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ENGLISH BAROQUE with CIRCA 1 Magical Spell of the Night English Baroque with Circa

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ENGLISH BAROQUE with CIRCA 1 Magical Spell of the Night English Baroque with Circa CREATIVE TEAM 2019 Paul Dyer AO Artistic Director Yaron Lifschitz Artistic Director, Circa CANBERRA INTERNATIONAL Benjamin Knapton Associate Director MUSIC FESTIVAL Libby McDonnell Costume Design Llewellyn Hall Peter Rubie Lighting Design Thursday 2 May 7:30pm Yaron Lifschitz, Libby McDonnell, Richard Clarke Set Design SYDNEY This Production premiered on 2 May 2019 at Llewellyn Hall as part of City Recital Hall the Canberra International Music Festival. Wednesday 8 May 7:00pm Friday 10 May 7:00pm CHAIRMAN’S 11 Saturday 11 May 2:00pm Proudly supporting our guest artists. Saturday 11 May 7:00pm Concert duration approximately 90 minutes with no interval. Please note Wednesday 15 May 7:00pm concert duration is approximate only and is subject to change. Friday 17 May 7:00pm We kindly request that you switch off all electronic devices during the performance. MELBOURNE Melbourne Recital Centre Saturday 18 May 7:00pm Sunday 19 May 5:00pm BRISBANE QPAC Tuesday 21 May 7:30pm A Baroque wig: Paul Dyer’s first inspiration image for the series. ENGLISH BAROQUE WITH CIRCA 1 Magical Spell of the Night English Baroque with Circa PRELUDE Alex Palmer English Overture SCENE ONE – THE COURT Henry Purcell Curtain Tune from Timon of Athens, Z 632 John Dowland Behold a Wonder Here from The Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires Henry Purcell Overture from King Arthur, Z 628 Henry Purcell Aire from King Arthur, Act II, Z 628 Henry Purcell Hornpipe from King Arthur, Act III, Z 628 Henry Purcell How Blest are Shepherds from King Arthur, Act II, Z 628 Henry Purcell 3 Parts Upon a Ground, Z 731 SCENE TWO – THE BEDROOM Henry Purcell Overture in C minor, Air in C minor, The Triumphing Dance from Dido & Aeneas, Z 626 Henry Purcell Ritornelle in D minor, Thanks to these lonesome vales, Dance in D minor from Dido & Aeneas, Z 626 George Frideric Handel Gentle Morpheus, son of night from Alceste, HWV 45 SCENE THREE – THE CHAPEL Arcangelo Corelli Concerto grosso in D major, Op. 6, No. 4: Adagio, Allegro George Frideric Handel De torrente in via from Dixit Dominus, HWV 232 George Frideric Handel Organ concerto in G minor, Op. 4, No. 3, HWV 291: Adagio SCENE FOUR – THE FAIRGROUND Nicola Matteis Ground after the Scotch Humour Traditional (arr. Alex Palmer) Scarborough Fair Traditional Wallom Green Henry Purcell Curtain Tune from Timon of Athens, Z 632 Traditional (arr. Alex Palmer) The Gartan Mother’s Lullaby Traditional Hole in the Wall Traditional The Virgin Queen Traditional An Italian Rant Traditional Paul’s Steeple ENGLISH BAROQUE WITH CIRCA 13 Set Design English Baroque v3 Elevation Render CRH Sydney 1:50 @ A3 14 AUSTRALIAN BRANDENBURG ORCHESTRA Costume Design ENGLISH BAROQUE WITH CIRCA 15 Facsimile of lute tablature from an original copy of Dowland’s Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires Program Notes Scene One — The Court HENRY PURCELL (1659-1695) was the greatest Even then, it was predominantly a pastime for the English composer of the Baroque era. He was wealthy upper classes. Plays, on the other hand, born into a family of professional musicians, attracted people from all walks of life (King Charles II and from the age of seven or eight his uncle was a regular attendee). arranged for him to be trained as a chorister The music did not drive the action, and often served in the Chapel Royal, where from 1674 he would purely to entertain or divert the audience’s attention study under the direction of another great English during elaborate scene changes which occurred composer, John Blow. In 1677, when he was eighteen, in full view of the audience. A ‘curtain tune’, such Purcell was appointed ‘composer in ordinary’ for as the ‘Curtain Tune on a Ground’ from Timon of King Charles II’s string orchestra, the ‘Twenty- Athens, was played while the curtain was being Four Violins’. Further royal appointments followed raised directly after the overture. A ground is a short including organist at Westminster Abbey in 1679, repeating melody in the bass of a composition, on a position he would hold for the rest of his life. which successive variations were based. This simple During the 1680s Purcell was fully occupied with device allowed composers infinite scope for melodic composing anthems and sacred works for the and rhythmic variation, as we can hear in the edgy Chapel Royal and various kinds of ceremonial music dissonances and extraordinary chromaticism over for the courts of Charles II and his brother James II. the relentless, angular ground bass. The more austere reign of William and Mary which JOHN DOWLAND (1563-1626) is now regarded followed saw a decline in royal patronage of music, as the finest English composer of lute music