Early Music Festival heads into final weekend honoring Leonardo da Vinci
"The World of Leonardo" extends to our world in surprising ways, such as the record-setting sale of his painting
"Salvator Mundi" at auction for $4.5 million a year ago November.
The work was among the screen images that enhanced a concert featuring a host of musicians, including members of the locally based Alchymy Viols and Echoing Air, and two dancers. The program was conceived and directed by Mark Cudek, artistic director of the presenting Indianapolis Early Music Festival, and Phil Spray, who guides Alchemy Viols.
The program was focused on Leonardo's enduring genius, a legacy also represented by two other images much imitated and admired: "The Last Supper" and "Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)." But painting was only a small part of his multifaceted genius. His inventions, many taken by their creator only to the design stage, were far-reaching, anticipating technological advances centuries in the future. Several were presented for viewing in the Indiana History Center lobby as realized by students under the direction of Woody Bredehoeft,
The music drew upon dance, song, and sacred forms of the 15th and 16th centuries. The social purpose of dance in Renaissance Europe was embodied in Catherine Turocy's stately choreography for costumed dancers Kali Page and Joe Caruana. Complementary movement in and around the ensemble was well-conceived so that neither dancers nor musicians were distractions for the other. The resulting balance could thus be seen as well as heard.
Esteli Gomez, a soprano who added so much to Ensemble Caprice concerts for the festival in 2015 and 2018, was featured in frottole (secular songs) by several composers, such as the melodiously named Bartolomeo Tromboncino and Marchetto Cara. Her idiomatic rendering of tremolos in Tromboncino's "Ostinato vo seguire," an assertion of the value persistence in love, was among her many stylistic triumphs.
She is an expressive singer without mannerisms that might obscure her technical security. This was a useful display of versatility in numbers that, for all the similarities they share in creative milieus and forms, span a wide range of secular and sacred purposes. With the assistance of three male singers from Echoing Air, Gomez made special the celebrated "Puer natus est" of Heinrich Isaac, an a cappella Gregorian chant setting.
The instrumental ensemble was notable for its pinpoint coordination and the occasional virtuoso spotlights shone upon its adept members, especially lutenist Ronn McFarlane.
Phil Spray came forward at several points in the program to deliver spirited reminders of Da Vinci's genius and notable incidents of his life, several of which have come down to us through Giorgio Vasari's landmark biographies in "Lives of the Artists." That's the source of the Leonardo death narrative, with the artist being comforted in his final moments by the King of France, his most illustrious foreign patron. Leonardo's hometown of Florence had become a less welcome place to him, according to Vasari, because of a bitter rivalry with Michelangelo. In Vasari's telling, piety overcame the artist during his final illness — a reminder that Leonardo's stature as a secular saint to posterity is far from the whole story.
Given that Vasari ends his account with praise chiefly for the knowledge Leonardo imparted about the anatomy of humans and horses, a dance-based program was an obvious emphasis for a concert evoking the setting of his innovations. Not everything could be covered, so why not stress form and its physical components as brought forth musically? Any one of several directions could have been taken to honor Leonardo on the 500th anniversary of his death, and this one seemed a most natural and well-executed choice for the 53rd annual festival.
"Salvator Mundi" at auction for $4.5 million a year ago November.
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| Leonardo Da Vinci's high-priced painting "Salvator Mundi." |
The program was focused on Leonardo's enduring genius, a legacy also represented by two other images much imitated and admired: "The Last Supper" and "Mona Lisa (La Gioconda)." But painting was only a small part of his multifaceted genius. His inventions, many taken by their creator only to the design stage, were far-reaching, anticipating technological advances centuries in the future. Several were presented for viewing in the Indiana History Center lobby as realized by students under the direction of Woody Bredehoeft,
The music drew upon dance, song, and sacred forms of the 15th and 16th centuries. The social purpose of dance in Renaissance Europe was embodied in Catherine Turocy's stately choreography for costumed dancers Kali Page and Joe Caruana. Complementary movement in and around the ensemble was well-conceived so that neither dancers nor musicians were distractions for the other. The resulting balance could thus be seen as well as heard.
Esteli Gomez, a soprano who added so much to Ensemble Caprice concerts for the festival in 2015 and 2018, was featured in frottole (secular songs) by several composers, such as the melodiously named Bartolomeo Tromboncino and Marchetto Cara. Her idiomatic rendering of tremolos in Tromboncino's "Ostinato vo seguire," an assertion of the value persistence in love, was among her many stylistic triumphs.
She is an expressive singer without mannerisms that might obscure her technical security. This was a useful display of versatility in numbers that, for all the similarities they share in creative milieus and forms, span a wide range of secular and sacred purposes. With the assistance of three male singers from Echoing Air, Gomez made special the celebrated "Puer natus est" of Heinrich Isaac, an a cappella Gregorian chant setting.
The instrumental ensemble was notable for its pinpoint coordination and the occasional virtuoso spotlights shone upon its adept members, especially lutenist Ronn McFarlane.
Phil Spray came forward at several points in the program to deliver spirited reminders of Da Vinci's genius and notable incidents of his life, several of which have come down to us through Giorgio Vasari's landmark biographies in "Lives of the Artists." That's the source of the Leonardo death narrative, with the artist being comforted in his final moments by the King of France, his most illustrious foreign patron. Leonardo's hometown of Florence had become a less welcome place to him, according to Vasari, because of a bitter rivalry with Michelangelo. In Vasari's telling, piety overcame the artist during his final illness — a reminder that Leonardo's stature as a secular saint to posterity is far from the whole story.
Given that Vasari ends his account with praise chiefly for the knowledge Leonardo imparted about the anatomy of humans and horses, a dance-based program was an obvious emphasis for a concert evoking the setting of his innovations. Not everything could be covered, so why not stress form and its physical components as brought forth musically? Any one of several directions could have been taken to honor Leonardo on the 500th anniversary of his death, and this one seemed a most natural and well-executed choice for the 53rd annual festival.
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