March 1, 2026 * Trinity Lutheran Church, Kalamazoo

Program Notes
Program and Translations
Performers
Supporters
Board of Directors
2026 Spring Events

Program Notes

Welcome to Music to Tug at Your Harpstrings! In this concert, we visit some of our favorite pieces from Italy, France, Ireland, Scotland and England, especially those which will help to move the passions and tame anxieties.

The theorist Agostino Agazzari wrote that the Italian Baroque harp—called the “Arpa Doppia,” because it was “double” the size of the corresponding instruments from the previous centuries, and in English the “Triple Harp” because it had triple rows of strings—was extremely attractive instrument for its versatility. One could play it melodically, with singing high notes. One could play it as a “basso continuo” instrument, with round low notes. And one could demonstrate both of these qualities together, much like a harpsichord or an organ.

We begin with a tour of seventeenth-century Italian music with a piece that demonstrates these soaring melodies, delicate ornaments, and robust bass all in one place. Giovanni Maria Trabaci (1575-1647) grew up in what is today the southern province of Maltera, and composed an abundance of works for the keyboard, with a few forays into writing for the “arpa doppia”. His “Toccata Seconda & Ligature per l’Arpa” demonstrates the strengths of the baroque harp, including its capacity for shading through various moods with its striking dissonances that resolve in sometimes unusual ways.

We next move to Florence, to hear works of harpist, singer, lutenist, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Francesca Caccini (1587-c.1645). Two short works, Che t’ho fat’io and Dispiegate, guancie amate quickly demonstrate her capacity for clever and sometimes surprising harmonies, and eminently singable ornamentation. Virtuosic from a young age, and educated well by her father who at that time had no legitimate son and treated her as such, Caccini’s legacy included a book of songs, sacred music, and one opera which survives, although she wrote many others in service of the Florentine ducal palace.

Paired with Caccini’s arrangement of the text Dispiegate, guancie amate, is Claudio Monteverdi’s (1567-1643) composition, now inviting in a cheery ritornello. Both composers include figures of laughter and joy in the meeting of two lovers which covers sensations of touch, sight, and even a suggestion of taste from the “beautiful mouth” in Anseba Celbo’s seductive text.

In keeping with the theme of music for the harp or composed for harpists, we present Luigi Rossi’s Muccidete, begli occhi. This would have likely been played and sung by harpist Costanza de Ponte, who married her musical collaborator, Luigi Rossi (1597-1653). Luigi’s compositions including hundreds of vocal pieces ranging in style and scale were heard throughout Rome, in the courts of the Borghese and Barberini families, and eventually in France, where the couple settled for a while under the patronage of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin (the king-makers behind Louis XIII). Themes of pain, death, and imploring for mercy from these sweet pains are rife in the text—“you slay me with your beautiful eyes: and yet, I adore you.”

The Chigi manuscript holds many instrumental treasures, including the works of Alessandro Piccini. This anonymous volume of the Chigi collection features both a Passacaglia and a Ciaccona with charming ornamentations spun out over repeating ground bass patterns. Several of these books were played by various daughters of the Chigi family, for whom harp would have been a familiar (and acceptably feminine) instrument.

We move back into the deliciously painful arms of cupid for Che si può fare, by Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677). The first movement of a larger cantata, this piece employs a “lament bass” ground, built on four descending notes in a minor key. A self-accompanist upon the lute, Strozzi published eight books of madrigals, arias and cantatas, and was known throughout Venice for her vocal prowess.

Our last stop in northern Italy is to visit the virtuoso violin writing of Marco Uccelini (ca 1610-1680). The piece is on the ground bass line of a bergamasca, a dance purportedly depicting the rustic courtship rituals of the country people in Bergamo, Italy in the sixteenth century. As such, the paired treble melodies are angular and at odds with each other before returning to sumptuously embrace.

Italy wasn’t the only area in Europe concerned with the sweet but dangerous pangs of love. Michel Lambert (1610-1696) accompanied himself on the theorbo (a large lute with bass notes, shaped a bit like an ostrich), as he sang and directed singing lessons in the court of King Louis XIV. French seventeenth-century music often employs “graces”; the delicate ornamentations that weave sweet chains around the melody, and ultimately the singer of the poem’s heart.

