2015 time warp web

The 20th Galway Early Music Festival May 14 - 17, 2015

TIME WARP!

ALPHABET BAROQUE CLUB Judiyaba - treble viol • Maria Caswell - violin • Gwyneth Davis - viola da gamba • Phebe Craig - harpsichord • Adrian Tinniswood - reader

SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2015 16:00 CONNACHT PRINT WORKS, MARKET ST GALWAY

Galway Early Music would like to thank its sponsors and friends, without whose support the Festival would not happen.

SUPPORTED

BY

MEDIA SPONSORS

PRINT PARTNER

SILVER PATRONS Michael & Clare Cuddy Tom Grealy Kimberly LoPrete

Riana & Pat O’Dwyer Seán & Lois Tobin Janet Vinnell

WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO St Nicholas Collegiate Church Connacht Tribune for The Print Works The Loft @ Seven Charlie Byrnes Bookshop Centre for Ancient, Medieval & Pre-Modern Studies, NUI Galway Il Vicolo Restaurant Galway Early Music is a member of REMA - The European Early Music Network

Galway Early Music

@gwy_earlymusic

INTERACTIVE PROGRAMME with puzzles and problems for you to solve fill in the dates (clues on next page)

☟

The Time Machine! or name that backward tune: a) I am the Walrus b) Yes, we have no bananas c) Hallelujah

Lednah G. (

Sonata Settima

G. B. Fontana (

)

)

match each piece to its composer!

Too Clever by Half or playing with time.

In Nomine “Trust” What Strikes the Clock Canone Inverso Ma fin est mon commencement

Sonata Ottava Soavemente Canzone Vivace Grave Bizzaria Adagio Allegro

Carolus Hacquart (

Draw a picture of a bizzaria here

Partita V Sonata Aria Terza Ciacona

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G. Machaut (1300-1377) Christopher Tye (c 1500-c 1573 Edward Gibbons (1568-c 1650) J.S. Bach (1685-1750)

)

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Joh. Pachelbel (

Seventh Inning Stretch What kind of exercise do you think this is? Try it out now!

)

Messing with your mind or “Don’t try this at home!”

Sit Fast

Christopher Tye

Royal Good Times The Time of Youth Pastime with Good Company Time to pass with Goodly Sport

Henry VIII (1491-1547) Henry VIII Anonymous

Write your favorite pastime here ☞

Time is short Thomas-Town (Words: Dr. Biles) Cobham (Words: Dr.Watts) Broad Cove (Words: Dr. Biles) Draw an inch or two of time here

Wm. Billings (

)

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Some things never change or union organising in 18th c. Paris Les Fastes des la grandes et anciennes Mxnxstrxnxdxsx François Couperin ( Premier Acte. Marche-Sans Lenteur Second Acte. 1er Air de Vièle; Second Air de Vièle Troisième Acte. Légérement Quatrième Acte. Les Disloqués; Les Boiteux Cinquième Acte.Tres vîte

Clues to Composers’ Dates 1580/89-c. 1630 1640-1701 1653-1706 1668-1733 1746-1800 1759-1685

)

PROGRAMME NOTES Time Warp: A hypothetical discontinuity or distortion occurring in the flow of time that would move events from one time period to another or suspend the passage of time.”-The Free Dictionary The Time Machine!

What better way to go back in time than playing a beloved piece of music backwards! Our Time Warped concert has many beautiful pieces representative of the times and tastes of the baroque, as well as several pieces more directly on the subject of Time.

Music is the organization of sound and time.

Elliott Schwartz (composer) A piece of music is simply a chunk of time you are paying attention to with your ears.

Barney Childs, quote in Ewen, American Composers (1982) Time is of the utmost importance in music. One might say time in music is organized in two basic ways: rhythm (duration), and meter (groupings).

Stretching the idea slightly, one could include direction! Composers love to play with these concepts.

In our first grouping, Too Clever by Half, two of the pieces, Canone Inverso and Ma fin est mon commencement, play music backward and forward at the same time. Metric convention was broken by the composer of the In Nomine “Trust” ,which is written in 5 parts with 5 beats to the bar, an almost unknown meter at the time. The lovely viol piece What Strikes the Clock has the alto voice striking the hours (1; 1,2; 1,2,3;...) as the basis for a carillon of notes in the outer parts pealing around the hours.

Messing with your mind!

Tye was an influential and innovative English composer, organist and teacher.

Sit Fast is a tour de force in proportion, wherein the players play rhythms against each other such as 3 against 2, 3 against 4, and even 7 against 9! It may have been written as a teaching device.

