NYS Baroque is taking audiences to 18th-century Paris with a program of music from the French Baroque, featuring works by both French and visiting composers.
Deborah Fox, who plays theorbo with NYS Baroque, says Paris was a city of dramatic contrasts during the period.
“Paris was rapidly growing, and it was becoming the second largest city in Europe after London in the early 18th century. And it was a city of great contrasts, and there was incredible excessive wealth at the palace and at court, and also great poverty and terrible conditions that eventually, at the end of the century, led to the French Revolution.”The music on the program, however, reflects a very different side of life in Paris.
“You don’t hear any idea of revolution coming,” Fox says. “You just hear a real flowering of incredible music.”
The concert features music by composers including Georg Philipp Telemann, Michel Blavet, Marin Marais, Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, and Jean-Marie Leclair. Although Telemann was German, he was invited to Paris in the 1730s, where he collaborated with a group of French musicians.
“Four musicians got together: a violinist, a flutist, a gamba player, and they invited him to write some pieces for them and to come and play with them,” Fox says. “So he wrote a number of quartets that he calls that are known today as the Paris Quartets.”
The program also includes music by Michel Blavet, who was one of the musicians Telemann encountered in Paris. Fox says the connections among the composers and performers make the program particularly enjoyable.
“We’re kind of getting everything all related to each other on this program,” she says. “It’s kind of fun.”
The musicians include violinist Julie Andrejeski, flutist Stephen Zohn, viola da gamba player Beiliang Zhu, and harpsichordist Michael Unger. Fox says they are among the leading performers in the field.
“These four musicians are really the crème of the crème,” she says. “They are really well known musicians throughout the country.”
Fox says the program also gives audiences a chance to hear some unusual instruments, including her own theorbo, a large bass lute with an extended neck and additional bass strings.
“What the harpsichord and the theorbo do is we accompany, we read from a bass line, and we improvise the accompaniment based on what we know about the musical language,” she says. “So it’s a little bit like playing Baroque jazz, and it’s really fun.”
The musicians will perform on copies of instruments used during the 18th century, including violins and a viola da gamba with gut strings. Fox describes the gamba as similar to a cello, but with a distinctive sound.
“It’s held between the legs like a cello, and bowed like a cello, but it has a slightly different sound than the cello — a little reedier, a little woodier, maybe,” she says.
One of the composers Fox is particularly enthusiastic about is Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, a woman who grew up at the French court as a musical prodigy and later established herself in Paris.
“She was incredibly remarkable,” Fox says. “She left the court when she was an adult, and she started to hold a series of salons in her apartment.”
Those gatherings brought musicians and composers together to perform new music, making Jacquet de La Guerre an important part of Paris's musical life.
“She was kind of on the cutting edge of what was happening in Paris,” Fox says. “It’s a very unusual piece. She has her own style that I just adore.”
The concert concludes with a chaconne by Jean-Marie Leclair. Fox says the form is one of her favorites in Baroque music.
“Once you start it, it repeats over and over the bass line, and there are all kinds of wonderful improvisations on top of it,” she says. “The audience just can’t help but being pulled along with this wonderful piece.”
NYS Baroque is in its 38th season, with concerts in Ithaca and Syracuse. Fox says the organization hopes this season will bring more Syracuse listeners into its audience. Each concert also features an informal pre-concert talk at 6:45 p.m., covering the music, instruments, and performers.
NYS Baroque presents “Paris” on October 2 at 7:30 p.m. at Pebble Hill Presbyterian Church, 5299 Jamesville Road in Syracuse, and October 3 at 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 309 Highland Road in Ithaca. Pre-concert talks begin at 6:45 p.m. For more information, visit nysbaroque.com.