By M.D. Ridge
Portfolio Magazine, Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2007
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Seventeenth-century composer Henry Purcell is a hot ticket this year, what with 1607 and Jamestown and all that. Schola Cantorum’s current series of concerts, "Across the Choral Sea," pays tribute to Purcell and the music of his time. Says director Gayle Johnson, "I like to focus on a period, and step back in time. I’m really a historian at heart." The concert series was marked by firsts: the Schola’s first concert with Johnson, and its first collaboration with The Itinerant Band, seven musicians from southeastern Virginia who specialize in early American music and play in period costume on recorder, flute, epinette (an ancestor of the dulcimer), bodhran and other percussion, Celtic harp, cello, guitar, mandolin and fiddle. Their collaboration gave the audience a charming, well-rounded picture of a musical era and of Purcell’s versatility. Like Mozart a century later, Purcell could do everything, from catches and theater tunes — the equivalent of pop music — to the highest of high art. His nickname, "The English Orpheus," was well-deserved. Johnson explained that Purcell’s Birthday Ode for Queen Mary incorporated Thomas D’Urfey’s "Cold & Raw," one of the Scottish Queen’s favorite folk tunes. The Itinerant Band played and sang the folk ballad, followed by the Schola’s singing the Purcell Ode, with Johnson conducting from the harpsichord. Having the cello restate the "Cold & Raw" melody after "Long may she reign" was a nice touch. |
The reiterations of kissing and merriment of "I gave her cakes and ale," sung with gusto by the men, was apparently the 17th-century version of "candy is dandy but liquor is quicker." Its companion piece was the charming dance tune, "Cuckolds All in a Row," played by The Band.
Tunes from The English Dancing Master, a period compendium of dance tunes, punctuated and enhanced the Purcell anthems, catches, and sometimes hilarious theater tunes, such as the men’s full-voiced rendition of "Your hay it is mowed," in which the harvest reapers plot to cheat the parson who takes a tenth of their crop. This was followed by the light, cheerful, country feel of the instrumental "Dance for the Haymakers," from The Fairy Queen. More serious were a passacaglia, "How happy the lovers," and "Two daughters," from King Arthur, featuring the women’s voices,
The deft use of smaller ensembles within the larger group created interest and variety.
The concert closed with an encore, "Come Let Us Drink," which Johnson conducted with a pewter drinking cup in her right hand — and then invited the audience to the reception that followed.
There is one more concert in the current series: Saturday, Feb. 3, 8 p.m., at Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg.
Longtime Schola tenor Thomas Long said he had lobbied the ensemble’s board for a year and a half for the ensemble to do a concert with the Itinerant Band. (Long and The Band’s director, Susan Lawlor, are colleagues at Thomas Nelson Community College.) His perseverance paid off for the audience and for the Schola. One hopes that there will be further collaborations down the road.
When Lee Teply, director of Schola Cantorum for seven years, relinquished the position, Johnson saw an ad in the Arts Calendar and applied. A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory, Johnson founded the world-class early music ensemble Capriole in 1987 in Seattle, then took it to Amsterdam.
"That’s where I got my international connections," she notes. Capriole returned to Williamsburg in 1987, and was ensemble-in-residence first at the College of William and Mary and then at Old Dominion University.
"My then husband said, ‘Virginians are like salmon: they come home to spawn.’"
Unfortunately, in 2000, Capriole was embezzled by a staff member, and never fully recovered. It was a major blow for Johnson.
"I didn’t want to admit that Capriole was over."
She made an attempt to reestablish the group, but Johnson says, "It was too hard. A nonprofit runs on trust, and it was difficult to regain that."
She founded the Williamsburg Boychoir to give her son and other boys an experience of music that was not available in the schools.
After moving to Virginia Beach and taking a year to renovate her mother’s house "from the studs," Johnson is happy to be doing music again.
"Schola Cantorum means School of Singers, so the members are there to learn. It’s a perfect fit; teaching adults who want to learn is a real joy for me."
"I approach conducting collaboratively, rather than as an authoritarian. In Capriole, I invited everyone’s input, structuring and guiding rehearsals to make maximum use of time but allowing everyone to exercise their creativity. In a certain way, I do the same with Schola. They told me they wanted to try small ensembles, so I auditioned those members who wanted to try out, and created the small ensembles you heard tonight. I try to maximize people’s strengths and minimize their weaknesses."
Schola Cantorum will sing in Jamestown May 12 for America’s 400th Anniversary Weekend, which will include the presence of Queen Elizabeth II. The Schola’s next concert series, in July, will feature the music of Jamestown, going farther back in time to the mid-16th to mid-17th centuries; they start rehearsing for that series in February.