The Holidays with BREVE

On a recent Friday evening, a small crowd sat rapt in Grace Episcopal Church in St. Francisville as twelve members of the Baton Rouge Early Vocal Ensemble (BREVE) stood in the chancel to sing pieces by the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. Given the program of four-hundred-year-old madrigals, the surroundings, and the accompanying quartet of harpsichord, violins, and cello, it seems appropriate to describe the results as “heavenly.” BREVE was founded in 2010 when director William Plummer, then a doctoral student at LSU, noticed that there wasn’t much performance of early music in Louisiana and assembled a core group of like-minded vocalists interested in changing that. “We used to practice in a stairwell, for the reverberant acoustics,” noted Plummer, who is now director of choral activities at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Members include LSU and ULL music students, businesspeople, lawyers, and merchants united by a love for the music of the Renaissance (1450–1600) and the Baroque (1600–1750). Plummer explained that, in addition to employing a tuning system different from that familiar to modern musicians, each period also produced very different musical styles. “From the Renaissance, we expect to see music constructed with imitative voice parts, like pieces of thread woven together to create a tapestry of sound,” he said. Often there’s a snippet of melody repeated, but the construction of the music is the singular unifying factor. Baroque music is more about the words being expressed. It’s highly emotional music, out to grab you with its persuasive, rhetorical value. The performance of each involves a different sound and structure.”

Monteverdi, an Italian composer and Roman Catholic priest who lived from 1567–1643, is regarded as revolutionary because his styles of composition straddled both periods. BREVE’s program provided a beautiful, educational introduction to the distinction. Plummer said that what draws members to the subject matter is “a sense that we’re able to see where we come from, to have intimate contact with the past through the lens of art, and, sometimes, to be the first to perform such things.” On October 23 at 10 am BREVE will perform its Monteverdi program at New Orleans’ Immaculate Conception Church with a Christmas program scheduled for December 5 at 6 pm in St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, Louisiana. Plummer also noted that the ensemble soon expects to have openings for a tenor and a mezzo-soprano. Search for Baton Rouge Early Vocal Ensemble on Facebook for details.