MPRO UpBeat 

FEBRUARY 2016

PLAY THE RECORDER MONTH

Since 1993, the American Recorder Society has designated March as '"Play the Recorder Month."  The third Saturday in March (March 19 this year) is "Recorder Day."  The ARS encourages its members and affiliated groups to play the recorder at community sites such as parks, shopping malls, libraries, schools, and churches. Such performances can help to spread knowledge and appreciation of the recorder, recruit new members for local groups, and provide public performance experience for inexperienced players.  If your small ensemble will be giving a community performance in March (or any other time of the year), please help to spread the word about MPRO, and invite recorder players you meet as a result of your gigs to check out our webpage and/or attend a rehearsal as a guest.

More information about this year's Play the Recorder Month is available at: 

http://www.americanrecorder.org/play_the_recorder_month.php. This page has links to a score and MIDI recording for "Steamed Bass and Fischmaul" a jazzy piece composed by Matthias Maute especially for Recorder Day.  If your taste in music is more traditional, see the East Bay Recorder Society’s 114-page "Gig Book"  at: www.symbolicsolutions.com/ebrs-web2015/pdf-items/Gig-Book-w-bookmarks.pdf  Originally published in 2005 and co-authored by Fred Palmer, it includes scores for two-, three- and four-part music ranging from folk to Renaissance and Baroque. The book is designed to "allow recorder ensembles to play for their own pleasure or perform for any occasion with a minimum of rehearsal time."   -Judith Unsicker

Conductor Fred 

CONDUCTOR’S CORNER

Dear members of the Mid-Peninsula Recorder Orchestra,        

 

        Listed below is the music for the next four meetings of the orchestra. Please note that there will be sectional seating for the Telemann La Joie, with those playing Soprano Recorder 1 and 2, Alto Recorder 1 and Tenor Recorder 1 sitting on the right as they face the conductor and those playing Alto Recorder 2 and 3 Tenor Recorder 2 and Bass Recorder 1 and 2 on the left.  Please observe this seating arrangement when you choose your place at the beginning of all four meetings.  Please note as well that sopranino recorder and bassoon will be needed at all four meetings, great bass and contrabass recorders on February 3 and February 24 and krummhorns on February 17 and March 16.

February 3

Gabrieli:  La Spiritata

Telemann:  La Joie

Wolkenstein:  Ave Mater, O Maria

Sousa:  The Liberty Bell March

February 17

Gabrieli:  La Spiritata

Anonymous:  El Picardo

Bach:  Bourrée I and II

Telemann:  La Joie


February 24

 Gabrieli:  La Spiritata

Telemann:  La Joie

Wolkenstein:  Ave Mater, O Maria

Sousa:  The Liberty Bell March

March 16

Gabrieli:  La Spiritata

Anonymous:  El Picardo

Bach:  Bourrée I and II

Telemann:  La Joie

        I look forward to seeing you at these upcoming meetings.

Sincerely,

Fred Palmer

MUSIC TRIVIA: COPYIST, COURTIER, MINER , SPY

In an earlier issue of Upbeat, I wrote about the British choral group Alamire in connection with Anne Boleyn's songbook. The group's namesake is a fascinating character in his own right. "Petrus Alamire" was the pseudonym of a German whose real name was probably Peter Imhoff. He was born about 1470 and died in 1536. His alias is based on the musical pitch "A" and the scale syllables "la" "mi" and "re."  He ran a music copying workshop in the Netherlands.  A significant amount of late 15th century and early 16th century music survived only in products of this workshop. Many of these were gifts between European royals and nobility that were preserved in aristocratic archives. A Google Images search for "Petrus Alamire" provides examples of the workshop's beautiful illuminated manuscripts.

Petrus Alamire was also a spy.  Musicians of this period were in good positions to be spies because they traveled frequently and could blend inconspicuously into the background of a court.  Surviving letters show that between 1515 and 1518 Alamire spied for Henry VIII on Richard de la Pole, the last Yorkist claimant to the English throne, who was in exile in France. (He had earlier experience spying on the Duke of Saxony for the Hapsburgs.)  Alamire went to the English court in 1516, and presented Henry VIII with gifts including an early pedal clavichord, crumhorns, cornetti, and  a music book that still survives. See: britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2011/10/the-spys-choirbook.html. Henry dropped Alamire after obtaining evidence that he was actually a double agent, spying for de la Pole.  Among his other "Renaissance man" credentials, Alamire received payment from the King of Denmark for instruction in mining. This may be a code related to spying, giving the modern term "data mining" pre-Internet roots.  See the following for more information about Petrus Alamire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Alamire  

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/11393319/Petrus-Alamire.html.  -Judith Unsicker

The Board: President: Judith Unsicker; Treasurer: LouAnn Hofmann; Recording Secretary: Helen Shamble; Membership: Chris Flake; Publicity: vacant; Graphics: Mary Ashley; Newsletter Editor: vacant; Workshop Coordinator: vacant; Hospitality: Judith Unsicker; Music Sales: Laura Gonsalves; Historian: vacant; Webmaster: Dan Chernikoff; Facilities Mgr: Grace Butler; Music Director: Fred Palmer; Assistant Music Director: Greta Haug-Hryciw.

 

MPRO website:

 

http://www.mpro-online.org     

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