Throughout his career, Ciconia absorbed local styles where he found them and influenced his contemporaries and successors in turn. The first two songs on the program — I cani sono fuora (The dogs are out) and Caçando un giorno (While hunting one day) — demonstrated his absorption of 14th-century Italian madrigal traditions: the use of hunting imagery in the texts, alternation of syllabic declamation with elaborate melisma, and brief snatches of imitation between the voices. These carefully crafted duets for treble and tenor require a fine attention to tuning and articulation, ably provided by Gerrod Pagenkopf, countertenor, and Owen McIntosh, tenor in the first instance, and Shannon Canavin, soprano, and McIntosh in the second. The three-voice ceremonial madrigal Una panthera was performed on three recorders by Héloïse Degrugillier, Justin Gody, and Tom Zajac. Although they played beautifully, it was still disappointing not to hear this interesting text, which features emphatically scored heraldic references to the city of Lucca and its protector, Giangaleazzo Visconti.

Giangaleazzo was known for his Francophile tastes (and he had a French wife). In striking contrast to the Italianate style of his madrigals, Ciconia composed the virelai Sus une fontayne (Above a fountain) in the rhythmically elaborate French style known as ars subtilior. Furthermore, this song skillfully incorporates the opening measures —- both text and music — of three songs by Philipoctus de Caserta, one of the foremost exponents of the ars subtilior style, who was also active at the Visconti court. Countertenor Near sang the texted part, while Tom Zajac, harp, and Karen Burciaga, vielle, carried the contratenor and tenor parts. Medieval and early Renaissance manuscripts never indicate who is to perform untexted parts, so modern interpreters have to decide whether to use instruments or voices. While some have insisted on all-vocal performance, the often disjunct lines of contratenor parts can sound convincing on a plucked string instrument, with the harmonically essential tenor played on a bowed instrument such as the vielle.  In the early 15th-century rondeau Ce jour de l’an (This New Year’s Day) by Baude Cordier, the choice of three recorders and vielle to accompany Near was less successful, the alto recorder doubling the voice and obscuring the articulation of the text.

Two Italian ballate dating from near the end of Ciconia’s career, along with a fragmentary — and skillfully reconstructed — ballata by the otherwise unknown composer Zaninus de Peraga de Padua completed the first half of the program. Certainly one of the highlights of the evening was McIntosh’s performance of Ciconia’s extraordinary O rosa bella (O lovely rose), which can take its place amongst the loveliest Italian songs of any period. His tenor in the haute-contre range brought out the expressive sweetness of the melodic line, intensified by repetitions, both literal and sequential, and smoothly swinging rhythms.

The second half of the program consisted primarily of motets, ceremonial pieces composed for persons and events connected with Ciconia’s career in Padua. By the early 15th century, a distinctly North Italian style of motet had developed, featuring two upper parts of equal range singing the same, or sometimes different, texts, with a tenor part that was more often freely composed than based on Gregorian chant (as in contemporaneous French motets). The melodious upper parts often began with a long passage in one part echoed by the second part, and the two parts often exchanged shorter motives that highlighted important text words. Countertenors Near and Gerrod Pagenkopf were perfectly matched as duet partners in O felix templum jubila ( Rejoice, O blessed church). The text apostrophizes the dedicatee, Stephano Carrara, and closes with a prayer that names the composer himself, followed by an elaborately imitative “Amen.” A much less public tribute was paid to Francesco Carrara upon his death in 1406, the family having been banished from Padua as the city came under Venetian rule. Con lagreme bagnandome nel viso (My face was bathed in tears) is couched in terms of a lament for a departed lover. The two parts were sung without accompaniment by Canavin and McIntosh. Three recorders sounded the motet O Padua sidus preclarum from the organ loft. An unlikely ensemble for early 15th-century Italy, they nonetheless provided a welcome change of focus. The last two motets on the program, both composed in honor of Ciconia’s patron Francesco Zabarella, were compositionally more ambitious, each with two upper voices singing two different texts, and each with two accompanying lower parts. Canavin and Pagenkopf were the singers in Doctorum principem/Melodia suavissima cantemus (The foremost of teachers/Let us sing in the sweetest melody), with Karen Burciaga’s vielle and Tom Zajac’s penetrating douçaine (an early double-reeded instrument) on the lower parts. Zabarella shared honors with his patron saint, Francis of Assisi, in Ut te per omnes celitus/Ingens alumnus Padue (So that we may follow you with the greatest veneration/Great son of Padua). Doubled by two recorders, Near and Pagenkopf sang the upper parts, with vielle and douçaine on the lower parts.

Mounting a program devoted to pre-Renaissance repertoire is always a daunting task. Ciconia’s music, engaging as it is, remains unfamiliar to most listeners, and the directors of Exsultemus, Shannon Canavin and Martin Near, are to be commended for assembling a group of topnotch musicians to perform this important music. If one can be allowed one wish for the future, it might be for more incisive text articulation, which tended to get lost in the search for tonal purity.

