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Perchance to DreameThe Golden Age of English MusicThe brothers Lawes and their colleague, Christopher Simpson, were on the cutting edge of England's musical life in the first half of the 17th century! Virtuoso viols and voice were their medium. The Lawes' brothers brilliantly set John Milton and Robert Herrick's poems to music while Christopher Simpson and William Lawes perfected the art of virtuoso viol playing. Paradise was lost when Charles I was executed in 1649, leaving a drab stage to the Puritans and a musical moratorium. After a decade, the Merry Monarch, Charles II, returned from Europe bringing a new musical dream to the Fairest Isle. The stage was set for Henry Purcell and a new golden age of English music. Charles Daniels tenor
 Sunday matinée performance at the Kay Meek Centre Studio Theatre in West Vancouver:
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Christopher Simpson (c.1602-1669):
William Lawes:
John Jenkins (1592-1678):
Henry Lawes (1595-1662):
i n t e r v a l
John Jenkins:
LUTE SOLOS:: Anonymous (Goess Lute Manuscript c. 1650):
Henry Lawes:
Christopher Simpson:
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Perchance to Dreame The period between Dowland’s Elizabethan era and Purcell’s age of the Merry Monarch are relatively unknown musically despite a unique, rich and varied repertoire. The brothers Lawes and their colleagues, Christopher Simpson and John Jenkins, were on the cutting edge of England’s musical life in the first half of the 17th century! Virtuoso viol divisions and vocal music were their mediums. The Lawes’ brothers, in a tradition immortalized by John Dowland, brilliantly set the greatest poetry of the time to music. It was an honour for poets such as John Milton, Thomas Carew, Abraham Cowley and Robert Herrick to be “heard” as well as read, in this 17th century form of “rap”! Poets would publicize the fact that a Lawes had set their poems to music. Meanwhile, Christopher Simpson, William Lawes and John Jenkins, perfected the art of virtuoso viol playing with brilliantly elaborate, usually improvised, divisions that are a form of musical acrobatics! . In the secular sphere, music was also acceptable to Anglicans, in plays, for example, which had been accessible to the public since the 16th century. However, for hard-line Protestants, all music, public, secular and sacred, was sinful and a distraction from the constant duty to serve God. Theatres and other public entertainments were suppressed during the interregnum. Music between friends for private enjoyment was, however, acceptable. Viol consorts or art songs might be enjoyed as an after-dinner entertainment at a private party of the bourgeoisie or aristocrats; thus the proliferation of spectacular chamber music, the only musical expression condoned during an otherwise dour era. Feasting however was, unfortunately, not encouraged!
Henry Lawes was born in Wiltshire, England and was the leading English songwriter of the mid 17th century. He was employed by the nobility and at the Chapel Royal. In the Commonwealth period, when public entertainment was suppressed, he taught voice and viol privately. The nobility would also come to his house to hear his music. Henry wrote 434 songs besides church music and a lost opera. John Playford published over 200 of his songs in 4 books; his autograph songbook has many more. His songs are sympathetic to different styles of poetry and range from strophic, where the same tune is repeated for each of the verses of the poem, to declamatory, where the style is closer to recitative, based on the rhythms of spoken English. William Lawes, Henry’s younger brother, though best known for his highly original and prolific consort music that includes the Royall Consorts and the Harp Consorts, also wrote music for the stage and over 200 songs. They often have a catchy tunefulness and our programme includes two of his best known. He lost his life in 1645 fighting for King and Country during the Civil War and Charles I gave him the honorary title of Father of Musick. Thomas Jordan ended Will’s epitaph with a pun on the composer’s name and the fact that he died at the hands of those who denied the divine right of kings: “Will. Lawes was slain by such whose wills were laws”. John Jenkins, who lived well into his 80s and witnessed the momentous political and musical transformations of the 17th century, was England’s most famous viol virtuoso and a prolific composer who “wrote dances by the cart-load” according to his biographer, Roger North. A friend of William Lawes, ten of his songs have survived including See, see the bright light shinesfrom one of Playford’s collection of songs, The Treasury of Music. Christopher Simpson was a brilliant improviser and theorist who left indispensible treatises for viol players today including The Division Viol, or the Art of Playing upon a Ground. As 21st-century viol players, we actually perform the divisions written in his book, even though he explains that his examples are only to be considered exercises to learn to improvise divisions over a ground bass! Paradise was lost when Charles I was executed in 1649, leaving a drab stage to the Puritans and a partial musical moratorium during which private music, nevertheless, flourished. After a decade, the Merry Monarch, Charles II, returned from Europe, bringing, amongst other novelties, the concept of the public concert! The stage was set for new artistic dreams on the Fairest Isle and Henry Purcell’s golden age of English music Henry Purcell was England’s most celebrated composer of the late 17th century. In his 36 years he wrote operas, church music, viol fantasias, organ music and hundreds of songs, many of which were gathered by his widow, Frances, into two volumes called Orpheus Britannicus, after his death. Purcell takes English song further along the path the Lawes brothers had taken, from wonderfully memorable tunes to exquisitely sensitive declamatory settings of longer poems. Come all ye Songsters and One Charming Night are both taken from the opera The Fäery Queen; She Loves and she Confesses too is a 1683 setting of Abraham Cowley’s poem. Charles Daniels and Susie Napper
