Piffaro's Heinrich Isaacs concert

When Piffaro first started presenting concerts 25 years ago, most of its programs included a peasant dance, the bransle, that's sometimes called a "brawle." In those days, Piffaro's musicians called themselves the Philadelphia Renaissance Wind Band, and a typical Wind Band concert ended with every musician in the group blowing into one of the louder Renaissance instruments while the tempo and the decibel level swirled toward a grand, climactic peak. The first half often ended similarly.

Those early programs also included less raucous moments. Some of my best memories of Wind Band events feature gentle songs, sung to the accompaniment of lute and harp. But the all-out dance blast was one of the Wind Band's trademarks.

Contrast that with the finale for this concert, the last of Piffaro's 25th season. Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen ("Innsbruck I must leave you") is a famous German farewell, and Piffaro's arrangement began with its co-director, Joan Kimball, playing the melody on a lone bagpipe.

No more carousing

She could have been playing a Highland lament, but she was working with the mellow, early European bagpipe, not the robust Scottish bagpipe, and the instruments that joined her lonely wail added the quiet voices of the lute, the harp and the recorder.

The farewell put an effectively moving end to a concert that followed the wanderings of the man who wrote it, the 15th-Century composer Heinrich Isaacs. But it wasn't the kind of big finish that made you feel like you'd been carousing with the rowdiest inhabitants of the nearest ten villages.

The program did include some pieces that featured the louder instruments in Piffaro's arsenal— but again, none of them sounded like the rousers of Piffaro's early days.

Easter music

The second half included four settings of the Latin text for Christ has risen that employed Renaissance brass and penetrating Renaissance reed instruments, but none of these settings blasted you out of your seat, either. They presented you with the kind of music you might have heard in an imperial cathedral at Easter—pieces that held your attention because they created sonic structures that were just as rich and embroidered as the tapestries and architectural details that would have surrounded the emperor's musicians.

In short, Piffaro has drifted toward more refined music as it has evolved. But it hasn't lost its audience. The crowd at Chestnut Hill Presbyterian looked just as big as the audiences that used to revel in the bransles, and they applauded just as vigorously.

Kissed by a knight

Are all of us mellowing as we age along with Piffaro's musicians? Or is our appreciation of Renaissance music growing more sophisticated? Piffaro still seems to attract young listeners, along with its veteran devotees, so we may as well flatter ourselves and assume that the early music audience is becoming more refined and knowledgeable.

The concert wasn't limited to religious music. Heinrich Isaacs enjoyed a long, varied career, and he lived in a period in which musicians happily mixed the sacred and the less exalted.

The song T'meiskin was jonck is a little ditty about a young maiden who is kissed by a knight. Piffaro followed two versions of the original with a Sanctus (Holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts) set to a slowed-down, stretched-out version of the same tune that celebrated the jonck Meiskin's red mouth.

Barbershop harmony

Piffaro has established an international reputation in the early music community. One of the happy byproducts of its ascent is the quality of the musicians the group meets at foreign early music festivals and brings to their home base. For this concert, Piffaro arranged a repeat visit by Capilla Flamenca, a Belgian vocal quartet.

Capilla Flamenca is the kind of ensemble that makes you think the baritone must be the best member of the group when he sings the first solo. Then you hear the tenor sing the next solo and realize you have to mention him, too. Ditto for the countertenor. And the bass.

As a group, Capilla manages to combine the smooth harmony of the barbershop quartet with musical forms in which every voice may trace a different line. They're an ensemble for connoisseurs of early music— the perfect guests for a connoisseur's concert.