Program Notes

A program that explores composers who were mavericks and progressives of their own time, writing music a generation or two before Bach. We bookend the concert with music of Henry Purcell, already fully formed as a composer while still a teenager. Purcell’s collection of youthful fantasies is a treasure of invention, surprise and lucidity. These are pieces that reach back to the late Renaissance string fantasies of Orlando Gibbons generations earlier, but speak the free, demonstrative language of the middle Baroque. We offer an abundance of the fantasias, each unique, moving from pieces in three parts to seven, each forming a “composition” in which Purcell’s juxtaposition of sections of unequal length and weight, his wonderful blue-note harmonies, his virtuosic and entirely natural part-writing are all displayed in a large pattern (one of course never mapped out by the composer). The program moves backward through the era, sampling instrumental music of Rameau, Buxtehude, Byrd, Gabrieli, and Isaac, concluding with an encore of Purcell songs. Works are offered on “original” instruments and modern, and the Gabrieli sonata presents violins from the hand of Jack Fry, who offered so many Token Creek forums on the acoustics of the greatest violins (pictured on our Purcell CD cover, below). Program guests include the Boston Museum Trio, Second City Consort of Viols, and countertenor Nathan Medley.