Submitted by Jeffrey Cohan
This performance will reveal suites assembled in 1713 of Louis XIV’s favorite music from many decades, almost surely for the first time since his death in 1715. A Little Evening Concert for Louis XIV will take place at 7 p.m., Friday, Jan. 20 at Brickworks, at 150 Nichols St., Friday Harbor with baroque bassoonist Anna Marsh, baroque violinist Courtney Kuroda, baroque violist Stephen Creswell and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan.
A remarkable and almost completely unknown manuscript of 770 pages discovered in Paris by Cohan was prepared in 1713 for evening performances for the aging Louis XIV by his long-time music librarian Andre Danican Philidor l’aine, who organized and transcribed some of Louis’ favorite music from at least the previous 54 years, possibly for performance by a select group of the king’s favorite instrumentalists. Two years before his death in 1715, Louis XIV was particularly anxious to revisit the music of his youth and the ensuing decades, and Philidor dates some of these selections as far back as 1659, when Louis XIV was 21 and had danced for eight years already in ballet performances at court, most famously as the sun god Apollo.
Many of the 67 suites from this unique manuscript have probably not otherwise been heard anywhere since the death of Louis XIV in 1715. Eleven of them have been performed in the last few years by Cohan in Washington, D.C. for the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival,and for the Salish Sea Early Music Festival.
The suites are between two and 12 movements each and range from very short and to quite long. Often, they have colorful titles representative of the Opera texts and consist of transcriptions for a smaller ensemble of excerpts from Operas and instrumental works, mostly by Jean-Baptiste Lully, the king’s indispensable court composer since 1653 who had been dead already for 26 years in 1713. Other composers include the younger Michel-Richard de la Lande and Philidor himself.
Entitled “Collection of Symphonies and Trios by Mr. Lully and several Trios by Mr. De la Lande/ For the little concerts given for his Majesty in the evenings/ collected and put in order by Philidor le Pere,” the manuscript contains individual parts for two soprano instruments (flutes, violins or oboes), an haute-contre or high tenor part, and an unfigured bass, implying that no chordal instrument (such as harpsichord or lute) was used, with each part consisting of 145 manuscript pages to which is affixed the same engraved nine pages of title page and table of contents. This exciting and extensive new source of chamber music at the court of Louis XIV is to be explored on the baroque instruments with which the king was familiar.
The baroque bassoon was a favored bass instrument, particularly in chamber music settings, as is evidenced by a beautifully bound manuscript in the Library of Congress, the “Simphonies Choisies” assembled in 1695 by Philidor as a present from Louis XIV to the Duke of Bavaria, which also contains no figures to be realized by any chordal instrument and mentions no bass instrument other than bassoon.
The 2017 Salish Sea Early Music Festival includes seven contrasting programs from January through June of renaissance, baroque and Beethoven-era chamber music on period instruments on San Juan Island, with special guests from Hannover and Lübeck, Germany, and from around the Northwest and the United States and Canada. The complete schedule follows and is soon to be posted with additional information at www.salishseafestival.org/sanjuan.
San Juan Island 2017 Salish Sea Early Music Festival performance schedule: (Each is performed at Brickworks in Friday Harbor).
7 p.m., Friday, Jan. 20
A Little Concert for Louis XIV: A never-before-heard selection of suites prepared for evening performances for Louis XIV from a remarkable and unknown manuscript from 1713. Jeffrey Cohan, flute; Rom Pokorny, violin; Stephen Creswell, viola; Anna Marsh, baroque bassoon
7 p.m., Monday, Feb. 6
Johann Sebastian Bach: Sublime chamber music by Bach. Susie Napper, cello; Hans-Juergen Schnoor, harpsichord; Jeffrey Cohan, flute
7 p.m., Saturday, March 11
Celebrating 250 Years of Telemann: Honoring the Baroque’s most prolific composer.
Bernward Lohr, harpsichord; Anne Roehrig, violin; Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute
7 p.m., Friday, April 14
The Art of Modulation II: A new set of selections from chess master Philidor’s “The Art of Modulation” and other late Baroque works. Linda Melsted, violin; Rom Pokorny, violin; Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute; Jonathan Oddie, harpsichord
1 p.m., Sunday, May 14
A Century of New Perspective: 1600-1700: Chamber music in transition, including 17th-century trios on both late renaissance and early baroque instruments. Ingrid Matthews, violin; Elisabeth Wright, harpsichord; Jeffrey Cohan, baroque and renaissance flutes
7 p.m., Saturday, June 10
Giuliani’s Guitar: Virtuoso works from the early 19th-century golden age for flute and guitar. John Schneiderman, guitar; Jeffrey Cohan, eight-keyed flute
