From the Folger
It is a Folger mantra that public programs are designed to support the collection and that the collection supports public programs. This is especially true for the Folger Consort, created in the 1970s by then-director O. B. Hardison to perform early music in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theatre. This season’s program is titled “Passionate Virtuosity” and will feature six concerts from early October to late May under the leadership of Christopher Kendall and Robert Eisenstein (the latter from Mount Holyoke College). The concerts, open to the public, will include Christmas music from colonial Mexico and Peru, organ music from a time when Notre Dame was new, and songs and instrumental pieces from Trecento Italy.
Over its lifetime, the consort has attracted an increasingly loyal audience for a large repertoire of instrumental and vocal music that spans Europe from the medieval to the late baroque period. As if to prove the truth of our mantra of mutual support, the consort musicians have frequently turned to the Folger’s musical holdings for inspiration, finding musical compositions—until then unknown—in our printed books and manuscripts.
In fact, the Folger has substantial holdings of music. A great treasure is a bound copy dating from 1826—in Felix Mendelssohn’s hand—of the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream arranged as a duet for piano four-hands. Most of the manuscript’s pages are beautifully written, without errors or second thoughts, until the very end, where scratches and scribbles begin to appear. We also have a full score—contemporary with the composer’s own manuscript—of Rossini’s Otello (c. 1817).
Of the extant music printed in England through 1640, we have a substantial percentage, and some of these books are among the most beautifully designed and masterfully printed in our collection. I think of two Elizabethan books of songs for lute and several voices: Thomas Morley’s 1597 Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practical Musike (the first musical treatise published in England) and the lutenist John Dowland’s First Book of Songs from the same year. These large-format books are splendid examples of the printer’s art, with title pages containing an elaborate engraving of allegorical and classical figures in the heavens, each representing one of the liberal arts and sciences. Ptolemy sits on one cloud, allegorical women named Geometria and Arithmetica on others, with the lady Musica seated on her cloud looking at a music book and playing a lute. The pages of music scored with entablature are beautifully designed, with illuminated capital letters beginning each song.
What is most interesting about the books, though, is that the pages are designed for use either by a solo voice and instrumentalist or as a four-part air for instrument and voices, with the singers encircling the facing pages of the book. The left-hand page contains music and lyrics for the instrumentalist and one singer; the facing page contains upside-down printing oriented on three sides. The singers of alto, tenor and bass parts face each other while singing the lyrics. The beauty and ingenious design of these books suggests the great value that books of music had for the Elizabethans, who seem to have found great pleasure in their ability to sing and play instruments.
Our collection contains four musical instruments from the period—two English viols of the late 16th century, a Paduan lute and an Italian virginal (a keyboard instrument from which the modern spinet is descended). These instruments are never played, but they often feature in exhibits and can be studied. What I truly love about the Folger’s music collection, though, is that it demonstrates once again that this collection is above all a working collection, meant to be used by scholars, some of whom are also performing musicians. We are grateful to have the musicians of the Folger Consort in our community, bringing the past to us in the richness and diversity of its music.
—Gail Kern Paster
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