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| The Duarte salon (Gonzales Coques) |
JBO founder and dire
ctor Prof. David
Shemer provided the audience with some information on Flemish composer and
musician Leonora Duarte (1610-1678). She was born in Antwerp to a wealthy
Portuguese-Jewish family of prominent merchants
and art collectors. They were members of the Converso community
(outwardly acting as Catholics while secretly maintaining their Jewish faith
and practices. The Duarte family had left
Portugal, settling in Antwerp to escape the infamous Inquisition.)
Leonora received a superb musical education that included instruction in
playing the viol, virginals and lute, as well as lessons in composition. The
Duarte home was a nexus of music-making and the visual arts, the musical evenings, with Leonora and her siblings
performing in them, becoming a port of call for traveling diplomats, literati,
thinkers and composers, among the latter, Nicholas Lanier, the
influential Constantijn Huygens, John Bull
(1562/3–1628), and more. Duarte wrote music for viol consort. All her
surviving compositions - seven beautiful Fantasias - were performed at the festive concert in
Jerusalem by Myrna Herzog, Tal Arbel, Marina Katz, Sonia Navot and Shmuel Magen
(viols), Ophira Zakai (theorbo). and Marina Minkin (organ). Having some
similarities to works of English Catholic
keyboard player and composer John Bull, who was director of music at Antwerp
Cathedral at the time (was he perhaps Duarte’s teacher?), the fantasias display Duarte’s
familiarity not only with Tudor consort music but also with the Italian
fantasia style of the late Renaissance as well as other Continental styles.
In playing that was both articulate and poetic,
the artists presented Duarte’s thought processes, her sophisticated free
contrapuntal writing and the different moods possible within each piece, giving the
audience a rare opportunity to experience the composer’s formidable
compositional skills and elegant musical language, also her sense of quietude
and introspection. Offering a glimpse into Baroque music-making within the
domestic sphere, these fantasias are the only record of music written for the
viol by a woman in the 17th century. As to Sinfonia No.5, the basis
for it might possibly have been a Passover song (as suggested by Belgian viol player Thomas Baeté.) Prior to hearing this fantasia, Herzog played the minor-modal melody, then to
be joined by singers Sharon Tadmor, Liron, Givoni and Itamar Hildesheim in
performance of a contrafactum, with Herzog providing a minimal, non-intrusive instrumental backing. Regarding the contrafactum itself, Herzog had constructed it, marrying it to the surviving text of a lost Portuguese Passover song.
As to the music sung
in the Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam, it was saved from oblivion by the
last choral conductor working there - David Ricardo (1904-1982) - who, on foreseeing the future destruction of the Amsterdam Jewish community, emigrated to Israel in 1933. He then set
about notating 170 synagogue songs from memory, many of these Sephardic
liturgical melodies arranged for 4-voices. Herzog was fortunate in receiving a
copy of this important collection from Ricardo’s daughter, Rachel Thaller
Ricardo, who was present at the Jerusalem concert. Thaller Ricardo spoke about
the tradition of singing these very songs at family gatherings. Herzog chose
some of the songs from the collection to be performed at the concert, several
opening with a vocal solo, to proceed with the vocal ensemble, a familiar
set-up in Central European synagogue music. Herzog’s order of performing the
(mostly major) vocal pieces was in logical modulating sequence, with the result that each of the two groups of songs hung together,
forming a musical whole. Myrna Herzog‘s preference for the 1/6 syntonic comma
meantone temperament here, one well suited to 17th and 18th century music, was due to its highly coloured temperament, enhancing the contrasts between
consonance and dissonance. What emerged was a lush fusion of instrumental and
vocal sound combinations, inspiring the artists to highlight the textual,
musical and emotional content of each song. Joining the ensemble made up of
some of Israel’s most established Baroque instrumentalists, the three young
singers, shining in both solos and ensembles, were clearly moved by the
experience, as was the audience.
From music
written by members of Duarte’s artistic circle, we heard “Love’s Constancy”,
Nicholas Lanier’s quintessentially English ostinato-based setting of a Thomas
Carew poem, this love song attesting to the composer’s sophisticated
integration of text and music. Accompanied by harpsichord, bass viol and
theorbo (Lanier frequently accompanied himself on the lute) Sharon Tadmor's singing of the evocative, ground bass ayre, with its many references to the
natural world, was fresh and vibrant. Dutch diplomat and poet Constantijn
Huygens, prominent in the fields of scholarship, music and science, was known
to have performed and enjoyed music exclusively within circles of close friends
belonging to the cultural elite of refined musical taste. From his 1647 collection
of compositions in the Italian Baroque style comprising compositions
for voice and basso continuo, tenor Itamar Hildesheim performed “Graves
tesmoins de mes délices”, a love song of a less optimistic nature than
Lanier’s. Following a stately viol solo (Herzog) introducing the piece,
Hildesheim gave a sensitive enactment of the song, his presentation convincing
and expressive, his well-anchored voice sculpting the piece’s rich shaping and
emotional gestures in a piece typical of Huygens’ refined and expressive
personal style.
Throughout the event,
Marina Minkin divided her time between playing virginal and organ. Performing
John Bull’s In Nomine XXXVII from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book on the virginal
(an informed choice) her playing was a reminder that Bull was one of the
leading keyboard virtuosos of his time. Minkin drew the audience into the
workings of the plainchant-based piece and its motifs in delivery that was
alive, technically assured and musically very interesting.
G.Frescobaldi’s “Si l’aura spira” closed this pivotal musical event on an exuberant note. Originally written for solo voice and continuo, Herzog had added two inner voices to it for the occasion. It was editor David Pinto who claimed that "four of the parts of Duarte’s Sinfonia 6 are taken well-nigh wholesale from a work in Frescobaldi’s 4-part Ricercari (1615), Ricercar Settimo, in which she {Duarte} contributed a second treble line and shortened Frescobaldi’s text.” A warm rousing, heady farewell to the evening’s music, the song opened with Liron Givoni's animated singing of the melody, the song's dancelike course coloured with gentle percussion (Herzog) and interspersed with recorder- (Arbel) and virginal solos (Minkin), all resulting in a vocal-instrumental weave that was robust and joyful.
“If the breezes blow ever charming,
The budding roses will show their laughing faces,
And the shady emerald
hedge
Need not fear the
summer heat.
To the dance, to the
dance, merrily come,
Pleasing nymphs,
flower of beauty!”
Throughout the program, the high-quality of performance, offering each artist the opportunity to shine, was the result of Myrna Herzog's profound groundwork and inquiry into the music and of thorough and painstaking preparation under her guidance.
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| Photo: Amir Feldman |
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