GENESIS BAROQUE, 2022–2024
1/ Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Concerti Grossi, Paris Quartets, Dresden Concerti, and Fête Champêtre
2024
Collages created for Genesis Baroque’s 2024 season
We were commissioned to create artwork for Genesis Baroque’s 2024 season.
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Concerti Grossi
To open its 2024 orchestral series, Genesis Baroque returns to the Concerto Grosso with a new perspective, examining its voices and ideas through a different lens. In this popular Baroque form, we usually find an electric dialogue between a handful of virtuosic soloists and a Greek chorus of instrumental ripieni. However, on this musical journey, every player of the ensemble becomes the soloist. On its path we will encounter many of Europe’s national accents, as we uncover the essence of musical interaction and communication.
Paris Quartets
In his two volumes of Paris Quartets, Telemann distinguished himself as a master of the French Sonate en Quatuor; a uniquely French style that contrasted the trio sonatas of Germany and Italy. Telemann published his first volume of six quartets, Six Quadri, in 1730 in Hamburg, which were then reprinted in Paris in 1736. In response to their enormous success in Paris, Telemann travelled to the city in 1737 for several months, where he received high praise and honour, inspiring him to write a second volume of six quartets, Nouveaux Quatuors en Six Suites, published in 1738. The collective title of Paris Quartets for which the two volumes of works are affectionately known, was only bestowed upon them in the second half of the 20th Century, in recognition of their incredible Parisian popularity.
Dresden Concerti
The Dresden court was an opulent cultural hotspot in the early 18th Century under the ambitious reign of King Frederick Augustus II, who invested in developing the city as a brilliant centre of art, music, and architecture. The king attracted some of the most inventive composers from across Europe, who developed a dynamic style that reflected the rich tapestry of their musical backgrounds. Dresden Concerti explores works that epitomise the Dresden court style, and the musical traditions that influenced it, from Leipzig to Venice; a celebration of galant style in all its shimmering glory.
Fête Champêtre
The fête champêtre was a style of garden party adored by 18th Century French aristocracy and the popular at the Gardens of Versailles. Parties would incorporate feasts and music, with musicians performing in lavishly prepared pastoral settings and palace gardens to entertain and accompany dancing. This program celebrates the fête champêtre with the musette, small French baroque bagpipes that were highly fashionable at the time, particularly in pastoral settings.
Genesis Baroque
2/ Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
La Tromba, Bach, Kammermusik, and Mozart & Beethoven
2022–2023
Collages created for Genesis Baroque’s 2023 season
We were commissioned to create artwork for Genesis Baroque’s 2023 season. We created four collages for four performances, La Tromba, Bach, Kammermusik, and Mozart & Beethoven.
Within the collages you will find, a golden wreath of laurel and oak branches ca. 1760–70; one of the nine female figures that personified the arts, the ‘marble head of a young woman, perhaps a muse’, 3rd–2nd century BC; floral pieces from Atelier Martine, c. 1914; a glass slide from the Netherlands, dating 1907–30, from the circle of Aldophe Burdet; ‘The Edge of the Forest’ by August Heinrich, ca. 1820 for that open meadow view; a large Italian floral wreath from the mid-19th century; and flitting between all four, Australian fairy wrens.
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La Tromba
Leanne Sullivan & Joel Brennan — Baroque Trumpet
Synonymous with the glory of the baroque is surely the glorious sound of the baroque trumpet.
Bach
Sophie Gent — Baroque Violin
A sublime program of Johann Sebastian Bach’s works for strings, including the Concerto for Two Violins.
Genesis Chamber Series: Kammermusik
Featuring composers from Bohemia, Germany and Austria, this highly varied music was written for the entertainment at feasts, serenades and the gathering of music-lovers.
Genesis Chamber Series: Mozart & Beethoven
For the final program of the year, Genesis Chamber Series presents two pinnacles of the Classical chamber music cannon for wind and strings…. [and] Beethoven’s much-loved, momentous septet for violin, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, horn, and bassoon.
Genesis Baroque
2/ Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
Acis & Galatea
2022
Collages created for Genesis Baroque
We were commissioned to create artwork for Genesis Baroque’s 2022 production of George Frideric Handel’s Acis & Galatea.
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Acis and Galatea, often touted as the greatest pastoral opera ever written, has variously been described as a masque, a serenata, a pastoral opera, and an oratorio, reflecting its chequered history and revisions by Handel over more than 30 years and its unconventional forms.
Handel initially composed the work in 1718 for James Brydges, Earl of Carnavon, who built the stately home ‘Cannons’ in Middlesex, where he employed musicians for his chapel and entertainment. Based on John Dryden’s (1717) translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the work tells the story of the love between the mortal Acis and sea nymph Galatea, and the monstrous cyclops Polyphemus, who kills Acis with a rock in jealous rage, after which Galatea transforms Acis’ blood into the sparkling waters of a river so they may remain together for eternity. The myth was popular at the time, and Handel had already written an Italian cantata based upon it, Acis, Galatea e Polifemo, ten years prior. With a libretto by the poet John Gay (possibly with minor input from Gay’s contemporaries), Handel’s Cannons version was scored for only five voices — soprano, three tenors, and a bass — with solo lines for each instrumentalist.
Jennifer Kirsner, Artistic Director Genesis Baroque
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