Welcome to Music for Life, enhancing the Armstrong concert experience. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. In today's episode, we will explore a unique upcoming concert at Armstrong Auditorium featuring recorder virtuoso Tabea Dibus and lute player Kevin Payne. This concert will be presented in Armstrong Auditorium on Thursday, March 31st, and it's a program titled Orverm, or Earworms, the concept of tuneful melodies that get stuck in your head. So stick around as we explore the recorder, the lute, the two virtuosi playing them, as well as the catchy program they are bringing to Armstrong today on Music for Life.
To prepare our audiences for this uniquely special event featuring two masters of the recorder and lute, first I think we need to discuss what a recorder and a lute are, as we've not really explored these instruments on this program to date, at least in any in-depth way. A recorder is a flute-like instrument that flourished during the medieval and renaissance periods in Europe, even going into the Baroque era. Unlike standard flutes, the recorder has a whistle mouthpiece, sometimes called a fipple, which produces the sound. Also, unlike most standard flutes you see today, recorders are made out of wood. Now, recorder players don't just play one instrument. Because of the relatively small range of a single recorder, there are different sizes of recorder that allow recorders to play in many different registers. The highest and smallest recorder is the sopranino recorder, followed by the descant recorder, which is the type used in school music programs, the one you're probably familiar with. Then the treble recorder, the most commonly used recorder in Baroque music, known as the common flute. And then the tenor recorder, followed by the bass recorder, so big that the instrument has to be bent at the neck to allow for ease of playing. That being said, the bass recorder still doesn't go as low as, say, a bass in a choir would.
have a tenor recorder here in my office where I record this program. And you're going to hear the regular recorder sound that you're probably used to hearing in some of the recordings we hear today. But listen to this low, tenory sound of this bigger, longer recorder. Tabea Debus has been described by the Times as a charismatic virtuoso, and she is constantly exploring the horizons of music for recorder and has performed widely across Europe, Asia, and North and South America. There's a captivating video online of her playing the recorder in some unique ways. Now, this is a pretty avant-garde work by Moritz Egert, and the title of which translates to Out of Breath. And we're not going to have this on the program at Armstrong, but here's a little part of the piece where she sings into the recorder while playing it.
Then there's a part of the piece where she has to play two recorders at the same time. It's not necessarily difficult to blow into two recorders at once, but what is extremely difficult is that means there's only one hand on each recorder, making fingering much more limited and complicated. And then here's a part of the same piece where she has to play two recorders at once while humming into both recorders. Tabea Diebus was born in Würzburg, Germany, and she studied at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts with Professor Michael Schneider and at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
and has released five solo discs to date. Most recently... Orverm on the Delphian Records label. That is the title of the program she'll be bringing to Armstrong, that being a German word translating in English as earworms. At the top of our program insert, she writes, music has a tendency to continue playing inside our minds whether we want it or not. She quotes a 17th century Englishman who reveals that musical earworms are a longstanding phenomenon. She writes, Orverm explores how tunes and dances wormed their way into many aspects of music making in 17th and 18th century Europe.
The concert will start with Tobia on recorder solo, playing Lamento di Tristano, an anonymously composed work from the 14th century. So that was Tabea Dibus in a solo recorder work from the 14th century composed by Anonymous, a work titled Lamento di Tristano e la Rota. That will be the first work Tabea plays on her Orvorm or Earworms program coming to Armstrong March 31st. Tabea Dibus will be joined by Kevin Payne on the lute. Now, a lute, while its name sounds similar to a flute and what with the concert featuring another flute-like instrument, is not a flute at all. A lute is an instrument in the guitar family. The lute was pivotal in Renaissance secular music and also played a strong role in the Baroque period. Now, some composers would call for standard tenor lutes and others would call for massive lutes.
