If I formed an early music ensemble, that’s what I would call it. What I love about early music is the absolute happiness it conveys—at least in its upbeat moments. The shawms, the sackbuts, the recorders, the bagpipes. When they all get happy together it’s a glorious thing. And when they move from frivolity to spiritual, the experience becomes positively transcendent. Last night’s first concert featured Piffaro (the YouTube video is much, much mellower than anything we heard them perform) and The Concord Ensemble (their audio clips are definitely worth a listen).
We entertained ourselves during the interval coming up with early music t-shirt slogans that we could do up to sell on Cafe Press. The best?
The shawm’s da bomb! ©
Who you callin’ a sackbut? ©
(We are, of course, copyrighting them so we can retire on our sure-to-be-ample earnings.)
After that concert, it was off to a 10:30 performance by selected members of Philharmonia Baroque doing Corelli Concerti, along with some Tartini and Geminiani. We got home utterly exhausted, but quite uplifted.
This morning we have Piffaro again at 11:00. Tonight it’s Le Poeme Harmonique performing a brand new program, Venizia delle strade ai Palazzi. Of this performance the program notes, “Due to the improvisatory nature of Venizia delle strade ai Palazzi, details of the program may change during performance.” That should be interesting.
While wandering through Mrs. Dalloway’s before last night’s performances, I picked up a copy of Nichele Rose Orne’s Inspired to Knit. The title says it all.