Virginia Newes, who now lives in Cambridge, was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

John Browne’s Stabat Mater is preserved only in the magnificent manuscript known as the Eton Choirbook, a collection of Magnificats and motets for the Virgin Mary prepared around 1500 for the chapel choir of Eton College and one of the very few sources of English polyphony from this period to have survived the vicissitudes of the Reformation. Like most of the music in the Choirbook, the Stabat Mater is notable for its intricate polyphony, in which extended melismatic lines weave around each other in infinitely varied combinations of small rhythmic and melodic figures that often obscure the underlying triple or duple meter. Considerable textural variety is provided by the vocal scoring: passages for changing groups of three voices contrast with duos in various pairings and full-voice sections for all six voices, comprising soprano, alto, two tenors, and two basses. The excellent program notes by Flynn Warmington provided a useful outline of the changing textures in the motet. Shannon Canavin, founder and General Director of Exultemus and the only female singer in the group, sang soprano with pure intonation and supple phrasing, sounding for all the world like an ideal boy treble. Music Director and countertenor Martin Near, alto, tenors Owen McIntosh and Jason McStoots, and basses Paul Guttry and Sumner Thompson were equally convincing.

The text that Browne set consists of the familiar eight tercets taken from the medieval Franciscan penitential poem, augmented by six additional stanzas in quatrains that the composer may have written himself. The dramatic high point of the motet comes two thirds of the way through when, after a full cadence, the voices enter in close succession with the words “Crucifige, crucifige” (Crucify, crucify), the soprano entering last on ferociously repeated high fs.

The only other work from the Eton Choirbook on the program was a four-voice Ave Maria, mater Dei by William Cornysh. This work was performed here earlier this month by the Tallis Scholars, who attributed it in their program to William Cornysh the Younger, who died in 1523. It seems more likely, however, that the Ave Maria and other sacred works in the Eton Choirbook are by William Cornysh the Elder (d.1502), as suggested in the Exsultemus program. Although less spectacular than the Stabat Mater, this motet belongs to the same stylistic family in its varied scoring for duets, trios, and full sonorities, and in its elaborate melismas and closely spaced imitations that are more decorative than structural.

The remainder of the program was devoted to works on English texts, and as such decidedly less compositionally ambitious than the rarified polyphony of the Eton Choirbook. Having been once led up to those heights, so to speak, and breathed in the atmosphere, one would have liked to hear more of these challenging works, delightful as the carols and secular songs turned out to be. The Fayrfax manuscript is the most important source of secular song from the early Tudor period, that of Henry VII and his son Prince Arthur. This collection also contains a number of devotional songs in carol form, with a series of stanzas set to the same music and a recurrent “burden,” or refrain. In the burden of “Ah, gentle Jesu” by a composer identified only as Sheryngham, a dialogue between a sinner and Jesus is represented by two high (male) and two low voices, all four singers joining in the final “Ah gentle Jesu.” Two secular songs by Robert Fayrfax, who may have copied the manuscript that was owned by his family, are set to serious poems in the courtly love tradition. “Most clear of colour and root of steadfastness,” for soprano, alto, and tenor, featured extravagant melisma on the word “womanhood.” “That was my woe is now my most gladness” was an exquisite duet for alto and tenor. Fragments of the song by Edmond Turges, “Alas, it is I that wot not what to say,” were reused by John Browne in his Stabat Mater, the betrayal of Jesus finding its secular parallel in a courtly love theme of betrayal and abandonment. From a large miscellany of secular music, vocal and instrumental, English and foreign, from the courtly circle of the young Henry VIII we heard the lovely anonymous song “Madame d’amours” and the popular “Ah, Robin” by William Cornysh the Younger, followed by two anonymous comic songs in carol form: “Hey, trolly lolly lo” about the narrator’s encounter with a milkmaid, and the equally ribald “I am a jolly foster [forester (lover)].”

Hearing the Stabat Mater again in its entirety at the end of the program was a welcome jolt back to the ethereal world of the Eton Choirbook. This was a special gift to the audience, the kind of “encore” that should be offered more frequently when a new or highly complex work is presented. The singers from Exsultemus are all accomplished virtuosi, known to Boston audiences as recital, oratorio, or operatic soloists, and equally at home in Renaissance, Baroque, and contemporary repertoires. Singing without conductor, they demonstrated the kind of unswerving musicianship that places accurate tuning, coordinated ensemble, clear diction, and stylistic sensitivity first and foremost.

Virginia Newes, who now lives in Cambridge, was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

Joining Blue Heron’s roster of eleven singers were three instrumentalists: Michael Collver, cornetto, and Mack Ramsey, Renaissance trombone, with director Scott Metcalfe playing a vielle (fiddle). Early music performance practice, since it first burst onto the recording scene in the 60s and 70s, has been subject to changing tastes as well as to ongoing scholarship. Colorful instruments that were assembled to accompany Renaissance polyphony were later banished in favor of all-vocal performance of sacred and secular polyphony. (Strict adherence to this practice came to be known in some circles as the “English a cappella heresy.”) More recently, documentary evidence has shown that wind instruments in particular quite often played along with choirs in sacred polyphony, either doubling voice parts or occasionally replacing them.

