Spotlight on the Netherlands: Odes and Motets II

We continue our long and fruitful association with our partners at Radio Netherlands in presenting a series of concerts from the 2009 Holland Festival of Early Music at Utrecht. The RNW web site provides more in-depth information about the music and performers we hear as well as more information about the festival (www.rnmusic.nl). The primary theme for 2009 was the 250th anniversary of the death of Handel and the 350th of the birth of Purcell.

RNW has also prepared a short YouTube video introduction to the festival for this year:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8gw2qGUaBw

NOTE: All of the music on these programs is performed by the ensemble B'rock with the Innsbruck Festival Chorus. For more information on B'rock:

www.loganartsmanagement.com/ensembles/B-Rock

and for the Innsbruck Festival Chorus:

www.altemusik.at

B’Rock
Innsbruck Festival Chorus
Timothy Brown

Judith van Wanroij, soprano
Maarten Engeltjes, countertenor
Christopher Ainslie, countertenor
Tom Raskin, tenor
Stephan Varcoe, baritone
Giles Underwood, bass

Odes & Motets

Recorded by Bert van Dijk, Helix

Grant Colburn on Jeremiah Clarke's Ode to the Death of Henry Purcell:

The Ode "Come, Come Along For a Dance and a Song" is by Jeremiah Clarke. Yes, THAT Jeremiah Clarke, who wrote the tuneful yet simplistic and overplayed Trumpet Tune and Prince of Denmark's March (both used to be thought by Purcell). Its a small half hour drama which is believed to have been acted out on stage where nymphs and shepherds are happy frolicking and dancing when a messenger comes interrupting them with the new that Henry Purcell has died. From the the mood apruptly shifts into melancholy and sadness climaxing with a remarkable funeral dirge/march with tympani and trumpets tolling out the death knells of funeral bells.  The piece is really spectacular and should be heard by anyone who has an interest in English baroque music, Purcell's Dido and Aeneas or Blow's Venus and Adonis. 

On the Caroline Te Deum, Agnes van der Horst writes:

Purcell's music echoed down the years long after his premature death in 1695. Twenty-five years later, Handel paid public tribute to his predecessor in the composition Te Deum for Queen Caroline; an homage to God, but in essence a tribute to Purcell, the god of 17th century English music.