The Music Club

A concert of music from the Medieval to the Baroque period, presented by the Harvard-Radcliffe Music Clubs Sunday evening in the Fogg Museum courtyard, demonstrated that compositions three to six centuries old can sometimes be as exciting and revealing as some of the most modern scores of our day.

Students of music history were especially interested in the performance of a Mass by Guillaume de Machaut, fourteenth century French composer. The edition which was used is a new one by Otto Gombosi, Professor of Music, and the performing group of eight singers and four wind players approximated the conditions which musicologists believe prevailed when the Mass was first performed.

Aside from historical considerations, however, the work itself had a sense of urgency and power conveyed by a style which displayed striking harmonic and rhythmic originality. This great work may not impress audiences as much as it used to in its time since its liturgical associations are no longer widely known. Nevertheless, it was rewarding to hear this performance, which showed the results of painstaking rehearsals. It suffered, though, from faulty intonation in the wind instruments.

Another novelty on the program, and one which proved so successful that an encore was demanded by the audience, was a group of four French chansons of the fifteenth century sung by Dorothy Barnhouse with instrumental accompaniment. Miss Barnhouse is one of those exceptional vocalists who possesses at once an effortless style of delivery, a vibrant voice, and an unfailingly sensitive feeling for nuances. The songs, especially those of Dufay and Binchois, showed melodic writing of great beauty and poignancy.

After a somewhat colorless cantata by Buxtchude, the audience found itself four centuries after Machaut and finally on more familiar ground with Bach's cantata No. 32, Liebster Jesu, mein Verlangen. The performance, featuring two excellent soloists, Jean Lunn, soprano, and Vincent Allison, baritone, was smooth and often moving. Violinist Helena Pappenheimer and oboeist Robert Freeman also deserve special commendation for their rendition of the instrumental obbligatos.

The Music Club Chorus under Peter Westergaard showed lovely tone quality and clearly-defined phrasing in the opening Palestina motet as well as in the difficult Machaut piece. Conductor Westergaard was enterprising as always in putting the program together and he carried it out with enthusiasm and understanding.