and and the court lost its place as the centre of musical lute songs, and in his own time he was one of the life in London. While Purcell remained on the court most famous players in Europe. His talent went payroll as one of the forty ‘musicians for the private unrecognised by the English court until the final music’, the focus of his writing became the public years of his life, partly because he was associated theatres in London. with a circle of English Catholics in Italy who were From 1690 to 1695 he composed music for nearly suspected of treason. ‘Behold a wonder here’ comes fifty plays. Some of them, such as The Fairy Queen from The Third and Last Booke of Songs or Aires and King Arthur, contain so much music that they (pictured left), and is thought to be part of an were called semi-operas, however no fully sung entertainment bythe Earl of Essex for Queen work was heard on the London public stage until Elizabeth I. Dowland was able to match poetry the introduction of Italian opera early in the next to music so precisely that many of his songs are century. Combining music, dialogue, and dance was considered masterpieces in miniature. a long-held tradition in the English theatre, catering “Before the Comedy begins, that the audience to an audience who wanted plenty of music but not may not be tired with waiting, the most ‘that perpetual singing’ as opera was described by delightful symphonies are played; on which The Gentleman’s Journal in 1692. Opera took much account many persons come early to enjoy longer to capture popular taste in England than in this agreeable amusement.” continental Europe and did not become established until the arrival of Handel in London in the 1710s. LORENZO MAGALOTTI 1669 ENGLISH BAROQUE WITH CIRCA 17 Program Notes Scene One — The Court King Arthur was Purcell’s most successful stage Purcell’s music is effortlessly melodic, his part- work and was often revived during the eighteenth writing always interesting, with a characteristic and nineteenth-centuries. Its overture has a slow juxtaposition of the poignant and the witty. At one majestic opening section followed by a lively Allegro. moment his music is full of startling harmonic Like all overtures of this period, it does not introduce changes and daring chromaticism, at another any musical ideas to be heard later on in the play. breezy and tuneful. French influences can be heard Spectacle was an integral part of every show, and in his gay and elegant melodies, however his later as mechanical devices became more and more instrumental music bears traces of the new Italian ingenious, incidental music was needed to fill in style then becoming fashionable throughout Europe. the time needed to manually operate the stage Above all, Purcell was an idiosyncratic and highly machinery. The ‘Air’ from the second act, for example, original composer who followed his own style. was “played while Merlin [a wizard] descends in a Purcell died at the age of only thirty-six, probably Chariot drawn by Dragons” according to the stage due to tuberculosis, and not as a result of being directions written in the script. Songs and dances, locked out of his house in the pouring rain by his wife like the cheerful ‘Hornpipe’ from Act III, based on an after he came home late, as some have suggested. English country dance, and the pastoral ‘How Blest are Shepherds’ from Act II, enhanced the mood His death was announced in a London newspaper of a particular scene but had little to do directly as that of “Mr Henry Pursel one of the most with the plot. Although it had a serious sub-text Celebrated Masters of the Science of Musick in (English patriotism), King Arthur was meant to the Kingdom, and scarce Inferior to any in Europe’’. be pure entertainment, and it was full of double- He was buried in Westminster Abbey – the funeral entendres, bawdiness, flashy special effects, music was the work he had composed for the funeral and rollicking and affecting music. of Queen Mary earlier in the year. His epitaph reads In 1694 Purcell wrote that “Composing upon a “ Here lyes Henry Purcell Esq. who left this Ground’ was ‘a very easie thing to do, and requires Life and is gone to that Blessed Place where but little Judgement …[however] to maintain only his Harmony can be exceeded.” Fuges upon it would be difficult”. Three parts upon a Ground is exactly this, a virtuosic example of ‘Composing upon a Ground’. Commonly ‘divisions’ or ‘variations’ on a ground were for one instrument, but as the title suggests this is for three solo instruments. The ground bass in this piece consists of only six notes repeated twenty-eight times, over which the three violins play increasingly complex variations. 18 AUSTRALIAN BRANDENBURG ORCHESTRA Program Notes Scene Two — The Bedroom Dido and Aeneas is an anomaly among Purcell’s GEORGE FRIDERIC HANDEL (1685–1759) was one works as it is his only true opera, with no spoken text.
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