Roads from Rome

Randa Wouweyha, soprano solist, most recently performed Bach's Christmas Oratorio with the New Dominion Chorale, and was last seen with The Washington Opera as Barbarina in Le Nozze di Figaro, and The Foreign Woman in The Consul under the direction of Gian Carlo Menotti. Ms. Rouweyha has sung with various Opera and Oratorio groups throught the Washington, DC metropolitan area, including The Washington Opera, The Washington Concert Opera, The Washington Savoyards, Opera Americana, Opera Theater of Northern Virginia, the IN series at Mount Vernon College, The New Dominion Chorale, Masterworks Chorus and VOCE. Randa is also a performing member of the Friday Morning Music Club where she will be singing Clérambault's Orphée in April.

The Ad Hoc Singers, an amateur chamber chorus devoted to traditional choral literature from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries, has been in existence under the direction of Louise Lee since 1975. They perform regularly at churches and other locations throughout the area. Good sight readers interested in joining the group should call 703-538-2557 to set up an audition, or speak with Ms. Lee after the concert.

Louise Lee is a graduate of Smith College and Indiana University, where she received a Master of Music degree in organ performance, studying with Oswald Ragatz. Ms. Lee performs frequently as a piano accompanist. She is organist at Arlington Forest United Methodist Church, and assistant organist at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Foggy Bottom. Ms. Lee has directed the Ad Hoc Singers since she founded the group in 1975.

The periods of music history spanned in tonight's program saw many developments of great significance. One was the emergence and refinement of multiple styles of writing for musical instruments, as distinct from vocal writing. Another was the rise of opera and its influence on music for church services, both Catholic and Protestant.

Perhaps most important of all for the subsequent course of Western music was the transition from polyphony, in which all "voices," whether instrumental or sung, were of equal importance in a musical texture, to homophony. In homophony one voice, usually the highest in pitch, carries a melody and the others supply necessary but subordinate harmony.

While innovations took place throught Europe, there is no question that Italy was a primary fount of musical culture, and the city of Rome in particular held fascination for musicians from every country. Because of the Papal establishment, Rome had long drawn accomplished singers, instrumentalists and composers. While their principal occupation for centuries was musical support for the Roman Catholic liturgy, music for entertainment was also cultivated, including solo and madrigal settings for poetry, dramatic productions, "dinner music" and compositions highlighting the skill of an individual singer or instrumentalist.

All but one of the composers on the program sojourned in Rome at one time or another; Buxtehude did not actually go there but incorporated features of keyboard writing (from Frescobaldi via Froberger), and both old and new vocal styles that circulated from Rome to elsewhere in Italy to his North Germain town of Lubeck.

The incredible productivity and diverse output of the two late Baroque giants, Bach and Handel, depended to a large degree on these influences. Handel based his operas and oratorios on Italian music he heard first at the opera in Hamburg, Germany where he lived as a very young man and then in Rome, where he stayed from 1701 to 1709. (Handel made an immediate impact on Rome, too; a contemporary diary states that "on January 14, 1707, a Saxon played the organ at St. John Lateran to universal admiration.") His Laudate Pueri, last on the program, was written in 1701. It foreshadows the great works of his maturity for soloists and chorus.

1707 also marks the death of the great North German organist and composer Buxtehude, whose lengthy impassioned toccatas inspired Bach. Buxtehude also wrote many choral works for the church, some employing Lutheran chorale tunes, others using newer, Italian models of text declamation. The title, Kantate, which he often gave to thise works, covers a multitude of styles. The short "cantata" In te Domine speravi is an example of his Italian-influenced works. So, in a different way, is the Missa Brevis, but it harks all the way back to the smooth, flowing polyphony of Palestrina in the 16th century, where our program begins.

Well-traveled Lassus, frequently known as de Lasso, was Franco-Flemish, but spent considerable time in Italy. In Rome he was maestro di cappella at the church of St. John Lateran from 1553 - 1555. At this time the great Italian composer Palestrina was chapelmaster at the Cappella Giulia there, and succeeded Lassus at St. John Lateran upon Lassus' departure for Mons, Antwerp, and finally, Munich. Lassus' music does not appear to be much influenced by Palestrina's, however; it is particulary sensitive to the text being set, especially in his motets. The opening motif of Videntes Stellam portrays the startled upward gaze of the Magi at the Star of Bethlehem, and the music continues on to convey their wonder and reverance.

Lassus joined the court chapel of the Duke of Bavaria in Munich as a singer in 1556, and became master of the chapel in 1563, remaining there until his death. There is more extant published music from the 16th century by Lassus than by any other composer. It includes, in addition to motets and masses in Latin, Italian madrigals, French chansons, and German lieder.

Although Rossi lived briefly in Rome, his main activity was at Mantua, where he knew Monteverdi. He wrote Italian madrigals and choral music for the synagogue (collected in Songs of Solomon, a whimsical reference to his own first name, not the Biblical poetry). These works are late Renaissance in style, but his instrumental compositions point to the trio-sonata writing of the Baroque, which became a staple of the 17th and 18th centuries. This texture – two melodic intsruments playing against each other over a keyboard or plucked harmonic part, often with the bass line reinforced by a cello or other bass instrument – became a foundation of much later Baroque writing (for example, the duet between oboe and voice in the second movement of the Handel Laudate).

The organist Frescobaldi was born in Ferrara but spent most of his life in Rome. He became organist at St. Peter's in 1608, and was also employed by various patrons there. He bacame organist at the Medici court in Florence in 1628, but returned to Rome in 1634. Frescobaldi wrote prolifically, mainly for the keyboard. Some of this output was for liturgical use. His toccatas, canzonas, ricercares, and dances and variations expanded the expressive power and virtuosity of the keyboardist's art. He also wrote over 50 canzonas for instrumental ensambles.

Frescobaldi's pupil, Froberger, came to Rome from Vienna in 1637 to study with him. Froberger subsequently travelled througout Europe, performing his own compositions, which owed much to Frescobaldi. He wrote toccatas, ricercares, fantasias, canzonas and capriccios for organ or harpsichord, and dance suites in the French style for harpsichord.

His toccatas (like the Frescobaldi recorder canzona) are sectional, containing contrasting passages of duple and triple meter, imitative and chordal texture, and rapidly running notes. They strongly influenced Buxtehude and other North German composers, and led ultimately to the great extended works in that genre by Bach.