CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS AT PENN STATE ONSTAGE Don Lee, The Banff Centre Banff The Don Lee, Today’s performance is sponsored by Gay D. Dunne and James H. Dunne COMMUNITY ADVISORY COUNCIL The Community Advisory Council is dedicated to strengthening the relationship between the Center for the Performing Arts and the community. Council members participate in a range of activities in support of this objective. Nancy VanLandingham, chair Mary Ellen Litzinger Lam Hood, vice chair Bonnie Marshall Pieter Ouwehand William Asbury Melinda Stearns Patricia Best Susan Steinberg Lynn Sidehamer Brown Lillian Upcraft Philip Burlingame Pat Williams Alfred Jones Jr. Nina Woskob Deb Latta Eileen Leibowitz student representative Ellie Lewis Jesse Scott Christine Lichtig CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS AT PENN STATE presents Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra Jeanne Lamon, director The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres Conceived, programmed, and scripted by Alison Mackay Glenn Davidson, production designer Marshall Pynkoski, stage director John Percy, astronomical consultant Shaun Smyth, narrator 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, November 5, 2014 Schwab Auditorium The performance includes one intermission. This presentation is a component of the Center for the Performing Arts Classical Music Project. With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the proj- ect provides opportunities to engage students, faculty, and the community with classical music artists and programs. Marica Tacconi, Penn State professor of musicology and Carrie Jackson, Penn State associate professor of German and linguistics, provide faculty leadership for the curriculum and academic components of the grant project. sponsors Gay D. Dunne and James H. Dunne support provided by Nina C. Brown Endowment media sponsor WPSU The Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State receives state arts funding support through a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. PROGRAM The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres The Harmony of the Spheres I Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) Allegro—Largo Concerto for 2 violins in A Major, Op. 3, No. 5 Music from Phaeton Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687) Overture Suite des quatre saisons (Dances for the four seasons) Entrée des furies (Entrance of the furies) Chaconne Music from the Time of Galileo Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) Ritornello from Orfeo Ciaccona after Zefiro torna Tarquinio Merula (1595–1665) Ciaccona Michelangelo Galilei (1575–1631) Toccata for solo lute from Il primo libro d’intavolatura di liuto Biagio Marini (1594–1663) Passacaglia Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643) Moresca from Orfeo INTERMISSION Henry Purcell (1659–1695) Song Tune “See, even Night herself is here” from Fairy Queen Rondeau from Abdelazer The Dresden Festival of the Planets Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) “Entrée de Jupiter (Entrance of Jupiter)” from Hippolyte et Aricie George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) Allegro from Concerto grosso in D Major, Op. 3, No. 6 Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) “Entrée de Venus (Entrance of Venus)” from Les surprises de l’Amour Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767) Allegro from Concerto for 4 violins in D Major Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745) Adagio ma non troppo from Sonata in F Major, ZWV 181/1 Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) “Entrée de Mercure (Entrance of Mercury)” from Platée Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–1687) “Air pour les suivants de Saturne (Air for the followers of Saturn)” from Phaeton Silvius Leopold Weiss (1687–1750) Allegro from Concerto for lute in C Major Anonymous, 18th century “The Astronomer’s Drinking Song” The Harmony of the Spheres II Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) Sinfonia “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (How Bright Appears the Morning Star)” after BWV 1 Sinfonia after BWV 29 Ancient civilizations depended on an The Galileo Project: awareness of the natural world for their livelihood and survival, and enjoyed Music of the Spheres an intimate relationship with the daily, BY ALISON MACKAY monthly, and yearly patterns of the The Galileo Project: Music of the Spheres night sky. The Greeks and Romans iden- was created by Tafelmusik Baroque tified characters in their mythological Orchestra in 2009, in honor of the stories with planets and stars, giving International Year of Astronomy and them names that are still used today. In the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s devel- Ovid’s story of Phaeton, the impetuous opment and use of the astronomical son of the sun god Apollo, the minutes, telescope. hours, days, and seasons are personified as denizens of the palace of the sun. The performance uses music, words, and images to explore the artistic, At Versailles, the French “Sun King” cultural, and scientific world in which Louis XIV, created his own palace