The opening work on the program, Inviolata, integra, et casta es, Maria, by Josquin Des Prez, is based on a plainchant melody in the tenor that was doubled by the trombone. Following the tenor in strict canon at the fifth above, the alto was doubled by the cornetto, a hybrid instrument with a conical bore, a cup mouthpiece like that of a brass instrument, and finger holes like those of a recorder. Both instruments enriched and clarified the texture of the ensemble without overshadowing the voices. In this exquisitely crafted piece, the rising opening motive of the chant melody is anticipated in the other three voices, artfully blending strict canon with free imitation. As counter-motive, a simple descending scale is heard four times in the top voice in close counterpoint with the bass.

After serving the Medici in Florence, the Flemish composer Heinrich Isaac entered the service of Maximilian in 1497. His motet O Maria, mater Christi for four low voices was performed by eight singers who skillfully negotiated its flexible contrapuntal lines in varied pairs and trios and shifting meters, concluding with joyful declamation on the words “that we may possess heavenly joys,” and a seemingly endless melisma on the final “O Maria.” Another grouping of eight singers assembled for the motet Beati omnes, an intricate setting of Psalm 127 for four voices by the Swiss-born composer Ludwig Senfl, who called himself a pupil of Isaac and after his death took his position at the Vienna court chapel.

Jacob Obrecht was the son of a town trumpeter who spent most of his life in his native Flanders but became one of the most celebrated composers in Europe in the late 15th century. His five-voice motet Salve crux is based on two plainchant melodies as cantus firmi and employs all the virtuosic contrapuntal techniques of  Franco-Flemish polyphony in shifting vocal combinations, rhythms, and meters. Equally virtuosic was the performance of the five male soloists, singing without conductor and perfectly tuned and attuned to one another.

Four different groupings of soloists were assembled for the performance of four settings of Dido’s lament, all composed probably around the same time at the Habsburg-Burgundian court. The setting by Johannes Ghiselin set forth each of Virgil’s four lines syllabically before dissolving into melismatic endings, while Alexander Agricola’s featured continually interweaving and overlapping lines. Josquin Des Prez appears to have borrowed the entire top part of his setting from that of the French composer Jean Mouton in an act of competitive emulation. The rhetorical and dramatic highlight of this sequence was heard in Josquin’s setting of the wonderful lines “Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum” (Rumor, of all evils the swiftest), which appear earlier in the Aeneid and depict the spread of the news of Dido’s love for Aeneas. Here the text is meticulously illustrated with increasing frenzy as Rumor, small and fearful at first, mounts up to heaven and joins the clouds.

Instrumental performances of two three-voice songs from Marguerite’s songbooks showed off the virtuoso capabilities of the trio of cornetto, trombone, and vielle. Both songs belong to the type known as motet-chanson, combining a secular French poetic text with a sacred Latin cantus firmus that can be construed as a commentary on it. Taking the cantus, or texted voice, Michael Collver executed elaborate yet tasteful flights of ornamentation on the cornetto, duetting with Scott Metcalfe’s more restrained tenor line on the vielle. Mack Ramsey’s Renaissance trombone, much less strident than its modern counterpart, provided the cantus firmi. The evening ended on a triumphant note with the performance by the full ensemble of Isaac’s six-voice Virgo prudentissima (Virgin most wise), celebrating both the Assumption of the Virgin and Maximilian’s coronation as Holy Roman Emperor with an ambitious classicizing text and equally magnificent polyphony, enhanced by the support of trombone and cornetto.

Now in its 13th season, Blue Heron has evolved over the years into one of the most successful advocates for Renaissance music in the country. Friday’s program was no exception. Focused on the fairly restricted context of Hapsburg-Burgundian patronage, it offered a pleasing variety of genres and ensemble groupings, performed with immaculate tuning and a clear sense of line. The handsome program provided full texts and translations, and the informative and readable program notes were supplemented by an excellent pre-concert talk on instrumental practice in Renaissance cities and courts by musicologist (and horn player) Keith Polk.

Virginia Newes, who now lives in Cambridge, was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

The program opened with a technically spectacular yet mellifluous work: Mouton’s motet Nesciens mater virgo virum (A mother unknowing of man). The short text is a plainchant antiphon for Christmas week. The entire chant melody, given a new rhythmic shape and slightly ornamented, is heard in the second (lower) tenor. This voice is doubled canonically when two measures later the first tenor follows it in exact imitation at the fifth above. Meanwhile a second canon is established in similar fashion between the two bass parts, while two more canons proceed in the upper parts (second alto/second soprano and first alto/first soprano). Thus the entire eight-voice complex is realized from only four written parts. Despite the virtuosity of this contrapuntal feat, the piece never sounded contrived, its sonorous harmonies and flowing melodic lines rendered with equal vocal virtuosity by the 10 Tallis singers. Salva nos, Domine, in six parts, also contains a canon (between alto and tenor) based on a plainchant melody. Mouton’s Ave Maria, gratia plena for five voices with no borrowed melody, was notable for the use of smooth imitative entries delineating each line of the text, occasional homophonic outbursts providing contrast and textual emphasis, while the forthright declamation of Quaeramus cum pastoribus (Let us seek with the shepherds), with its “Noe” (Nowell) refrain, reflected the popular flavor of a Christmas carol.

