2020 has certainly been a difficult year for many, not least for musicians and music-lovers. This concert of baroque chamber-music was put together after large-scale oratorio performances had to be cancelled, and even so, you – our audience – cannot be here to commiserate and celebrate with us, but must join us online, and – we trust – in spirit!
ENSEMBLE FLORIDANTE
Väärika Aasta Vallatu Ärasaatmine
A Jolly Farewell to a Bitter Year
Watch the video (from Tallinn’s Old Town on 30th December 2020) here.
In the mid-17th century, English musicians faced some 11 years of cultural restrictions, during the period of the Civil War and Commonwealth, until the Restoration of King Charles II brought back theatre plays, music, dancing and renewed contact with continental culture. Let us hope that the dark days of Brexit do not last so long for England now!
Purcell evokes a ghostly gloom as the Conjurer awakens the Indian Queen’s god of sleep out of his eternal slumber, whilst King Arthur’s Cold Genius freezes to death in his bed of everlasting snow. Over a tortured, chromatic Ground, Purcell’s melody promises that music will ‘beguile’ – charm away – all your cares, whilst onstage, tragic Oedipus sees ghosts passing amongst the trees. More about Music for a While here.
So let’s bid 2020 “Farewell!”, and Battle our way into the New Year with the Resolution of Tobias Hume’s soldierly compositions for viola da gamba. Hume (who was perhaps the model for Shakespeare’s viol-playing, Galliard-dancing knight, Sir Andrew Aguecheek in the New Year play Twelfth Night) was both an experienced Soldier and a gamba virtuoso. Our two viol-players compete fiercely, but remain in musical Good Humour, fortified by the Spirit of Gambo.
Wit and Mirth or Pills to Purge Melancholy was the title of Thomas d’Urfey’s collection of over a thousand songs and poems published around 1700. If Dissembling Love cannot be trusted, perhaps Tobacco or even Hemp can drive the melancholy of a cold winter away. So have a happy Holiday and may your New Year Wish come true!
Although in 1600 everything in the winter sales is ‘trash’, the Tinker (salesman) swears that his ‘heart is true’. In 17th-century London, when the river Thames froze over, ladies and young lasses crowded onto the ice to buy Fine Knacks, ‘cheap, choice, brave and new’, although Nothing was really new. The Fine Dog has a hole in his head, but everything comes ‘with a ….’ [free gift]!
The political and cultural disruption of 1649 (the Plague and Fire of London were yet to come!) were mourned in a Sad Pavan. But I would fain Change this note of sadness – I would if I could – into the joyful chorus of a country-dance: ‘We come on, and never go back’. We have indeed all been living through ‘distracted times’, but the Spanish Gypsies wish a Happy New Year for everyone!
ENSEMBLE FLORIDANTE
Väärika Aasta Vallatu Ärasaatmine
A Jolly Farewell to a Bitter Year
Alvar Tiisler – baritone
Peeter Klaas – treble viol, bass viol
Andrew Lawrence-King – baroque harp, psaltery
Villu Vihermäe – bass viol
Saale Fischer – harpsichord
GHOSTS OF OLD YEARS PAST
The Conjurer’s Song Indian Queen (1695) Henry Purcell
A Ground Oedipus (1692)
The Cold Genius King Arthur (1691)
FAREWELL & RESOLUTION
Parson’s Farewell The English Dancing Master (1651) John Playford
The Battle Galliard Lachrimae (1605) John Dowland
A Souldier’s Resolution & The Souldier’s Song Tobias Hume
A Souldiers Galliard Musicall Humours (1605)
PILLS TO PURGE MELANCHOLY
Dissembling Love Playford
Tobacco Hume
The Hemp-Dresser Playford
Drive cold winter away – Shepherds Holyday – The Whish
CHEAP, CHOICE, BRAVE & NEW
Tom Tinker Playford
Fine knacks for ladies Second Book of Songs (1600) John Dowland
New New nothing Playford
Will you buy a fine dog? First Book of Ayres (1600) Thomas Morley
SPIRIT OF CHANGE
A Sad Pavan for these Distracted Times (1649) Thomas Tomkins
Fain would I change that note Hume
Fain I would if I could Playford
The Spanish Jeepsies after Playford & Purcell
Program devised by Andrew Lawrence-King
The Conjurer’s Song
Ye twice ten-hundred Deities
To whom we daily sacrifice;
Ye Powers that dwell with Fates below,
And see what Men are doom’d to do;
Where Elements in discord dwell,
Thou God of sleep arise and tell
Great Zampoalla, what strange Fate
Must on her dismal Vision wait.
