CityRecorder Classes 2024

CityRecorder Workshop Class Descriptions

Participants will be asked for their first choice for each class period. (Notifications going out soon!) Each topic is offered at two levels, with a different teacher for each level. If you intend to bring large recorders (C great bass and F contra), you will be asked to indicate that when choosing classes.

**Friendly to large recorders.

  Early Morning Classes  
9:30 – 10:45 a.m. & Saturday & Sunday

❦ The Dutchman: Music of Jacob Obrecht** (Begley, Hellauer)
The only Dutchman of the big names of the Josquin generation, Obrecht was a master of new Mass techniques, motets, chansons, Dutch popular songs, and the new instrumental polyphony.

❦ Fancy Free** (Booth, Ricketts)
Sixteenth- and 17th-century instrumental fantasias allowed English, French, and other composers to exercise counterpoint freely, employing imitation, scales, chordal passages, and changes of mensuration, usually without basing works on cantus firmi or other pre-existing music. Fun!c.

  Late Morning Classes  
11:15 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. Saturday & Sunday

❦ Mother Mary Comes to Me** (Booth, Ricketts) 
A huge corpus of motets in a wide variety of styles was composed in the Renaissance to honor the Virgin Mary, a figure of cult-like veneration at the time. Many feature texts from the Song of Songs.

❦ Swing Time: French Baroque Suites (Begley, O’Brien)
A chance to dust off (or acquire!) your notes inégales and French ornamentation skills by spending une belle heure with some of the French musical dance styles of the Baroque.

  Early Afternoon Saturday  
2:00 - 3:15 p.m. Saturday only

❦ Renacimiento español** (Haas, Iadone)
Late 15th - and 16th -century Spain produced both rhythmically lively secular polyphony (the villancico, romance, and some instrumental works) by composers such as Juan del Encina, Anchieta, Peñalosa, Flecha, and Francisco de la Torre), and rich sacred works by natives and foreigners such as Urreda, Morales, Guerrero, Victoria, and Navarro. Olé!

❦ A Taste of Italian Madrigals** (Hellauer, Stern)
Lasting ca. 1520 through the early 17th century, the Italian madrigal was the most important secular polyphony of the era. Its composers—Verdelot, Arcadelt, Rore, Marenzio, Monteverdi, and many others—produced settings of poetry that were almost cinematic in how they musically portrayed emotion and physical items, creating a rich new rhetorical language.

  Late Afternoon Classes Saturday  
3:30 - 4:40 p.m. Saturday only

❦ Lightning Telemann (Iadone, Stern)
A quick dip into the music of one of the most prolific and successful German composers of the Baroque, a man who wrote in every genre, who knew both Bach and Handel. Lucky for us, recorder was one of the many instruments that he played.

❦ Benjamin Britten (Haas, O’Brien)
Britten was the most important English composer born in the 20 th century. His music attractively marries modern style with tonal clarity. Britten was an avid amateur recorder player, and his Alpine Suite and Scherzo are charming and accessible works. Wendy has also arranged his Irish song Sail on, sail on (The Humming of the Ban) for SAATB recorders.

  Early Afternoon Sunday  
2:00 - 3:15 p.m. Sunday only

❦ Music in the Middle (Hellauer, Ricketts)
A sampling of some of the exciting music of the late Middle Ages. Composers may include Machaut, Landini, Jacopo da Bologna, Ciconia, and/or caccias, anonymous works from Las Huelgas, or other pre-Renaissance items.

❦ French Kiss: 15th - and 16th -Century Chansons** (Begley, Booth)
Secular French polyphonic songs—about love, raunch, the seasons, humor—with teacher’s choice from the hundreds of
chansons from the great composers of the Renaissance, such as Du Fay, Binchois, Sermisy, Janequin, Lassus, and others.