Ensemble
Soleil
presents
“Crosscurrents:
Spain
and Italy at 1600”
A
Performance Art Event including live music of the
Renaissance
and Baroque, multiple images
on large
screens, and narration
Wednesday,
March 4, 1998
at
8:00 pm at Sawyer Arts Center
Colby-Sawyer
College
and
Wednesday,
March 11, 1998
at
8:00 pm at the Newport Opera House
A project
of
Ensemble
Soleil with Colby-Sawyer College,
New Hampshire Humanities Council,
and New
Hampshire State Council on the Arts
Program
Part
l: Spain in the Gothic Era
Opening sequence: Procession
Music: “Riu, riu”
Images:
Gallery and garden
Images from a Spanish procession
Music: “Dindirin, dindirin”
“Hermitaño Quiero
Ser” by Juan del Encino (1468-1530)
Images: Nave of a Spanish
church
Tapestry with instruments
Crowning of the Blessed Virgin by Fra
Angelico
Images of medieval fiddles
Sequence III: Ideals of Beauty
in Spanish Art
Images:
Madonna with Music-Making Angels by Pedro Serra
Presentation of the Virgin by The Budapest Master
Portrait of a Man and Burial of Count Orgaz by El Greco
Music: "O Felici Occhi
Miei"
madrigal by Jacques
Arcadelt
division by Diego Ortiz
Music: “Con Pavor Recordo el
Moro” and
“Fantasia” (pub. 1536)
by Luys de Milán
“Tres Moricas
M'enamoran” by Alonso Fernandes (c.1500)
Images: Moorish architecture in
a Spanish mosque
Spanish instruments - vihuela and rabab
Sequence V: Art of El Escorial
Images: Nave of a cloister
Library, Escorial
palace and close ups
Frescos, library of
Escorial by Pellegrino
Lectern and chapel of
The Escorial
Philip II
Satire of Spain,
England and the Cow of the Netherlands
Hall of Battles from The Escorial
Music:
Recercada Segunda by Diego Ortiz (pub. 1553)
Images: Philip II in the last
year of his life
Dream of Philip II by El Greco
Images: Martyrdom of St.
Maurice by El Greco
Auto de fé
The Death of Savonarola
Music: Recercada Quarta by
Diego Ortiz
Images: Portrait of Isabella d’Este by Titian
The Education
of Marie de' Medici by Rubens
Viols in Italian
art
Music: Two galliards by
Salamone Rossi
Sequence VIII:
The Borgias
Music:
"La Dame le Demanda" by Antonio de Cabezon
Sequence IX:
The Medici
Images:
First public library, Medici palace (1443)
Illuminated music manuscripts
Procession of the Magi by
Gozzoli (1459)\
Music:
Renaissance dance music for violin
Sequence X: High Renaissance Art
Images: School of Athens (1510)
by Raphael
Portraits of
Eleanor of Toledo by Bronzini and Vasari
Portrait by
Dosso Dossi (Fogg Art Museum)
Marriage at Cana by Veronese (1563)
Music: Fantazia by Orazio Vecchi (1590)
Part 5: The Dawn of the
Baroque
Music:
Violin sonata by Giovanni Paolo Cima (pub. 1610)
Images: The violin and its players by Caravaggio,
Gentileschi, and Cavallino
(Boston Fine Arts Museum)
Sequence XII: 1600 - The Birth
of the Baroque
Music: "La
Lusignuolo" by Tarquinio Merula (pub. 1615)
Images: Sculpture at Santa
Capilla by Jose Ramirez
Sculpture, Ecstasy
of St. Theresa by Bernini
Architecture by
Borromini
Aurora by
Reni (1613), Aurora by Guercino (1621)
Apotheoses of St. Ignatius by Fra Andrea Pozzo
Credits: Images from The
Triumph of Maximilian I
by Hans Burgkmair and others
Ensemble Soleil was formed by musicians who perform Renaissance and
Baroque music on instruments authentic to the period. We seek to create a soundscape through which the music from an
era rich in dance and song can live again.
From the bold and unusual harmonies heard in England and Italy to the
refined ornaments of the French, the music of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries transports us to a time of discovery and invention. An antidote to the fast pace of modern life,
this music invites us to reflect and imagine.
Biographies of Key Project Personnel
Peter Tourin, Project Director
Peter Tourin has a
career that spans many areas of music and technology. He has a B.S. from the University of Michigan, and did graduate
work at Yale University in History of Music.
He studied harpsichord making with the international expert Frank
Hubbard, and lute and viola da gamba making with the outstanding American
builder J. Donald Warnock.
Mr. Tourin has an
international reputation as a musical instrument maker and as a researcher in
the acoustics and history of the viola da gamba. As a member of the Tourin Musica, a family business in Duxbury
and Jericho Center, Vermont, he made over 100 viols from 1972 to 1990. He published "A Comprehensive
Catalogue of Historical Viole da Gamba in Public and Private Collections"
in 1979, which he researched with the help of a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts. Mr. Tourin is a
well-known performer on the viol, and has been a member of the Boston Viol
consort and the Oberlin Consort of viols, with whom he can be heard on CD. He is a founding member and co-director of
Ensemble Soleil. He also performs in
the folk and popular genres. On the
technology side, Mr. Tourin has worked with computers since the early ‘60’s. He is a computer software designer and
programmer, working on such diverse projects as a laptop-based sheet metal
estimation system, a data logging system for hydroelectric sites, and an
inventory control system for ROTC schools.