It was not unusual for Renaissance composers to select a secular song rather than a sacred chant as the basis for a polyphonic Mass composition. In choosing the tenor of a rondeau Dictes moy toutes vos pensées (Tell me all your thoughts), by Loyset Compère (ca. 1445-1518) as a source of motivic material for a four-voice Mass, Mouton may have intended a playful homage to an older colleague who also served at the French court. We heard the Kyrie and the Agnus Dei, whose smoothly flowing melismas came to the fore in a number of skillfully performed duets, particularly that between tenor and bass in the second section of the Agnus Dei.

William Cornysh the Younger, a gentleman of the Chapel Royal under Henry VII and Henry VIII and later Master of the Children, was also engaged in court entertainments as a writer and actor. He supervised the Chapel Royal’s ceremonies at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, his second visit to France in the retinue of Henry VIII. His four-voice Ave Maria, mater Dei makes little use of the pervading imitation then current on the continent and employed so skillfully by Mouton. Its charm lay rather in the florid lines assigned to a variety of duos and trios that provided textural contrast. The five-voice Salve regina, mater misericordiae by John Browne, a contemporary of Cornysh, in a similarly florid style, was notable for the sweeping beauty of its final “Salve.” Cornysh also composed a number of English partsongs, a genre that flourished at Henry VIII’s court. In Ah Robyn, performed by just four singers, two friends compare the fidelity of their ladies. The refrain is a very simple three-part canon repeated after each solo verse. Woefully arrayed, a sacred song in the voice of the suffering Jesus, has a longer refrain heard at the beginning and the end, but shortened in between stanzas. Although beautifully rendered by eight singers, the effect might have been more immediate with one singer to a part. All 10 singers took part in the extraordinary five-voice Magnificat by Cornysh that concluded the program. The text is set in the customary alternatim style, with the odd-numbered verses sung on the Gregorian chant tone and even-numbered verses set in polyphony. The exuberant polyphony of the ensemble verses features a wide range of vocal scoring combinations, setting an upper-voice trio against a lower-voice trio in one verse, for example, and two solo tenors against the full ensemble in another, and a lovely duet for soprano and alto in the final doxology. The Scholars obliged us with two verses from a Magnificat by Nicolas Gombert (ca. 1495-ca. 1560), his dense polyphony with its overlapping imitative entries contrasting notably with Cornysh’s wayward melismas.

Virginia Newes, who now lives in Cambridge, was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

The program started off with a short and pleasing Sinfonia in D Major by Antonio Brioschi, a prolific composer of early symphonies, which became popular all over Europe in the second quarter of the 18th century. The first movement, in abbreviated sonata form, veered toward the minor in its second section before a varied reprise of the opening. In the second movement, the ingratiating triple-time melodies of the opening were punctuated by strident descending unison arpeggios. The lively finale brought Biondi’s virtuosity to the fore, supported by adroit playing by the continuo group.

In the Vivaldi violin concerto that followed (no. 3 in L’Estro Armonico), Biondi had a double function to fill as soloist and leader of the ensemble, turning his back to the audience to give the down bow for each movement and again to coordinate its close. It’s worth noting that the Europa Galante violinists and violists play standing up, which may be closer to 18th-century ensemble practice than the more recent tradition of sitting. Not only did it seem to lead to a particularly energetic and coordinated style of playing, but it also allowed Biondi to move seamlessly between his roles as virtuoso soloist executing flights of passage work and leader of the ensemble in tutti sections.

Angelo Maria Scaccia was the son of a violinist and a member of the ducal orchestra in the 1750s. His Violin Concerto in E-flat Major featured solo passages employing double stops in the first movement and a highly ornamented aria for solo violin and ensemble in the second. The third movement included a short cadenza and a surprising pianissimo ending.

Haydn’s Concerto for Violin and Harpsichord is an early work, composed before he joined the Esterhàzy household in 1766. Continuo player Paola Poncet switched roles to join Fabio Bioni as soloist, while continuing to support the orchestra in tutti sections. The two soloists were heard both separately and together, vying in virtuosity and joining in double cadenzas near the end of both the first and the second movement. In the Presto Finale, Haydn’s toying with offbeat rhythms ended in a battle of wits between the two soloists.

After the intermission we were treated to a stellar performance of an old favorite, Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor in which Biondi was joined by the ensemble’s principal second violinist, Andrea Rognoni. Taking the first movement at a brisk tempo, the well-matched pair brought out its fugal intricacies while maintaining a clear sense of the overall architecture, no mean feat. In the second movement, the exquisitely interweaving aria-duet in siciliano rhythm was set off sharply against brusque chordal passages with drone accompaniment. Tasteful variations ornamented the da capo repetition of the opening. In the Finale, the two soloists sounded as one in chordal accents over a lively walking bass, concluding one of the most satisfying performances of this concerto heard in a long time.

