VoM: Six Seventeenth-Century Sopranos

The New Year has brought a new season to the Sunday Mornings at Ten series of YouTube concerts presented by Voices of Music (VoM). This morning saw the release of The 17th Century Soprano, a program featuring five composers and one very familiar traditional song from that century. Each of the six selections was sung by a different soprano. Overall this made for a thoroughly engaging showcase.

The program began with the BuxWV 38 cantata Herr, wenn ich nur dich hab sung by Laura Heimes. This is a single-movement composition structured as a chaconne in which the vocal line weaves its way in and around a ground bass. This was a “first contact” listening experience, and Heimes served as an excellent guide in leading me through an unknown domain. I subsequently discovered a “fun fact” through Wikipedia. In the spirit of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV), there is also a Buxtehude-Werke-Verzeichnis catalog of the composer’s complete works. The first 112 entries account for all of the cantatas; and they are (for the most part) ordered alphabetically by title!

Heimes was followed by Sophie Junker singing “O Maria,” the seventh song in Barbara Strozzi’s Opus 5 collection, Sacri musicali affetti (sacred musical affects). This was structured as a rondo with a coda setting an “Alleluia” text. It has been some time since I have had an opportunity to listen to Strozzi’s music. I have a recording of the entire Opus 5, and Junker’s performance convinced me that I should get to know it better.

Far darker was Tarquinio Merula’s “Hor ch'è tempo di dormire” (now it’s time to sleep). As might be guessed from the title, it is basically a lullaby based on a minimal ground bass. However, as the text unfolds, one realizes that the vocalist is anticipating the Crucifixion, making the aria one of the earliest musical ventures into irony. The song was delivered by Jennifer Ellis Kampani, who negotiated the tension between lullaby and Crucifixion with almost blood-curdling rhetoric. The listener could then find relief from that intensity in Sherezade Panthaki’s delivery of “Laudate dominum in sanctis eius” from Claudio Monteverdi’s Selva morale e spirituale collection of different forms of sacred music.

The last two selections were the most familiar. Anna Dennis sang the aria known as “Dido’s Lament” from Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. This is the final vocal solo in the entire opera, and it has become one of the most familiar arias in the entire opera repertoire. Even more familiar was the anonymous “Greensleeves,” sung by Molly Netter with accompaniment by plucked viols. Pete Seeger used to joke about the enormous number of verses set to this tune. (As he put it, “Each one dumber than the last!”) Netter was considerably more discreet in her delivery of an appropriately abbreviated number of verses.

The current plan is that next week’s program will advance into the eighteenth century!