Philly Fringe 2024: The Publick Pleasure presents Stop the Bells Tolling

Subtitled Music of Philadelphia & the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793, and part of this year’s Philadelphia Fringe, this concert explored the social and musical milieu of the city before, during, and after the 18th-century epidemic in three sections enhanced by text from period newspapers. Well-researched and fascinating program notes also provided historical and musical overviews of Philadelphia, then the new nation’s capital.

The totally engaging evening was presented by The Publick Pleasure, an ensemble of some of the region’s finest early music specialists playing on period instruments: Eve Miller (founder and cello), Edmond Chan (violin), Amy Leonard (viola), John Walthausen (harpsichord), and Steven Zohn (flute), along with baritone Jean Bernard Cerin.

Concerts for a Capital City

In the first segment (Concerts for a Capital City), the spirited ensemble explored Philadelphia’s bustling 1780s/90s music scene, when subscription “City Concerts” were held in locales including the City Tavern, Lodge Room, and Oellers Hotel. A vibrant mix of noted musicians and composers presented these musical evenings, often followed by a ball. The set opened with Carl Friedrich Abel’s Sonata I in A Major (for violin, cello, and continuo), a two-movement work filled with dance-like rhythms. Philadelphia abounded in dancing schools, and a recitation from an October 1790 paper noted that dancing master Pierre Landrin Duport had just arrived from France to set up his establishment.

Also a composer, Duport continued the custom of dedicating works to our first President, noted for his elegant dancing, and a highlight was Duport’s spritely Washington’s Minuet & Gavott. Cerin sang three songs epitomizing the period, including the familiar French chanson Plaisir d’amour and the deftly acted, tongue-in-cheek work The Dancing Master by James Oswald, a Scottish composer who was a period favorite. The set ended with the lively Durang’s Hornpipe, an instrumental 1785 work that has been folded into the lexicon of American fiddle tunes.

A Fever Prevails

The concert’s second section (Interstice: A Fever Prevails) soberly explored the dramatic musical changes in a suffering city. In the summer of 1793, “a malignant fever” took hold, and by early fall more than 5,000 people had died (10 percent of Philadelphia’s population). Gatherings were banned; concerts and theater life ceased; gunpowder was exploded in the streets to purify the air; and citizens covered their noses with handkerchiefs soaked in vinegar or camphor. Attempting to stem the panic, the College of Physicians forbade the tolling of church bells to announce each death—hence the concert’s title—and bodies were carried to graves only after nightfall.

Miller programmed only two exceptionally moving selections here, prefaced by words from Black clergymen Absalom Jones and Richard Allen. Chan played a beautifully rendered solo, Oswald’s air Young Collin, whose sorrowful swoops evoked the sobering melancholy of the times. After his evocative playing, applause (though amply deserved) seemed almost out of place. Cerin then sang a masterful a cappella version of the African American traditional work Deep River. Here, the mood was quickly changed to mirror the anxiety and sadness of those times.

The Happiness of Existence

The third section (The Happiness of Existence) portrayed changing concert life as the epidemic abated. Those musicians who presented the City Concerts had moved away, and a new cadre, many from London, brought the music of composers like Haydn and Pleyel. The Philadelphia Inquirer (March 1794) noted that “these diversions should be encouraged”: there was a Handel commemoration concert that year; the New Theater was founded; and two former Londoners—Rayner Taylor and Benjamin Carr, both buried at St. Peter’s Church at 3rd and Pine Streets—created the Musical Fund Society.

This spirited section expressed the delight in gathering again; all the works programmed were in major keys. Walthausen and Miller opened with Solo 3 in A Major (for cello and keyboard) by Rayner Taylor, quoting the composer beseeching George Washington to support his new work and playing from a scan of Taylor’s original manuscript. Cerin sang the jaunty (and naughty) ballad “When I was a Little Lad”, and Walthausen played Haydn’s virtuosic Keyboard Sonata in C major. Closing the program, Steven Zohn (flute) and Amy Leonard (viola) joined Miller and Chan for Ignace Pleyel’s Flute Quartet in D Major, a skillfully crafted three-movement work whose joyful and witty flourishes perfectly encapsulated Philadelphia’s post-epidemic musical world.

Historic and vibrant

Creatively constructed and compellingly researched, Stop the Bells Tolling tracked Philadelphia’s changing mood—social and musical—from the joyous Americanism of a new nation through sober reflection to a more worldly musical view, and the venue enhanced the concert musically and historically. The historic ambiance and excellent acoustics of Gloria Dei Old Swedes’ Church, completed in 1700 (the city’s oldest brick building), allowed the audience to fully experience Philadelphia’s vibrant musical life, both then and now.