A suite of instrumental pieces from Handel’s early opera Roderigo concluded the program. Predictably, it opened with an Overture in the French manner, with slow, dotted-rhythm, duple-time opening and concluding sections enclosing a faster triple-time fugue. In the dance movements that followed, Biondi and his ensemble had a chance to show off their stylistic mastery of the French manner. A lively Gigue and a slower Sarabande in “walking” tempo, played by the smaller concertino group of two violins, viola, and continuo, were followed by a toe-tapping Matelot (the French equivalent of a Hornpipe) for full orchestra. The next group consisted of two minuets for the concertino group enclosing an energetic Bourrée for full orchestra. In the final Passacaille, the recurrent refrain over a ground bass alternated with virtuosic solo couplets for the violin in dialogue with other instruments.

As an encore, Biondi announced “a little surprise:” the fast and furious storm Allegro movement from Vivaldi’s Winter concerto from the Four Seasons. In a tour de force of ensemble and solo playing, this was presented as a programmatic character piece, its chromatically descending harmonies as threatening as could be.

Virginia Newes lives in Cambridge. She was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

The program opened with Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in C Major, op. 6, no. 10. Published in Amsterdam a year after the composer’s death in 1713, and much admired for their melodic clarity and tonal consistency. The twelve concertos of Opus 6 remained current well into the 19th century. According to conductor Martin Pearlman, who supplied introductory remarks in lieu of program notes, the concertos were so popular in England that on one occasion all 12 were performed at a single sitting and, thanks to overwhelming audience response, repeated on the spot. For this performance, Boston Baroque’s band consisted of 15 accomplished string players (no less than 13 of them women), with harpsichordist Peter Sykes providing continuo support. The three principals, violinists Christina Day Martinson and Julie Leven, violinists, and Sarah Freiberg, cellist, served as concertinists in the “solo” sections, providing dynamic contrast to the full complement of ripieno players. Pearlman conducted with characteristic verve and stylistic sensitivity. He took the opening Andante in a sprightly walking tempo and the Allemanda in a faster duple time, and brought out inherent rhythmic subtleties in the triple-time Corrente and Menuetto.

Published (in 1738) as one of six organ concertos, Opus 4, Handel’s Harp Concerto in B-flat Major was originally composed as an interlude for his setting, first performed in February, 1736, of Dryden’s ode Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Music. The concerto represents metaphorically the scene in which the musician Timotheus, Orpheus-like, plays his lyre for Alexander the Great at a banquet, arousing various moods in the ruler and finally succeeding in inciting him to burn the city of Persepolis in revenge for his dead Greek soldiers. Moderns harps have pedals that can quickly retune certain strings in order to produce chromatic notes. The “triple harp” of Handel’s time has three rows of strings, the two outer rows for the notes of the diatonic scale, with the inner third row providing chromatic pitches. Often sounding alone, the harp was played by soloist Barbara Poeschl-Edrich with beautiful clarity of articulation and phrasing. In order not to overwhelm its delicate sound, Handel’s accompaniment often called for pizzicato in the lower strings, with bowing only in the violins. The Larghetto second movement evoked the mood of a pastoral lament from one of Handel’s operas, its melody doubled in thirds and punctuated by tutti chords from the orchestra, while the vigorous Allegro Finale was presumably intended to depict Alexander’s more warlike frame of mind.

In the Bach Double Concerto in D Minor, concertmaster Christina Day Martinson was joined by Julie Leven, principal second violin. Both are accomplished players, but Martinson’s playing was more forward and soloistically projected, while Leven tended to remain in the background. One missed the sense of friendly rivalry — each soloist striving to outdo the other — essential to the character of this piece. The second movement, with its sinuously intertwining melodies, brought out the best in both soloists, while the Finale was a shade too fast. The melodies hurtled over one another, obscuring details of articulation in the process.

After the intermission we were entertained by two spectacularly virtuosic works by Vivaldi. Aldo Abreu was the soloist in the Concerto in A Minor for sopranino recorder and orchestra, one of the many works composed for the talented girls of the famous Ospedale di Pietà orphanage in Venice, where Vivaldi taught for many years. Abreu showed himself to be a master of this tiny instrument, which sounds an octave higher than written — more or less in the range of a modern piccolo. His adroit phrasing and skillful ornamentation were nothing short of amazing in fast passage work, while superb breath control allowed him to sustain extended melodic arabesques in the aria-like Larghetto. The Finale, working up to a climactic crescendo at breathtaking speed, brought down the house.

Mary Wilson was the soloist in Vivaldi’s motet Nulla n mundo pax sincera, really a cantata consisting of two da capo arias in contrasting meter framing a recitative, the whole rounded off by a concluding Alleluia. In his introductory remarks, Pearlman speculated that this piece might have been composed for a talented alumna of the Pietà conservatory. Wilson’s light, clear voice and surefire technique were more than a match for the motet, which rivals a violin concerto in its virtuosic demands. Beginning the opening aria, with its lilting siciliano rhythms, in fairly restrained tones, her voice took on more warmth and a deeper resonance in the da capo repetition, thanks to expressive ornamentation and a judicious addition of vibrato. Arioso-like flights of melisma brought the recitative to an emotional peak, while the summit of virtuosity was reached in the final aria in fast duple time and the breathtaking roulades of the Alleluia.