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His concert and recording repertoire extends from the Middle Ages to 20th century composers such as Luigi Nono and Benjamin Britten. In December 2001, he was the tenor soloist in a performance of Wojciech Kilar's Missa pro pace, performed in the Vatican in the presence of Pope John Paul II. However, he is best known for his interpretations of baroque music, and in particular for the role of Evangelist in the St Matthew Passion and the St John Passion by JS Bach. Daniels has made frequent concert appearances at the Wigmore Hall and the BBC Proms, in addition to performing frequently in both European and North American music festivals. His opera performances have included Purcell's The Fairy-Queen at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the New York City premiere of Lully's Atys and the title role in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo for its Montreal premiere at the Montreal Baroque Festival. The Montreal Baroque Festival subsequently released a recital disc with Daniels singing excerpts from L'Orfeo and songs by John Dowland and other composers of the period. He also won praise for his singing in the role of 'An Attendant on Pleasure' for the Hyperion recording of Handel's operatic oratorio The Choice of Hercules. He was for sixteen years a member of the early music vocal ensemble the Orlando Consort. In addition to conducting master classes at the Montreal Baroque Festival, Daniels teaches Early Music Performance Practice at the Ringve Museum's International Summer Course in Norway. Les Voix humaines: After being awarded a Diapason d'Or for their fourth volume of Sainte-Colombe's Concerts a deux violes esgales, they also received the Opus Award 2007 for Performer of the Year from the Conseil québécois de la musique. Their recording L'Ange Marais was nominated at the MIDEM 2007 for Best Early Music Recording of the Year and their recital given in 2009 at the Melbourne Recital Place was nominated for Best Concert of the Year at the Australian Helpmann Awards. Les Voix humaines has invited prestigious artists to join them in concert and recordings, such as Wieland and Barthold Kuijken, Charles Daniels, Suzie LeBlanc, Rinat Shaham, Matthew White, Eric Milnes, Skip Sempe and Stephen Stubbs. The duo is regularly joined by some of Montreal's finest young gambists to form the Voix Humaines Consort of Viols specializing in the vast 17th-century repertoire for viol consort. The consort released in 2009 Henry Purcell's complete Fantasias for viols. The album received great reviews. A new recording of the consort will be launched in 2011 The Art of Fugue by J.S. Bach. Les Voix humaines has recorded over 30 discs which have received critical acclaim and prestigious awards (Diapason d'or, Choc du Monde de la Musique, Repertoire-Classica 10, Goldberg 5, Classics Today 10/10, Prix Opus, etc). They include the complete Poeticall Musicke of Tobias Hume, The 4 Seasons of Christopher Simpson, the complete Le Nymphe di Rheno of Johannes Schenck, several discs with soprano Suzie LeBlanc and countertenor Daniel Taylor, a Telemann disc with renowned Belgian flutist Barthold Kuijken and a Marais disc with world famous gambist Wieland Kuijken. Their recording of the complete Concerts a deux violes esgales by Sainte-Colombe (4 double CDs) is a world premiere. Les Voix humaines record for the ATMA label. The duo has toured in Canada and USA, Mexico, many European countries, Australia, New Zealand and Israel, performing is prestigious festivals such as Early Music Vancouver, the Festival Internacional Cervantino, the Brighton International Music Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Summer Festivities of Early Music in Prague and the Israel Festival. In 2010-11 they are touring in France, Japan, China, Poland, Holland and the USA.
Sylvain Bergeron has always been fascinated by the historical context of the things around him. His childhood ambition of becoming an archeologist was eventually replaced by his interest in music, which like most teenage boys, started with the guitar. He listened to British bands like Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, and Genesis, learning entire albums such as Thick as a Brick and Fox Trot by heart. Bergeron still remembers the precise day he decided to switch from guitar to lute: listening to recordings in his older brother Alain's collection, which included music by Bartok, Bach and Stravinsky, he chanced upon a recording of Troubadour music by Thomas Binkley. "This was a revelation!", says Bergeron. "Discovering the sound of the medieval instruments, their nuances, languages, the creativity of the performers, the freedom of interpretation. Clearly, that was the "real" stuff I was looking for, and I became totally convinced this was what I wanted to do." He soon learned to read music and began formal lessons, and eventually devoted himself completely to the lute and its family of instruments. Bergeron went on to study with Paul O'Dette and Eugène Dombois, and became a member of the period group Ensemble Anonymus. In 1991 he co-founded the ensemble La Nef and directed many of their productions, including Perceval, The Quest for the Holy Grail, Montsegur, The Garden of Delights and Music for Joan the Mad. Described as "a supremely refined, elegant, cerebral musician who … seems to find a spiritual home in these haunting, restrained-yet-achingly lyrical pieces" (Ottawa Citizen), Bergeron is a master of many other plucked-string instruments including teorbo, oud, and baroque guitar. He is in constant demand both as a soloist and ensemble player, and has accompanied such giants as viol player Jordi Savall in concert halls around the world including Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, Paris' Salle Gaveau and New York's Lincoln Center. Naturally, as a lutenist he has accompanied many singers and has performed and recorded with such stars as Dame Emma Kirkby, David Daniels, Daniel Taylor, Suzie LeBlanc, Vivica Genaux, Agnès Mellon, and Charles Daniels. |
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Almaine of Alfonso
Born in Salisbury, Charles Daniels attended the choir school at King's College, Cambridge where he was a chorister, then Winchester College for his secondary education. He returned to King's College, Cambridge for his university education, where he was a Choral Scholar, reading Natural Sciences and Music. After taking his degree, he studied under Edward Brooks at the Royal College of Music in London
where he was awarded a Foundation Scholarship.
Their musical complicity has been compared to the skill of two trapeze artists or the telepathic communion of a pair of jazz saxophonists! Susie Napper and Margaret Little, the two gambists of Les Voix humaines, have been thrilling audiences worldwide with dashing performances of early and contemporary music for viols since 1985. They are renowned for their spectacular arrangements of a wide variety of music for two viols and have become a world reference for the music of Sainte-Colombe.
Sylvain Bergeron