Those Were the Days

Cabaret Baroque. Photo from Early Music Now.

An unusual trio of duo harpsichord, lute, and recorder takes the stage as Early Music Now opens its season on Saturday, Oct. 25. The group Cabaret Baroque will perform a concert called Les Goûts Réunis (“[Musical] Tastes Reunited”). Members of the group are Corina Marti, who performs on harpsichord and recorder, lutenist Michal Gondko and Shalev Ad-El, harpsichord.

European composers during the Baroque period, roughly 1600 to 1750, were innovators. They created new musical forms, expected performers to augment their written notes with musical embellishments, and differentiated melody and harmony lines. Individual composers also incorporated their own musical roots, such as the operatic traditions of Italy and the aristocratic dance practices of France.

Cabaret Baroque’s performance will explore French and Italian musical styles from the early and middle Baroque periods. The performers promise to “not only juxtapose Italian and French styles – we also perform French music in Italian style, and vice versa.”

The program is named for and inspired by a collection of instrumental dance suites composed by François Couperin (1668-1733). Couperin was a French harpsichordist, composer, and organist. His lineage included a great-grandfather who built instruments; his grandfather, known as a “master instrumentalist;” and his father and uncle, both organists in Paris. At age 25, François was appointed the organist of the chapel at Versailles, and soon was teaching the harpsichord to the royal children.

In 1724, Couperin wrote 10 suites of dances for the court of Louis XIV. Known collectively as the Royal Concerts, each begins with a prelude, followed by a series of courtly dances. They can be played by the harpsichord or a small chamber group.

“Throughout his later career,” Kate Bolton-Porciatti writes in BBC Classical Music, “Couperin aimed for a ‘bi-lingual’ musical idiom, melding his native French style with the fashionable Italian.” In Couperin’s Royal Concerts, “the languorous and embellished French idiom is impregnated with Italian lyricism and vivacity.”

For Saturday’s concert, movements of the third Royal Concert suite will be interspersed with compositions by Denis Gaultier (c. 1603-1672). Gaultier was an accomplished French lutenist, and his dance suites (which include instructions on lute playing) are characterized by graceful melodies. Gaultier’s cousin Ennemond Gaultier (c. 1575-1651) also was a renowned lutenist; one of his compositions is included on Saturday’s program. Gondko will play these works on an 11-course lute, considered the first Baroque-era form of the instrument.

Italian composers represented on the program include Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), best known for advancing the development of the sonata form and writing 555 one-movement sonatas for keyboard; violinist Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713); and organist Vincenzo Pellegrini (1560-c. 1631).

Les Goûts Réunis will be performed at 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 25, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 914 E. Knapp St., Milwaukee. A free pre-concert lecture begins at 4 p.m. Tickets are available online and at the door.

Early Music Now’s next concert, on Nov. 22, is a rare opportunity to hear Handel‘s Messiah as it sounded at its 1742 premiere. The complete work will be performed by chorus and Baroque instruments.