Getting intimate: SF Pro Musica to perform 'Baroque Holy Week' with period instruments

Step back into the 18th century and experience chamber music as it is meant to be heard, in intimate and resonant spaces.

For those longing for a more traditional Holy Week, Santa Fe Pro Musica will perform music by French women composers using period instruments.

Getting intimate: SF Pro Musica to perform 'Baroque Holy Week' with period instruments

The concerts are slated for Saturday, March 23, and Sunday, March 24, at First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe.

The featured musicians include soprano Clara Rottsolk and violinist Stephen Redfield.

The ensemble will play music from the French court of the Sun King, Louis XIV (1638-1715).

“There were a number of female composers supported by the court,” Redfield said. “They were part of his vision of French artistic excellence.”

The program features three works by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre. Born into a family of musicians, she was a French musician, harpsichordist and composer. As a teenager, she was accepted into the French court, where her education was supervised by the king’s mistress. De La Guerre was one of the few well-known female composers of her time, and unlike many of her contemporaries, she composed in a wide variety of forms.

The musicians will perform her “Trio Sonata No. 1,” “Violin Sonata No. 1” and “Judith Cantata.”

“This is the heroic role of Judith,” Redfield said of the latter. “It’s quite dramatic.”

Judith was a Jewish widow who seduced an Assyrian general who has besieged her city. With this act, she saves nearby Jerusalem from total destruction.

“She gets his trust and then turns on him,” Redfield said. “It even features the moment she beheads him with the sweep of a sword.”

The sonata and cantata feature the viola da gamba, a pear-shaped member of the viol family. The viol differs from the cello in having six strings instead of four, and tuned more like a lute or guitar.

The single Italian composer on the program, Antonia Bembo fled to the French court to escape a bad marriage, Redfield said.

There she sang for Louis XIV. The king granted her a pension and housing. Her work is a combination of French and Italian styles.

Mademoiselle Duval, whose first name is unknown, was a French composer and dancer who was an accomplished harpsichordist. The musicians will perform her “Suite from Les Genies,” a ballet opera and her best-known work.

Redfield will play a period violin.

“It is quieter, it is mellower, and it blends with the other instruments instead of standing out.”

Baroque violins are almost always fitted with gut strings, as opposed to the more common metal and synthetic strings on a modern instrument, and played with a bow made on the Baroque model rather than the modern bow.

Redfield plays with both the Pro Musica Baroque and Bach ensembles. He is also concertmaster for the Pro Musica Orchestra. He recently retired as violin professor at the University of Southern Mississippi.