Old, Bold, in a New Mold

Old music isn’t what it used to be.

The ubiquity of period instrument ensembles--playing instruments restored or newly made to the standard prevailing at the time of the music for which they are used--has shifted the focus of authenticity in music of pre-modern eras from fussy issues of embellishment to more sensual matters of sound. And that means more immediate ear appeal for listeners and performers alike.

Southern California, however, has come late to the party, with noble pioneering efforts appearing and disappearing without much impact on the local music consciousness. But now there are two thriving period instrument groups that have compiled a distinguished record and that seem here to stay: the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra and Musica Angelica.

Both ensembles have sophisticated Christmas programs on tap that reveal much about their artistic concerns and audience expectations. On Thursday, Musica Angelica presents “A Renaissance Christmas” in Founders Hall at the Orange County Performing Arts Center. On Saturday, the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra offers “A Christmas Tale of Two Cities” at the Water Garden in Santa Monica.

“Los Angeles seems to be the last place in the United States where this is happening,” says lutenist Michael Eagan, founder-director of Musica Angelica, which dates to 1993. “I spent the ‘70s studying in Holland, and when I moved back in 1980, there was precious little here. I basically dropped out for about five years, mostly concentrating on the guitar and popular styles, and learning to compose. Now it’s improving in both quality and diversity.”

“The scene was pretty sparse,” agrees violinist Gregory Maldonado, director of the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, which he founded in 1985. “We were really the only orchestra around then. There are definitely more groups now and audience enough for two orchestras.”

Given the former scarcity of early music in L.A., it was serendipity that brought Eagan, who grew up in the Bay Area but went to high school in Los Angeles, and Maldonado, a Merced native, into encounters with the sound that ultimately seduced them.

“As a late teenager, I was very interested in the guitar,” Eagan says. “I went to hear a concert by Julian Bream. On the first half, he played an instrument I had never heard before, a Renaissance lute. It charmed me completely. Now I don’t remember the second half at all, but that first half was the spark.”

For Maldonado, it was a performance by the Bay Area-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, touring the early music hinterlands here in 1982, that got his attention. “It was such a warm and relaxed sound, lower in pitch and tension with a color very different from modern instruments,” he says. “It seems very natural.

Once they got the bug, the two musicians faced the long, slow process of building organizations.

“We started off very much a grass-roots thing,” says Maldonado of L.A. Baroque. After a brief time at Cal State Fresno, he came to UCLA, and like-minded students were his first partners in local period instrument performances. He studied Baroque violin in Europe with Monica Huggett and Reinhard Goebel, and performed and recorded with Philharmonia Baroque for several years.

“I began doing chamber concerts, occasionally getting a larger group together, and I wanted to do something more permanent. We got together a board of directors and some grants, and 1986/87 was our first subscription season.

“We definitely have our own home players now, a good core of serious musicians. We’ve been able to sustain ourselves financially and grow, with orchestral and chamber series and a lot of educational outreach.”

Eagan studied at the Royal Conservatory in Holland after dropping out of UC Berkeley and has performed with the cream of European and American ensembles, from La Petite Band to Philharmonia Baroque. He founded Musica Angelica with cellist-gambist Mark Chatfield, whom he first met at a festival organized by the Southern California Early Music Society in 1982 (the same event where Maldonado first heard Philharmonia Baroque).

Together, Eagan and Chatfield form the continuo core of Musica Angelica. In Baroque music, the continuo players lay down the bass line and harmonic support, somewhat similar to the rhythm and bass guitars in a modern pop band.

“To mix metaphors, the heart and engine of Baroque music is continuo,” Eagan says. “We wanted to provide consistently excellent Renaissance and Baroque music, and we wanted to emphasize singing, since it was vocal music that created the Baroque style.”

It is vocal music that dominates Musica Angelica’s Orange County program. For the intimate confines of Founders Hall, Eagan has enlisted sopranos Samela Aird Beasom and Susan Judy, mezzo Christen Herman and tenor Daniel Plaster, all of whom have sung with Musica Angelica since the beginning. Supporting them are Eagan and Chatfield, with Philharmonia Baroque violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock doing a guest artist turn.

“This is the fourth incarnation of our Christmas program,” Eagan says. “We keep fine-tuning the concept of doing a great variety of music spanning the centuries, mostly with voices. We’ll do some medieval chant and Renaissance carols. The presenters asked us to include some Hildegard--very popular now--and some Monteverdi. Ever since our collaboration with L.A. Opera [in 1997] on ‘Il Ritorno d’Ulisse,’ there has been a renewed interest in Monteverdi.”

