For those of us that chose not to brave the elements to see tenor Thomas Cooley perform with Voices of Music at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church last night, last week’s Sunday Mornings at Ten video episode served as at least some compensation. That compensation consisted of eight recordings from past performances by Cooley. The first two selections were arias from oratorios by George Frideric Handel. They were followed by two selected movements from works by Claudio Monteverdi, and the remainder of the program was devoted to Henry Purcell.
Tenor Thomas Cooley singing Monteverdi with cellist Elisabeth Reed and David Taylor on theorbo (screenshot from the video being discussed)
The first of the Monteverdi selections was a reminder that I still had a lot to learn. I had casually assumed that it was one of the vocal solos to be found somewhere in the composer’s eight books of madrigals. It wasn’t. After a moderate amount of digging, I found that “Sì dolce è'l tormento” (SV 332 in the Monteverdi catalog) was one of the four pieces in a collection entitled Quarto scherzo delle ariose vaghezze. Google Translate transformed those last to words into “airy vagueness,” leading me to believe that Monteverdi may have been having some fun with his audiences and/or patrons. Nevertheless, Cooley gave an affectionate account, accompanied only by Elisabeth Reed on cello and David Tayler on theorbo.
Fortunately, the second Monteverdi selection was more familiar. This was the first of the four “Concerto” movements (motets) from the Vespro della Beata Vergine (Vespers for the Blessed Virgin), SV 206. The text is taken from the Song of Songs: “I am black, but comely, o ye daughters of Jerusalem.” Cooley gave it a perfectly gender-neutral account, allowing the sensuous Hebrew to be “neutralized” by its delivery in Latin.
The two Handel selections were taken from oratorios that also drew upon the Old Testament. In fact, Esther (HWV 50) is most likely the first oratorio to be written for an English libretto. (To be fair, however, that libretto was based on a drama by Jean Racine.) The libretto for Jephtha (HWV 70), on the other hand, was written by the Reverend Thomas Morell, drawing upon Chapter 11 of the Book of Judges. The Esther selection amounted to a duo for Cooley and oboist Marc Schachman, performing against accompaniment by pizzicato strings, making for a thoroughly engaging listening experience.
Purcell was one of those composers that seemed to enjoy writing music about music. This is most evident in his Z.323 ode Come Ye Sons of Art. Cooley sang the fifth movement, “Strike the viol, touch the lute,” in which the contrast between the two instruments is represented by the string players alternating between bowed and plucked performance. That was the first of the four Purcell selections, complemented by the concluding selection, “Music for a While,” taken from the Z.583 incidental music for Oedipus, for which John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee prepared an English-language libretto based on the play by Sophocles. These offerings served to frame “Now that the sun hath veiled his light” (Z.193, given the title “An Evening Hymn On A Ground”) and the Z.402 song “O! fair Cedaria, hide those eyes.”
This all amounted to a most pleasant way to appreciate Voices of Music performances while remaining dry!
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