Piffaro and Laughing Bird celebrate Cipriano de Rore

Piffaro has been exploring Renaissance music for almost three decades, and their devoted fans have become familiar with the names of Renaissance masters like Guillaume Dufay and Josquin des Prez. For all most of us knew before Piffaro brought him to our attention, Cipriano de Rore could have been a fourth-division Italian soccer player.

De Rore is actually an important figure in the history of music, even though the early music movement has apparently failed to give him his due. Monteverdi considered him one of the major creators of the “second practice” — the expressive vocal style that Monteverdi and his successors developed in the 17th century.

But de Rore isn’t one of those composers specialists admire merely because he pioneered a new approach. De Rore created some of the most attractive music Piffaro has played. Piffaro presented this concert with an early music vocal quartet, the Laughing Bird, and you could hear the same colorful harmonies you hear in Monteverdi’s songs.

Piffaro enhanced the coloring by following its customary practice and partnering the songs with different groups of instruments. Some songs were played on quieter instruments like the harp and the recorder; others on combinations that included the somber tones of the Renaissance trombone or penetrating reed instruments like the Renaissance predecessors of the oboe and bassoon. Three sets of purely instrumental works added more variety and included dances and other works by composers influenced by de Rore’s innovations.

Singling out two soloists

This was primarily an ensemble event, but it included two solos that deserve special mention. Priscilla Herreid played a set of variations on the soprano recorder, accompanied by Grant Herreid’s lute and Christa Patton’s harp, and produced a series of virtuoso displays that flowed from note to note with an unbroken, almost liquid, continuity. That’s a hard trick to pull off on the recorder, and it creates a mesmerizing effect when it succeeds.

For a love song that was just as mesmerizing, soprano Leslie Johnson combined a richly expressive style with the ornaments, such as long trills, that play a critical role in Renaissance and Baroque music. The ornaments emphasize emotion and add to the drama of technical display. Johnson used the ornaments, and her natural expressiveness, with a restraint that created a touching vision of a lover praising the “gentle spirit” who makes the singer happy.

The Laughing Bird is an up-and-coming group that’s added an important resource to the Philadelphia early music scene. Its members are all familiar faces to anyone who follows choral and vocal groups like the Bach Festival, Lyric Fest, and Donald Nally’s new music chorus, the Crossing. As individuals, they can all sing music from the whole six-century tradition modern classical musicians draw on. As a quartet, they provide instrumental groups like Piffaro with a consort that specializes in the intricacies and special traditions of Renaissance and Baroque vocal music.

The concert ended with a rendition of Happy Birthday by the whole company. I’ve heard other groups play that hallowed tune on other occasions. Musicians enjoy doing that kind of thing. Piffaro went all out and did it Renaissance style, with counterpoint and crossing vocal and instrumental lines.

Happy birthday, Chip. Here’s hoping the next 500 years bring you bigger billings.