The carols include a setting of “In Dulci Jubilo” by Eagan in a neo-Renaissance style. The core of this “Renaissance Christmas,” however, is Baroque: two of Biber’s programmatic, highly virtuosic violin sonatas and four arias from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

“ ‘Renaissance,’ in its meaning of rebirth, is a great catch-all,” Eagan laughs. “We really cover ground here, spanning 10 centuries of music.”

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L.A. Baroque’s “Christmas Tale of Two Cities” features Charpentier’s “Pastorale sur la Naissance de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ,” from late 17th century Paris, and the Christmas portion of Handel’s “Messiah,” representing 18th century London. Maldonado gave the U.S. premiere of Charpentier’s neglected masterpiece in 1991 and has been doing it annually ever since, with the same singers, headed by soprano Kris Gould.

“We were looking for alternatives to the regular Christmas fare,” Maldonado says, “and I heard this piece, [which was] recorded by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants. Audiences come back every year for it now. It helps a lot that we have the same performers, but there is always something new when we revisit it.”

“Messiah” may not sound like much of an alternative to Christmas business as usual, but L.A. Baroque will wear its Handel with a difference.

“We have done solo arias from ‘Messiah’ in the past with the Charpentier,” Maldonado says. “This year, we decided to do all of the Advent and Christmas music [in the oratorio], but with the same forces as the Charpentier, along the lines of what Joshua Rifkin did with Bach’s B-minor Mass.” (In 1982, Baroque organist-ragtime pianist-musicologist Rifkin made a controversial recording of Bach’s work with one singer to a part, instead of a full chorus.)

Maldonado concedes that this will undercut some of Handel’s contrasts of texture and weight, but says that the singers will now be able to embellish and personalize the choruses, giving a fresh slant to this beloved music.

As you might suspect, neither Maldonado nor Eagan considers himself a purist.

“I don’t fuss too much,” Maldonado says. “You do whatever the line [of music] tells you and let the music shape itself. We can’t really re-create early music 100%.”

Eagan points to the fact that Musica Angelica has premiered about 12 works by himself, Chatfield and other contemporary composers fascinated with the sound of period instruments. His ensemble also collaborates eagerly in outre productions, such as Long Beach Opera’s recent thoroughly rethought version of Purcell’s “Indian Queen,” which turned an English Restoration opera into a wild New World ride.

“I’m not an absolute purist,” he says, “but if you do play a period instrument in a historically informed way, you will discover so many things that will change your concept of the music. Arrangement, however, was the sine qua non of the period--you made do with what you had.”

The rest of L.A. Baroque’s orchestral season consists of three pairs of programs, each presented at the Water Garden and Zipper Hall at the Colburn School. In March 1999, the full ensemble will do Bach concertos, followed by Handel’s complete “Water Music” in April and a Mozart program in June. For the future, Maldonado is thinking about mounting a festival like some of the big Eastern and Bay Area early music conclaves, as well as concert versions of operas and a summer chamber series.

Musica Angelica just finished its fourth annual performance of the complete “Messiah” with Dana Marsh and the Paulist Boy Choristers, and will do the Christmas portion this afternoon with the forces of All Saints Church, Beverly Hills, under Thomas Foster. Its own subscription series features three programs of Baroque vocal music at All Saints Church in Pasadena and First Presbyterian Church of Santa Monica, and three performances of a concerto program at Zipper Hall, All Saints Beverly Hills and All Saints Pasadena.

Musica Angelica has recently released its first CD, with Eagan, Blumenstock and oboist Gonzalo Ruiz in Vivaldi concertos. In June 2000, Eagan will take the ensemble to Europe on its first tour. He would like to do bigger presentations, putting on a Handel oratorio annually, and he hopes to continue collaborating with local opera companies, including another production with Long Beach Opera next summer.

“We’ve been trying to grow in a measured way,” he says. “It’s been a long time coming, but I think period instrument performance in Los Angeles is finally approaching critical mass.”

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Musica Angelica, “Messiah,” Part 1 (Handel). All Saints Church, 504 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills. Today, 5 p.m., (310) 275-2910. $10-$15 donation. Also “A Renaissance Christmas” at Founders Hall, Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Thursday, 8 p.m. (714) 556-2787. $30.

* Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, “Pastorale sur la Naissance de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ” (Charpentier), “Messiah,” Part 1 (Handel). The Water Garden, 1620 26th St., Santa Monica. Saturday, 8 p.m. (310) 458-0425. $30.