Locura & Tormenti (madness and torments) features intimate 17th century Spanish and Italian songs about love and heartbreak by composers including Monteverdi, Quevedo, Strozzi and Sanz.
Date/Time: Jan 20 2017, 7:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Vancouver, The Christ Church CathedralCost: $51.00
Find tickets: here
For performances at Christ Church Cathedral, chairs are reserved seating, and pews are general admission
Pre-concert talk 6:45pm
Ensemble La Galanía; Raquel Andueza
Spanish soprano Raquel Andueza is one of Spain’s most respected early music vocalists, and works regularly with L’Arpeggiata, Al Ayre Español, Gli Incogniti, Orquesta Barroca de Sevilla. She is also a regular guest of conductors including William Christie, Fabio Biondi, Monica Huggett, Eduardo López-Banzo, Christina Pluhar, Richard Egarr, Ottavio Dantone and Sir Colin Davis.
Supported by Stephen and Betty Drance and Jose Verstappen
Programme
Yo soy la locura – Henry du Bailly (¿? – 1637)
Marizápalos
– Anonymous (s. XVII)
Zarabanda del Catálogo – Text: Anónimo
/ Arrangement: Álvaro Torrente (n. 1963)
Folias – G. Sanz/improv (ca. 1640 – 1710)
Sé que me muero
– Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
La Ausençia
– Anonymous (s. XVII)
Vuestros ojos tienen d’amor – Anonymous (s. XVII)
Canarios
– Francisco Gerau (1649 – 1722)
Jácara de la Trena – Text: Francisco Quevedo (1580 – 1645) / Arrangement: Álvaro Torrente (1963)
II
Folle è ben che si crede – Tarquinio Merula (1595 – 1665)
Eraclito amoroso – Barbara Strozzi (1619 – 1664)
Bella mia
– Anonymous (siglo XVII)
Toccata arpeggiata – Giovanni G. Kapsberger (1580 – 1651)
Oblivion soave
– Claudio Monteverdi (1567 – 1643)
Caprice de Chacone – Francesco Corbetta (1615 – 1681)
Sdegno campione audace – Virgilio Mazzocchi (1597 – 1646)
Chi vuol ch’il cor gioisca – Pietro P. Capellini (fl. 1641 – 1660)
Programme Notes
“Locura & Tormenti”, madness and torments: they usually go together when concerning love. We wanted to bring together these two visceral feelings in a program, which consist of two very different sections.
In the first part, we will perform Spanish music, but also scores with text in Castilian that have been found in 17th century French, English, and Italian collections: songs about love and disaffection, hope and abandonment.
Likewise, we bring some new music to light, created upon the harmonic and rhetorical parameters of two very famous dances of the Spanish baroque: the Zarabande and the Jácara. The Zarabande was already forbidden in 1583 because it was considered an obscene and disgraceful dance, but composers and the greatest men of letters (Cervantes, Góngora, Lope de Vega, etc) continued making use of it and the Zarabanda was hugely popular until the end of the 17th century. All the written music was lost (or destroyed), but not its texts. The Spanish musicologist Álvaro Torrente, one of the greatest specialists of the Spanish 17th century, and also expert in literature and rhetoric of that period, has reconstructed for La Galanía one zarabanda, of anonymous text, and one jácara with a text by Francisco de Quevedo. In both cases, it can be considered as a reliable and traditional sample of how these dances used to be. In this zarabanda we present a rascal who describes, without a hint of shyness, why he loves all kinds, types, and social position of women; and in the case of the jácara, our protagonist, another rogue of the period, writes a letter to his lover from a Sevillian prison, and he narrates all of his adventures and misfortunes being locked there.
In the second half of the concert, we will move to 17th century Italy, guided by the main composers of the period: Monteverdi, Strozzi, Merula. We show different styles of compositions of the Seicento: strophic songs, like “Folle è ben” and “Bella mia”, melodical constructions upon ground basses, bassi ostinati, that is to say, upon the repetition of the same harmonic pattern, as in the passacaglia “L’Eraclito amoroso” or the ciaccona in “Sdegno campione audace”. We will also bring danses of Neapolitan origin, as the tarantella, in “Chi vuol ch’il cuor gioisca”.
All these love songs alternate with Spanish and Italian traditional dances (folía, canarios and ciaccona), as well as with a wonderful toccata arpeggiata from the theorbo player and composer Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger.
In conclusion, it is a program from that wonderful century called degli affetti, or “of affections”, to love, dream, cry, and, above all, feel. We really hope you will enjoy it as much as we do performing it on stage. Please, make yourself comfortable.
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