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November 13, 2024

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Seicento introduces new director with Handel oratorio

Coreen Duffy will conduct ‘Judas Maccabeus’ Friday-Sunday

By Peter Alexander Nov. 13 at 5:55 p.m.

Seicento Baroque Ensemble is starting the concert season with a new conductor and a Handel oratorio that is likely new for many in the audience.

Coreen Duffy, newly hired as Seicento’s artistic director and as director of choral activities at the CU College of Music, is a specialist in Jewish choral music. She will conduct the singers of Seicento and an orchestra of Baroque period instruments in a performance of Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabeus. Performances will be Friday through Sunday in Longmont, Boulder and Denver (Nov. 15–17; details below).

Seicento in 2022 with founding director Evanne Browne

Handel’s Judas Maccabeus was composed in 1746, the 18th of the composer’s remarkable output of 18 or 19 oratorios, depending on how you count them. Based on the historical event of the rebellion of the Jewish people against the Greek Seleucid Empire in the years 170–160 BCE, the libretto was written by Thomas Morell who wrote several oratorio texts for Handel.

The story of Judas Maccabeus is tied to the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, which celebrates the return of Jewish worship to the Second Temple in Jerusalem during the revolt. Eventually the revolt led to victory over the Greeks and their expulsion from Judea.

George Frideric Handel

Handel wrote Judas Maccabeus at a time that his oratorios were losing their popularity. To revive his success, he wrote Judas Maccabeus to celebrate the 1746 victory of the English over the Scots at Culloden. To appeal to the British audience, the libretto stresses the military victory of the Jewish people, rather than the “The Festival of Lights” and the Hanukkah story of lamps that miraculously burned for eight days. The premieretook place at in London on April 1, 1747, nearly a year after the battle of Culloden.

The oratorio comprises 68 separate musical numbers organized in three acts, much like Messiah. It includes 17 choruses, as well as arias for the soloists who portray Judas Maccabeus, his brother Simon, a messenger and other characters in the story.

Because it never achieved the broad popularity of Handel’s Messiah, Judas Maccabeus is often regarded as secondary to the more famous work. However, it does contain one of Handel’s most popular choruses, “See, the Conqu’ring Hero Comes!” This chorus has been adapted several times, including a set of variations for cello and piano by Beethoven, a hymn tune, and a movement of Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs.

A performance of Judas Maccabeus is a major undertaking. Seicento will feature its full choir, four soloists—Alice Del Simone, soprano; Alexandra Colaizzi, mezzo-soprano; Javier Abreu, tenor; and James Robinson, bass—and an orchestra with local Baroque-instrument string players and a number of period wind-instrument specialists, most brought in from outside Boulder. 

Duffy links the oratorio firmly to the celebration of Hannukah. She has written of the upcoming performance, “The Jewish High Holy Day season (is) a time of intense contemplation, when we consider the past year in retrospect, make amends with each other and set goals for the coming year.

“This year, the Seicento Baroque Ensemble has set an exciting performance goal . . . one of Handel’s greatest—yet under-performed—oratorios, Judas Maccabaeus. This Chanukah oratorio tells the story of the Maccabees’ fight for religious tolerance and freedom from persecution. Handel’s music soars over the conflict, desolation, and joy, lifting the Chanukah story up for new generations.”

Coreen Duffy

Duffy replaces the founding director of Seicento, Evanne Browne. Her duties at the College of Music include leading the graduate program in choral conducting at both the master’s and doctoral levels. She earned degrees from the University of Michigan (bachelors degree with honors in English), the University of Michigan Law School (Juris Doctor), the University of Miami Frost School of Music (masters in conducting) and the USC Thornton School of Music (doctorate in choral music).

Before coming to CU-Boulder, Duffy was on the faculty of the University of Montana and the University of Miami Frost School of Music, and practiced law in California. She is excited to join the faculty at CU, saying “it’s a legacy program . . . the envy of the country in terms of the gold standard for choral literature studies.”

At Seciento, she says, “it’s a wonderful opportunity to continue the amazing work that Evanne Browne had done. We’re taking on the enormous project from the get-go this fall, with Judas Maccabeus. Next spring the title of the concert is “Renaissance women.” It will be all women composers of the Renaissance and Baroque.

“That will be really fun to do—music that doesn’t get done very often.”

