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Vancouver Early Music Festival - 4:“Love is a Battlefield”“Madrigali Concertati” by Monteverdi & ContemporariesThe most common theme in secular song has changed little over time: Love is a Battlefield. Claudio Monteverdi and his contemporaries demonstrate that, though popular music's sound has changed, the message remains the same. The programme includes love songs and madrigals by Monteverdi, Rossi, Archilei and Cavalieri. Les Voix Baroques: Shannon Mercer soprano 
Tickets for this performance at $35 (students & seniors $3 discount) can be ordered on-line via our secure connection. They can also be ordered by phone (604 732-1610) from the office of Early Music Vancouver. Tickets are also available at Sikora’s Classical Records. Rush Seats for Students with valid ID on sale for $10, at the door only, from 7:00 pm on the evening of the performance. This concert is included in our “Bring a Youth for Free” programme.
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“Ogni Amante è un guerriero”: Every Lover is a Warrior A programme of madrigals, interspersed with instrumental interludes
Antonio Archilei (1542-1612): Antonio Marastone (d. ca. 1628): Claudio Monteverdi: Tarquinio Merulo (ca. 1594-1665): Marco da Gagliano (1582-1643): Luigi Rossi (ca. 1598-1653): Marco da Gagliano: Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643): Marco da Gagliano: Biagio Marini (1594-1663): Claudio Monteverdi: Claudio Monteverdi: Massimiliano Neri (1615-1666): Emilio de’ Cavalieri (c.1550–1602): ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ ¤ Claudio Monteverdi: – programme subject to changes
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“Love is a Battlefield”: Around 1600, accompanied monody began to replace the renaissance madrigal as the vehicle par excellence for love poetry. In the madrigal’s polyphony, five voices all expressed the same emotion; they enhanced the text with various musical images, knitted complex textures, and sometimes produced daring harmonies. In the assigning of the text to a single voice, on the other hand, monody individualized the expression of emotion. Henceforth the baroque era’s new vehicle for expression, for evoking the movements of the heart by means of melodic and rhythmic figures that made perceptible its torments, pleasures, excitement, or interior agitation, would be the solo voice. It would have the support of shifting harmonic colours, provided by the basso continuo, to correspond to the flux of emotional states. It was in Florence that composers first began to compose in this way. Jacopo Peri, Giulio Caccini, and Emilio de Cavalieri were the pioneers who shaped melody to text, made poetry the mistress of sound. In 1600, as part of the effort to revive ancient Greek tragedy, the first opera in history, Euridice, was performed at the Medici court. Theatrical experiments with recitar cantando had been heard 11 years earlier in the musical interludes on mythological themes to the play La Pellegrina; Emilio de Cavalieri had contributed the Godi turba mortal, and Antonio Archilei had contributed Dalle più alte sfere (which has also been attributed to Cavalieri). Though the transition from madrigal to monody was swift, a number of composers worked in both forms for a good part of the 17th century. Thus, though Marco da Gagliano was, with his Florentine colleagues, one of the inventors of the opera, he left six books of madrigals. With their supple management of voices and careful musical renderings of the sense of the words, these demonstrate his mastery of the form. Claudio Monteverdi, who dominated all his contemporaries with the sheer scale of his genius, is one of the key artisans of the explosion of the madrigal into a profusion of vocal and instrumental forms. Starting in 1587, the date his first book was published, he continued to work in the genre throughout his career. His madrigals, even more so than his operas and religious music, clearly mark the evolution of his thought and creativity — much as, a little later, string quartets clearly mark Haydn’s development. Though Monteverdi wrote his first madrigals in the classical polyphonic style, they already showed some of his distinctive personal qualities. The fourth and fifth books allowed for the optional addition of basso continuo, while the increasingly frequent use of the concertante style, with its contrasts between groups of voices, did away with polyphonic unity