The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: X-rated classic music? The UW-Madison Madrigal Singers will perform a program of choral music “for adults only” this Saturday night.

By Jacob Stockinger

So much choral music seems to be sacred music.

Most of it, in fact.

But this week along comes a program of secular music.

For adults.

Only.

The program would probably be rated by Hollywood as NC-17 or X.

It is called “Not in Front of the Children” and will be performed this Saturday night at 8 p.m., in Mills Hall by the UW Madrigal Singers (below top) under director Bruce Gladstone (below bottom, in a photo by Katrin Talbot).

The program comes with the warning: **For Mature Audiences**

Adds the website for the UW-Madison School of Music:

“Choral music isn’t all masses, psalms and spirituals. Madrigals, part songs, folksongs and chansons are just some examples of the secular side of choral singing and, quite honestly, it’s not all nature worship and charming love ballads.

“Long before Tipper Gore (below) was slapping CDs with warning labels, poets and composers were regaling their contemporaries with eroticism and humor that ranged from coy to seriously explicit.

“Over the years, supposedly well-meaning editors and musicologists have often provided bowdlerized translations or, worse, simply labeled certain pieces vulgar, leaving them obscene and not heard.

“The Madrigal Singers, consciences pricked, will cast off false propriety and expose their audience to a wealth of bawdy, lascivious, erotic and often hilarious musical gems. From saucy chansons to Mozart’s scatological canons, this will be an evening you’ll long remember. And not just because you left the kids at home …” (One example of such a scatological work by Mozart is in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

No word on specific works. The Ear usually complains about that.

But in this case, that would probably just spoil the surprise and fun!