Jean Baptiste Drouart de Bousset (1662-1725) held the admiral role as music director at the chapel in the Louvre.* His charming Pourqoui, doux rossingol is related to a long running tradition of the “dawn song,” or “alba,” in which the speaker bemoans the tweeting of the birds at dawn, which signals the break of day and the fact that one must leave one’s secret trysting place among the flora and fauna to return to the duties (and relationships) of home life. We allow the birds to have the last laugh in “Le Rossignol Vainqueur”.

*There are several portraits of ladies playing historical harps in the Louvre museum today! Perhaps Bousset would have been aware of those portrait sitters.

Harps with gut strings (rather than wire or metal, found throughout the Celtic isles) from the continent made their way to England in the seventeenth century, although the jury is still out about “what kind” of harps. While it is not clear if Henry Purcell (1659-1695) knew any harpists personally, he certainly encourages the listener to “wake the harp” in his charming Strike the Viol from “Come, Ye Sons of Art” also called the “Ode for Queen Mary’s Birthday.” Purcell dedicated this ode in 1694 to Mary II (in Bid the Virtues called Maria) on the occasion of her birthday. Purcell’s highly melismatic writing and tender duet with the oboe was one of the first in this era, and which became a staple in eighteenth-century baroque music.

The harp has been a huge part of Irish life for certainly at least a millenia. That lineage, however, was broken by political turmoil, especially as British invaders banned the language and culture of Ireland and her instruments. The practice of celtic wire-strung harps nearly faded, but an enterprising harp builder in the nineteenth century, John Egan, used his knowledge of harp building as it was proliferating in Paris and London to rekindle the idea of the “portable Irish harp.” As his harps used gut strings (like the modern day pedal harp), a new tradition of celtic folk music grew out of these instruments.

In considering songs to tug at our “harp strings,” I simply had to include Silent, O Moyle, also called The Song of the Fionnuala, with poetry of writer and singer Thomas Moore (1779-1852) and music of an ancient tune. The piece recounts the plight of Fionnuala, daughter to Lir, the Irish mythological sea god. Fionnuala and her three brothers were turned into swans for 900 years by a spiteful stepmother. In this song, speaking to the mighty Moyle river which runs in the northeast of Ireland, Fionnuala recounts that Erin (Ireland), like her, is still held in captivity. I have based my interpretation on a publication from 1921, “Songs of the Hebrides,” collected and edited by Marjory Kennedy-Fraser and Kenneth Mcleod, and the vocal stylings of Irish harpist-singer Mary O’Hara.

Toirdhealbhach Ó Cearbhalláin (1670-1738; also known as Turlough O’Carolan) was the best known harpist and tunesmith of his generation. His melodies were so beloved, that his admirers quickly adapted their songs into their repertoires, and recorded them on the page. We present three pieces: firstly his “Farewell to Music,” composed near the end of a fifty year career as an itinerant musician, performing for gentry and persons of import, next “Lady Athenry,” one of these respectable ladies, and lastly “Cock up your Beaver,” which O’Carolan scholar Catroina Rawesome assures us means essentially to “tip one’s cap,” as the —“bay-ver”—was a type of hat popular in the day.

As Ireland is surrounded by sea on all sides, we include a tune about sailing away on a small boat or currach, Óró mo bháidín. Popularized by Mary O’Hara, her rendition was sampled in a song by the electronic dance band Passion Pit, and that is how I first came to know the haunting tune (albeit through a bit of distortion!)

Lastly, we conclude with a rollicking Scottish inspired piece by Italian-born violinist-composer Nicola Matteis (fl. 1670-1700) set upon a repeating ground bass.

-Anna O’Connell

There are many theories as to the identity of the Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, acclaimed French soloist and teacher of the basse de viole (bass viola da gamba). Nonetheless, his major contribution to the viol and it’s literature includes the addition of the 7th string to the French instruments as well as his students: Mlle Rougevillle and Mlle Vignon, Jean Desfontaines, le Sieur de Danoville, Pierre Méliton, Jean Rousseau, and Marin Marais. A fictionalized version of the fraught teacher-student relationship of Marais and Sainte-Colombe is detailed in Tous les matins du monde (‘All the Mornings of the World), a 1991 film from Alain Corneau based on the novel by Pascal Quignard.

At the time of the film’s release the only known works by Sainte-Colombe were the 67 Concerts a deux violes esgales, works for 2 bass viols. Since the 1990s, many of his compositions have been unearthed making his survivng output of surviving works for the 7-string viol significant – over 170 unaccompanied solos in all.

