Early Music Festival opens with artistic director's home ensemble in a two-century survey

With a milestone having been reached in his main academic association, Mark Cudek appeared at the Indiana History Center with the Peabody Consort in "A Tale of Two Centuries" to launch the 2023 Indianapolis Early Music Festival.

Though he's continuing his position as the festival music director, Cudek has retired from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. With different personnel, the Peabody Consort has been engaged at least twice before here under his direction. He participated in Friday's program (playing variously cittern, guitar and percussion) with six young musicians, and made or oversaw the arrangements for this ensemble.

Mark Cudek and the cittern, one of his specialties

The two centuries involved are the turns from the 15th to the 16th and from the 16th to the 17th. The music was organized into compatible sets, each with a pleasing shape of anticipation and closure.  The periods present contrasts of texture, with extremes of polyphony over against forms that privilege melody and accompaniment. Modern arrangements held within the period embrace allowed for instrumental balances to be  displayed in various combinations, which were always well-knit in this performance.

Programmatically, there was a progression toward the sort of foundational clarity of the Baroque style that emerged in the 17th century. Melodies became more explicitly linked to moods, though there was certainly a wide Renaissance tonal language to communicate emotion. 

Case in point from the early 16th: a lover's urgency is foremost in the chanson "Jouissance vous donneray," bringing out the nuanced vocal splendor of soprano Mira Fu-En Huang in one of several showcases for her. The complaint voiced by the impecunious subject of Josquin des Prez's "Adieu mes amours" embodies the text's wry emotions in the music's structure, typical in one of the supreme composers of his era.

With the overall time shift to the early 17th century, the first set focused on the unique figure of Salamone Rossi, a Mantuan Jew who enjoyed special status among the ruling Gentile aristocracy. Even his music written for his faith tradition brought in a mainstream style of writing that made him controversial until approval of polyphonic music by the rabbinate secured his stylistic preference for a while. That ended with the expulsion of Jews in 1630, the year of Rossi's death. Grove's Dictionary supposes the two events are connected, as plague ensued upon the destruction of the ghetto.

The entry on Rossi ties itself in knots trying to assess how much of the "proto-Baroque" there is in his work, especially in his pioneering creation of the trio sonata. The dictionary suggests that Rossi's contribution may have been somewhat "misrepresented." Leaving scholarly disputes aside (which I am not qualified to enter), the selections presented Friday were appealing in all respects. Whatever they set in motion in music history was a most welcome development (to my taste, anyway). Again, Huang's mesmerizing style was on vivid display in the intense song "Cor mior, deh non languire," a desperate appeal for the heart not to die in the unwelcoming breast of another. 

An English set gave special attention to the the Consort's lutenist, Cameron Welke, in John Dowland's "A Fancy," and also brought in musicians' high regard for the artistic eminence of their contemporary Shakespeare in the song "Full Fathom Five," in which Huang insightfully lingered on the final consonants of "Ding dong," as if to extend the characteristic resonance of bells. The recorder players, Sarah Shodja and  Teresa Deskur, also played robust and well-articulated roles. Other Consort members represented brilliantly  and collaboratively in the course of the program were Olivia Castor, harp, and Niccolo Seligmann on three bowed string instruments and percussion.

The program had an appropriate epilogue in its focus on the decades-long hit — the "Stardust" of an extended era, perhaps — "La Folia," a Spanish dance, less a tune than a harmonic progression. It was treated in three versions, mounting to a full-ensemble spectacle and thus properly heralding the festival to come over the next few weeks.