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Go to Old Music News Archive Home Old Music News Volume 26, Number 1 December 2002 AUTHOR MARY ANN TAYLOR-HALL WRITES IN CELEBRATION OF THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CENTER FOR OLD MUSIC IN THE NEW WORLD “That we may have apples and cider next year” I think that the first Center for Old Music concert I attended took place in 1980, when my neighbor Anna Isaacs began singing with the group. What I remember of that first concert was my amazement that my friend, whom I’d watched wiring houses and fixing tractors, could sing like that. All those times we were chasing cows, watching basketball games, pitching straw on our gardens, looking for wildflowers, this mysterious life and art was waiting in her for its occasion. From the first moment, there was no doubt that what I was witnessing was an Occasion — for all the musicians involved, and for everyone in the audience, as well. I don’t think it’s the least significant point to be noticed about this group that, back then, it seemed mostly to have been made up of people who had kept the faith of the late 60’s and 70’s, who were trying to live at peace with the natural world, and to find some relevant way to share their talent with their community. The ensemble, in other words, seemed mainly an improbable collection of ex-hippies. And then, having assembled themselves around the happy miracle of Donna Boyd turning up in Lexington, Kentucky (happy, certainly, for Lexington), they opened their mouths, and I heard them for the first time.... I had come to Kentucky a few years before from New York. Before I landed in the deep sticks of Harrison County, I had enjoyed a fairly rich life of concert-going, I’d say, and I had been introduced to early music through the recordings of the Musical Heritage Society. I loved my records of Purcell and Monteverdi and Corelli. I also had two albums by the counter-tenor Alfred Deller. So I thought I knew something, when I got myself to that concert in December of 1980. In fact, I knew next to nothing. I have been a faithful attender since that night, and I understand now that listening to the music the Center for Old Music has offered us at its Christmas and other concerts this past quarter of a century has taught me what music is. We have often lamented that these concerts have not been recorded: they all have been worthy of being listened to over and over, and several of them have contained the purest moments of music that those of us who were lucky enough to hear them will ever experience. But, in a way, I’m glad they weren’t recorded. The music we heard has been a living thing, no more willing to be caught than a bird. We go to the concert, we put ourselves into the condition to receive what’s offered, and we receive it. The gift is in the moment of that transaction. Early music lives much closer to the bone, it seems to me, than classical music, with its greater elaborations of orchestration; early music seems to have the actual lineaments of the human spirit, moving with austere logical beauty through its changes. It is never all that far from the melodic thought that called it into being, though it has its glorious openings, ornamentations, soaring flights, and unpredictabilities. Still, it is the clear glass of the earliest churches, with perhaps a pane or two of blue or green, as opposed to the huge stained glass windows of the cathedrals: it lets the light in, it doesn’t drench it. The music we heard, Christmas after Christmas, spring after spring, seemed meant to be apprehended in the intricate moment of its making, and then let go of. Like the years themselves. “Oh that was wonderful, that was hair-raising, that was the best concert ever....” We blurted out our inadequate praise after each concert, or sometimes we just ran away with our hands over our ears, not wanting to talk to anyone, wanting to hold on as long as possible to what we’d heard. A quarter of a century. The musicians had children, changed professions, marriages, addresses. Others drifted in; some passed through, some stayed. Voices took on new coloration. The balance changed, the dynamic altered a little, then a little more. Musick’s Company gained and lost instruments and wonderful musicians, adapted itself, gained others. The whole operation has seemed rather like a garden, which year to year rearranges itself, readjusts to the conditions in which it finds itself. We all got a quarter of a century older. And some of us, in the audience, learned a little how to understand what it was we were hearing. How to hear. I never have attended any performances as faithfully as I’ve attended these offerings of the Center for Old Music. Often, when I’m making the forty-five minute drive into town, I’ve asked myself why it’s so crucial to me to be in attendance, why I feel so desolate when I have to miss one of these concerts. The answer is that something of great precision and beauty is being offered to us, one time only. Our part is to be there, to take it in as best we can, and then to go back where we came from, changed a little. Not to be present for it seems like missing out, woefully and permanently. When I began thinking about writing this piece, I wanted all the old programs and newsletters, thinking to reminisce about this or that wonderful moment, wanting to be sure to get the composers’ and performers’ names right. But I found that I don’t have the musical memory to retain the distinct shape of any of these events. For me, when I scan the wealth of music that has been presented to us by the Center for Old Music, under the brilliant direction of Donna Boyd, what I’m left with is the rank of familiar, loved faces, all these years, composed and waiting, at high and somehow joyful attention. And the audience waiting also. And then the first astonishing sound of those voices opening the air. The gift of any particular concert has been like a picnic basket; one singer steps forward, or two, or here the whole chorus is, in four parts, or eight, singing with and against, making the difficult seem natural and easy; then there is an interlude for the recorders to pipe in their ancient way; perhaps the lute comes in, or the harpsichord spills out a stunning tumble of notes. Sometimes the music is raucous, sometimes it’s sexy, sometimes it’s of a beauty that seems etched in the air, sometimes it’s divine. Sometimes there are drums, or tambourines, sometimes a little dancing — or swaying, at the very least. At the end, there’s often a good bit of silliness — and joy come to our jolly wassail. And who can forget The Hits of the Fifties, with the Parkettes and the Shytones? Last Christmas, we assembled in shaken and somber mood, sure only that we had to go on doing what we’d always done. In that concert, which featured the beautiful Victoria Requiem, it seemed to me that we were shown a way not only to grieve for the loss of so many souls to hopeless rage and violence, but also to attach ourselves once more to a belief in the capacity of the human spirit that music expresses, which stands in direct and consecrated opposition to the abstract violence of terrorism, war, and bombs. So, to The Center for Old Music: for that evening, and all the others that have guided and graced and transported us for these twenty-five years, we will applaud you for twenty-five more. Mary Ann Taylor-Hall is the award-winning author of How She Knows What She Knows About Yo-Yos, a collection of short stories, and Come and Go, Molly Snow, which has been hailed as “one of the best novels ever written about music...one of the best novels ever written, period.”
A Handefull of Christmas Delights The very first official Center For Old Music Christmas Concert was held on December 18, 1977. That program was based on an ideal we still hold dear: “Through the ages some have brought offerings of gold and myrrh; others have wrought their most precious gifts in music.” A quarter century later our musical procession continues: the Center’s silver anniversary Christmas concert will be held on December 16, 2002. The vocal and instrumental ensembles of Musick’s Company, along with a couple of special guests, will perform new renditions of some very old favorites from many memorable concerts past. You will at least recognize the tunes, and maybe the Dutch, Spanish, French and German too. Some new selections are slated (in Catalan and Latin) and a special treat will feature violinist Zach Brock, in from Chicago, performing a Telemann cantata with tenor Hunter Hensley and harpsichordist Donna Boyd. The old recorder quartet is together once again, as Atossa Kramer has rejoined the ranks, and viola da gambist Dwight Newton is back in Kentucky and in Musick’s Company. Finally of note, the vocal ensemble has been expanded with a few more good men: Dan Duncan, Wayne Gebb and Loren Tice. (We now have that rarity traditionally lacking in virtually all choral groups: balance!) The concert gets under way at 8:00 and once again we are happy to present it at St.Michael’s Episcopal Church. Ticket prices are still the same! ($10 regular, $8 seniors & $5 students) And, yes, we will sing the Wassail. And won’t you, too? OLD MUSIC NEWS is published by 2002-03 season: Through the ages some have brought offerings of gold and myrrh; Musick’s Company |
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