By the croaking of the Toad
In their caves that make abode;
Earthy Dun that pants for breath,
With her swell’d sides full of death;
By the Crested Adders’ Pride,
That along the Cliffs do glide;
By thy Visage fierce and black;
By thy Death’s Head on thy back;
By thy twisted Serpents placed
For a Girdle round thy Waist;
By the Hearts of Gold that deck thy Breast,
Thy Shoulders and thy Neck;
From thy Sleeping-Mansion rise,
And open thy unwilling Eyes!
While bubbling Springs their Music keep,
That used to Lull thee in thy Sleep.
John Dryden
The Cold Genius
What power are thou, who from below
Hast made me rise, unwillingly and slow,
From beds of everlasting snow?
See’st thou not how stiff and wond’rous old,
Far, far unfit to bear the bitter cold,
I can scarcely move or draw my breath.
Let me freeze again to death!
Dryden
The Souldier’s Song
I sing the praise of honor’d wars,
The glory of well-gotten scars,
The bravery of glitt’ring shields,
Of lusty harts & famous fields:
For that is Music worth the ear of Joue,
A sight for kings, & still the Soldier’s love:
Look, for me thinks I see
The grace of chivalry,
The colours are displayed,
The captains bright arrayed:
See now the battle’s rang’d
Bullets now thick are chang’d:
Hark, hark, shoots and wounds abound
The drums alarum sound:
The Captains cry za! Za!
The Trumpets sound tarra-ra-ra.
O this is music worth the ear of Joue,
A sight for Kings, and still the Soldier’s love.
Tobacco
Tobacco, sing sweetly for Tobacco,
Tobacco is like love, O love it,
For you see I wil prove it:
Love maketh lean the fat men’s tumour,
So doth Tobacco.
Love still dries up the wanton humour,
So doth Tobacco.
Love makes men sail from shore to shore,
So doth Tobacco.
Tis fond love often makes men poor,
So doth Tobacco.
Love makes men scorn all Coward fears,
So doth Tobacco.
Love often sets men by the ears,
So doth Tobacco.
Tobacco, sing sweetly for Tobacco,
Tobacco is like Love, O love it,
For you see I have proved it.
Fine Knacks for Ladies
Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new,
Good pennyworths but money cannot move,
I keep a fair but for the fair to view,
A beggar may be liberal of love.
Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true.
Great gifts are guiles and look for gifts again,
My trifles come as treasures from my mind,
It is a precious jewel to be plain,
Sometimes in shell the Orient’s pearls we find.
Of others take a sheaf, of me a grain.
Within this pack pins, points, laces and gloves,
And diverse toys fitting a country fair,
But in my heart, where duty serves and loves,
Turtles and twins, Court’s brood, a heav’nly pair.
Happy the heart that thinks of no removes.
Will you buy a fine dog?
Will you buy a fine dog, with a hole in his head?
With a dildo;
Muffs, cuffs, ribatos, and fine sisters’ thread,
With a dildo;
I stand not on points, pins, periwigs, combs, glasses,
Gloves, garters, girdles, busks, for the brisk lasses;
But I have other dainty tricks,
Sleek stones and potting sticks,
With a dildo, diddle dildo;
And for a need my pretty pods,
Amber, civet, and musk cods,
With a dildo, with a diddle dildo!
Fain would I change that note
Fain would I change that note
To which fond love hath charm’d me,
Long, long to sing by rote,
Fancying that that harm’d me.
Yet when this thought doth come:
– Love is the perfect sum
Of all delight –
I have no other choice
Either for pen or voice,
To sing or write:
O Love they wrong thee much,
That say thy sweet is bitter.
When thy ripe fruit is such,
As nothing can be sweeter,
Fair house of joy and bliss,
Where truest pleasure is,
I do adore thee:
I know thee what thou art,
I serve thee with my heart,
And fall before thee.
The Spanish Jeepsies
“Come follow all!”
The Spanish Gypsies call.
All you who fear your lives,
Here’s those that Passion drives.
We come on and ne’er go back,
None of us shall ever lack!
Andrew Lawrence-King 