Early Music Ensembles Explore the Venetian Renaissance

The Baylor University Early Music Ensembles will present a program called “Psallite Domino: Innovation and Inspiration from Renaissance Venice” on Thursday, November 4, beginning at 5:30 p.m. in Armstrong Browning Library’s McLean Foyer of Meditation.
The Early Music Ensembles perform repertoire from the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque eras, exploring cultural contexts and historical performance practices. These historically informed musicians are led by Associate Professor of Musicology (and violinist) Jann Cosart. Other performers on early violin are Emily Bustos and Maya Johnson, and the group’s harpsichordist is Guilherme Almeida.
In the Late Renaissance, arts flourished in the vibrant cultural center of Venice. The floating city was a cradle of inspiration and innovation, thanks to generous patronage and an overall heightened interest in the literary and performing arts. As a result, exciting and innovative new genres such as the sonata and the rhetorical sacred motet were developed in literary-musical circles, as well as in acoustically vibrant cathedrals. The Early Music Ensembles’ concert celebrates Renaissance Venice and her innovation, inspiration, and creativity.
Opening the program will be “Audi Domine” by Adam Gumpelzhaimer and “Jubilent in caelia” by Giovanni Felice Sances. Next, the performers will play “Sonata Terza a due” from Dario Castello’s Sonate concertate in stil moderno.
Jann Cosart’s own arrangement of the plainchant “Psallite Domino” will be followed by a setting of it by Sances, and then Dr. Cosart’s arrangement of the traditional “Folia” will be juxtaposed with Antonio Vivaldi’s vibrant set of “La Folia” variations, and her arrangement of “Veni veni Emmanuel” will be followed by a thirteenth-century Franciscan procession of that tune.
The program will close with “Tu scendi dale stelle” by Alfonso Maria de’Liguori and “Gaudete, Gaudete Christus est natus” from the Piae Cantiones collection of 1582.
This concert is free of charge and open to the public.