so as to highlight emotional subjectivity, and did so with an enlarged palette. In the last books, the seventh and especially the eighth, published in 1619 and 1638, respectively, Monteverdi used all available means to describe and express the range of human feelings: counterpoint, monody, the concertant style, dissonances, and the addition of concertant instruments. All was perfectly integrated in the service of a poetic aesthetic and a noble concept of what it is to be human. Though the maestro always classified his secular vocal compositions as madrigals, really they are madrigals only in name and not in form; they shatter the conventions of the form. Solos, duos, and trios with basso continuo alternate with large-scale pieces for six, seven, or eight voices with obbligato instruments, and all are dramatic songs about love and its difficulties, victories, and defeats. The madrigal Ecco, Silvio, published in the fifth book, unfolds like a homophonic recitative, without any particular contrapuntal complexity to obscure the meaning of its text, but with several harmonic tensions. Amor, che deggio far, from the seventh book, is like a canzonetta enriched with beautiful ritornellos for violins, and with fresh voices joining in en route. The eight book, subtitled Madrigali guerrieri ed amorosi (Madrigals of war and love), is the one that contains the most varied assortment of pieces, some of which were written as theatrical divertissements. The Ballo à 5, with its Introduzione for tenor, two melody instruments, and basso continuo, is a song praising the grandeur and military prowess of Emperor Ferdinand III. This sumptuous theatrical music was performed at Ratisbonne to celebrate the emperor’s coronation in 1637. In the spiritual madrigal O ciechi, ciechi — which was included in the Selva morale, a huge collection of sacred music published in 1640 — solo and tutti voices vigorously remind us of life’s brevity. The works of Tarquinio Merula, of Antonio Marastone, and of Monteverdi himself, testify to the happy development by 17th-century Italian composers of the vocal duo — a form intermediate between the strictly defined madrigal and accompanied monody — for use both in opera and in chamber music. Like the trio sonata, this new form allowed composers to retain contrapuntal interest by means of imitative play between the voices, a musical technique easily overlooked in the new concertant style. Most commonly, they used two similar and — as in the ravishing Chiome d’oro, published in the seventh book — usually high voices; almost all Monteverdi’s ‘madrigals’ for two voices are either for two sopranos or for two tenors. The voices may combine their melodic lines, or sing one after the other, playing with questions and responses, harmonic changes, dissonances, and various kinds of tension, followed by their resolutions; or they may abruptly shift in tone, thus allowing expression both of the intimacy of love, as well as its rupture by jealousies, quarrels, or more serious hurdles. The passage from the Renaissance to the Baroque was a major and decisive aesthetic transformation, but it occurred, around 1600, with astonishing speed. The extraordinary flourishing of vocal forms shows that, henceforth, music no longer sought to reproduce the harmony of the cosmos but, like the other arts, to evoke and excite the passions. This new aesthetic goal is linked to a concept of humanity borrowed from antiquity, by which art and eloquence can and should “move, improve, change, and soothe the feelings.” © François Filiatrault, 2010
Translated by Sean McCutcheon
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Les Voix BaroquesLes Voix Baroques is an ensemble specializing in vocal works from the Renaissance and Baroque in formats ranging from traditional concerts to fully staged operatic productions. Past collaborations include Bach's St. John and St. Matthew Passion with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, Bach Cantatas with Ensemble Les Boreades, a German tour of Antonio Caldara's Oratorio Il Conversione di Clodoveo with IConfidenti Berlin and a 2007 Juno Nominated and Opus award winning Atma recording of Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri with Les Voix Humaines and conductor Alexander Weimann. Les Voix Baroques have appeared in concert at the Boston Early Music Festival,for Early Music Vancouver, Houston's Mercury Baroque, Montreal Baroque, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Sackville Early Music Festival, Domaine Forget, the Elora Festival and in two Opus Award winning concerts produced by CBC for their McGill Concert Series. Upcoming highlights include collaborations with the Portland Baroque Orchestra under Monica Huggett for a US tour of Bach's St.John Passion, concerts and a recording of the St.John Passion with Ensemble Arion for the Montreal Bach Festival, a 6 concert tour of Nova Scotia for Music Royal and a 4 concert tour of Colombia. Shannon Mercer