# # # # #

Seicento Baroque Ensemble, Coreen Duffy, director
With Alice Del Simone, soprano; Alexandra Colaizzi, mezzo-soprano; Javier Abreu, tenor; and James Robinson, bass
Orchestra of Baroque-era period instrumentalists

  • Handel: Judas Maccabeus

7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 15, Stewart Auditorium, Longmont
7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 116, Congregational Nevei Kodesh, Boulder
3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 17, St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Denver

TICKETS (Students under 18 free)

CORRECTION: The name of bass soloist is James Robinson. It was originally incorrectly listed as James Robins.

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April 24, 2024

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Seicento Baroque Ensemble explores music from the birth of the Baroque

Artistic Director Evanne Browne conducts her last program with Seicento

By Peter Alexander April 24 at 6:20 p.m.

Evanne Browne

Evanne Browne, the first and the fourth director of Boulder’s Seicento Baroque Ensemble, will perform some of her favorite music for her last performances with the group, Friday through Sunday in Denver, Boulder and Longmont (April 26–28; details below).

Browne has announced that she will retire as Seicento’s artistic director following the concerts, which mark the end of the ensemble’s current season. A search is under way for her successor.

Browne founded Seicento in 2011 then left the group when she moved to the east coast in 2017. Two conductors later, she returned to Colorado, and has led the group for the past two years. She says the program was planned in advance and not specifically chosen for her last concert with Seicento. It might well have been, though, as the early years of the Baroque are Browne’s specialty. 

“This is the era that I truly love—the early Italian Baroque,” she says. “This program is a passion of mine (and) was my specialty in my performing years.”

The music she is referring to comes from the period around 1600. The music of the Renaissance had mostly been written for choirs, but starting around 1600 music was written for solo singers with accompaniment of a bass line and simple chords played by keyboard or other stringed instruments. The emphasis in the solo singing was on expression of the text, with vocal lines that required extensive ornamentation.

“It is very virtuosic,” Browne explains. “It really is an approach that where, you have to fill in the blanks.”

To help promote understanding of the style, Browne has been working with four apprentice artists who will be featured on the program, sopranos Ann Jeffers and Andrea Weidemann, and mezzo-sopranos Emily Anderson and Gabrielle Razafinjatovo. 

“I’ve done a lot of that kind of music as a soloist,” Browne says. “It is very virtuosic, and my goal in having the apprentice artists program (was) to pass that knowledge on.”

Because much of the expression in the early Baroque was supplied by ornaments that were not written out, that was where Browne started with the apprentice artists. She started by teaching the most common ornaments, and suggested recordings they should listen to. “They learned the cadential ornaments [for endings of phrases],” she explains. “Then we started filling in thirds, and filling in fourths, and it was so much fun to see them go, ‘Oh!’”

William Simms with theorbo
cornettos

To make an interesting program for both solo artists and the Seciento chorus, Browne selected both solo pieces in a style called “monody”—ornamented solo voice with continuo accompaniment that will be sung by the apprentice artists—and music from the period for the full chorus, including madrigals and a mass setting by Frescobaldi. There are also instrumental pieces played by local performers on Baroque instruments and three guest artists—William Simms on theorbo (a large stringed lute that can play chordal accompaniments), Chuck Colburn on cornetto (a fingered wind instrument with a trumpet-like mouthpiece), and Webb Wiggins on harpsichord.

Browne singles out two portions of the program that bring together the Seicento chorus and the other performers. “Things that I think are spectacular are our set of variations on a tune, sometimes called ‘La Monica’,” she says. “This tune is anonymous, (and) appears in the early 1500s. It appears in France, it appears in Italy, it appears in England, and different composers take that same tune and set it for different instruments.”

Frescobaldi

The set is based around music by Frescobaldi that incorporates the tune within a choral mass. Seicento’s set begins with a unison performance of the tune, followed by the mass with different instrumental versions of the tune interspersed between the movements. “The Mass is gorgeous, it’s a double choir mass,“ Browne says. 

Between movements, she explains, “William Simms is going to play variations on theorbo that were written by Piccini, our cornet player is going to do ornamentation on his own that shows what a performer would have done at the time, and then the violins have a Sonata by Marini that’s also a set of variations. I love this set!”

The final piece on the program, Venga dal ciel migliore (Come from the best heaven) by Giovanni Rovetta, also brings performers together. “That’s a highlight for me because it brings the violins and the soloists and the choir and all the continuo instruments (together), and the cornetto player’s going to be playing. 