-Phillip Serna

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Program & Translations

“Vos mépris chaque jour”

“Come Ye Sons of Art, Mvt. VII”

“Come Ye Sons of Art, Mvt. V”

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Performers

Are you interested in performing with EMM? We welcome new singers and instrumentalists, as well as volunteers! Learn how to get involved with EMM.

Featuring

Anna O’Connell, harp and soprano voice

Luke Conklin, Baroque Woodwinds

Addi Liu, Baroque Violin

Phillip Serna, Viola de Gamba

Supporters

EMM thanks the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation, the Harold and Grace Upjohn Foundation, and our individual and institutional donors for their generous support! We are also very grateful to Trinity Lutheran Church for hosting us.

Individual Donors

Alexander and Anne Lipsey

Supporters’ Circle

Martha Beverly

Robert and Barbara Davis

Hans Engelke

Will and Bess Fitzgerald

Barbara Gustin

Mary Lagerway

William and Jennifer Sanderson

Jan Solberg

Richard Voorman

Joann Yochim

Business/Institutional Supporters

Harold and Grace Upjohn Foundation

Irving S. Gilmore Foundation

Kalamazoo College

Your support of Early Music Michigan through concert attendance and donations helps to ensure that our unique form of music will continue to be available in Kalamazoo at a reasonable price. A tax-deductible donation can be made by writing a check and mailing it to us or by clicking on the PayPal donation button located below. Donation envelopes are also available on the table at the entry to the concert and can either be mailed to us or left with us in our donations box.

Learn about how else you can support EMM, including through qualified charitable distributions, by volunteering at our concerts, or serving on our Board of Directors!

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Board of Directors

Jan Solberg, President
Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar, Vice President
Will Fitzgerald, Treasurer
Luke Conklin, Artistic Director
Becky Straple-Sovers, Administrative Director and Secretary
Christopher Brodersen
John Fink
Marjorie Harrington
Alice Margerum
Mitch Rogers-MacDonald
Ginny Shilliday

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Take a sneak peek our 2026–2027 season!

Feel free to have some fun and add images to these if you want to.

Eighteenth-Century Music from Marginalized Voices

While the western art music canon is overwhelmingly dominated by white men, at every moment in music history, the people working in music were a diverse cross section of society. For this chamber concert, we will feature some of these underrepresented voices including a cantata by the French Baroque composer Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and instrumental works by the so-called “Black Mozart,” Joseph de Boulougne, the Cavalier de St. George’s.

Chant as Early Music, Part III: Polyphony

For the third of our hands-on Chant workshops, we will explore the second generation of polyphonic composition in Western Europe. Participants will learn a chant and try singing the different approaches to polyphonic singing that were being developed in the 11th and 12th centuries.

Salamone Rossi – The Songs of Solomon

For our fall concert, join Early Music Michigan as we explore the rich and varied output of Salamone Rossi – the Jewish, Italian composer of the late Renaissance who crossed cultural boundaries with his choral “Songs of Solomon” and stylistic boundaries with his instrumental and vocal writing that helped establish the new styles of the 17th century Baroque.

In Miniature – (Formerly) Large Works of the Classical Era

When you think of a symphony or an oratorio, you might imagine a large ensemble with dozens or even hundreds of instrumentalists and singers assembled to bring the work to life. Although the large orchestral and choral works of the late 18th century and early 19th century are most familiar to us in these forms, the majority of audiences contemporary with their composition would have heard them in smaller forms, often arranged or endorsed by the composer’s themselves or people closely associated with them. This concert will feature familiar music from symphonies, oratorios, and operas that was arranged immediately after it was written for significantly smaller forces.

Workshop: An Introduction to “L’homme Armé”

To enrich our audience’s appreciation of our spring concert, we will be offering a sing along workshop on the tune “L’Homme Arme.” Participants will leave the workshop able to sing this fantastically catchy tune, in both major and minor versions, and ready to hear it as it is manipulated throughout the mass settings featured in our spring EMM concert.

The Many Armed-Man – “L’homme Armé”: An Early Renaissance Mass-Up

From its origins as a 14th-century secular chanson, the tune “L’homme Armé” would become the most widely used cantus firmus in masses of the 15th century with over 40 known examples. For this project, instead of choosing a single one of these settings, we will feature movements from a half dozen different mass movements using “L’homme Armé” as a cantus firmus. This concert will also provide the opportunity for community members with an interest in Renaissance instruments to participate in some of the settings. 

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