This being New Year’s Eve, Wilson and Pearlman presented us with a surprise encore: the “first and only” performance by a Baroque ensemble of the set piece “Glitter and Be Gay” from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. An experienced opera singer and comedienne, Wilson played this brilliant piece, itself a witty pastiche of operatic cliches, to the hilt in a rousing finale to a wonderful evening.

Virginia Newes, who now lives in Cambridge, was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

Outside the “Euro zone” although connected by many links to the continent, English music of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance developed many idiosyncratic, and endearing, style traits. Fullness of sound and a fondness for “sweet” harmonies based on thirds and sixths as well as quirky false harmonic relations persisted even as the long, floating melodic lines of early Tudor polyphony gradually gave way to text-defining points of imitation, a continental import. Those of us lucky enough to have heard Blue Heron’s stellar “Christmas in Medieval England” the night before (a program presented December 16th and 17th in the First Church, Cambridge and reviewed for BMI by Tamar Hestrin-Grader here) were treated first to a grand sweep through English sacred music from the thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth century, and then from the mid-sixteenth to the turn of the seventeenth century.

Life under the Tudor monarchs was complicated for composers of sacred music as they navigated the violent fluctuations in musical practice from Henry VIII’s break with Rome and suppression of the monasteries to the stripping of the altars under Edward VI, Catholic restoration under Mary Tudor, and finally the establishment of the Anglican Church under Elizabeth I. Although the Catholic composers Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505-1585) and William Byrd (ca. 1540-1623) wrote music for Anglican as well as Catholic services, all the music we heard last night was composed for the Roman Catholic rite. The program opened, like Blue Heron’s, with the singing of the familiar hymn for Advent, Veni, veni Emmanuel. Alternate hymn stanzas were sung by men and women placed in opposite transepts of the church, the last two stanzas harmonized in simple note-against-note organum that lent additional solemnity to the haunting plainchant melody.

Thomas Tallis served in the royal households of all four Tudor monarchs, composing service music in both Latin and English. The text of his six-voice motet Videte miraculum, a responsory for the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin on February 2nd, tells the story of the Virgin birth. Placed in the tenor as a cantus firmus in equal long notes, the plainchant melody is surrounded by five other voices in complex polyphony, whose linear thrust often results in uncompromising cross relations at cadences. Tallis’s incomplete seven-voice Missa Puer natus es is based on the Christmas Introit, which we heard in its original plainchant form later in the program. Here Tallis employed an elaborate cantus firmus technique that harks back to Medieval numerology: the value of each note of the borrowed chant melody is based on the number assigned to its vowel in the original text. Only the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei of the Mass survive. Tallis — and the Stile Antico singers — made the most of the implicit contrast between sections of the Gloria text, from the vigorous opening song of praise to the more reflective “Qui tollis peccata mundi” and the triumphant “Quoniam tu solus sanctus” with its closely-spaced imitations on the word “altissimus.” In the Sanctus, the climactic moment came in the recurrent “Osanna in excelsis” section, its static harmonies animated by complex contrapuntal interchange among the voices, a technique employed again in the “Dona nobis pacem” that concluded the Agnus Dei.

The movements of the Tallis Mass were interspersed with four settings of Propers (seasonal liturgical texts) by William Byrd for the Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary during Advent. In his late years Byrd, a recusant, and his family joined a Catholic community in Essex. By 1605, when his first book of Gradualia (Propers for the major feasts of the church year) was published, he no longer tried to conceal either its authorship or its liturgical purpose. Intended for devotions in the private chapels of aristocratic recusants, these short four-voice motets are modest in scale yet full of text-inspired motives in skillfully handled imitative entries. Byrd’s contemporary Robert White (ca. 1538-1574) served as Master of the Choristers at Ely and Chester cathedrals and then at Westminster Abbey. His Magnificat for six voices is set alternatim, that is, with plainchant and choral verses in alternation. This expansive work is notable for its long-breathed melodic lines and ingenious variety of contrapuntal textures, such as the pairing of upper-voice quartet and bass on “Esurientes implevit bonis” and the duet for alto and bass that opens “Sicut erat in principio.”

As the second half of the program opened, four female voices rang out from the rear gallery with the evocative text of Audi vocem de caelo by John Taverner (ca. 1490-1545), most of whose music was composed before the Reformation. Whether in the closely-spaced polyphony of the respond with its soaring contrapuntal lines, or in the plainchant verse, the women sounded for all the world like (ideal) boy choristers, their voices perfectly tuned, ringingly clear, and without vibrato. Most of the Latin sacred music by John Sheppard (ca. 1515-1559 or 1560) was composed during the reign of Mary Tudor. His six-voice responsory for Christmas Matins, Verbum caro factum est, with its extravagantly wide range and florid ornamental lines, brought a fitting conclusion to this magnificent program. By way of contrast, and in honor of the four-hundredth anniversary of his death, Tomás Luis de Victoria’s four-voice Christmas motet was offered as an encore.

