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Sunday Feb. 13 - 4pm Davies memorial Chapel (HPA Upper Campus) - Waimea/Kamuela |
| The Waimea Consort will offer its first
2005 concert on Sunday, February 13 at 4pm in the Davies Memorial
Chapel, on the upper campus of HPA in Waimea. In keeping with its
tradition of bringing rarely heard vocal music to the Big Island, the
twelve member a cappella ensemble will present songs from the
fourteenth to the twentieth century, not forgetting that Valentine's
Day will be the following day!
The program will open with large excerpts (Kyrie, Gloria and Ite Missa Est) from a piece never performed in Hawaii before, the 'Messe de Nostre Dame' by Guillaume de Machaut, an important ars nova (c.14th France's new music) composer from the Middle Ages. A little history here: Church music was acquiring more complexity after the beginnings of Gregorian chant, while the Roman Catholic leaders were progressively getting angrier with the composers, convinced their intricately woven harmonies interfered with the understanding of text. They opposed anything that might possibly obstruct the proper hearing of the words, thus banning the use of hocket(think of a broken record skipping), a composing devise where overlapping voices creates a sort of hiccupping sound. Early censorship! However, by using discreet rests and syncopation, Machaut cleverly circumvented the ban and got the same result without technically calling it a hocket. His lawyer would have been proud! To add insult to injury he included in the Mass a long melisma(one syllable sung for many measures, a favorite device later used by Bach and Handel) on the word amen. Until Machaut no composer had written a complete polyphonic mass. Prior to this masses had been pieced together, akin to 'cut and paste,' which didn't allow for much continuity. The rest of the performance will explore various ways composers aurally depict the many shades of love in all it's sweetness, angst, and sorrow. English madrigalist Thomas Weelkes effectively shows fury by creating a maelstrom with rising and falling quarter note sequences in the piece 'Mars in a fury'. John Dowland's intense pain is emoted with the beautiful descending line that matches his heartfelt sadness in 'Flow my tears'. No vanilla chords here. There's a lot of spice in these works where different melody lines are woven, note against note, as in a fine Renaissance tapestry. Just think, harmonic tapestry for the ears! As the music progresses through the romantic era with Mendelssohn and Schumann toward the twentieth century, the listener is delighted to hear more familiar consonances appearing with their traditional predictable endings, like a warm homecoming. But at the end of the journey, the twentieth century composer Darius Milhaud achieves a new kind of complexity and beauty in modern day music just as the earliest pioneers had done centuries before. It comes full circle...modern tapestry! The Waimea Consort is comprised of amateur singers led by Christian Veillet, the director of Canada France Hawaii Telescope. They come together to share their love of early music with the community. After five years of singing without instruments to hide or mask the voices, these intrepid vocalists have created their own niche with this special repertoire. Music lovers seeking rarely heard pieces will surely appreciate this unusual Valentine's Day Concert. What better instrument has ever been devised than the human voice? HPA's stone and wood chapel offers the perfect acoustical setting for this unique consort of a cappella voices. There is no charge but donations are gratefully accepted. |