“It’s from that transitional time when a piece of music has choral sections that are punctuated by solo sections. The solo sections have all of the ornamentation, a lot of written out runs, and very challenging technical parts, and then the choir comes in and kind of repeats what they said.”

Browne emphasizes how the musical changes at the beginning of the Italian Baroque are still familiar to us today. “We’ve been calling this kind of a revolution in music,” she says. “This is when we change to the melody accompanied by harmonies, which is a big change from Renaissance music.”

Browne and Seicento at a performance earlier this season. Photo by Emily Bowman.

Ultimately, the importance of the “revolution” was in creating a texture and style of music that continues to this day. In fact, any time you turn on the radio you will hear a melody accompanied by harmonies, in popular songs, in jazz, in show tunes—almost anything you hear today, 

As Browne wrote in her press release, “A lead melody supported by harmony and a prominent bass line is still the primary format of today’s music, from classical to jazz to rock and roll.”

And it all started around 1600.

# # # # #

“Prima Melodia: Birth of Baroque”
Seicento Baroque Ensemble, Evanne Browne, conductor
With sopranos Ann Jeffers and Andrea Weidemann, and mezzo-sopranos Emily Anderson and Gabrielle Razafinjatovo, Seicento apprentice artists.
William Simms, theorbo, Chuck Colburn, cornetto, and Webb Wiggins, harpsichord, guest artists

  • Monteverdi: Movete al mio bel suon
  • Sigismondo d’India: Cruda Amarilli
  • Cipriano de Rore: Ancor che col partire
  • Riccardo Rognoni: Ancor che col partire
  • Alessandro Grandi: Laetamini vos o caeli
  • Monteverdi: Quel sguardo sdegnosetto
  • Francesca Caccini: Maria, dolce Maria
  • Monteverdi: O come sei gentile
  • Girolamo Frescobaldi: Toccata Settima in D minor, Book 2

Variations on a Melody: “Aria della Monica”:

  • Anonymous: Madre, non mi far monaca (unison)
  • Frescobaldi: “Kyrie” from Missa sopra l’aria della Monica (chorus)
  • Alessandro Piccinini: Corrente sopra l’Alemana (theorbo)
  • Frescobaldi: “Gloria” from Missa sopra l’aria della Monica 
  • Une jeune fillette (embellishments improvised on cornetto)
  • Frescobaldi: “Sanctus” and “Agnus Dei” from Missa sopra l’aria della Monica
  • Biagio Marini: “Sonata sopra la Monaca” (two violins and continuo)
  • Luzzasco Luzzaschi: Toccata in e minor
  • —O dolcezz’ amarissime d’amore
  • Giulio Caccini: Amor, io parto
  • Nicolò Corradini: Spargite flores
  • Giovanni Rovetta: Venga dal ciel migliore

7:30 p.m. Friday, April 26, St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Denver
7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 27, Mountain View Methodist Church, Boulder
3 p.m. Sunday, April 28, United Church of Christ, Longmont

TICKETS, including live stream of Friday’s performance

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February 28, 2024

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Baroque music and jazz brought together by Seicento

“Improvisation in Baroque and Jazz,” March 1 and 2

By Peter Alexander Feb. 28 at 10:45 a.m.

Evanne Browne, conductor of Boulder’s Seicento Baroque Ensemble, is the daughter of jazz musicians—“jazz pianist mom and a bass player dad,” she says. “There was a lot of American songbook music going on in our house all the time.”

Evanne Browne

It might seem like a long way from jazz and the American songbook to Bach, Monteverdi, and the other specialities of Seicento. But as a trained early music performer, Browne believes the two musical styles are closer than you might think. And her next concert with Seicento will demonstrate that.

The concert, titled “Embellish! Improvisation in Baroque and Jazz” (7:30 p.m. Friday in Longmont and Saturday in Golden; details below), features Baroque music by Couperin, Monteverdi and others, mixed together with jazz by Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, and even some pops and Broadway numbers (see full program below). In addition to the Seicento choir, performers will be violin and gamba player Tina Chancey, a jazz ensemble led by bassist Mark Diamond, and Seicento apprentice artists.

The inspiration for the program comes from the fact that in the early Baroque a lot of written music was sketchy, often only a bass part and one or two melody lines. Performances could vary, much as performances of jazz standards very from one artist or combo to another. There were traditional bass lines and chord progressions for dances that were filled in differently by different composers, much as the traditional 12-bar blues can be filled in differently by different performers.