Stile Antico stands out for clarity of phrasing, precisely unified ensemble, and for sheer beauty of sound that is strong and clear but never sounds forced. Their program booklet featured complete texts and translations along with two pages of concise and informative notes by Matthew O’Donovan that were a model of how to write for informed but not necessarily specialist listeners — all presented in a clearly readable typeface. Members of the choir also stepped out occasionally to deliver further introductory remarks. Under the title Puer natus est, the program was issued on CD last year by Harmonia Mundi. But nothing can replace the pure pleasure of hearing this talented ensemble live in a beautiful space such as St. Paul Church.

Virginia Newes, who now lives in Cambridge, was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

In Spain, devotional texts were often set as villancicos, refrain songs in the vernacular that had their secular origin in medieval dance tunes. Spiced with  elements of local Indian or African-American dialects and rhythms in the colonies, villancicos were performed  before mass on special feast days or even inserted into the liturgy itself. In the lighthearted song that opened Friday’s program, a recurrent refrain “Attención! Silencio!” invited believers to celebrate of the birth of the Christ Child. Shannon Canavin’s light and flexible soprano was paired with Shari Alise Wilson’s somewhat darker yet equally agile voice, the continuo accompaniment ably provided by Andrus Madsen, chamber organ, and Emily Walhout, Baroque cello. The Spanish-born composer of this piece, Antonio Durán de la Mota (ca. 1672-1736), worked in the silver-rich mountain town of Potosi in Bolivia. Domenico Zipoli 1688-1726), born and trained  in Italy, served as a missionary in the Indian villages established by the Jesuits in Paraguay. His Latin hymn, Jesu, corona Virginum, consisted of solo verses for soprano (Shannon Canavin) and alto (sung by countertenor Martin Near); in the final stanza, the two were joined by tenor Michael Barrett.

In a charming villancico by the Mexican composer Antonio de Salazar (1650-ca. 1715), Anthony the Moor proposes to celebrate the birth of Jesus by dancing a “Puerto Rico” and a “Cameroun.” Pizzicato cello imitated the sound of his bells and tambourine, the percussive plucking a foil for the flowing lines of the vocal duet sung by Wilson and Near. The anonymous Latin hymn Volate angeli was found in the archive of Chiquitos in eastern Bolivia. Here stanzas for two sopranos in dialogue were interspersed with instrumental ritornellos for violin (Katherine Winterstein), cello, and harp. Nancy Hurrell played a copy of a 1704 Spanish arpa de dos órdenes, a wonderfully sonorous instrument with 47 strings in two rows, which provided percussive articulation to the ensemble. In Los que fueren de buen gusto (All those who have good taste), by the Mexican composer Francisco de Vidales (ca. 1630-1702), three singers (Canavin, Wilson, and Near) told the story of the nativity in the style of a rustic xácara dance in wildly syncopated rhythms. Bass-baritone Paul Max Tipton joined the ensemble in the joyous carol — accompanied only by the ringing tones of the harp — by the Franciscan friar Gerónimo Gonzales that concluded the first half of the program.

After the intermission it was time for a complete change of style and texture in a group of late Renaissance motets sung a cappella. Pedro Bermúdez (ca. 1558-1605?) was born in Granada but, after a rocky career in Spain, spent the last years of his life in the New World. In his four-voice motet Christus natus est nobis (Christ is born for us) Canavin, Near, Barrett, and Tipton joined in a beautifully balanced ensemble. The two works by Victoria,  the dean of Spanish polyphonists, brought further  textural contrast. The hymn Christe Redemptor omnium (O Christ, redeemer of all people) was set alternatim style: the odd-numbered verses intoned by Canavin in unaccompanied Gregorian chant, and the even-numbered verses set in elaborate polyphony for varying combinations of three or four voices. All five singers participated in Victoria’s Gaude Maria virgo (Rejoice, Virgin Mary), the two sopranos carrying a sustained canon at the unison against the more active lower parts.

The three final numbers returned to a more popular style. The anonymous carol Tierno Infante divino (Tender divine child), was a strophic song for two sopranos with instrumental interludes, its graceful melodic lines echoed from one voice to the other. Roque Ceruti (ca. 1686-1760) was born in Milan but served for more than 50 years in cathedrals in Peru. His xácara told the Christmas story in a lively strophic song for two sopranos, two violins (Winterstein and Emily Dahl) and continuo. Ceruti’s Hoy la tierra produce una rosa (Today the earth produces a rose) concluded the evening on a joyful note.

