Elizabeth Reed Leads Viol Consort for VoM

Last night Voices of Music (VoM) returned to St. Mark’s Lutheran Church to present the San Francisco performance of the second program in its 2023–2024 season. The title of the program was Entertainment for Elizabeth, and there is a good chance that all of the selections on the program were, at some time or another, performed at the court of the Queen of England, Elizabeth I. Those selections were performed by a viol consort directed by Elizabeth Reed, whose other members were Wendy Gillespie, David H. Miller, Farley Pearce, and William Skeen, playing instruments of different sizes over the course of the evening. They were occasionally joined by VoM Directors Hanneke van Proosdij (recorder) and David Tayler (lute). There were also vocal selections performed by soprano Molly Netter.

I suspect that some (many?) of us attended this event as a “refuge from the flood” of “seasonal programming.” More likely is that the selections on the program had served as “dinner music” for one (or more) of the feats offered by Queen Elizabeth. Mind you, such dinners provided settings for conversations that (for better or worse) could lapse into political issues, leaving any musicians to be relegated to the background; but that’s the way things were in the sixteenth century! (Have they changed that much?)

Reed prepared a “usual suspects” program, presenting compositions by John Dowland, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, and several of their lesser-known contemporaries. Netter delivered a clear account of the vocal selections, always with a keen ear to balance with the viols. I have to confess that I appreciated her contribution to that blend, since the sonorities of the viols differ only in register. As a result, there is a uniformity of instrumental coloration that contrasts significantly with the rich sonorities of a string quartet.

Thus, as the evening progressed, I began to feel as if I was experiencing too much of a good thing. A sense of “sonorous uniformity” only passed at the end of the program with two “Holiday special” selections, both of which offered novel and engaging alternatives. The first of these was Hugh Martin’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” with a thoroughly effective vocal delivery of Ralph Blane’s words by Netter. Netter then shifted over to the Christmas carol “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” (a rose has sprung up).

Would Elizabeth have appreciated such diversity, or would she have been too wrapped up in “head-of-state conversations?”