RAISE THE FLAME OF LOVE

Tonight's programme reflects the sometimes-competing yet always inextricable styles of the French and Italian Baroque. The French style can be often said to begin with Lully—who was, perhaps ironically, and Italian. However, he figured out how to mimic the different patterns of the French language in music, fostering a style all its own. Meanwhile, the Italian style captivated the world over, reaching central Europe (in as far-flung places as Bohemia and Poland), Spain (thanks to Elisabetta Farnese, Philip V's queen), and Latin America.

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Jean-Philippe Rameau’s 1728 cantata Le berger fidèle is one of his last small-scale works before he began tackling the world of opera. Like his first opera Hippolyte et Aricie, Berger deals with mythological themes, such as shepherds, nymphs, goddesses, and the idylls of Arcadia. Directly inspired by Guarini’s text Il pastor fido, Berger tells the tale of Mirtillo and Amaryllis, two star-crossed lovers in the crosshairs of temptation. Mirtillo, unable to allow his lover to be sacrificed on the altar to Diana, offers himself in exchange. Amazed by his faithfulness, a satisfied Diana blesses the couple and nullifies the sacrifice as Hymen, god of love, raises his torch.

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Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Bohemian composer Jan Josef Ignác Brentner's arias "Hoste devicto" and "Si quid est in corde meo" (from his 1716 collection Harmonica duodecatomeria ecclesiastica) and Guatemalan composer Rafael Castellanos’ tonada “¡Ay! ténganmele, Señores” showcase the other side of amorous ardour: sacred love. Castellanos, who was chapelmaster at Guatemala Cathedral in the late eighteenth century, wrote this tonada for the feast of the Ascension of the Lord in 1776. The text describes a female narrator who is “ill with an original malady”—a metaphor for original sin. Her love comes and cures her, but she is despondent that he is now leaving her, for he is “going and going and going” and she thus pleads for the listener to hold on to him. Written in the style of a jácara, this piece of vernacular sacred music, performed here for the first time in the modern day, is a window into the prolific world of music-making in what was then the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Just like Castellanos after him, Brentner was exposed to the Italian style, this time in Prague. His virtuosic string and vocal writing provide simultaneous triumph and pastoral sweetness in these two contrasting arias.

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Intercalated between these works are selected movements from François Couperin’s sonata Parnassus or The Apotheosis of Corelli. This programmatic sonata imagines the composer Arcangelo Corelli, renowned and revered even in life, arriving at the gates of Parnassus and admiring the beauty before him. We also include a trio sonata by Corelli as well as sonatas by Jacques-Christophe Naudot and Jean-Marie Leclair, both leading French exponents of the violin.