2012: Let’s Celebrate the 50 Year Anniversary of the BC Recorder Society!
Spring Showcase 2012: Celebrating our 50th Birthday
by Anthony Morgan Programme
Hodson Manor was packed to its venerable gills with friends of the fipple on May 3, 2012, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the BC Recorder Society. Our usual consort of eager players was augmented by plenty of friends and family and an impressive group of past presidents. Many thanks to Lynne Taylor and Tony Griffiths for organizing the event. Do read Tony’s excellent article on the history of the society for a little context. Click here for a copy of the programme.
Please excuse any lack of detail in these recollections, as I did not know at the time that I might be asked to write this. Being only too aware that the recorder is perhaps the instrument closest to the human voice in its ability to transmit nervousness directly from the diaphragm of the performer to the ear of the listener, I was rather focused on preparing to play pieces in the middle and near the end of the program.
On the program were selections covering some 650 years from late medieval times, missing only the Romantic era, through to the present. Many pieces were arranged for recorders from original vocal, lute or keyboard music and some were composed specifically for our instrument. The Domaren Consort set a festive mood early in the program with Thomas Morley’s It was a lover and his lass (“Hey ding a ding a ding, sweet lovers love the Spring”) and notably played the only piece by a female composer, Francesca Caccini. The earliest music was Guillaume de Machaut’s Quant je ne vois from the mid-Fourteenth Century ably played by Merrie Accord. Childe’s Play and Bergamasca offered selections from the Seventeenth Century and took us into the Baroque with Sammartini. The White Rock Sandpipers and the Mount Pleasant Consort played settings of Corelli string sonatas. Musica Amici offered a Branle by Michael Praetorius arranged by their own Mark Demers. Every consort should be lucky enough to have a resident arranger! The Recorderistas, the artists formerly known as The Novices, even touched on the Classical Period with an Ecossaise by Beethoven, and Zwei Blockfloten offered a Heinz Irsen Sonatine from the mid-Twentieth Century. Several of the groups were short a member for various reasons, turning quartets into trios; they were missed.
After a lovely and lively intermission full of champagne toasts, chocolate cake and socializing we reconvened to play music by live composers! David Donaldson led us through his Canzona Cinquanta, written especially for the occasion. The piece was suitably accessible, fun and elegant for a fiftieth birthday. To close the event, Liz Hamel did a great job of conducting us through a sight-reading of James Whittaker’s Fancy No. 2, in memory of Frank Gamble (the founder of the BC Recorder Society and a professor of Early Music at UBC). “Bar 47, 2, 3, 4!” brought some of us back on track after unanticipated key changes or rhythmic shifts. I believe that with a little rehearsal we would have done justice to the elegance and wit of its ragtime but the evening was getting late….
Where might the next generations come from? Can we recruit younger members? Can we keep the spirit of the old music fresh and encourage the composition and arrangement of new work? With a hey and a ho and a hey nonny no to the next fifty years and may we all continue to play with joy and to grow in our music making!
©2012, Anthony Morgan
Hodson Manor was packed to its venerable gills with friends of the fipple on May 3, 2012, in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the BC Recorder Society. Our usual consort of eager players was augmented by plenty of friends and family and an impressive group of past presidents. Many thanks to Lynne Taylor and Tony Griffiths for organizing the event. Do read Tony’s excellent article on the history of the society for a little context. Click here for a copy of the programme.
Please excuse any lack of detail in these recollections, as I did not know at the time that I might be asked to write this. Being only too aware that the recorder is perhaps the instrument closest to the human voice in its ability to transmit nervousness directly from the diaphragm of the performer to the ear of the listener, I was rather focused on preparing to play pieces in the middle and near the end of the program.
On the program were selections covering some 650 years from late medieval times, missing only the Romantic era, through to the present. Many pieces were arranged for recorders from original vocal, lute or keyboard music and some were composed specifically for our instrument. The Domaren Consort set a festive mood early in the program with Thomas Morley’s It was a lover and his lass (“Hey ding a ding a ding, sweet lovers love the Spring”) and notably played the only piece by a female composer, Francesca Caccini. The earliest music was Guillaume de Machaut’s Quant je ne vois from the mid-Fourteenth Century ably played by Merrie Accord. Childe’s Play and Bergamasca offered selections from the Seventeenth Century and took us into the Baroque with Sammartini. The White Rock Sandpipers and the Mount Pleasant Consort played settings of Corelli string sonatas. Musica Amici offered a Branle by Michael Praetorius arranged by their own Mark Demers. Every consort should be lucky enough to have a resident arranger! The Recorderistas, the artists formerly known as The Novices, even touched on the Classical Period with an Ecossaise by Beethoven, and Zwei Blockfloten offered a Heinz Irsen Sonatine from the mid-Twentieth Century. Several of the groups were short a member for various reasons, turning quartets into trios; they were missed.
After a lovely and lively intermission full of champagne toasts, chocolate cake and socializing we reconvened to play music by live composers! David Donaldson led us through his Canzona Cinquanta, written especially for the occasion. The piece was suitably accessible, fun and elegant for a fiftieth birthday. To close the event, Liz Hamel did a great job of conducting us through a sight-reading of James Whittaker’s Fancy No. 2, in memory of Frank Gamble (the founder of the BC Recorder Society and a professor of Early Music at UBC). “Bar 47, 2, 3, 4!” brought some of us back on track after unanticipated key changes or rhythmic shifts. I believe that with a little rehearsal we would have done justice to the elegance and wit of its ragtime but the evening was getting late….
Where might the next generations come from? Can we recruit younger members? Can we keep the spirit of the old music fresh and encourage the composition and arrangement of new work? With a hey and a ho and a hey nonny no to the next fifty years and may we all continue to play with joy and to grow in our music making!
©2012, Anthony Morgan
