Project overview
Restoration London clamoured with music, as the town enjoyed its release from the strictures of the Protectorate and belatedly binged on the latest pleasure-giving styles. The most conspicuous child of this musical emancipation was of course English opera - but another, entirely new genre also came into being: the Cecilian Ode. Our programme opens with probably the first-ever such piece: Henry Purcell's Welcome to all the Pleasures. We then give an outing to a little-known example by the Italian-born Londoner Giovanni Battista Draghi - would he have been proud if he'd known that he was the only Italian ever to set John Dryden? - before concluding with the capital's most famous musical Gastarbeiter, George Frederick Handel.
Project repertoire & personnel
Henry Purcell (1659-1695): Welcome to all the Pleasures
Giovanni Battista Draghi (c.1640-1708): From harmony, from heav'nly harmony
George Frederick Handel (1685-1759): Ode for St Cecilia's Day
5 violins ~ 2 violas ~ 2 celli ~ bass ~ lute ~ harpsichord ~ chamber organ ~ flute ~ 2 recorders ~ 2 oboes ~ bassoon ~ 2 trumpets ~ timpani
4 sopranos ~ 3 altos ~ 3 tenors ~ 4 basses
Performances
2009: Grosvenor Chapel, Mayfair, London. (2009 Handel Institute Conference)
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| Julian Forbes (tenor); Christopher Lowrey (counter-tenor); Jonathan Sells (bass-baritone) rehearsing Draghi's From harmony at Grosvenor Chapel, Mayfair, November 2009 |
