On Sunday, I had the rare fortune to hear the Aulos Ensemble presented by Music at Kohl Mansion in a Christmas concert in Hillsborough that managed to stand apart from the tired demands of the season while capturing the joy of the holiday.
As the program notes admitted, Christmas is an excuse for music making, and so Christmas was (tenuously) connected to Aulos’ program of works by Michel Corrette (1709-1795), Rameau (1683-1764), Couperin (1668-1733), and others. Most important, this music, commonly termed French Baroque (but what the French call la musique classique française), resonated with an audience accustomed to a series of string quartets performing mostly standard works. The Aulos members — Arthur Haas (harpsichord), Christopher Krueger (flute), Myron Lutzke (cello), Marc Schachman (oboe), and Linda Quan (violin) — are rare players who know how to perform such a program.
If you were to pick players at random from America’s better conservatories or even America’s top orchestras — the types of players who can toss off thorny Bartók quartets without breaking a sweat — and hand them a Rameau score, the results would likely be dreary, boring, and even bizarre. This music has a reputation of being the most difficult early music, not because it is hard to wrap your fingers around, but because it translates from page to ear differently than what most musicians expect.
Italian composer Arcangelo Corelli (of Christmas Concerto fame) once rejected some music of the French composer Lully because “it is in the French style, which I do not understand.” In the 17th and 18th centuries, French music was considered a separate genre, as different from Italian style as jazz and country music are today. The performing traditions, relying on the French aristocracy for patronage, expired in the French Revolution. Only since the 1980s have some performers, through study of old documents and much experimentation, found a way to realize this music in a way that works.
Blazing Trails for Early French Music
The Aulos players are pioneers. Formed in the early 1970s, their ensemble couldn't rely on years of high-quality recordings as today's groups can. Early French music requires attention to attack, articulation, rhythmic alteration, gesture, dancing, and resonance. Many musical symbols have different meanings than is normal, and the music often references other unfamiliar styles. More critically, French style requires musicians to ignore ideals of legato and even-tone production, the type of sound that modern instruments are designed to produce, Juilliard students are drilled to master, and critics are charged to uphold. As a practical matter (and unlike other early-music genres), achieving convincing balance and tone is only possible on early instruments, which Aulos plays. The members play from facsimiles of 300-year-old printed scores, making the music leap from the page. The ensemble’s members have gone on to hold prominent chairs in some of America’s best period-instrument bands.
The evening’s discoveries were three harpsichord pieces by Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1722-1799), transcribed for chamber ensemble. Balbastre’s works might have been the least typically French of the evening, but the second, La Morrisseau, was certainly the most beautiful: an aria bearing a striking resemblance to Bach’s Mache dich mein Herze Rein. On the other end of this spectrum, François Couperin’s eighth concerto, Dans le Goût théatral, (after the theatrical taste) was the most French. Aulos played this work to its stylistic extreme, exaggerating swung rhythms and lending the work an aristocratic and balletic sonority.
Rameau’s Pièces de Clavicin en concerts (1741) for harpsichord, flute, and violin obbligato are exceptional rather than representative. As Rameau’s only major published instrumental works, these are pieces to demonstrate the talents of a master composer rather than for acompanying a dance or occasion. Aulos’ fine effort on Rameau’s Third Concert from the set made the greatest technical demands of the program. Harpsichordist Haas balanced the work’s complexity with its declamatory grace.
Kohl Mansion is a Hearst Castle–type affair with a beautiful great hall ideal for an early-music band. I am sure some audience members wanted Beethoven or Silent Night, though they were a minority. If one needs a Christmas season as an excuse to hear programs such as Sunday’s, then let every day be like Christmas. It’s already like that in the shopping malls.