to bring it to life today, as we again return to music making with a live audience. I hope that strains of ‘Hallelujah’ will accompany you on your journey home, a gift from Purcell through the centuries to this historic day when music can once again take flight for performer and audience.

Helen Charlston

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BIOGRAPHIES

Helen Charlston – Mezzo Soprano

Acclaimed for her musical interpretation and “warmly distinctive tone” (The Telegraph), winner of the London Handel Competition for 2018, Helen Charlston was a founding participant of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment ‘Rising Stars’ programme. She continues to work alongside the orchestra frequently both in concert and for films on their online streaming platform. Helen is a member of Les Arts Florissants Young Artist Programme (Jardin des Voix) for 2021/22 with whom she will sing the role of Rosmira (Handel Partenope). She is a 2018 City Music Foundation Artist.

Recent highlights include solo recitals at Wigmore Hall, Halle Handel Festival, Ryedale Festival and Oxford Lieder Festival, and debuts with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Slovenia Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Academy of Ancient Music.

Helen’s Isolation Songbook, a collection of 15 new songs written during the first UK lockdown in response to the coronavirus pandemic, was released on Delphian Records on 26 March 2021. This Autumn she records her second CD on the label, centred a newly commissioned song cycle for Voice and Theorbo by Owain Park that seeks to rebalance the 17th century obsession with the female lament. www.helencharlston.com

Julian Perkins – Harpsichord Julian Perkins is Artistic Director of Cambridge Handel Opera and Sounds Baroque. He has performed at the Salzburg Festival, Edinburgh International Festival and BBC Proms, and featured as soloist in concertos with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Florilegium and Orchestra of The Sixteen. He has appeared as solo harpsichordist at the Royal Opera House, Welsh National Opera and Northern Ireland Opera, featured on the BBC Early Music Show and played at London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center and Sydney Opera House.

An avid recitalist, Julian has given numerous solo and duo recitals for organizations such as the Mozart Society of America, Oxford Lieder Festival and the Royal Opera House. Julian's conducting and playing has been praised for its 'demonic intensity' (BBC Music Magazine – Recording of the Month), 'fluid and natural pacing' (Gramophone – Editor's Choice) and 'verve and suavity' (Classical Music).

With Sounds Baroque, Julian has directed performances with performers including Simon Callow, Dame Emma Kirkby, Mark Padmore, Christopher Purves and Timothy West. He has directed the Academy of Ancient Music, directs annual Baroque projects with the Southbank Sinfonia, and conducted opera productions for the Buxton International Festival, Cambridge Handel Opera, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Kings Place, Netherlands Opera Academy, New Chamber Opera, New Kent Opera and Snape Maltings.

Jonathan Manson – Bass Viol

Cellist and viol player Jonathan Manson was born in Edinburgh and received his formative training in the Scottish Borders, later going on to study at the cello at the Eastman School of Music in New York. A growing fascination for early music led him to Holland, where he studied viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken. Jonathan is principal cello of the Dunedin Consort and co-principal cello of the Orchestra of the 7

Age of Enlightenment. He is a founding member of the viol consort Phantasm and the cellist of the London Haydn Quartet, both of which tour worldwide.

A long-standing partnership with the harpsichordist Trevor Pinnock has led to critically acclaimed recordings of the Bach sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord, amongst many others. Jonathan lives in Oxfordshire and is a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music.

William Carter – Theorbo

Born in Florida, William Carter received a rigorous but conventional training as a classical guitarist with Bruce Holzman at Florida State University before falling in love with the earlier plucked instruments and the world of historical performance. Following initial guidance from Pat O’Brien in New York City, he travelled to London as a Fulbright Scholar where he studied the lute with Nigel North and quickly established himself as one of the leading players on old instruments.

Concert tours and festival appearances followed, throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas, both as an orchestral player and as a chamber musician, and soloist with his own group, The Palladian Ensemble. Carter has an extensive discography (including ten albums with The Palladian Ensemble) and has featured on numerous recordings of the Academy of Ancient Music and The English Concert, for both of which he acts as the principal lutenist. He is also an enthusiastic teacher and is Professor of Baroque Studies and Lute at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London.

2005 saw Carter embark on a series of solo Baroque guitar recordings for Linn, the first, La Guitarre Royalle: The Music of Francesco Corbetta, was named in Gramophone’s ‘Critics’ Choice’ end of year list. Carter has been awarded Gramophone’s ‘Editor’s Choice’ accolade twice: for La Guitarra Española: The Music of Santiago de Murcia and Fernando Sor: Early Works. His most recent recording in the series, Le Calme: Fernando Sor Late Works, was awarded an Opus d’Or and also topped Gramophone’s ‘Critics’ Choice’ list.

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The London Festival of Baroque Music, known before 2015 as the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, was founded in 1984 and aims to put before London audiences the highest quality performers in the field of Baroque music from abroad and from the UK.

The Lufthansa Festival was jointly founded in 1984 by Ivor Bolton and Tess Knighton to enrich the already-strong London scene for 17th- and 18th-century music by inviting over top-quality foreign artists, many to make their UK debuts. It quickly won recognition as one of the world’s foremost early-music festivals, with a reputation for intelligent theme-based programming and for offering London audiences the opportunity to see live artists they may previously have only heard in recordings.

In its 30 years of existence, visiting artists have included such Baroque luminaries from abroad as Musica Antiqua Köln, La Petite Bande, the Bach Ensemble, Collegium Vocale Gent, the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Les Talens Lyriques, Tafelmusik, Jordi Savall, Andreas Scholl, Gustav Leonhardt and Andreas Staier, and home-grown performers such as Dame Emma Kirkby, Andrew Manze, Carolyn Sampson, The English Concert, the Academy of Ancient Music and the Gabrieli Consort & Players.

Concerts were initially at St James Church, Piccadilly, but since 1998 have mainly taken place at a new regular home at the Baroque church of St John’s Smith Square. Concerts are also presented in Westminster Abbey and a range of other local venues. www.lfbm.org.uk

London Festival of Baroque Music | Registered charity number 1160689| Registered Office at St John’s Smith Square, Smith Square, London, SW1P 3HA|

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