Tempesta di Mare: After the Thirty Years War

The overlooked German composers who plied their trade during the last half of the 17th Century belong to an interim period. Musically, their works form a bridge between the Germans who first adapted the musical styles developed in Italy and the High Baroque Germans who created the fully matured blend of German and Italian styles that we hear in Bach's music.

Their music also reflects the effects of the Thirty Years War, which killed between 25 and 40 percent of the population of the German states, directly through combat and indirectly through the havoc inflicted on agriculture and commerce. All the pieces on Tempesta di Mare's latest program were small-scale chamber works, primarily because the German courts and churches couldn't field large-scale musical forces on a regular basis for a full generation after the Peace of Westphalia ended the war in 1648.

The concert was preceded by a lecture by historian Tanya Kevorkian, who discussed the revival of "music and celebration" after three decades of devastation. This was one of the happiest early music concerts I've attended— a testament to our species' ability to put terrible catastrophes behind us and take what we can from the world.

Solemnity discarded

The concert opened with a rollicking outburst from tenor Aaron Sheehan, singing the opening lines of a setting of Psalm 100, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands." In the other sections, Sheehan ranged from the slow and heartfelt to a properly royal delivery of "enter into His courts with praise."

Normally this psalm would have ended on the solemn mood of the last verse. But the composer, Nicholas Bruhns, apparently felt the congregation would appreciate another round of jubilation, so he concluded with a repeat of the opening.

Tempesta di Mare thoughtfully provided the German texts beside the English translations for all the vocal pieces. That takes extra work, but it means the audience can see exactly where the singer is in the text.

A female "'male alto'

The program's second vocal item introduced a major addition to Tempesta's musical resources. The soloist, Jennifer Lane, is an alto with a voice that can best be described as a "female male alto."

As we all know, the alto parts in Baroque works were sung by castrati. Nowadays, they're usually sung by mezzo-sopranos. The small number of men who possess natural male altos always steal the show when they show up on a Baroque program. Their voices combine the color of the female alto with the extra power and resonance created by the male chest.

Lane possesses the extra range and the distinctive timbre of the male alto. She isn't quite as powerful, but that's an irrelevant consideration in a chamber concert presented in a small space.

Her text was a passage from St. Augustine— "O Thou Who Givest All Good Gifts"— set by a composer, Johann Rosenmuller, who was born in 1619, the year after the Thirty Years War began. Lane's voice colored it with one of the rarest and most distinctive sounds of Baroque music.

Country fiddling

The instrumental works on the menu were a suite and a "Concerto Pastorale" by two other composers with unfamiliar bylines: Phillip Heinrich Erlebach and Johann Christoph Pez. The suite started with a cheery march that featured odd, catchy blends of recorders and strings. It followed the introduction with sections that included strong riffs for the strings and a long, slow aria for two recorders.

The Concerto Pastorale took its name from the presence of the recorders played by Gwyn Roberts and Tricia van Oers, but it included some fine suggestions of country fiddling by concertmaster Emlyn Ngai, along with a showy presto for the recorders.

For the finale, Lane and Sheehan supported two early music veterans who were both in good voice— soprano Laura Heimes and bass David Newman. The text consisted of the wedding verses from the Song of Solomon, set to music by Johann Christoph Bach, a cousin of J.S. Bach's father.

Christ's wedding?

Some puritanical theologians have claimed that this text is really an allegory about the wedding of Christ and his church, but Cousin Bach wasn't thinking about allegories when he penned this piece. It was clearly a cantata about sensual male-female attraction, and Heimes and Newman played it that way.

Johann Christoph switched to Ecclesiastes for the last two verses, and Lane and Sheehan joined the principles in declaring that "it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink and to enjoy the good." The words referred to wine, but there were moments when the music suggested a happy beer fest, with the feasters clinking mugs as they harmonized on booming German syllables.