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The Soothing Simplicity of Musica Pacifica

Niels Swinkels on November 15, 2016
Musica Pacifica

When the members of Bay Area baroque ensemble Musica Pacifica put together their program for the opening of the 40th season of the S.F. Early Music Society, little could they have suspected that sacred and secular music from 17th century Italy would offer much needed distraction, comfort and soothing in the wake of an emotionally turbulent week.

But thankfully, that is exactly what happened.

For a few enjoyable hours, those fortunate enough to attend one of the ensemble’s concerts in Palo Alto, Berkeley, or San Francisco found themselves in the consoling presence of Italian masters of greater and lesser fame, such as Giulio Caccini, Alessandro Stradella, Giovanni Legrenzi, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Tarquinio Merula. And there was even a dash of George Frideric Handel.

Musica Pacifica, which consists of Judith Linsenberg (recorders); Elizabeth Blumenstock (violin); William Skeen (cello); Charles Sherman (harpsichord/organ); and John Lenti (theorbo/baroque guitar) invited British countertenor Ryland Angel to perform a pair of sacred cantatas and two secular arias that illustrate 17th-century Italian sentiments about religious and worldly love and the way they overlap.

Angel dug especially deep into the emotions of Scarlatti’s Infirmata Vulnerata (1702), which starts in a mood of despair about unrequited love but ends in optimism and confidence, hopeful that the lovers in question will be united for eternity. This was also reflected in the beautiful way in which the timbres of Linsenberg’s alto recorder and Angel’s voice matched and merged.

John Lenti

Theorbist John Lenti opened the concert with a solo piece by (the to me hitherto unknown) composer Giovanni Geronimo Kapsberger (c. 1580-1651). Lenti’s intimate moment in the spotlight perfectly illustrated why Kapsberger played such an important role in the development of the lute and the theorbo as solo instruments.

Like the rest of the program, it also showed how 17th-century Italian music is able to channel and process human emotions by simply condensing them into short and intense, contrasting movements and rapidly moving from one to the next.

Corelli’s sonata in C Major, Op 4, No 1, for instance, has a violin, recorder, and cello chasing each other through fast-moving sequences and ending in an upbeat Presto after a grievous Adagio, while parts of Stradella’s Sonata for Solo Violin and Continuo resembled a serious and slightly agitated conversation between friends, which moves through a melancholic (drunken?) phase but ends in a dynamic thrill ride, in which the friends seem to be riding into battle.  

With their wonderfully curated selection of Italian baroque gems, Musica Pacifica offered the audience plenty to reflect and project on.  

And isn’t that exactly what art is for?