instruments called fiorbos, which had necks over six feet long. Around the 1700s, lute makers found a happy medium between the tenor lute and the massive fiorbo called the arch lute, which is what our luteinist Kevin Payne is bringing to Armstrong this March 31st. Kevin Payne is active as a recitalist, accompanist, and chamber musician in his field who has performed everywhere from the Kennedy Center to Carnegie Hall and from Taipei, Taiwan to Baden-Baden, Germany. He holds both a Bachelor of Music and a Master of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, Maryland, where he studied Renaissance Lute and Fiorbo. He was the first Lutenist to be accepted to the Juilliard School, where he received a graduate diploma in historical plucked instruments with Pat O'Brien. Payne and his wife, cellist Caroline Nicholas, currently work and live near Seattle, Washington. Let's hear some of Kevin Payne's work, his wife, on the viola da gamba, which is a relative to the cello, basically. And this is them both...
playing Marin Marais' Les Voies Humaines, or Human Voices. That was Les Voies Humaines, or Human Voices, by Marin Marais, and performed by a husband-wife, lute cello duo Kevin Payne and Caroline Nicholas. Kevin Payne will be playing the arch lute for Recorder Virtuoso, Tabia Dibus, a concert to take place Thursday, March 31st at Armstrong Auditorium.
After Tabia's opening solo work, the program will feature, for lack of a better term, a mashup of various melodies, all built around the same renaissance, chacona or chacon, as it's more widely known in the English-speaking world today. Now, chacon, much like the popular music we hear even today, consists of various melodies being played over a recurring bass line or chord progression. This particular chacon features melodies from three composers, Antonio Bertali, Tarquinio Merula, and Claudio Monteverdi. The Bertali chacon was composed for a solo violin and accompaniment, whereas the Merula and Monteverdi chacons are actually arias, meaning they were to be sung. For this concert, Tabea Dibus combined the various melodies from these different chacons to make this mashup or medley.
Now, in the recording of the Chaconne I'm playing for you here now, it starts with a solo Renaissance guitar, in this recording played by Elizabeth Kenney, which sets the chord progression before being joined by a viola da gamba, played by Reiko Ichize, and finally Tabea for the melody. While our upcoming concert on March 31st won't feature a viola da gamba, they will be joined by a local musician, a senior here at Herbert W. Armstrong College, my son Seth Malone, playing historically informed cello. He will be playing in several sets throughout the concert as well. So here's Chaconne Medley, arranged and performed by Tabea Dibus.
You are listening to Music for Life. I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. In today's episode, we are previewing an upcoming concert at Armstrong Auditorium on March 31st, featuring recorder virtuoso Tabea Dibus and lutenist Kevin Payne. We just heard Tabea Dibus' Chaconne mashup, or Chaconne medley, joined in that recording by Elizabeth Kenney on the Solar Renaissance guitar and Reiko Ichize on the viola da gamba.
Next in the program here at Armstrong is the song La Monica, also known in French sacred music as Un jeune filet, or A Young Girl. This particular rendition of the old Italian song is arranged by Tobia in the form of theme and variations. So it's the same melody and chord progression over and over again, contributing to the earworm effect, as her program is titled, but in different variations. Here's a recording of her playing with Jonathan Reese on Viola da Gamba and Alex McCartney on Fiorbo. And right after that, we'll hear the work to follow on the program, a Spanioleta, or an old Spanish dance attributed to the Renaissance composer Pierre-Francisco Carubel, but arranged and published by a contemporary of his, Michael Pretorius.
We just heard two works to be performed by recorder, lute, and cello on Tabea Dibus' March 31st concert at Armstrong Auditorium. That was her with Jonathan Reeves on viola da gamba and Alex McCartney on fiorbo, which is a very large lute. At Armstrong, she'll be joined by lutenist Kevin Payne and our own Seth Malone on cello. We just heard an Italian song, La Monica, followed by a spagnoletta or Spanish dance. After the spagnoletta comes a set of Bach. Tabea will be bringing a solo arrangement of Bach's French Suite in C minor for harpsichord. Here it is so you can get an idea of how she fits the many notes that could be played simultaneously on a harpsichord into one recorder line.
