If you loved the excitement of ‘His Majesty's Musicke’ last season, you'll be doubly pleased in ’97 as Baroque Festival completes our two-year cycle of MUSICAL MONARCHIES by evening up the score. ‘At Her Majesty's Command’ explores the creative impact of women on the arts through a millenium of music inspired by Queens and female archetypes. Transporting you to the ‘Golden Age’ of English arts, the moment of greatest intrigue and fascination for Scotland, and to the first flowerings of the Russian arts, our season introduces you not only to remarkable courts and great art, but also to the realm of imagination as we share a continuum of ‘feminine’ inspiration from the visionary songs and personal illuminations of St. Hildegard through the rationalist music games of the 18th century Enlightenment, to computer-composed ‘Mozart’ with a Classical chamber orchestra. 

Beginning on Valentine’s Day weekend with an intimate visit to the High Renaissance court of Elizabeth ‘The Great’ we present romantic and humorous songs dating from the age of Shakespeare featuring the internationally-celebrated soprano Julianne Baird (Concert I). English music fashions favored during the long reign of the Elizabeth I (almost half a century, 1558-1603) and the tragic twenty-year captivity of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots (b.1542-d.1587) were as different as the international connections and intrigues of their rival Protestant and Catholic factions. In Concert II, we meet Mary and hear the court melodies to which she danced and played in her castle-prison, and explore the popular dance-tunes of her times led by special guest artist Chris Norman (the famed wooden flutist that raised the roof with Baltimore Consort on our ’94 series) and a host of other musicians. 

But even the vision of great rulers must be understood in the broader context of human aspirations and dreams, as often symbolized by the worldly and celestial aspects of ‘feminine’ inspiration. In Concert III, we explore the juncture of reason and music in the eighteenth century and its echoes in the futurist field of artificial intelligence. As the 18th century courtier knew, ‘Lady Luck’--the familiar patroness of gamblers--could be trusted to produce charming minuets, polonaises, and other works through musical dice games by Mozart, Haydn, C. P. E. Bach and other mathematically-inclined masters, and one could thus bring an ‘original’ work to dinner every night of the week! Our exciting event features a chamber orchestra with Linda Burman-Hall as fortepiano soloist in a premiere of a new concerto in the style of Mozart by EMI (David Cope¹s Experiments in Musical Intelligence), and a ‘Mozart’ symphony. Revisiting the cloistered celestial realm of the great 12th century mystic composer, Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Concert IV presents divinely-inspired songs and poetry in praise of Mary, ‘Queen of Heaven’ as well as antiphons for St. Ursula and her 11,000 Martyred Virgins, featuring the internationally celebrated vocalists Mary Rawcliffe and Karen Clarke with baritone Leon Wann. 

A powerful convergence of ‘feminine’ forces occurred during the late eighteenth century in the court of Imperial Russia, where the Empress Catherine the Great hosted an international elite of Enlightenment-inspired philosophers, artists, writers and composers. Here the venerable currents of Mother Russia blended with the finest French and Italian styles to transform music-making, creating jewels of sacred and secular music. Concert V brings Catherine herself to you as Slavyanka Russian Choir and internationally-known instrumentalists perform rare works from her court that touch the mind and heart equally today. 

1996, Linda Burman-Hall.