Royal Good Times Time is also important in texts and contexts. Henry VIII and contemporaries at his 16th century English court were interested in good times, as long as they were relatively pleasing to God.

Time is short On the other hand, Wm. Billings' texts are more interested in the moral implications of our time on earth. Billings, an exclusively 18th century American composer, is considered the father of American Choral music, and is believed to be the first to use the 'cello in the church, paving the way for the introduction of the organ.

Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilised into time and tune.

Thomas Fuller, History of the Worthies ofEngland (1662), ‘Musicians’ Four of our pieces are longer instrumental works which, while not being specifically about “Time”, are beautiful examples of the musical style at the time each was written.

The first is a trio sonata by GB Fontana, an early 17th century Italian composer. Fontana was among the first composers writing specifically for violins. In the 17th century the violin family's more brilliant qualities began to supplant the 16th century's preferred and sweeter viol family. The music is written in an episodic style, short movements following one on the other with little or no break.

Somewhat later in the century C. Hacquart, a Belgian viol player and composer working in Amsterdam, wrote inventive trios and quartets for violins and viols combined in a similar style to Fontana.

J. Pachelbel, despite being a near contemporary of Hacquart, wrote in the much different style of the German High Baroque. The Partia V has distinct movements, the last of which is the dance form of the Ciacona, which uses an eight bar bass line repeated 13 times.You may recognize this device from his famous Canon in D, which you may also have heard at the last wedding you attended!

Some things never change!

François Couperin, appointed by Louis XIV Organiste de Roi, was rather affronted when the ancient Confrérie de St. Julien-des-Ménétriers, the guild of public musicians which included theater and circus musicians, attempted to gain control of composers and keyboardists, so he wrote this satirical harpsichord piece in response. We have taken the liberty of orchestrating it.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

W. H. Auden, quoted in Craft, Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship (1972)

Now we've finished playing, let's go eat!

Alphabet Baroque Club The ABC is an outgrowth of Judiyaba's A to Zed Concert series in which each month a concert was presented using only composers whose names began with a certain letter of the alphabet, starting with “A”. We four had such fun working on the baroque concerts of this series that we decided to continue working together as the ABC. Last June we performed at the Berkeley Early Music Festival Fringe, doing our “All Over the Map” program.

The ABC not only actually enjoys rehearsing together, we also enjoy eating together as an integral part of our rehearsal process. The ABC is not a comedy group, but we do like to have fun with our programs!

Judiyaba, treble gamba, in her Clark Kent persona, has spent most of her career to date playing cello with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony. She has been a character in the SF Bay Area music scene since concerts were “happenings.” She took up the treble gamba so she could play melody lines and boss the basso continuo around, like those diva violin players! She is also an avid quilter, water colorist, and concert impresaria. She and partner Gwyneth Davis keep a few sheep in order to fill the freezer with lamb to feed the ABC! Gwyneth Davis, bass viola da gamba, plays cello for The Lamplighters, SF's Gilbert and Sullivan theater company, and with the Eloquence String Quartet and various small opera companies. She fills those awkward morning hours working as a professional dessert chef. She is the chief reason why we usually rehearse at her and Judiyaba's house. The food is best there, you see! She took up gamba to play all the interesting French music, but ends up playing viola lines all too often.

Phebe Craig teaches harpsichord, music theory, and whatever else they rope her into at the University of California at Davis, the premier agriculture school in the UC system! As a continuo harpsichordist she has played with nearly every early music ensemble ever in the SF Bay Area. She now lives in about four or so places, including Utah. Luckily she is able to move her harpsichords in and out of her car by herself. She is further fortunate to have found this ABClub: she eats well, laughs a lot, plays a lot,and has finally learned her ABCs.

Maria Caswell, violin, is a founding member of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the “premier baroque orchestra” (New York Times) of the United States. She also plays violin and viola with other early music groups in the SF Bay Area including Live Oak Baroque Orchestra and Voices of Music.You can see her playing viola on Voices of Music’s beautiful Brandenburg 3 video on Youtube. It has been suggested she take up tenor viol, but she is too much of a prima donna to do that. When at home she teaches violin and takes walks with her useless but entertaining goats.

We welcome your feedback! In person or at mariacaswell@sbcglobal.net And, believe it or not, you can even “Like” us and see working photos of us and our animals on our Facebook page: Alphabet Baroque Club

Galway Early Music www.galwayearlymusic.com tel. +353-(0)83-461 9039 e-mail: info@galwayearlymusic.com Galway Early Music

@gwy_earlymusic