Allegro presents ‘Battles’ of musical style
Classical music seems to present such a peaceful scene. But don’t kid yourself; it has always been a world of hard-fought battles, bitter rivalries and struggles for attention and, yes, money.
Allegro, Spokane’s “baroque and beyond” series, on Friday will perform music showing one of the great musical battles of the baroque period: the war between the Italians and the French.
Co-directors Beverly Biggs and David Dutton will lead performances of music and dance showing the French styles of such composers as Lully and Couperin, and the Italians Corelli and Vivaldi.
The performance at the Bing Crosby Theater will include Dutton and Biggs along with Keith Thomas, Rachel Dorfman, Chari Bickford, Nicholas Carper, Louis Butler and Stephen Swanson.
Dancers from Theatre Ballet of Spokane will join the instrumentalists in artistic director Dodie Askegard’s choreography of dances from the Lully and Moliere production of “Le bourgeois gentilhomme” and Francois Couperin’s “Dans le gout theatral.”
Asked about the audible difference between the French and Italian styles of the 17th and 18th centuries, Dutton says: “That’s harder to describe than you might think, considering all the fuss they made about the difference back then.
“We’re going to let people make their own judgments when we have a violin sonata by Archangelo Corelli and an oboe sonata by Pierre Danican Philador battling it out at opposite ends of the harpsichord.”
Oboist Dutton and violinist Rachel Dorfman will play alternate movements of their respective sonatas, with Dorfman being accompanied by Louis Butler on cello and Dutton by Stephen Swanson on viola da gamba.
Biggs will play harpsichord for both performers. “Maybe we’ll have Beverly change scarves to signal the switch from French to Italian and back,” Dutton says.
The musical war will continue after intermission with alternating treatments of the popular tune “La folia” by Antonio Vivaldi and Marin Marais. (Moviegoers will remember Marais as the central character in Alain Corneau’s 1991 film “Tous les matins du monde.”)
Dutton points out the irony that the “founder” of the French style, Jean-Baptiste Lully, was really an Italian from Florence who was brought to France as a teenager, changed his name from Giovanni Battista Lulli, claimed to be the son of “a Florentine gentleman” instead of a miller’s son, was given French citizenship – and the rest is history.
Lully collaborated on theater and dance music with Moliere. Friday’s performance will include music and dance for the 1670 Lully-Moliere production of “Le Bourgeois gentilhomme” as well as a ballet for Couperin’s tribute to Lully, his Eighth Concert Royale, “Dans le gout theatral” (In the Theatrical Style).
Leonard Oakland, Whitworth University professor of literature and film and a classical music host on public radio station KPBX-FM, will discuss the music in a pre-concert talk beginning at 7:15 p.m.