“I’ve been thinking for a long time that when you look at charts for jazz and there’s melody and chords, and when you look at a basso continuo part for keyboard (in Baroque music) and there’s a bass line and chords, those things are similar,” Browne explains. “I just kind of started going down the list of what else was similar.”

Since jazz charts and Baroque scores—especially for the early operas by Monteverdi and others—left a lot to be filled in by performers, in both cases fans of the music distinguish between different versions, or realizations, of specific pieces. Another parallel that Browne found was that rhythms are often not played exactly as they are written, but are made more “swingy,” especially for dance music.

Seicento Baroque Ensemble and conductor Evanne Browne. Photo by Emily Bowman.

In the Baroque era, there was a convention in France called “notes inegales” (unequal notes), where notes on the beat were lengthened and the notes between the beats were shortened, to make the rhythms more pointed. This is not unlike the jazz tradition of “swinging” what are written as even notes. In jazz, Browne says, “you don’t play them ‘straight.’ People would think you were crazy if you did that. It’s exactly what notes inegales are in French.

“In dance music, the need for movement is something that turns duple into triplets and makes that more universally pleasing to us as listeners or performers.”

Claudio Monteverdi

As the music from the Baroque period and from jazz and popular idioms alternate on the program, there is one pairing that Browne particularly likes. “The Lamento della ninfa by Monteverdi and ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ are striking together,” she says. In Monteverdi, “we have this four-note bass line that is repeated, and this beautiful lament. Then going right into ‘Hit the Road Jack,’ it’s the same bass line—it’s interesting how that chord progression can be used expressively to emote what is being said.”

Browne has selected other pieces that demonstrate similarities in the structure of Baroque arias and jazz songs, with a slower and explanatory introduction that sets up the situation, followed by the main tune that expresses emotions. They both represent turning points in music, one the rise of dramatic music and opera in early 16th century Italy, and the other the rise of jazz and widely available popular dance music recordings in early 20th-century America.

In addition to examples that have a serious point to make, Browne also selected some parings on the program just because they are fun. Among the latter would be Monteverdi’s duet Bel Pastor dalcui bel guardo (Beautiful shepherd from whose beautiful gaze), which is a conversation between a shepherdess who keeps asking a shepherd if he really loves her, and that is paired with a song from Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye asks his wife Golde, “Do you love me?”

“So here’s these two (pieces)—we haven’t recovered from two centuries of learning about humanity,” Browne says. “We’re still insecure in love! So I thought that was a fun one.”

In fact, the word Browne uses most in describing the program is fun. “It’s a fun program,” she says. more than once.

“I think the audience will be laughing and tapping their toes.”

# # # # #

“Embellish! Improvisation in Baroque and Jazz”
Seicento Baroque Ensemble, Evanne Browne, director
With Tina Chancey, viola da gamba and violin, and jazz ensemble led by Mark Diamond

  • Louis Couperin: Prélude non mesuré (Unmeasured prelude)
  • Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington: “Take the A Train” (arr. Gordon Prugh)
  • Marin Marais: Fantasie from the Suite in A minor, Book III
  • Anon: Madre, non mi far monaca (Mother, don’t make me a nun)
  • Giralamo Frescobaldi: Missa sopra Aria della Monaca, Kyrie (Mass on La monaca)
  • Thomas “Fats” Waller: “Honeysuckle Rose”
  • Charlie Parker: “Scrapple from the Apple”
  • Frescobaldi: Così mi disprezzate (So you despise me?)
  • Diego Ortiz: Recercada segunda (Second ricrercar)
  • Claudio Monteverdi: Lamento della ninfa (The nymph’s lament)
  • Percy Mayfield: “Hit the Road, Jack”
  • Monteverdi: Come dolce oggi l’auretta (How sweet is the breeze today)
  • Don Raye and Hughie Prince” “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”
  • Monteverdi: Si dolce è’l tormento (The torment is so sweet) (choir, solo and jazz)
    —Bel Pastor dalcui bel guardo (Beautiful shepherd from whose beautiful gaze)
  • Jerry Bock: “Do You love me?” from Fiddler on the Roof
  • Jimmy McHugh: “On the Sunny Side of the Street”

7:30 p.m. Friday, March 1
First Congregational Church, Longmont

 7:30 p.m. Saturday March 2
Calvary Church, Golden

TICKETS  

NOTE: The spelling of conductor Evanne Browne’s name was corrected 2/28. The correct spelling of her last name is Browne.