“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” wrote George Santayana.
To which Kurt Vonnegut responded, “I’ve got news for Mr. Santayana: we’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That’s what it is to be alive.”
This Sunday morning on WPRB, we’ll have music by contemporary composers – that is to say, composers active within the last 80 years, give or take – who remember the past quite well, but who opt to repeat it anyway, though with delightful variations.
In honor of Early Music Month, we’ll gaze into a distant mirror – make that a funhouse mirror – glimpsing courtly dances, Gregorian chant, madrigals, and hymn tunes, transformed by “contemporary” sensibilities.
Among the morning’s highlights will be Princeton composer Paul Lansky’s “Semi-Suite” for guitar, completed in 1998, music that loosely, wittily, and, ultimately, movingly evokes dance suites of the Baroque Era; and the transporting “Vespers” of 2008 by Philadelphia composer, writer, and radio personality Kile Smith, a work that conjures “the musical flowering of the Protestant Reformation,” as heard in an authoritative performance by The Crossing and Piffaro, The Renaissance Band.
Hopefully these will help get you in the mood for this year’s Guild for Early Music Festival, which will be held this Sunday afternoon at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ. This year’s festival will take place on the two stages of the Seward Johnson Center for the Arts, from 12:30 to 5:30 p.m. Enjoy mini-concerts for cornetti, dulcians, recorders, and violas da gamba, then take a break to stroll the grounds and grab a cup of coffee — but keep an eye on those peacocks! You’ll find more information at guildforearlymusic.org and groundsforsculpture.org.
Some things never go out of style. What goes around comes around, this Sunday morning from 7 to 10 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and wprb.com. Travel back to Merrie Olde Princeton, on Classic Ross Amico.
Early Music America