Virginia Newes, who now lives in Cambridge, was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

Violinist Yura Lee joined violist Marcus Thompson, artistic director of the Chamber Music Society, and cellist Astrid Schween in the Serenade in C major for String Trio, op. 10, by Ernö Dohnányi (1877-1960; grandfather of the conductor Christoph von Dohnányi).  Dohnányi’s career as pianist, teacher, and conductor began in Hungary, where he championed the music of Bartók and Kodály, and ended in the United States. Composed in 1902, his five-movement Serenade evokes similarly lighthearted music from the Classical era, combining echoes of Brahms with his own brand of lyricism. A Hungarian-tinged melody, worked out contrapuntally, appears as an interlude in the opening Marcia. In the Romanza, the viola opens with a beautiful Adagio melody against pizzicato violin and cello, followed by a soaring melody in the violin. The Scherzo features a perpetuum mobile theme with contrasting Trio, and the Andante Tema con variazione a chromatically-tinged theme most poignant in its Adagio incarnation. The final movement, a Rondo, adds a rustic touch to one of its interludes with a Hungarian melody over drone fifths in the cello.

Ernest Bloch’s Two Pieces for String Quartet were composed twelve years apart. The Andante moderato, from 1938, with its dark harmonies, has a neo-romantic cast. The second piece, Allegro molto, composed in 1950, contrasts dissonant gestures and brusque, aggressive rhythms with a lyrical interlude and concluding reminiscences of the Andante. Lucy Chapman joined the members of the string trio as first violinist in this engaging performance.

Hodgkinson returned to the stage, and Chapman and Lee exchanged places in the final offering, Schumann’s popular Piano Quintet in E-flat major, op. 44. Players of the rousing Allegro brillante all too often thump their way through this movement with its multiplicity of energetic themes. It was gratifying to hear sensitive ensemble playing — give and take among the players — taking precedence over romantic excess. Steady tempo throughout the second movement prevented the funeral march from lapsing into pathos as it faded away. The brilliant Scherzo gave all members of the ensemble plenty to do, with rapid scales in the opening section, distant bells sounding in the first Trio, and echoes of Schubert in the second. Attention to details of texture and articulation held our interest throughout the lengthy Finale, Allegro ma non troppo, culminating in a return of the first movement’s opening theme in a fugato apotheosis.

Virginia Newes, who now lives in Cambridge, was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.

The program opened with Franz Schubert’s String Trio in B-flat, D471. It was composed in 1816 when Schubert was 19, working as a school assistant but already producing operas, Masses, and numerous lieder as well as symphonies and string quartets. In the midst of all this activity, the trio remained a fragment, abandoned after only the opening Allegro and thirty-nine measures of a second movement were completed. The four movements of a second String Trio, D581, also in B-flat, were composed a year later. Schubert’s early instrumental works were composed for performance by his family and friends. Apparently they also enjoyed playing Joseph Haydn’s trios for violin, viola, and baryton (a now rare form of viol). Certainly there was a distinctly Haydnesque flavor to the lively Allegro of D471, although the development section already showed Schubert’s propensity for extended modulations. The Chameleon players (Joanna Kurkowicz, violin; Scott Woolweaver, viola, and Rafael Popper-Keizer, cello) wisely chose to honor the repeats indicated for both sections (exposition and development plus recapitulation) of the movement, giving us the chance to savor the brief movement in full.

An entirely different ensemble took the stage for Francis Poulenc’s popular Sextuor for piano and wind quintet, composed between 1932 and 1939. Pianist Vivian Chang-Freiheit was joined by Deborah Boldin, flute; Nancy Dimock, oboe; Gary Gorczyca, clarinet; Margaret Phillips, bassoon; and Whitacre Hill, French horn. The first movement, Allegro vivace, opens in jazzy café-concert style; a lyrical interlude features duets and trios for various instruments, followed by a concluding “perpetuum mobile” march. In the second movement, the instruments enter one by one, then join in a lighthearted march. The Finale opened with a sharp burst of sound from all five winds, concluding with sonorous chords. Poulenc well understood the surprising affinity of piano and wind timbres, displayed at their best by this virtuoso ensemble.

Libby Larsen’s Corker for clarinet and percussion was another tour de force, pairing clarinetist Gary Gorczyca in witty dialogue with Mike Williams’s one-man percussion band (drum set, marimba, and xylophone). In fact, the piece is a set of compound dialogues: the contrasting upper and lower registers of the clarinet converse with one another, their melodies punctuated by drums or eerily echoed by marimba or xylophone. In the second section of the piece, the percussion took the lead in a lively  exchange of rhythmic motives. Larsen, who acknowledges the idioms of American vernacular music as her inspiration, writes with an appealing and forthright voice that cannot help but please.

After the intermission we entered a totally different stylistic world with Brahms’s densely romantic piano Quartet in A major, op. 26. Gloria Chien was the pianist, with violinist Joanna Kurkowicz, violist Scott Woolweaver, and cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer. Eloquent in many details, the performance was generally convincing, particularly in the second movement, Poco adagio, with its long-breathed melodies and foreboding cello ostinati. In the opening Allegro non troppo, however, a more coordinated flexibility in phrasing and articulation would have helped bring clarity to the complexities of conflicting duple and triple rhythms.

Chameleon is certainly to be commended for its innovative programming: little-known Schubert, less-known Brahms, a popular and tuneful work by Poulenc, and a showpiece for clarinet and percussion in an American idiom — all added up to a refreshingly out-of-the-ordinary mix.

Virginia Newes, who now lives in Cambridge, was Associate Professor of Music History and Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.