PROGRAMME

Wednesday 14 May 2008 at 7.30 pm St. Chad’s Church, Shrewsbury

EMMA KIRKBY (Soprano)
ANTHONY ROOLEY (Lute)

Part I
Songs of Joy - John Dowland

Awake sweet love
Come again, sweet love doth now invite
Sweet stay awhile
The Countess of Pembroke’s Paradise (Pavan) - Anthony Holbourne
Clear or Cloudy
Welcome Black Night
Mr Dowland’s Midnight
Tell me True Love
Come away, come sweet love

Part II
Songs of Mourning - Thomas Campion & John Coperario

O Griefe! How divers are thy shapes: to King James
‘Tis now dead night: to Queen Anne
Fortune and Glory may be lost and won: to Prince Charles
So parted you: to Lady Elizabeth
The Countess of Pembroke’s Funeral (Pavan) - Anthony Holbourne
How like a golden dream: to Frederick the Fifth
When pale famine fed on thee: to Great Britain
O poor distracted World: to the World

SONGS OF JOY - SONGS OF MOURNING

Song-cycles are a powerful form of communication of things profound. The varied architectural structures of song-cycles lead the listener through a design often of great complexity. Even though John Coperario’s ‘Songs of Mourning’ is so very early (1613), and it is only the second consciously structured song-cycle in the English language (the first being Coperario’s ‘Funeral Teares’, 1606) the work explores structure and design in a most mature manner.

The untimely death of the young Prince Henry (at the end of 1612, when he was only 18) left a nation bereft of a much-loved future King. Elegiac utterances were legion, not least because his retinue of over 400 soldiers, philosophers and artists of all kinds was unexpectedly left without their Patron. Thomas Campion was not only Poet to Prince Henry, but also Physician, and therefore at the very epicenter of the dramatic events. One senses that intimacy of feeling as he dedicates each of the seven songs to a particular member of the immediate family. Personal in every way, each is private mourning in appropriate style for that individual’s relationship to the dead Prince. Bereavement becomes the common thread even as numbers six and seven move out to ‘Great Britain’ and then ‘The World’. Coperario’s music embraces and gently explores the same intimacy, creating a tonal language arising from Campion’s poetry. The musical language is that rare thing - a balance between recitative and arioso - making the work a fine example of the ‘new music’ influenced by Italian Camerata considerations, yet adapted with skill to suit English prosody and diction. Designed for the smallest forces - a single voice and lute - the work is imbued with an elegance and quiet strength, yet is fittingly majestic; this is noble music, elevated and rarefied as the Prince himself was said to be.

To balance the elegiac ‘mourning’, we have taken much pleasure and delight in creating our own ‘cycle’ of otherwise unrelated works by John Dowland - ‘Songs of Joy’. The inherent humour of choosing a variety of joyful works by the usually lugubrious melancholic Dowland was certainly part of our pleasure! We took to heart the only known statement of a contemporary: that Dowland ‘lived his life in lawful merriment’. There is no melancholy in this choice of songs, but several strands of ‘joy’ are represented: the joy of young love, the joy of enlightened philosophy, and the joys of marriage nuptials being just some facets lightly visited.

Two lute solo ‘pavan and galliard’ pairings by Dowland and Coperario’s contemporary, Anthony Holborne - a friend and colleague of them both - interrupt the song sequences. The first dance pair, The Countess of Pembroke’s Paradise’ and the ‘Sighes Galliard’ reflect the joys that Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke experienced with her close creative relationship with her adored brother, Sir Philip Sidney. They constantly exchanged poems, ideas, literary fantasies together, creating a ‘paradise’ out of the ‘Arcadia’ of Sidney. The ‘sighes’ are only sighs of joy, pleasure, contentment.

