The St. Paul,Minn.-based Rose Ensemble has travelled the world from its beginning, sharingits expertise in and love for medieval and Renaissance music. This ensemble ofvocal and instrumental artists under Jordan Sramek (the ensemble’s artisticdirector as well as its founder some two decades ago) performs early musicconcerts from Vermont to California and Germany to Bolivia. At the 2012 TolosaChoral Contest in Spain, the Rose Ensemble took home first prize in both thesacred and secular music categories.
The Rose Ensemblehas recorded several unique and interesting CDs; among them are IlPoverello: Medieval & Renaissance Music for Saint Francis of Assisi; AndGlory Shone Around: Early American Carols, Country Dances, Southern HarmonyHymns and Shaker Spiritual Songs;
and SlavicHoliday: Legends from Ancient Bohemia and Poland. Truly showing theensemble’s eclecticism and variegated talent, it has also released an album ofAmerican music of the Prohibition Era, the Mexican Baroque and even Hawaiianvocal music. We are indeed quite fortunate to have like-minded hosts—EarlyMusic Now—to provide Rose Ensemble with the time, space and opportunity toshare its art with us here in Milwaukee.
Rose Ensemble’sprogram, titled “A Rose in Winter: The Miracle of New Lifein the Dark of Night,” is just the right medicine for the winter blahs. Theprogram’s music, taken together, powerfully and beautifully reminds us that, nomatter how harsh the coming months, spring willreturn. One of the best-known pieces on the program is the Christmas carol andMarian hymn Es ist ein Ros entsprungen,harmonized by the prolific German composer, organist and theorist MichaelPraetorius in 1609. It’s much better known in the English-speaking world in the1894 translation by Theodore Baker as Lo,How a Rose E’er Blooming. Particularly moving and most apropos to ourpurpose are Baker’s charming words:
O Flower, whose fragrance tender
With sweetness fills the air,
Dispel with glorious splendor
The darkness everywhere.
Both sacred andsecular pieces fill the concert program; most will be unfamiliar to audiences,but that’s a good thing. There are two pieces by the German Benedictine abbess,writer, composer, visionary and mystic Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179): O frondens virga and O Virga ac diadema. Some of the most“modern” music is Surge, illuminare,Jerusalem by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525-1594), an Italiancomposer whose works represent the culmination of Renaissance polyphony.Another of the “big names” of the age is Guillaume Dufay (1394-1474), a centralfigure of the Burgundian School of composition and a leading figure of theearly Renaissance period. Attendees will hear his Flos florum. There are several anonymous pieces from the 12ththrough 14th centuries as well as works by such as Francisco Guerrero, JanTollius and John Dunstable. The latter, an Englishman, was one of the finest ofthe composers active in the early 15th century; Rose Ensemble playshis lovely motet Speciosa Facta Es (Thou Art Beautiful).
“A Rose in Winter: The Miracle of New Life inthe Dark of Night” will be performed on Dec. 10-11 at St. JosephChapel, 1501 S. Layton Blvd. For tickets and more information, visit earlymusicnow.org.
