A Happy New Year to viol players and friends, one and all!

The first workshop of our 2009-2010 year,  under the direction of Laura Jeppesen and  Wendy Gillespie, was a great success. Held at  Wellesley College and featuring Wellesley  alumnae and faculty, this gala event also partnered  with Amherst Early Music’s fall workshop,  and included a magnificent concert on  the Sunday evening after the Saturday workshop.  The music, which participants worked  on during the workshop and then heard performed,  had a woman-centered focus, with  texts including Petrarch’s elaborate elevenpart  “Vergine bella”, the anonymous “Une  jeune fillette,” the well-known “Susanne un  jour,” and other delectations. 

Looking ahead, on Saturday, February 20,  2010, Alison Crum and the Rose Consort  (Alison Crum, Roy Marks, Ibi Aziz and John  Bryan) will present a workshop on the works  of Ferrabosco the Elder. His oeuvre includes  motets, madrigals and instrumental pieces, of  which we will be sampling as much as is possible  in a single day. As his compositions are  much less commonly played and available  than those of his son, Ferrabosco II, this  workshop provides a unique, first-time opportunity  to experience this composer’s music.  Ferrabosco was respected and emulated in his  time; his name is mentioned alongside Byrd,  Marenzio and other greats of his day. 

The Rose Consort will also be presenting a  concert, on Friday, February 19, at Lindsay  Chapel, First Church, Congregational in Cambridge.  The concert, as well as a pre-concert lecture  by John Bryan, will look at the Italian influence  on Renaissance English music. 

On Saturday, May 8, 2010, we will be holding  our spring workshop at Hancock Church in Lexington.  The workshop, organized by Martins  Aldins and Hannah Davidson and presented by  A Joyful Noyse (directed by Martins Aldins),  will look at seventeenth-century German music  for voices and viols. Other faculty will include  Pamela Dellal, Jane Hershey and Lisle Kulbach.  Works by Augustin Pfleger, Heinrich Schutz,  Christan Geist, Franz Tunder and Dietrich Buxtehude  will form the basis for the workshop. 

Once again, our memberships run from September  to August; there is still time to join for the  2009-2010 year if you have not already done so.  (Check the date on your mailing label to see  whether your membership is up to date.) Thank  you to those who have renewed, and especially  to those who have made contributions of any  kind. We cannot continue without you! 

This year’s Silbiger award-winning ensemble,  under the leadership of Sarah Mead,  joined singers of St. Paul’s Episcopal  Church in Natick, led by Monique Weiss  Byrnes, Director of Music and organist, in a  late-night holiday service. The central musical  event was a performance of the  “Christmas Story” by Heinrich Schütz with  the very capable baritone Ron Williams  singing the demanding part of the Evangelist.  Sarah Mead had arranged the instrumental  parts from Schütz’ orchestra of twenty to fit a viol quartet with two sackbuts and two  recorders. Sarah, Hannah Davidson, Patrick  Ramsey, and Mai-Lan Broekman were the  viol players; Mack Ramsey and Brian Kay  played sackbut, and Patrick and Mack took  the recorder parts.  

Sarah used a variety of sources to create the  instrumental realization for small consort.  The choir owned a version in English with  piano reduction; also available were a continuo  edition of the recitatives, and the version  in the collected works with reconstructed  parts. Sarah had to deal with the  fact that there would be no trumpets, but  fortunately her sackbut players could play  various instruments including the voices  which would have been taken by trumpets.  Mai-Lan’s violone grounded the instrumental  group and Sarah, who played pardessus  in some movements, comments that it may  be unique to have an ensemble including the  lowest and the highest members of the viol  family. 

The best kept secret among Early Music  players is the splendid, relaxing-butchallenging  Early Music Week at the World  Fellowship Center by Mount Chocorua in Conway,  N.H. Now heading for its 16th year (June  23 – July 2, 2010), it offers an excellent faculty  for gamba, recorder, harpsichord, voice and  lute. Children attend all-morning play groups  while their parents attend classes. Swimming is  a short walk to Whitten Pond (a loon sanctuary)  or a short drive to Lake Chocorua. Meals are of  delicious local organic food, much of it grown  on site. Country dance takes place on several  evenings. The faculty concert is always extraordinary  – as is the annual lecture. 

What an ideal way to begin the summer, as we  can form informal groups, experiment with new  (old) music, make new friends, and do as much  or little as we wish in a beautiful setting— the  perfect musical getaway. Come join the feast! 

For more information on the Early Music Week  program contact Larry Wallach at  larry@simons-rock.edu, or 413-528-9065, or  Jane Hershey at hershey@blakeville.mv.com or  603-899-5036. Any questions about accommodations  can be directed to Andrea Walsh at
reservations@worldfellowship.org, call 603-447-2280; check the website at  www.worldfellowship.org

The ravishing sounds of three viols in consort  will transport you to the world of the Renaissance  English court. Their starting point is the  extraordinary manuscript that preserves works  by King Henry himself, his court musicians and  the continental composers who influenced them.  A feast for the ears, from haunting chansons to  astonishingly complex polyphony, this is elegant  and exhilarating music that is off the beaten  path.

• Thursday, January 14, 8:00 PM at First Religious  Society, 27 School Street, Carlisle MA  01741
• Friday, January 15, 8:00 PM at Weston Congregational Church, 130 Newton Street, Weston  MA 02493
• Saturday, January 16, 8:00 PM at Salem Athenaeum,  337 Essex Street, Salem MA 01879
• Sunday, January 17, 4:00 PM at Heard House  Museum, 54 Main Street Ipswich MA 01938
• Monday, January 18, 7:39 PM at Christ  Church, Zero Garden Street, Cambridge MA 02138

The Inquisition certainly believed him to be a  spy for Queen Elizabeth, as seen in the letters  transcribed in Richard Charteris’s 1984  “Biographical calendar.” Writing in the New  Grove Dictionary of 1980 John Cockshoot asserts  that the continued rumors in the positive  are unfounded, but by 1992 Joseph Kerman  writes as if there is no question that Ferrabosco  undertook diplomatic missions at least and  probably clandestine acts as well, including carrying  salaries for the Italian agents of spymaster  William Cecil, Lord Burghley. The letters in  Richard Charteris’s calendar read like the framework  for a swashbuckling adventure story. Ferrabosco  escaped from Italy without permission  of his employer or the Pope, going to England  where he, a nineteen-year-old, was immediately  taken on as a musician to Queen Elizabeth. He  was active planning masques, currying favor  with noblemen, and interpreting for the Venetian  embassy in London, returning several  times to Italy, finally without the Queen’s permission,  at which point she held his two young  children hostage and refused to release them  even after repeated requests including a letter  from the French queen mother Catherine de’  Medici. The Inquisition succeeded in incarcerating  Ferrabosco, either in Bologna or in Rome,  for a number of months, after which he entered  the service of the Duke of Savoy, traveling with  him to Spain but never again to England. He  died in 1588 at the age of forty-five.

Trebles, tenors, basses all available for rental  from Powers. Call 617-484-4696 between  10:00 AM and 5:00 PM and ask for Evan for  more details, or contact Evan via email at  Registrar@powersmusic.org. You can also  contact Jane Hershey, viol teacher at Powers,  603-899-5036 

Rental fee is $300/yr, also available for 6 months term at $150.

Seeking: cases in good condition for basses and tenors for Powers collection. If you have a hard viol case in storage that you want to get rid of, please consider donating it to the Powers Music School. Our instruments are in good shape, but some cases need replacing.