Stockbridge — The viol consort Long and Away will perform a program of old and new viol music on Thursday, May 25, 7:30 p.m., at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Stockbridge. The group’s program comprises works composed over a 700-year period, including three pieces from living composers.
That’s fine. But what is a viol? And what is a consort? Isn’t that the king’s wife?
There are many definitions of the word “consort,” but Long and Away uses the 1584 definition: “a set of musical instruments from the same family.” (Later, the term “broken consort” referred to an ensemble with instruments from two or more families.)
And while we have the dictionary open, let’s define the word “viol,” the bane of copy editors. According to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, a viol is “a bowed stringed instrument chiefly of the 16th and 17th centuries made in treble, alto, tenor, and bass sizes and distinguished from members of the violin family especially in having a deep body, a flat back, sloping shoulders, usually six strings, a fretted fingerboard, and a low-arched bridge.” And if you follow the Aston Magna Players, you may know the viol as a “viola da gamba” or, informally, “gamba.”
This is handy stuff to know, because there are more professional viol players in the Berkshires than you probably realize. Local cello teacher Anne Legêne, for example, who is one third of Long and Away’s lineup for this program, picked the instrument up after studying cello at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands, her native country. A former student of Jane Hershey and Phoebe Carrai, Anne has played treble and bass viol with such ensembles as Foundling, Les Inégales, Crescendo, the Berkshire Bach Society, the Harvard Choir, and the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra. She conducts the orchestra and teaches cello at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and has taught at the Early Music Week at World Fellowship Center in New Hampshire.
Karen Burciaga, president of the board of the Viola da Gamba Society – New England, plays the treble and tenor viol in such groups as The King’s Noyse, Newton Baroque, Arcadia Players, Cavalier Consort, Cambridge Concentus, Grand Harmonie, and Exsultemus. She is a founding member of Seven Times Salt, a broken consort specializing in 16th-century English music and ballads. She holds a master’s degree in early music performance from the Longy School of Music, where she studied baroque violin with Dana Maiben and viol with Jane Hershey.
James Perretta is co-founder of Lyracle, a group focused on music for one human voice accompanied by a single viol. He studied viola da gamba and baroque cello with Enid Sutherland at the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor’s in modern cello under Richard Aaron. James currently teaches gamba at the Powers School in Belmont. A bona fide computer geek (always a good sign in the field of music), James is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Northeastern University. He plays tenor and bass viol.
Long and Away’s program for Thursday, “700 Years of Delights for the Muses,” consists of music by composers from the 1400s to the present day, beginning with Guillaume Du Fay and Gilles Binchois, and continuing with Orlando Gibbons, John Jenkins, and Henry Purcell. Scottish and French composers from 18th and 20th centuries come next, concluding with viol pieces written very recently by living composers.
The “Songs of Time” theme took inspiration from a video game released in 1986, “The Legend of Zelda” (“LoZ” for those in the know).
Hear the viol consort Long and Away on Thursday, May 25 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 29 Main Street, Stockbridge. Suggested donation is $20. For more information, visit Long and Away’s website or call (413)-645-2133.
