Sunday June 11th at 3.30pm….please note the later start time
Coming soon, and not to be missed!!
Author: Barbara Dunn
Barbara trained as a teacher and worked for most of her career in Primary Education, eventually serving as a headteacher in Reading and then in Worcester, before taking early retirement.
She has been involved with Worcestershire Early Music from its beginning, delivering workshops and organising concerts and the Pride and Prejudice Ball. Barbara is an enthusiastic amateur musician, playing regularly in many different formal and informal gatherings. She performs with the Gloucester Waits on flutes and recorders
Ensemble la Notte
coming soon…………..Sunday April 16th
Ensemble la Notte will play a programme entitled
Bach, Buxtehude and Beyond,
Kate Allsop (recorder), and Mark Wilson (bassoon) first played for Worcestershire Early Music in a lunchtime concert showcasing students from Birmingham Conservatoire. It was apparent there that we would see them again! They have now graduated and are joined by William Peart (harpsichord)
3pm Angel Centre, Worcester;
Tickets £20 on the door
A Concert to remember……
The Art of Fugue;
Sunday 12th February 2023 in the Angel Centre at 3pm
The concert given by Worcester’s Musical and Amicable Society was performed in the round to great effect. It was well received by an appreciative audience whose feedback included the following:
“the in-the-round worked very well–a real collective experience…and I liked the poetry sorbets…..”
“a fabulous concert”,
“a wholly immersive experience” and “superb” .
The first half of the concert set the scene with two works employing fugal techniques written before J.S. Bach’s Art of Fugue; Paduan a 4 from Ludi Musici by Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654) and 3 Fantazias by Henry Purcell (1659-1695). The second half of the concert was given to J.S. Bach’s great work the Art of Fugue. Written towards the end of his life (1685-1750) this tour de force of counterpoint was interspersed with verses of a poem of the same title, by contemporary Canadian poet Jan Zwicky aptly describing a performance of Bach’s Art of Fugue. These two art forms complemented each other to enhance the musical performance, providing a thoughtful and contemplative experience.
Members of the Musical and Amicables rehearsing for the afternoon concert
Our next concert
Kate writes:
“a table, four chairs, and the river of the human voice” (Zwicky)
Bach takes a brief melody as his plaything, pulling and pummelling it every which way to create a kaleidoscope of iterations. Written towards the end of his life and left unfinished, possibly as an instruction manual for how to write fugue, The Art of Fugue is a tour de force of counterpoint, delighting in the sheer virtuosity of the inventive possibilities he can conjure from a single theme. No performance instrument is specified and assigning it to a string quartet allows each strand to be embodied by an individual player, four voices weaving in and around each other – alternately arguing, agreeing, cajoling, conversing. Contemporary Canadian poet-violinist Jan Zwicky has written a poem describing such a performance, which works as the perfect companion piece. We play in the round, using instruments that Bach would have recognised, interspersing his music with Zwicky’s words, celebrating the intricacies of musical and human connection, across the room and across the centuries. Intimate seventeenth-century consort music by Scheidt and Purcell paves the way perfectly.
The original MUSICAL AND AMICABLE SOCIETY was founded in 1762 by James Kempson, who directed the choir at St Bartholomew’s Chapel, Birmingham. Together with fellow musicians from St Philip’s Church (now Birmingham Cathedral), Kempson and his singers gathered on a regular basis at Cooke’s tavern in the Cherry Orchard “for practice and recreation”! In 2003, Kate Fawcett and Martin Perkins decided to revive this historic society as a collective of professional period-instrument specialists, performing in combinations ranging from small ensembles to full orchestra. Our presiding ethos is one of chamber music – however large or small the formation – where each and every performer has a significant role to play.
