The Operatic Life of Artemisia Gentileschi
Each week , we’re presenting a tiny taste of the BFX—an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Festival feast! * * * * * The life of painter Artemisia Gentileschi was so dramatic it could only be described as “operatic”: trained by her father, fellow painter Orazio Gentileschi, Artemisia became a renowned painter in her own right […]
The Burgundian School and the Order of the Golden Fleece
Each week , we’re presenting a tiny taste of the BFX—an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Festival feast! * * * * * The Distinguished Order of the Golden Fleece is a Catholic order of chivalry originally founded in Bruges, Flanders, by Philip the Good*, Duke of Burgundy in 1430 to celebrate his marriage to Isabella […]
From Haiti and Back Again: The Travels of Lisette
Each week , we’re presenting a tiny taste of the BFX—an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Festival feast! * * * * * “Lisette quitté la plaine” (Lisette has left the plain) is the earliest surviving Creole literary text, a poem set to music by a white Creole named Duvivier de la Mahautière sometime around 1757. It has as its […]
Dark Dreams: Women on the Edge
Each week , we’re presenting a tiny taste of the BFX—an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Festival feast! * * * * * Until fairly recently, women’s roles in European society were severely circumscribed, mainly confined to “kinder, küche, kirche”: children, cooking, church. Often, a good marriage was the only sort of financial security a woman could […]
The First Lutheran Oratorio: Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri
Each week , we’re presenting a tiny taste of the BFX—an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Festival feast! * * * * * Dieterich Buxtehude needs no introduction to early music lovers: his compositions are included regularly on concert programs, he is still a mainstay in college composition classes, and he is rightly lauded for his contributions […]
William Lawes’ Consort Setts
Each week , we’re presenting a tiny taste of the BFX—an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Festival feast! * * * * * While we do not have an exact date of birth, we do know that William Lawes was born in Salisbury and baptized on May 1, 1602. His brother Henry, six years his elder, […]
Charles Burney and A General History of Music
Each week , we’re presenting a tiny taste of the BFX—an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Festival feast! * * * * * “Um…Charles who?” Okay, he may not be the best known composer or musician of the late Baroque/early Classical period, but Charles Burney (1726-1814) was the premier musicologist and writer about music of his […]
You can never have too many Johanns
Each week , we’re presenting a tiny taste of the BFX—an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Festival feast! * * * * * During the Baroque, it’s undeniable that an enormous amount of music came out of Germany and Austria: even a casual online search for Baroque composers reveals a large number of Germans, and if […]
You say Trecento, I say Ars Nova…
Each week , we’re presenting a tiny taste of the BFX—an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Festival feast! * * * * * Last week, we looked at the Italian side of the 14th century; this week, we peek at the French side. What the Italians called the Trecento, the French called Ars Nova…although the latter became the […]
A Taste of the Trecento
Each week , we’re presenting a tiny taste of the BFX—an amuse-bouche for the upcoming Festival feast! * * * * * The Trecento—short for “milletrecento” (1300)—refers to the fourteenth century, but more specifically to the arts in Italy: painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, and, of course, music, all flourished during this point in Italy’s history. Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Dante, […]