A Spanish Christmas: Festive Music from Spain's Golden Age (2008)

From December 12 to December 21, 2008, the Folger Consort scene shifted westward to Spain for a program of Christmas music from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with their program A Spanish Christmas: Festive Music from Spain's Golden Age. The Consort's good friends of the Concord Ensemble returned to sing, and the instrumental forces will included harp, organ, lute, vihuela, violin, cornetto and dulcian. The program included motets from the great Cathedrals by the masters of Spanish Renaissance choral music, including Morales, Victoria, and Guerrero, as well as popular villançicos (carols), both Renaissance and Baroque, with their lively and quintessentially Spanish rhythms. The instruments, or ‘ministriles’, contributed ‘differencias,’ or virtuoso improvisations on bass lines and popular songs and dances.

Artists

Folger Consort

Artistic Director

• Robert Eisenstein: violin, viol

Guest artists

• Pablo Cora: tenor, hautecontre
• Daniel Carberg: tenor
• Rachelle Fox: soprano
• Kristen Toedtman: mezzo-soprano
• Mischa Bouvier: baritone
• Marilyn Boenu: dulcian, recorder
• Alexander Bonus: cornetto
• Charles Weaver: lute, theorbo, guitar
• Webb Wiggins: organ
• Marcia Young: harp