If the world seems too complex and noisy, an evening of "early music" might be just what you need.
European music written before 1650 or so strips things down to essentials. The sound is simple and straightforward, but often quite beautiful, a refreshing palate cleanser from the layers upon layers found in much of modern music … or anything from the 1800s on.
This weekend, the Bach Society of Minnesota launched a month-long celebration of its 90th anniversary with a program that only had a couple of short pieces by J.S. Bach. Instead, the focus was upon the foundation for his style.
"Legends & Lies: The Story of Till Eulenspiegel," a collaboration with male vocal octet Cantus, weaves tales of a legendary medieval-era trickster between brief works either written during the Renaissance or fashioned after the style by contemporary composers.
On Saturday night, I sat within the intriguing modern design of Minneapolis' acoustically splendid Westminster Hall and hit a delightful refresh button on my late-COVID-era experience. Immersed in music of 500 years ago or more, I gained some worthwhile context, messages transported across time from a place where plagues were prominent, warfare wearying, but passions as pronounced as today.
And, rather than a dry academic take on these tunes of the past, Cantus and a septet of instrumentalists from the Bach Society seized upon the heart of the music and often emphasized the dance structures that bubbled through them like a swollen spring stream. This was an early music concert that sometimes felt more like a jam session, players of baroque-era violins, guitars and recorders of varied voices trading solos.
While the popular Cantus is surely the big draw on this program, the Bach Society musicians often upstaged them with high-energy instrumental interludes, including Andrea Falconiero's take on the traditional "La Follia" melody and a glorious bit of old-world Celtic energy on "My Lady Carey's Dompe" and "Duke of Norfolk," gleaned from anonymous sources.
But singers and instrumentalists came together marvelously on some Josquin des Prez of the late 1400s. And Giovanni de Palestrina's "Adoramus Te" was Cantus' harmonic peak of the evening, a heavenly blend lent to a prayer of adoration.
