The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: Is Rameau the French Bach? UW-Madison faculty players and Baroque scholar Charles Dill will explore Rameau throughout this season. The first two FREE events are this Thursday and Friday nights.

By Jacob Stockinger

For some musicologists and audiences, the French Baroque composer  Jean-Philippe Rameau (below) is wholly misunderstood, under-performed and underappreciated.  Some even see him as the French counterpart to Johann Sebastian Bach.

But a year-long project by the University of Wisconsin School of Music aims to correct that lack of knowledge and appreciation.

That effort starts with two FREE concerts this week.

Here is a link to a Q&A about Rameau done with UW-Madison musicologist Charles Dill for the UW-Madison School of Music blog:

http://www.music.wisc.edu/2014/10/16/rameau-dill/

THURSDAY

On Thursday night, Nov. 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Room 180 of Science Hall, at the intersection of Langdon Streets and  North Park Street, the FREE program “Rameau and Musical Expression” will take place. The subject is the French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. The 250th anniversary of his death is being marked this year around the world.

Music of the mid-18th century can strike modern audiences as stilted or dispassionate, but composers of the time, like society at large, thought about the passions a great deal — how to describe them, what their physical properties were, and how to depict them on stage for the benefit of audiences.

David Ronis (below top, in a photo by Luke Delalio), a stage director who has specialized in Baroque staging practices, and Anne Vila (below bottom), a scholar specializing in 18th-century theories of the emotions, will discuss passion in the thought of Rameau’s contemporaries, suggesting cues for listening to Rameau’s music. The evening will include a performance of  cantata Les Amants trahis by Paul Rowe, Chelsie Propst, John Chappell Stowe and Eric Miller.

FRIDAY

Then on this Friday might, Nov. 14, at 8 p.m. in Mills Hall, UW-Madison bassoonist and native Frenchman Marc Vallon  (below, in a photo by James Gill) will present a FREE all-French program that highlights his own works and arrangements as well as the music of Jean-Phillippe Rameau in one of his most well-known works, “Les Indes Galantes.”

Vallon will be joined by other performers and period instruments will be used in historically informed performances.

Here is the program:

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937)   Pièce en forme de Habanera for bassoon and piano

Marc Vallon (b.1955)    Serbian Songs for viola and bassoon – Tuzbalica-Harvest Song-Trezkavica

Marc Vallon      Ami for Baroque flute

Jules Massenet (1842-1912)  (arr. M. Vallon)  La Lettre

Georges Bizet (1838-1875) (arr. M. Vallon)

Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894)           L’Invitation au Voyage

INTERMISSION

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), Les Indes Galantes, a 45-minute version. Ouverture; Menuets 1 & 2; Musette en Rondeau; Air; L’Amour “Ranimez vos Flambeaux”; Ritournelle, “Le Turc Généreux,”;  Air, “Osman Il faut que l’amour s’envole”; Récit et Orage; Choeur des Matelots; Emilie; Rigaudons; Air pour les esclaves Africains; Tambourins; “Les Incas du Pérou,”  Scène 1; Air “Le calumet de la Paix”; Air et Choeur “Traversez les plus vastes mers.”

(At the bottom is a concluding movement from “Les Indes Gallantes” in a popular YouTube video that more than one million hits. It is performed by Marc Minkowski directing Les Musicians du Louvre.)

Marc Vallon has split his impressive performing career between the modern and baroque bassoons. In addition to appearances with many of Paris’ orchestras and celebrated contemporary ensembles, Vallon has played baroque bassoon with leading early music ensembles such as La Chapelle Royale, Les Arts Florissants, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Tafelmusik.  In this recital, Marc Vallon will bring his skill on both instruments and thorough knowledge of and feeling for baroque music to works by Jean-Philippe Rameau and J.S. Bach, two great masters of the late baroque period.

Other participants include: Thomas Kasdorf, piano; Sally Chisholm, viola; Nathan Giglierano, Ilana Schroeder, Gene Purdue, baroque violins; Micah Behr, baroque viola; Martha Vallon, Andrew Briggs, baroque cellos; Jeanne Swack and Mili Chang, baroque flute; Konstantinos Tiliakos, baroque oboe; Brian Ellingboe, baroque bassoon; John Chappell Stowe, harpsichord.

Mesdames singers: Elizabeth Hagedorn, Chelsie Propst, Christina Kay.

Messieurs singers: Paul Rowe, Dennis Gotkowski, Antonio De Souza.

There will also be an Introduction to the second half by UW-Madison School of Music musicologist Charles Dill (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot), who has been speaking about Rameau in the U.S. and France.

This concert is part of the school’s year-long retrospective of the work of Rameau. Click here for more information.