Token Creek Chamber Music

Program VII


TCF 2020 Virtual Season · Music from the Barn

Early Modernists

2020 Virtual Season · Program VII · Early Modernists

Program

Five Fantasias & Two In Nomines Henry Purcell (1659-1695) No. 2 in Three Parts (12 June, 1679) No. 3 in Three Parts (12 June, 1679) No. 10 in Four Parts (19 August, 1680) No. 7 in Four Parts (19 August, 1680) Fantasia on One Note, in Five Parts (before 1679) In Nomine in Six Parts (before 1679) In Nomine in Seven Parts (before 1679)
  • Danielle Maddon & Hillary Foster, violin
  • Mary Ruth Ray & John Harbison, viola
  • Rhonda Rider & Sarah Schaffer, ‘cello
  • Greg Koeller, bass
  • from the 2001 Token Creek Festival
Four Fantasias in Four Parts (ca. 1679) Purcell No. 1 & No. 8 No. 2 & No. 3
  • Anna Steinhoff, Craig Trompeter,
  • Russell Wagner, Brady Lanier, violas da gamba
  • from the 2016 Token Creek Festival
Pièces de clavecin en concerts Nr. 5 (by 1741) Jean-Phillippe Rameau (1683-1764) La Forqueray (Fugue) La Cupid (Rondement) La Marais (Rondement)
  • Boston Museum Trio
  • Dan Stepner, Baroque violin
  • Laura Jeppesen, viola da gamba
  • John Gibbons, harpsichord
  • from the 2000 Token Creek Festival
Sonata a due, in A minor, Op. 1, No. 3 (by 1694) Dietrich Buxtehude (1637-1707) Adagio - Allegro - Lento - Vivace - Largo - Presto - Largo
  • Boston Museum Trio
  • Dan Stepner, Baroque violin
  • Laura Jeppesen, viola da gamba
  • John Gibbons, harpsichord
  • from the 2000 Token Creek Festival
Three Fantasias for Three Viols (n.d.) William Byrd (ca. 1540-1623)
  • Second City Musick Consort of Viols
  • Anna Steinhoff
  • Craig Trompeter
  • Russell Wagner
  • from the 2016 Token Creek Festival
Sonata XXI for Three Violins (ca. 1615) Giovanni Gabrieli (ca. 1557-1612)
  • Kangwon Kim, LeeAnne League, Allyson Fleck, violins
  • Rafael Popper-Keizer, ‘cello
  • John Chappell Stowe, organ
  • from the 2004 Token Creek Festival
Six Instrumental Pieces for Four Stringed Instruments (n.d.) Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450/55-1517) 1. Der welte fund 2. Tmeiskin uas funch (De tusche im busche, probably by Obrecht) 3. Helogierons nous 4. Et le bol d'autant 5. Maudit soyt 6. [Untitled]
  • Danielle Maddon & Hillary Foster, violin
  • Mary Ruth Ray, viola
  • Rhonda Rider, ‘cello
  • from the 2001 Token Creek Festival
Encore: Three Songs of Henry Purcell Purcell “O Solitude,” Z.406 (1687)
  • Lucy Fitz Gibbon, soprano
  • Ryan McCullough, piano
  • from the 2015 Token Creek Festival
“Fairest Isle” (from King Arthur, 1691)
  • Nathan Medley, countertenor
  • Anna Steinhoff, Craig Trompeter,
  • Russell Wagner, Brady Lanier, violas da gamba
  • from the 2016 Token Creek Festival
“Come Unto These Yellow Sands” (from The Tempest, ca. 1695)
  • Mary Mackenzie, soprano
  • Molly Morkoski, piano
  • from the 2013 Token Creek Festival

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.