Concert Information:

Fandango!

A concert of Spanish music played on period instruments presented by Early Music Studio

Clive Titmuss, guitars
Susan Adams, harpsichord

Saturday, October 18, at 7:30 pm at the Kelowna Art Gallery, 1315 Water St.
(250-762-2226)

Call 250 769 2884 for Information and Reservations

Admission (at the door) Adult $18, Students and Seniors $16

The Early Music Studio visits Spain and Italy for their next concert, entitled Fandango!, October 18 at the Kelowna Art Gallery.

Featuring Clive Titmuss playing period guitars and Susan Adams playing the harpsichord, the performance will be presented on replica instruments which recreate the original sound and mood of the music.

The guitar has always been a people's instrument, and it began back with Columbus and his Spanish-funded trip to Central America. That started a wave of exploration, which spread people and their music all over the globe. The Spanish empire in the Age of Exploration became the largest on earth in any period; it grew for nearly two hundred years during the 1600s and 1700s.

Just as the Spanish took gold from the New World, musicians plundered the dances and songs of the colonies and brought them back to Spain. The tunes came thick and fast and were used by sophisticated composers as the basis of complex art music. This music spread like a virus and the highly portable guitar was the vehicle that carried the melodies of the New World back to Spain.

Surveying this cultural movement, Titmuss, a luthier as well as a musician, has created guitars modelled on those of the period, from the mid-1500's to 1800. He will use three of his handcrafted guitars in this concert including a copy of an early Spanish "vihuela" from around 1550. Another was copied from an anonymous instrument made in Madrid around 1700, and the last is a copy of an instrument by Cadiz luthier Juan Pages, whose guitar was made around 1800. Pages' famous elaborate guitars became the model for instruments for nearly four generations.

The guitar spread from Spain to become fashionable throughout Europe and the Americas by the middle of the 17th Century. The concert also features music by composers who imitated the guitar in their pieces particularly on the harpsichord.

Adams plays Spanish and Italian music that illustrates this trend. Her harpsichord is a copy of an instrument very much like those played in the Spanish court during the first half of the 18th Century, made almost entirely from a single wood--cedar. "The guitar was everywhere," says Adams. "The music of Domenico Scarlatti is full of guitar figurations, translated into the brilliant resonance of the harpsichord."

The music for the concert includes performances of vihuela pieces by Luis de Narvaez, sonatas for the harpsichord by Domenico Scarlatti, and guitar music by Fernando Sor and Antonio Soler. Adams also plays a monumental work by Roman organist Frescobaldi with one hundred variations. The title work is a Fandango by Soler, a piece whose manic energy gave Ravel the idea for his Bolero.

The concert promises to illustrate a period of explosive creativity, one in which the cultural importance of today's pop music was first established.

Programme:

Canto llano del Caballero (The song called "Caballero"--the cowboy, for vihuela and harpsichord)--Antonio Cabezon

Guardame las Vacas (Guard My Cows)--Luis de Narvaez
[vihuela, from the middle of the 1500's]

Aria detto Balleto (Variations on the aria "at the Ball")--Girolamo Frescobaldi (harpsichord, 1620's)

Gailarda, Fantasia que contraheze la harpa en la manera de Ludovico (Fantasy which imitates the harp in the manner of Ludovico)--Alonso Mudarra (vihuela)

Cento Partite sopra Passacgli (One Hundred Variations on Passacaglia)--Frescobaldi (harpsichord)

La Folia (The Spanish Madness)--Francisco Guerau (five course guitar,1697)
Canarios (Canary Jig)--Guerau/Gaspar Sanz (guitar and harpsichord)

Pause

Sonata in C major--Domenico Scarlatti (harpsichord, 1730's)

Sonata in D major--Antonio Soler (six course guitar, 1740's)

Two Sonatas in D major--Scarlatti (harpsichord)

Studies for the guitar in C, A, D and D minor--Fernando Sor (1812)

Fandango--Antonio Soler (harpsichord and guitar)

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Italian harpsichord after an anonymous instrument, 1674 by John Secker, Calgary 1983

Vihuela after historic models of the mid-1500's by Clive Titmuss, 2005
Five-course Baroque guitar after an anonymous Spanish instrument around 1700 by C.T., 1995
Six-course early Classical guitar after Juan Pages of Cadiz, around 1800 by C.T., 2007