First Unitarian Church??at Benefit & Benevolent St., Providence, RI
Come enjoy our wonderful Sunday afternoon concert??series??followed by??wine??and cheese get-togethers??with the artists and music lovers!
Tickets can be purchased??at the door* ??? many good seats??still available!
$25 general seating,??$8??students/low-income??
You may still purchase subscriptions to the remaining four concerts at the door,??and receive two complementary guest passes for any concert.
For more information??
email:
museumconcerts@outlook.com?? ??
or visit??
MuseumConcerts.org
Mailing address:??Museum Concerts,??PO Box 23055, Providence, RI 02903
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Program Notes
The midwinter celebration of Christ’s nativity coincides with many pagan celebrations of the winter solstice, and most particularly with the Roman??Dies sol invictus(“day of the unconquered sun”).????Certain pre-Christian forms and practices survived and intermingled with the Christmas holiday — elements of the Roman Saturnalia, a year-end bacchanal, are still present in our contemporary merrymaking.??But the specific themes of Annunciation, Advent, and Nativity make of Christmas a celebration unique among mankind’s other midwinter rites.????By the sixth century, most elements of the medieval Christmas feast were in place.????
As the Dark Ages waned, the relatively more stable living conditions of the 12th and 13th centuries encouraged a tremendous outburst of religious art, poetry, and music.????The musician-artisans of the Middle Ages, like their confreres in the visual arts, devoted much of their craft and creative energy to the elaboration of the Christmas story.????But whereas the great monuments of medieval architecture, sculpture, and design are well known today, the musical world of the Middle Ages remains, for most people, something distant and mysterious.
The relative obscurity of medieval music has much to do with the difficulties we encounter when attempting to reconstitute the??soundof those distant centuries from the various kinds of??notationthat have survived.????The sketchy notational systems of the Middle Ages functioned perfectly well for performers back then — but in the intervening generations, contact with the living oral tradition has completely disappeared.????We are left with examples of musical shorthand and many unanswered questions.
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As originally notated, none of the pieces we will be performing for you on this program contain indications for instrumental accompaniments or doublings.????Many of them contain little or no information concerning rhythm.????And some of them — the excerpts from the powerful??Sponsusmiracle play — do not even indicate the clef or key of the singing lines.????So many decisions about performance, then, depend on us modern-day musicians.????How is a given melody to be sung, freely and dreamily, as one often hears chant nowadays, or with a definite rhythmic pulse? What does the phonetic system of the sung language — Latin, old Proven??al, or other — tell us about the colors of the voice? What does the content of the poetry indicate to us about the affective character of the musical lines? What is the function of the piece at hand — contemplation, rejoicing, processing? By asking these kinds of questions, and by our willingness to make a number of educated guesses, we can try to do justice to the compelling, magnificent material at hand.????
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In a larger sense, the direction given to any performance of medieval music depends on our perceptions of the civilization as a whole — contradictions included.????For instance, though the church fathers persistently forbade the use of most instruments in the services, they reappear at every generation (especially at holiday time) with astonishing tenacity.????The 12th-century tympanum and capitals at Moissac Abbey are covered with musical motifs.????Several centuries later, the puritanical Erasmus disapproved of Christmas celebrations:????“a bawling and agitation of various voices…horns, trumpets, and pipes sound constantly along with the voices.??Amorous and lascivious melodies are heard…The people run into churches as if they were theaters, for the sake of the sensuous charm of the ear.”
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We conclude that a selection of medieval Christmas music needs to take into account the intense, complicated lives that brought forth these sounds. The monastic ideal of otherworldly contemplation cannot be understood without the playful tumult of year-end foolery– the solemn??Judicii signum??and the joyful??Gregis Pastor??were meant to be sung during the same season! The celebration of Christmas, in the Middle Ages as today, was as colorful and complex as humankind itself.??
c. Joel Cohen, 1999, 2003, 2011
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It is with great joy that we at Camerata present this Christmas offering, in its new configuration, with three women’s voices and sparse instrumentation.????Speaking for myself, this is the very first LP of The Boston Camerata I ever owned ??? in my native France ??? and it did make a strong impression!
What was most striking to me then was the sense that there was some very vital musicianship being transmitted via the vinyl grooves.????Away with scholastic debate and with the coldness of rectitude:????in poured the light and awe from some of the most magnificent medieval pieces (“Oiet virgines” from the??Sponsusplay), the energy of a young group of performers combined with the sheer fun of the seasonal feast (“Adest Sponsus”).????This program forever marked many of us young musicians and set us on a course for which we are still grateful, regardless of the many other paths we have discovered and explored since.????
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Enjoy today’s performance, which will bring some of the original program conceived by Joel in 1974, along with new choices, drawn from a vast medieval trove that includes some of the most beautiful music ever produced in Europe.??
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c. Anne Az??ma, 2018
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??Currently celebrating its sixty-second anniversary,??The Boston Camerata??ranks among the world???s oldest and most eminent early music ensembles.????Founded in 1954, Camerata has been under the direction of France-born singer and scholar Anne Az??ma since 2008.??
