Wednesday, April 09, 2003
The real (old) deal at the Outer Banks Forum
A recent trend in the presentation of early music has been to mix a few period instruments with electronic ones, mainly synthesizers, that will approximate the authentic sounds of the early instruments.
This does produce some beautiful music, and if a baroque-period listener were unearthed, revived and exposed to it, he would probably not be too put off. (That's not to mention the thousand other anxieties of modern life that would quickly blow his mind, like "The Osbournes.")
But to deliver real joy to our subject, we should carry him to a Chatham Baroque concert, such as the one presented Sunday by the Outer Banks Forum for the Lively Arts at the Kitty Hawk Elementary School.
These brilliant musicians from Pittsburgh played beautiful wooden instruments, authentic down to their sheepgut strings. Each player spent a few moments during the evening describing his or her instrument.
The musicians were Julie Andrijeski (baroque violin), Patricia Halverson (viola da gamba), Scott Pauley (theorbo and baroque guitar) and guest artist Danny Mallon (percussion).
The instruments in general are not as loud as their modern-day counterparts or equivalents, owing partly to the sheepgut strings, which still produce a warmer sound. In the day, they were played most often in castles. While castles were generally opulent and fabulous with hundreds of rooms, those rooms in which the privileged gathered to be entertained were smaller. (There was no central heating in those days.)
Some instruments' differences were less pronounced: The old violin had no chin rest. Some were more pronounced: The viola da gamba, equivalent to the modern cello, had six strings, not four, and moveable frets on the fingerboard, where cellos have smooth fingerboards.
The baroque guitar was smaller, with 5 pairs of strings as opposed to the modern guitar's six single strings.
The theorbo was a trip, though. A long, strange one. An obsolete kind of archlute, played by Scott Pauley, its body was like a lute's, large and egg-shaped with a flat front. It had two necks, the first like a regular lute's, with a fretboard for fingering notes.
The second neck was above the other, with a 5-foot-long set of unstopped sympathetic bass strings, that is, strings that are tuned so as to vibrate by themselves with the plucked strings, and which are themselves sometimes plucked, without being noted by the left hand, as bass notes.
New Yorker Danny Mallon, the guest artist (who plays on many of the group's CDs), played an eclectic group of percussion instruments from castanets and shakers to hand-held drums. At times he strapped instruments to his feet.
Mallon also played the only original composition, his own, called "Piece," or maybe it was "Peace," written to take advantage of the great variety of sounds at his finger- and toe-tips.
The other pieces were written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were mostly dances. One could easily imagine bewigged folks stepping around an ornate garden in time (think Glenn Close and John Malkovich).
The performances were very tight and the music ranged from sprightly to poignant. The variety of colors and tempi was endlessly entertaining. There was no amplification save the two public address microphones pointed vaguely in the direction of the ensemble, but all was delightfully audible.
The first piece of the evening was Santiago de Murcia's "Jota," which means "encore." The last piece was Gaspar Sanz' "Canarios," and despite the best efforts of the standing audience, there were curtain-calls but no more encores.
CDs are available at http://www.chathambaroque.org and the usual shops, such as http://www.amazon.com.
©2003 Womack Newspapers Inc.
This does produce some beautiful music, and if a baroque-period listener were unearthed, revived and exposed to it, he would probably not be too put off. (That's not to mention the thousand other anxieties of modern life that would quickly blow his mind, like "The Osbournes.")
But to deliver real joy to our subject, we should carry him to a Chatham Baroque concert, such as the one presented Sunday by the Outer Banks Forum for the Lively Arts at the Kitty Hawk Elementary School.
These brilliant musicians from Pittsburgh played beautiful wooden instruments, authentic down to their sheepgut strings. Each player spent a few moments during the evening describing his or her instrument.
The musicians were Julie Andrijeski (baroque violin), Patricia Halverson (viola da gamba), Scott Pauley (theorbo and baroque guitar) and guest artist Danny Mallon (percussion).
The instruments in general are not as loud as their modern-day counterparts or equivalents, owing partly to the sheepgut strings, which still produce a warmer sound. In the day, they were played most often in castles. While castles were generally opulent and fabulous with hundreds of rooms, those rooms in which the privileged gathered to be entertained were smaller. (There was no central heating in those days.)
Some instruments' differences were less pronounced: The old violin had no chin rest. Some were more pronounced: The viola da gamba, equivalent to the modern cello, had six strings, not four, and moveable frets on the fingerboard, where cellos have smooth fingerboards.
The baroque guitar was smaller, with 5 pairs of strings as opposed to the modern guitar's six single strings.
The theorbo was a trip, though. A long, strange one. An obsolete kind of archlute, played by Scott Pauley, its body was like a lute's, large and egg-shaped with a flat front. It had two necks, the first like a regular lute's, with a fretboard for fingering notes.
The second neck was above the other, with a 5-foot-long set of unstopped sympathetic bass strings, that is, strings that are tuned so as to vibrate by themselves with the plucked strings, and which are themselves sometimes plucked, without being noted by the left hand, as bass notes.
New Yorker Danny Mallon, the guest artist (who plays on many of the group's CDs), played an eclectic group of percussion instruments from castanets and shakers to hand-held drums. At times he strapped instruments to his feet.
Mallon also played the only original composition, his own, called "Piece," or maybe it was "Peace," written to take advantage of the great variety of sounds at his finger- and toe-tips.
The other pieces were written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and were mostly dances. One could easily imagine bewigged folks stepping around an ornate garden in time (think Glenn Close and John Malkovich).
The performances were very tight and the music ranged from sprightly to poignant. The variety of colors and tempi was endlessly entertaining. There was no amplification save the two public address microphones pointed vaguely in the direction of the ensemble, but all was delightfully audible.
The first piece of the evening was Santiago de Murcia's "Jota," which means "encore." The last piece was Gaspar Sanz' "Canarios," and despite the best efforts of the standing audience, there were curtain-calls but no more encores.
CDs are available at http://www.chathambaroque.org and the usual shops, such as http://www.amazon.com.
©2003 Womack Newspapers Inc.