That was Tabea Dibus on the solo recorder in part of her adaptation of a Bach French suite originally written for a keyboard instrument. Next, Tabea will play a set of English works, which will include a fantasia by the great English Renaissance composer John Dowland, the beautiful Pavan Lacrimé by Johann Schopp, here performed by Tabea and Toby Carr on the Fiorbo. That was the Pavan Lacrime by Johann Schopp, an English composer from the early 17th century. That was the recorder virtuoso Tabea Dibus and Toby Carr on Fiorbo. Tabea will be joined by lutenist Kevin Payne for the concert at Armstrong, and the first half will end with this set of English works we're exploring here. She'll finish with a song written by John Dalland, the Earl of Essex Galliard, also known as Can She Excuse My Wrongs. Here is Toby Carr again, this time on the tenor lute accompanying Tabea.
We just heard John Dallin's The Earl of Essex Galliard, which will end the first half of the program. To start the second half, Tabea and Kevin will stay in England to perform two very English works, one song written by Henry Purcell called Fairest Isle, and then Greensleeves, perhaps the most famous work of Renaissance music today. Here's a recording of Tabea Debus playing with Elizabeth Kenny on the Fiorbo. That was Tabea Dibus' arrangement of the famous Renaissance song Greensleeves. We heard her there with Elizabeth Kenney on Theorbo. At Armstrong, she'll be joined by Kevin Payne on the Arch Lute. After Greensleeves, Tabea will play solo again, this time playing a solo flute sonata on her recorder written by the German Baroque composer Georg Philippe Telemann. We just heard Tabea Dibus on solo recorder for the Telemann solo flute sonata.
After Tabea plays her solo Telemann, we will hear the melody La Monarca, written by the Italian composer Andrea Falconieri. Then, Tabea and Kevin will perform a work by the late 16th century composer Giulio Severino, followed by another piece by Andrea Falconieri, this time a piece called La Suave Melodia, meaning the soft melody. For the upcoming concert this March 31st, Tabea and her lutenist will be playing this without a melodic bass instrument, but I'd like to play a recording for you here with Tabea, joined again by Jonathan Reese on viola da gamba, that predecessor to the cello, and Alex McCartney on Fiorbo, playing Falconieri's La Suave Melodia. You are listening to Music for Life.
I'm your host, Ryan Malone. This is KPCG. In today's episode, we have explored an upcoming concert at Armstrong Auditorium on Thursday, March 31st, featuring recorder virtuoso Tabea Dibus and luteinist Kevin Payne. More information about this and all Armstrong Auditorium events can be found at armstrongauditorium.org. We just heard La Suave Melodia by Andrea Falconieri, a work that will end the penultimate set on Tabea's and Kevin's program at Armstrong. To finish the program, we will be hearing a piece by 16th century Spanish composer Diego Ortiz, Recercada Segundo sobre Tenores Italianos, which loosely translates in English.
to Italian ricacar number two. Now, ricacar is a musical form that fell out of fashion by the end of the Baroque period, but it was quite a popular genre of music during the Renaissance and early Baroque periods. The word ricacar means to search out again, or literally, to research. It is an imitative instrumental work that displays or researches a particular melody. This particular Ricercar is written in the Italian style, and it is second in a set Ortiz compiled in his Trattado de Glossas. Special thanks to Seth Malone for the massive production help he was to making this episode today. And now let's hear Tavia Divus play the Ricercada Segundo sobre tenores italianos with guitarist Toby Carr. I hope you enjoy, and I hope to see you soon at Armstrong.
You have been listening to Music for Life, a production of KPCG 101.3 on the FM Dial in Edmond, Oklahoma. From the Herbert W. Armstrong College campus, I'm Ryan Malone. Thanks for joining me.