Event

Cupid and the Rose

Join Ariose Singers as we explore the pleasures, pains and mysteries of love through five centuries of choral song. Masters of early English polyphony are represented by works composed by John Dunstable, William Byrd, John Dowland, Thomas Tomkins and Henry Purcell. Ralph Vaughan Williams's ingenious transcriptions of English Folk Songs give a later British perspective. Californian composer Emma Lou Diemer delightfully sets Shakespeare lyrics for choir and piano in her Three Madrigals. Les Chansons des Roses by another West Coast composer, Morten Lauridsen, has become a standard of contemporary choral repertoire for its passionate and lyrical settings of French poetry by the great Rainer Maria Rilke. Johannes Brahms's Neue Liebeslieder Walzer (New Love-song Waltzes), op. 65 for chamber choir and piano duet is a compositional tour-de-force full of grace and fire--in this enduring masterwork fifteen waltzes of breathtaking variety elevate the humble dance form to the level of high art.