Tag: pifarri

Jubilate Musica

My first semester of freshman year in college, I took Music History 204 (having skipped the prerequisites due to 6 years of orchestra and a strong passion for music history). Professor Stoner walked us through about 600 years of music, from “Hey, we can write this down so we don’t forget”, through hocketing to the Baroque. I fell for early music, and I fell hard. I still haven’t recovered from that first passionate discovery.

My sophomore year, having quite quickly exhausted the early music resources of a school that definitely wasn’t strongest in music and definitely definitely wasn’t strongest in early music, I did an independent study on Wind Instrumental Ensembles in Italy from 1450 to 1620. That website is actually how (why) I learned HTML, which led to a 10 year career as a programmer. I digress. I love love love early music. Of all early music, I love best the wind ensemble music of 16th century Italy. Of that, I *heart* Giovanni Gabrieli’s wind ensemble compositions most of all, and daydream about hearing them with authentic instruments. I made my husband go with me to Venice, just to stand in St. Marks and imagine what it sounded with Gabrieli’s opposing choirs.

So when I got a note from one of my favorite local early music ensembles (Blue Heron) mentioning in a small postscript that their conductor was going to be leading a bunch of young musicians playing period instruments in a program of Gabrieli and Praetorius, well…. I had to be there.

It was with a light heart this morning, in summer sunlight, that I turned my steel chariot to transport me to Back Bay for the concert. I had planned on taking the T, but I was running a bit behind and figured that I’d probably be able to find street parking, and if I didn’t, I could park in one of the lots down there. That was ok with me. Heaven forbid I be late. There were cornetti and sackbuts! Tickets sold at the door! Late was not an option.

About halfway down 93 I noticed that there were a lot, and I mean a LOT of small planes and helicopters circling over the city. I passed a digital billboard with yellow, black and a “B” in the middle. It was 11:25 am on Saturday the 18th.

Whoops.

Reckoning that my original course was still my best option, I pressed on to the city, encountering surprisingly little traffic. But when I got to Back Bay, route after route was closed for the parade. And parking? Completely non-existent. I crawled through the streets looking desperately for pay parking, meter parking or permit parking where I would only get ticketed, not towed. How horrible and appalling it would be to drive past the church where this music was to take place (several times) and yet be denied! I started to panic. Then, just when my situation was getting dire, I found a great spot at a meter (no charge for weekends) which didn’t even require me to use my (non-existent) parallel parking skills. The day was saved! I rushed breathless to the church.

Taking advantage of my single status, I ante’d up my $10 and walked in. There was no assigned seating. I noticed, Presbyterian-like, that only a few people were sitting in the very front row. I made myself one of them. The church quickly filled behind me.

And oh glory! There were cornetti and sackbuts! There were recorders and theorbos. There were bass viols and violones. There was a harpsichord and organ. And there were glorious singers – clear crisp sopranos, warm confident mezzos, firm authoritative tenors and profound basses. They sang in Latin and German. There was counterpoint across the balconys. In fact, the only downside of this concert is that I was directly under the balcony that held the sackbuts, so I didn’t get to watch them except for one piece where they were in the center area of the stage. One of my favorite conductors (Scott Metcalfe who [how cool is this?] does a conducted sing-along once a year so interested amateurs like myself can remember how much fun it is to make music. He’s an EXCELLENT rehearser!) was center stage, animated, bringing the musicians along with him.

For an hour and a half, I glowed. My heart sang. At several Gabrieli chords, tears came to my eyes. It was superb.

The glow has come through the day with me. I feel nourished and restored. I feel extremely tempted to pull out my cornetto and see if I can get good enough to get called in. (Apparently, talking with one of the cornettists afterwards, they’re extremely hard to come by and perhaps the standard is lower than it might be for other musicians.) The day was clear and warm. The city was full of celebrations. And I had the sounds of Gabrieli in my ears.

These are the moments of our life to which we aspire, and which we must hold firmly in memory. It was glorious.


My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit has rejoiced in God my savior.

Musings on my past

There was a time in my life when I was quite possibly the world’s expert on something (although probably not). Unfortunately, it was when I was about 19. I wrote an independent research paper — cobbling together scraps of information from ‘divers’ sources, about the wind ensemble I called the pifarri. They were an Italian phenomenon that never stayed the same for a century. Mutable creatures. They started out being homogenic shawm bands, with shawms of different pitches. You know, your average bass shawm. Shawms are, for those who didn’t bother to click, basically loud bagpipes without the bags.

Then came the lovely, my heart’s desire, the cornetto. I mourn that the cornetto got lost, and had largely disappeared by the time the great classical composers arrived (although it hung around in German drinking bands for a while). It has a beautiful, soft sound. It’s versatile and lovely. The cornetto played in mixed ensembles with sackbuts (a trombone predecessor), and that is the 16th century ensemble I dream of.

It was for that grouping that Giovanni Gabrieli, arguably the best and most important composer of his century, wrote his Sonanta Pian e Forte — the first known piece with dynamic markings. He is also one of my favorite composers. He wrote in Venice, in St. Marks cathedral. They would get two bands of these pifarri — 12 or 16 players in all, and put them antiphonally on balconies on either side of the church. The music written for these circumstances intertwines, opposes, combines in rich an luscious ways. And it was so specifically written for one geography, this one church, that I longed to go. (Of course, what I was really longing to do was to be a pifarro, but that’s another story.)

I bring this up because after longing to go my whole life (or since my sophomore year of college), I will hopefully be going to Venice this October. I will stand in St. Marks. If I’m very, very lucky perhaps I will be able to hear antiphonal brass choirs calling to each other from across the congregation and echoing in the dome.

I wonder if it can possibly be as splendid as I imagine it. I hope so.