KEEPING AN EAR TO THE GROUND

Saturday, September 19 at 7:30 p.m. | Virtual Concert

Austin Baroque Orchestra will start their tenth season online with a program celebrating ground basses, drones, passacailles, chaconas, and other static or repeating compositional techniques.

Since ancient times, musicians have used repeating patterns as a foundation for compositions and improvisations. One of the most common, the ground bass, involves a bass line that repeats itself while the voices above it engage in melodic variation of increasing complexity. Later, dances based on repeating chord progressions, like the chaconne and passacaille, became popular, turning up in popular French operas and Italian concertos. One of the most popular of ground bass patterns, the folie d’espagne, even had a stock melody that was used by many composers as a launching point for melodic variation. Finally, the simplest of these techniques is the drone, which was often used by 18th-century composers to imitate bagpipes or hurdy-gurdies and to evoke the sound of folk music.

Recorded live in high definition video and audio at St. Theresa Catholic Church in Austin, this program will include music by Handel, Vivaldi, Lully, Purcell, Cabanilles, Telemann, and Marini.

Ticket prices are reduced from those of our in-person concerts. Suggested ticket prices are $20 (General), $15 (Senior), and $10 (Young Adult).

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In place of our usual informal pre-concert talk, each piece on the program will be preceded by a brief video conversation involving the musicians
casually talking about the piece, what they think is unique or special about it, and points of interest to listen for.

Event Details

Date: Saturday, September 19
Time: 7:30 p.m. CST
Website: https://austinbaroqueorchestra.org/events/keg/

Ticket Information

Cost: $20.00

Presenter Details

Name: Austin Baroque Orchestra

Embarking upon its tenth full concert season, the Austin Baroque Orchestra & Chorus seeks to immerse its audiences in the sound world of the past by performing high-quality music from the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries using replicas of period instruments and historically-informed performance techniques.