In the area of
music, Mr. Tourin developed a $42,000 recording project for the Viola da Gamba
Society of America for which he directed the recording and production of a 3-CD
series of viol music. He has also had
experience in sound reinforcement. He
has developed several slide shows for musical instrument exhibitions.
Jean Sawyer Twombly, Artistic Director
Jean Sawyer
Twombly, a Master’s graduate in Early Music Performance from the Longy School
of Music, Cambridge, Massachusetts, specializes in Baroque violin and treble
viol. She is a founding member and
co-director of Ensemble Soleil. She led
the ensemble on their 1996 and 1997 appearances on WGBH radio’s “Classical
Performances” and 1997 appearance on "Morning Pro Musica" with Robert
J. Lurtsema. She performs regularly on
period and modern instruments with several New England chamber orchestras.
An active
free-lance violinist and member of Boston Musicians’ Association,
Ms. Twombly has
performed with oratorio societies and community theater groups in
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
She has led performances of large choral works such as Handel's Messiah
and Haydn's "Lord Nelson" Mass, as well as played principal violin
for many stage shows.
Ms. Twombly is a
member of the Fine and Performing Arts faculty of Colby-Sawyer College, New
London, New Hampshire, where she has taught violin and viola since 1985 and in
recent semesters, a music survey elective.
A member of American String Teachers, Early Music America, and the Viola
da Gamba Society of America, she is presently a board member of the Boston area
early music concert organization, the Society for Historically Informed
Performance.
Ms. Twombly has
lived in New London and maintained a private teaching studio there since
1983. She is a past president of the
board of Summer Music Associates, New London’s community concert series.
Donald A. Beecher, PhD., Advisor on
Humanities, Narrator
Donald Beecher has had a lifelong passion for Renaissance studies. He is a professor of English at Carleton
University, Ottawa, Canada, where he has taught since 1967. He has received many professional
honours including fellowships for study
in Birmingham, England and Montpellier, France. He was past President of the Canadian society for Renaissance
Studies and is present Director of the Barnabe Riche Society. Professor Beecher is the editor of 11 books
on a variety of Renaissance topics. As
publisher of Dovehouse Editions, he produced 55 performing editions of
Renaissance & Baroque music for viola da gamba, which are highly regarded
in the early music field. He has had
many editorial responsibilities, and has edited numerous scholarly critical
editions.
He has organized and directed more than a dozen conferences, many of
them international, such as Parallel Lives: Spanish and English National
Drama, 1580-1680 at the University of Calgary and Eros and Anteros:
Eroticism and the Medical Traditions of Love in the Renaissance at Carleton
University.
He is a performing musician on viola da gamba and has participated in
several recordings. He has been the organizer and director of many music concerts
and workshops and is the recipient of over 50 research grants. Professor
Beecher has been involved in iconographical research and slide preparation in
the development of several programs for public television.
Professor Beecher’s current research interests are Elizabethan prose
fiction and scholarly editing, the literary origins of the texts of Handel’s
English oratorios, and Renaissance Aesthetics.
As our humanist advisor, he has
researched and written the narrative portions of tonight’s program.
Guest Artists and Members of Ensemble Soleil
Margaret Angelini, the ensemble's Archivist and Librarian, began her
organ studies as a freshman at Wellesley College with Frank Taylor and
completed her B.A. in music in 1985.
Since then she has studied with John Finney and completed a Master's
Degree in Organ at New England Conservatory with William Porter. She plays continuo regularly with a number
of Boston area early music ensembles. A founding member of Ensemble Soleil, she
is also organist - choir conductor at St. Paul's Episcopal Church,Newton
Highlands.
Rosalind Brooks Stowe has been involved in early music since she began
studying the viol at Brown University in 1976.
She has a Master's Degree in Early Music Performance from New England
Conservatory and has performed with the Boston and Washington, D.C. groups
Voice of the Turtle, Much Ado, Telemann Ensemble and La Rondinella. She has taught at Viola da Gamba Society
workshops and has recorded with La Rondinella on Dorian Records.
Hannah Davidson first performed with Quadrivium, Alexander's Feast, and
the Revels, with whom she has also recorded.
She attended Harvard University and Longy School of Music, and has
studied viol with Sarah Cunningham and Jane Hershey. She is a member of the Boston early music ensemble La Donna Musicale, which specializes in
compositions by women, and a director of the Viola da Gamba Society of New
England.
Guest Artist Frank Wallace is one of the world's leading performers of
the vihuela de mano. In 1976 he and his wife, soprano Nancy Knowles, founded
Duo LiveOak, an internationally known ensemble based in Antrim, New
Hampshire. Critically acclaimed for
their programs of music from Renaissance and Medieval Spain, Duo LiveOak were
featured artists of the Boston Early Music Festival in 1995. LiveOak and Company has a recent compact
disk, "Lanterns of Fire: Love and the Mystic in Renaissance Spain",
which is available for sale at the front table.