A Musical Banquet: Songs for Lute, Voice, and Viol (2010)

This is the approved revision of this page, as well as being the most recent.

Folger Consort returned to its English roots in A Musical Banquet: Songs for Lute, Voice, and Viol from April 9 to April 11, 2010 in the Folger's Elizabethan Theatre with music from a 1610 anthology of songs entitled A Musicall Banquet, published by Robert Dowland, the son of the great lutenist John Dowland. A feast of varied styles, the collection includes English lute ayres, French court airs, and some of the most famous Italian monodies. In 1610, the lute and viol still reigned as the most popular and influential English instruments, but the violin was beginning to make its presence felt as well. The Consort program featured some of the first English pieces for violins and viols together by John Cooper, also known as Giovanni Coprario.

Detail of an early 1600s drawing, a table scene from the time of James I.












Artists

Folger Consort

Artistic Directors

  • Robert Eisenstein: violin, viola, recorder
  • Christopher Kendall: lute

Guest artists

  • Mark Bleeke: tenor
  • Mary Springfels: viol, cittern
  • Charles Weaver: lute, guitar
  • Tom Zajac: recorder, flute, bagpipe, trombone