of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sun, a building that strongly reflected astronomers lived and worked. the cosmology of the ancient world in its statuary and decoration. Jean- In sixteenth-century Florence, Italy, Baptiste Lully, the resident composer at the house of lutenist and composer the Palace of Versailles, wrote some of Vincenzo Galilei was a fertile breeding his most magnificent music for his opera ground for important innovations in the Phaeton. We include excerpts from the realms of music and science. Vincenzo’s opera in the concert as an example of experiments with the expressive power the cultural inheritance that the world of of accompanied solo song influenced baroque music received from the obser- the creation of opera as a musical form, vations of ancient stargazers. and the style of music that we now describe as baroque. The first important opera, Claudio Mon- teverdi’s Orfeo, was composed in 1607 Vincenzo also conducted repeated trials and published in Venice in 1609—the under controlled conditions with lute year Galileo travelled from Padua to strings to find the mathematical formu- Venice—to offer his newly created tele- las that express the relationships among scope as a gift to the Venetian Doge. length, tension, and musical pitch. He Monteverdi and Galileo were exact con- is thought to have been assisted by temporaries and near the end of their his oldest son, Galileo Galilei, a bril- lives, Galileo arranged for Monteverdi liant young teacher of mathematics to procure a beautiful Cremonese violin who went on to apply his expertise to (probably built by Nicolo Amati) for his world-changing discoveries about the nephew Alberto Galilei. Alberto was the universe. son of Galileo’s brother Michelangelo, who composed the lute solo in the Galileo inherited his spirit of scientific first half of the program. Monteverdi, inquiry and a love of playing the lute Tarquinio Merula, and Biagio Marini from his father. It seems fitting that a were the most important composers in musical tribute honors the astronomer, Galileo’s world and Tafelmusik presents whose intellectual and artistic vitality some of their most beautiful works as a stemmed from a place where music backdrop to his own account of his dis- and science intersected. Performances covery of the moons of Jupiter and the of The Galileo Project have brought events that followed. Tafelmusik into contact with scientists, stargazers, and music lovers in many In spite of the efforts of the inquisition diverse communities around the world. to suppress Galileo’s discoveries and writings, his influence was soon felt throughout Europe and the telescope was adopted as a tool for astronomi- for his reconstruction of Weiss’s Lute cal research. English astronomer, Isaac Concerto in C Major. All that survives of Newton, was born within a year of the original is the solo lute part; the title Galileo’s death and was buried in 1727 page confirms that two violins, viola, in Westminster Abbey near the tomb and violoncello accompanied the lute. of Henry Purcell. This period saw the Harris composed the missing parts. establishment of a Royal Observatory in Greenwich, Newton’s own creation of The program begins and ends with the reflecting telescope, his discoveries reflections on the ancient concept of about the properties of refracted light, the music of the spheres, created by a and his development of the principles of heavenly ensemble of planets and stars universal gravitation. making music together as they move through space. The concert’s opening Newton used the musical analogy of a speech from The Merchant of Venice seven-note scale to explain the seven contains Lorenzo’s beautiful expression colors of the rainbow, but unlike Gali- of this idea: “There’s not the smallest leo, he does not appear to have been a orb which thou behold’st but in his music lover. After attending a concert by motion like an angel sings, still quiring George Frideric Handel, he complained to the young-eyed cherubins.” that there was nothing to admire except the elasticity of his fingers. The subject was treated extensively in Harmonices Mundi (The Harmony of the Handel created more of a sensation World, 1619) by Johannes Kepler, who when he traveled from his adopted used the formulas from his laws of plan- country of England to his homeland of etary motion to derive musical intervals Germany, in order to play at a glittering and short melodies associated with royal wedding celebration in September each planet. We perform these short 1719. It was a month-long Festival of the tunes on their own, and then weave Planets in Dresden featuring numer- them into the chorale tune “Wie Schön ous operas, balls, outdoor events, and Leuchtet der Morgenstern (How Bright concerts in honor of each of the known Appears the Morning Star).” planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Uranus was not This is followed by music adapted from included; it was discovered in 1781 by opening sinfonia of Johann Sebastian oboist, organist, composer, and amateur Bach’s cantata of the same name, astronomer, Sir William Herschel who, BWV 1, and from the opening sinfonia like Handel, had moved to England from of Bach’s Cantata BWV 29.