Saturday at the Boston Early Music Festival

Being a consumer at the Exhibition

For some reason, I only ever buy things at the Exhibition on Saturday. Of course, when you're thinking about a $2000 recorder, you want your teacher and everyone else to give you good advice about the instrument. And if you're thinking about buying a $2000 recorder, whether you do or not might affect how many hundreds, or even dozens, of dollars you want to spend on music. But one of the things I bought yesterday was a $5 t-shirt, which I really could have bought on Wednesday.

I think part of why this happens is that it's really fun being a spectator without having to put dollar signs on the things you're looking at and watching other people play.

But there really are things for sale at the exhibition that aren't as easy to buy elsewhere, so yesterday I put my checkbook in my pocket and bought some of them.

My first stop was A-R Editions, which puts out collections of things. A lot of the French music on my site is transcribed from Three-Part Chansons Printed by Gardane (1541). They aren't very playable editions -- they do things like have repeats go across page turns, but if you're going to transcribe them to have the unbarred parts anyway, they're good source material. This year I got two volumes of Andrea Gabrielli madrigals and a volume called Canzone Villanesche alla Napolitana and Villotte by Adrian Willaert and His Circle. Someone suggested last Spring that this kind of music is more fun to sing outdoors than the Morley and Dowland we keep attempting. And a form for ordering more with the festival discount.

I reverted to being a spectator and talked to a woman who produces editions like mine of Women composers, and helped a friend who was drooling over the harpsichords at the Harpsichord Clearing House try them all out. The Indiana University Press had Carol McClintock's Readings... on sale for less than $5, but they weren't really selling them; you have to go to the website. Which I should remember to do, later when I'm not trying to get the blog entry up before I leave for this afternoon's recorder concert.

And I gave the ARS a check for two year's membership at the Festival discount rate, and collected all my instruments from their makers. They all sound better than when I left them, but I haven't had much time to play them.

Tragicomedia and Friends

The Saturday night 11 PM concert with Tragicommedia playing something related to the rest of the Festival with the people at the Festival that they want to play with is quite often one of the best concerts of the week.

Last night they did the more dramatic madrigals of Monteverdi, with full continuo. I actually like both Madrigals and Operas, and hadn't realized that there was a middle ground like this.

The singing was wonderful. The bass-baritone (Douglas Williams) could in fact have supported the singing without all those instruments, and you don't often hear flexible ornamentation like what we got last night from both tenors (Aaron Sheehan & Zachary Wilder).

Zefiro Torno has been the big hit on every concert I've heard where it was on the program, and last night was no exception. The jazzy continuo established by the plucked (or in this case strummed) strings at the beginning anchored all the vocal fireworks.

Related posts:

1. Wednesday at the Boston Early Music Festival
2. Thursday at the Boston Early Music Festival
3. Sunday at the Boston Early Music Festival