Camerata’s musical performances are well known for their blending of spontaneity and emotional commitment with careful research and scholarship. With its distinguished roster of singers and specialists in early instruments, Camerata produces an annual concert series for audiences in the Greater Boston area. The Boston Camerata also tours regularly in the US and all over the world, recently appearing in Paris at the Palais de Chaillot, in collaboration with the Tero Saarinen Company of Helsinki, Finland (2014), during its 60th??anniversary season, at the Th??atre de la Ville (2015),????and this past September at the Philharmonie de Paris (2018). The company’s South American d??but tour took place in Brazil in 2016.?? Anne Az??ma’s innovative staged production built around a medieval tournament in France,??The Night’s Tale, first presented in France and Luxembourg, was performed in Boston to great acclaim in spring 2016.????The company’s South American d??but tour took place in Brazil in July, 2016.????Further tours took place in Europe in 2017 (Switzerland, Holland, France) and in North America (Canada and the US Midwest in late 2017 and early 2018) ??? including a reprise of the??Play of Daniel, presented with great????success to Boston audiences in late 2014, during early 2017 again in Boston and other American cities and due to tour in 2020.??
The Camerata is also renowned for??its??many concerts and recordings of early music from the New World North and the South, and for its??bridge productions??of Eastern and Western music: “A Mediterranean Christmas”??and ???The Sacred Bridge: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Europe??? are noted among these pioneering enterprises.????
The Camerata’s many recordings (Grand Prix du Disque, 1989) as well as its numerous media appearances (two prizes at FIFA Montr??al, 2014; one prize at the 2014 Massachusetts Film Festival; a recent BBC 3 project) and its many museum and educational projects (including its recent Visiting Artist residency at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), have brought its work to audiences in every continent. Collaborations with local choirs (both children and adults) and with young professionals-in-training in both Europe and the United States are a distinctive feature of the company’s 2016, 2017 and 2018 touring seasons.????Both 2018 and 2019 will mark the release of the Camerata???s latest CDs. One recorded in coordination with an international exhibit project of late Medieval artifacts (Toronto, New York and Amsterdam); September 2018 has seen the company’s second recent media project recorded in France and in partnership with La Philharmonie de Paris and Harmonia Mundi.??
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Additional information about The Boston Camerata is available at??www.bostoncamerata.org
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Anne Az??ma, mezzo-soprano, Director
France-born vocalist and scholar Anne Az??ma directs The Boston Camerata (2008) and the France ensemble Aziman (2005). Her current discography of 35 recordings (Grand Prix du Disque; Edison Prize) includes five widely acclaimed solo CD recitals.?? Since assuming the directorship of The Boston Camerata in 2008, she has created a series of fourteen new productions, acclaimed by press and public alike. Ms. Az??ma is in demand as a solo recitalist, presenting her original programs to audiences in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In November 2014, she directed and staged??The Play of Danielto critical and public acclaim. Among her teaching activities are master classes, seminars, and residencies at conservatories and universities here and abroad. ?? She has contributed articles to scholarly and general audience publications. In 2010, Ms. Az??ma was named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the France Government. Ms. Az??ma has been the Robert M. Trotter Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Oregon, Eugene in 2012, has lectured at New York University, Boston University, University of Tennessee and Manitoba; she is faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College.??Most recently, she has been invited to teach at the Fondazione Cini, Venice; the Fondazione Benetton, Treviso; and the Schola Cantorum, Basel.
Camila Parias, soprano
Colombia native Camila Parias has become a regular collaborator to The Boston Camerata. She also regularly performs with La Donna Musicale, Handel & Haydn, and The Broken Consort, as well as Rumbarroco, a group focusing on Latin American and baroque music. Her international appearances include solo performances with the Colombian chorus La Escala throughout Italy, France, and Spain. Ms. Parias studied and performed with Benjamin Bagby and members of Sequentia at the Vancouver Early Music Festival in 2011, and toured Europe with the Camerata???s ???Borrowed Light??? program.?? She holds a Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and a M.M. in Early Music Performance at the Longy School of Music of Bard College under a Presidential Scholarship.
Deborah Rentz-Moore, mezzo-soprano
Deborah Rentz-Moore has enjoyed many solo collaborations with The Boston Camerata as well as Emmanuel Music, Boston Early Music Festival, Handel & Haydn Society, Magnificat Baroque and the Mark Morris Dance Group. Ms. Rentz-Moore recently performed in the Boston premiere of Handel???sSusannato critical acclaim. Recent highlights include roles in Handel???s Messiah, Bach???s B Minor Mass, Mozart???s Requiem, Beethoven???s Missa Solemnis, and Purcell songs with Aston Magna. A longtime proponent of early American music, she has conducted Shaker manuscript research, given solo concerts at Hancock Shaker Village and Tanglewood, and was featured in Tero Saarinen Dance Company/Boston Camerata???s remarkable ???Borrowed Light??? tour.??