VARAZDIN, CROATIA
19th – 28th August 2012.


The Aestas Musica Summer School invites students and young professional musicians and dancers from all over the world to explore historically aware performance practices under the guidance of top international specialists, in the unique Baroque surroundings of Varazdin, Croatia.

IN 2012 AESTAS MUSICA CELEBRATE ITS 15th ANNIVERSARY
Under the patronage of the
president of the Republic of Croatia, Dr.Sc. Ivo Josipović

AESTAS MUSICA was created by Catherine Mackintosh and her friends the musicians 15 years ago. Samo of them are still with us and some of them are not – but thank you Catherine Mackintosh, Jennifer Ward Clarke, Nicolettte Moonen, Alastais Ross, Robert Howarth, Jamia Hansen-Murray, Laurece Cummings...

In 2012. we are going to do theatrical performance of:

 VENUS AND ADONIS

Music by JOHN BLOW
libretto by ANNE KINGSMILL
 

INSTRUMENTALISTS
Previous experience in historical performance is not essential. We can assist string players by providing period bows and gut strings if needed. Modern oboe players are welcome. Please bring some dark trousers and white shirts (for boys) for the concert performances, and dark skirts and white blouses, or some nice dresses for girls. For the opera performance you will be outfitted in real costumes.

VOICE
Classes for students pursuing professional careers and amateurs singers. There will be an opportunity for all course participants to take part in the choir performance at the Cathedral. Please bring some dark trousers and white shirts (for boys) for the concert performances, and dark skirts and white blouses, or some nice dresses for girls. For the opera performance you will be outfitted in real costumes.

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT TUTORS BY E-MAIL ABOUT PIECES FOR THE CONCERT PROGRAMMES.

DANCE
Exploration of dances from European courts, from the Renaissance to the late Baroque. The course is open to professionals and amateurs dancers, as well as musicians willing to find the roots of the music they often play.
Please bring dance shoes.

JOHN BLOW
(Baptized 23 February 1649 – 1 October 1708) was an English Baroque composer and organist, appointed to Westminster Abbey in 1669. His pupils included William Croft, Jeremiah Clarke and Henry Purcell. In 1685 he was named a private musician to James II. His only stage composition, Venus and Adonis (c. 1680-1687), was thought to influence Henry Purcell's later opera Dido and Aeneas. In 1687 he became choirmaster at St Paul's Cathedral, where many of his pieces were performed. In 1699 he was appointed to the newly created post of Composer to the Chapel Royal. Blow composed several anthems at an unusually early age. About 1683. he wrote his only stage composition of which any record survives, the Masque for the entertainment of the King, Venus and Adonis. In this Mary Davis played the part of Venus. Lady Mary Tudor, her daughter by Charles II, appeared as Cupid.
Fourteen services and more than a hundred anthems by Blow are known. A famous page in Charles Burney's History of Music is devoted to illustrations of Blow's "crudities". These show the immature efforts in expression characteristic of English music at the time. Some of them (where Burney says "Here we are lost") have since been judged to be excellent. He died at 1st October 1708. a was buried in his beloved Westminster Abbey.

VENUS AND ADONIS
his only surviving stage music was composed in about 1683. It was written for the court of King Charles II. It is considered by some to be either a semi-opera or a masque, but The New Grove names it as the earliest surviving English opera. The author of the libretto was surmised to have been Aphra Behn due to the feminist nature of the text, and that she later worked with Blow on the play The Lucky Chance.[1] However, according to the musicologist Bruce Wood, in his 2008 critical edition of the work for the Purcell Society, the librettist "has been identified as Anne Kingsmill. The story is based on the Classical myth of Venus and Adonis, which was also the basis for Shakespeare's poem Venus and Adonis, as well as Ovid's poem of the same name in his Metamorphoses.
Venus is with her son Cupid, and he accidentally pierces her with one of his arrows. The next person Venus sees is the handsome youth Adonis, with whom she immediately falls in love. He is a hunter, and she decides that in order to be with him, she will take on the form of the goddess of the hunt, Artemis. Eventually she warns Adonis of the danger of hunting the wild boar, but he does not heed the warning, and is gored to death by the boar. Although there is no happy end, the opera itself is full of joyful moments of dance, merry Gods and Goddesses, hunters and shepherds and shepherdesses – so beloved by Baroque composers.
 
CONTACT:
nedajanko@gmail.com

00385 98 234 989
Aestas Musica is a Registered UK Charity (No. 1063202)
 
   

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