We have given 14 regular concerts so far. The pamphlets we have created for each of these concerts are uploaded on our website, and are naturally written in Japanese. Since our website is now viewed by people overseas, we thought it would be a good idea to translate it into English. Fortunately, excellent translation software is now widely available, so now would be a good time to do so.
Introduced here is the memorable first regular concert. The cover of the brochure looks like this.
Recorder ensemble
Aeolian Consort
The first regular Consert
--- Recorder Music of the Renaissance and Baroque Periods ---
(2005) / December /25 (Sun)
Chiba City Museum of Art, Sayado Hall
Acknowledgements
Thank you very much for coming to the first regular concert of the Aeolian Consort. The Aeolian Consort is a recorder ensemble composed of seven members. We have been performing mainly choral and instrumental music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Although we are not always as good as we would like to be, we are confident that our love and enthusiasm for music are second to none.
Today's program consists of two Bach pieces in the front and back frames, with a Renaissance piece in the middle. I am not sure how it will turn out, but I will do my best, so please take your time and enjoy it.
Approximately 200 church cantatas by J.S. Bach (1685-1750) have survived. Most of them are from his Leipzig period (1723-50) when he served as a cantor, but No. 182 is a masterpiece representing his Weimar period (1708-17). The first sonata and two choruses are performed as a recorder ensemble.
Thomas Tomkins (1572-1656) was a composer active in Worcester and London, England, known primarily for his works for virginal. This "Dream of Balafostus" is a work from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, a well-known collection of 16th- and 17th-century keyboard music, and is written in the form of variations.
Jacob Handl Gallus (1550-91) was born in Ljubljana, now Slovenia, and worked in Austria. He was such an important composer that the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II granted him the privilege of publishing his music. Most of his works are religious compositions, and the two motets featured today are both motets with an unusual arrangement of three tenors and two basses.
Orlando di Lasso (1532-94), a native of Flanders, was a leading composer of the 16th century, active in Munich and elsewhere in France, Flanders, and Italy. He left more than 2,000 works, mainly religious and secular choral works. The lyrics of the song "I will return from the crag alive" is one of his six madrigals and is taken from Petrarch's "Canzoniere".
Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) is considered the most important German composer before Bach. He served mainly under the Elector of Saxony and wrote numerous religious choral works. "The heavens reveal the glory of God" was published in 1648 in the "Geistliche Chor-Musik" (Religious Choral Music). It is one of his best-known anthems.
Jan Pieterszohn Sweelinck (1562-1621) was a leading Dutch composer of keyboard music. He worked mainly in Amsterdam. His style influenced many later Lutheran composers in northern Germany. "My Youth is Past" is one of his masterpieces, written in the form of a variation, which was the most popular form of music at that time. The original melody is said to be a folk song.
Johannes Eccard (1553-1611) was a German choral composer who worked in Augsburg and Berlin. "Zanni e Magnifico" is a madrigal with Italian lyrics, and it has a unique form, with a different character for each voice in the Commedia dell'Arte, which was popular in Italy at the time, and all the lyrics are different.
During his time in Leipzig (1723-50), Bach was the conductor of the Collegium Musicum at the University of Leipzig, and it is believed that the 13 surviving concertos for harpsichord were written for that purpose. This concerto for four harpsichords is an arrangement of a concerto for four violins from Vivaldi's ensemble concerto collection "Harmony and Creative Experiment".