The second dance pair, ‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Funerals’ and the doleful ‘galliard’ reflect the depths of despair experienced by Mary after the death of her brother at the age of 28 (fighting for the Protestant cause in Holland). Many folk at the time made analogous reference to the two young deaths of the noble Englishmen - Philip and Henry, so it is fitting that the ‘Funerals’ is sounded like a tolling death knell between the songs dedicated to Princess Elizabeth (Henry’s younger, doting sister) and the colleague-at-arms, Frederick the Fifth, Count Palatine of the Rhine. This noble Prince was in London preparing for his marriage to Elizabeth, and the celebrations were delayed by the funeral mourning for Henry. The two princes had had great military plans - they intended to lead a Protestant army to drive the Infidels out of Vienna, and talked of a new ‘Crusade’ to free Jerusalem! How different history would have been had this wild plan ever been attempted … perhaps Henry’s death was not so untimely, when afar?
(Anthony Rooley)

EMMA KIRKBY

Emma Kirkby’s singing career came as a surprise. As a student of Classics at Oxford University she sang a great deal for pleasure - and still does. She works mostly with historical instruments, and has enjoyed long partnerships with British groups: The Academy of Ancient Music, the Consort of Musicke, London Baroque, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Florilegium: and many other ensembles worldwide.

To date she has made well over a hundred recordings of all kinds, from sequences of Hildegarde of Bingen to madrigals of the Italian and English Renaissance, cantatas and oratorios of the Baroque, works of Mozart, Haydn and J. C. Bach. Recent recordings include: Handel: Opera Arias and Overtures 2 for Hyperion, Bach wedding cantatas for Decca, Bach Cantatas 82a and 199 for Carus; and four projects fort BIS: with London Baroque, one of Handel’s motets and one of Christmas music by Scarlatti, Bach and others; with the Royal Academy Baroque Orchestra the first recording of the newly-rediscovered Gloria by Handel; and with the Romantic Chamber Group of London, Chanson d’amour: songs by the American composer Amy Beach who died in 1944.

Recent recordings include an anthology, Classical Kirkby, devised and performed with Anthony Rooley on the BIS label 2002, Cantatas by Cataldo Amodei BIS 2004,: with Fretwork, consort songs by William Bird, for Harmonia Mundi USA 2005; Scarlatti Stabat Mater with Daniel Taylor ATMA 2006; Honey from the Hive, songs of John Dowland with Anthony Rooley BIS 2006; and Musique and Sweet Poetrie BIS 2007; lute songs from Europe with Jakob Lindberg.

Her recordings came to the attention of Classic FM listeners who voted her artist of the year in 1999; in 2000 she was awarded the Order of the British Empire. 2007 brought further surprises: in April a BBC Music Magazine poll of critics to find the “100 greatest sopranos” put her at no 10; in July she was the subject of a “South Bank Show” on ITV, and in November she became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Shocked but delighted by all this, she is glad of the recognition it implies for a way of music making that values ensemble, clarity and stillness above the more usual factors of volume and display, and above all she is grateful for the chance to carry on sharing this marvellous repertoire with likeminded and talented colleagues.


ANTHONY ROOLEY

Having traveled the world for thirty years, playing the lute to an amazing variety of audiences, Anthony Rooley could lay claim to being a seasoned modern-day minstrel. The pace of time travel (at the speed of a donkey for John Dowland in 1597!) might have changed, but the love of communicating to a live audience remains fresh. Jetting the world to deliver exquisitely contemplative music is a wonderful irony and paradox, which continues to be a source of humour for Rooley. There is frustration: continual travelling is not conducive to writing and research, two activities of great importance, which feed and renew the repertoire and plans for the future include more time for writing.

The Consort of Musicke, founded in 1969 by Rooley, continues to be one of the chief vehicles for his inspiration, though many other activities and interests crowd in. He has been appointed as York Early Music Festival Vice President, and he continues regular work as Visiting Professor at the ‘Schola Cantorum Basiliensis’. Most recently he has been invited to direct an entirely new Masters Programme there on ‘Advanced Vocal Ensemble Studies’ (AVES for short!) that promises to bring to young singers a practical awareness of the work he has done with ‘The Consort of Musicke Madrigal Ensemble’. In 2003,2005 and 2007 he had four-month residencies at Florida State University, holding graduate seminars and directing productions, - in 2003 this was a fully staged version of “Semele” by John Eccles; 2005 a ‘first’ Conference on John Eccles; 2007 focused on The Passions’ of William Hayes.

Recently, Anthony has turned to the 18th and 19th centuries, as part of his continuing project to search out the best of forgotten English music; in 2004 and 2005 he directed performance, live and on CD, of madrigals and part-songs of Robert Lucas Pearsall, and of “The Passions” by Handel’s contemporary and champion, William Hayes; this last was revived for the Weimar Festival in 2006.

With new plans and projects fizzing continually, modern day minstrelsy will have to be redefined.

Last Updated : 15/05/2008