Her upcoming 2009-2010 season begins in Ottawa where she reprises her “achingly beautiful” Pamina in Opera Lyra’s The Magic Flute. October sees Shannon at London’s famed Royal Albert Hall for a performance and BBC live-televised broadcast of Eric Idle’s highly popular Not the Messiah. Highlights of her concert calendar include Carnegie Hall in New York for Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with Les Violons du Roy, Roy Thomson Hall with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for Handel’s Messiah and the Mozart Festival, and in Houston, Texas with Mercury Baroque and Les Voix Baroques. Shannon's award-winning discography includes several releases on the Analekta label: the 2009 JUNO Award recipient Gloria!: Vivaldi’s Angels, the JUNO nominated Bach and the Liturgical Year, Mondonville, and English Fancy. Her much-lauded ... read more Yulia Van Doren
This season she also returns to the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, St. Thomas Men and Boy’s Choir, Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Vancouver Early Music Festival, and sings two major roles with the Boston Early Music Festival: Belinda in Dido and Aeneas, and Manto in Steffani’s Niobe, the Boston Early Music Festival’s centrepiece opera starring French countertenor Phillipe Jarrousky. A 2009 winner of Astral Artists’ National Auditions, she will be presented in recital on Astral’s Philadelphia concert series. Ms. Van Doren made her European debut in 2010 singing the Hungarian premiere of Barber’s Knoxville .... read more
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Sanzio Raffaello (1483-1520): “Allegory (The Knight's Dream)” c.1504
Shannon Mercer’s voice has been described as luminous and her acting witty and feisty - Shannon Mercer has been hailed as "one of Canada's most pomising young sopranos" and a "Leader of Tomorrow (Maclean's)",
Consistently singled out for her “perfect baroque voice” (Seattle Times), young Russian-American soprano Yulia Van Doren has established herself as a rising star of the new generation of baroque specialists. A major highlight of her 2010-2011 season includes being a featured artist at the Cartagena International Music Festival, Colombia, where she will appear in nationally televised performances of Bach’s Mass in B Minor with soprano Dawn Upshaw and the Orchestra Sinfonia of London, as well as Bach’s Coffee Cantata with the Brentano String Quartet.
Matthew White was born in 1973 and began singing as a treble with St. Matthew’s Men and Boys Choir in Ottawa, Canada. 
Charles Daniels was born in Salisbury. He was a Chorister and Choral Scholar at King’s College, Cambridge, and studied at the Royal College of Music in London under Edward Brooks. He has made over eighty recordings as a soloist including Handel’s Messiah with the Gabrieli Consort for Deutsche Grammophon, Dowland songs for EMI, Wojciech Kilar’s Missa Pro Pace with the Warsaw Philharmonic for CD Accord, Monteverdi Vespers with The Gabrieli Consort and The King’s Consort, Bach Mass in B Minor with Jos van Veldhoven and De Nederlandse Bach Vereniging, Tenorlied by Senfl with Fretwork, two recital discs, one based on 'Orfeo', for ATMA, Rubbra’s Amoretti with the Maggini Quartet,The Beggar’s Opera for Hyperion, and much Purcell and Bach.
Sumner Thompson is one of today's most sought-after young baritones. His appearances on the operatic stage include roles in productions from Boston to Copenhagen, including the Boston Eearly Music Festival's productions of Johann Georg Conradi's Ariadne (2003) and Lully's Psyché (2007) and several Eurpoean tours with Contemporary Opera Denmark as Orfeo in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. He has performed across North America as a soloist with Concerto Palatino, Tafelmusik, Apollo's Fire, Les Boréades de Montréal, Les Voix Baroques, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, the King's Noyse, Mercury Baroque, and the symphonies of Charlotte, Memphis, and Phoenix.