A Baroque Violinist Performs Music by Living Composers
“Now there are varieties of gifts...To one is given through the Spirit various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.”
- 1 Corinthians 12
The craft of musical composition is undergoing a renewal. I’m delighted to write about my experience as vocalist and violinist in a July 2022 concert in which the Catholic Sacred Music Project brought dedicated musicians together to perform works by living composers under the excellent guidance of conductor Martin Baker. Music is a universal language transcending the spoken word. If St Paul’s “tongues of men and of angels” refers to music, composers and performers are those tasked to speak and interpret this gift for the Church.
As a baroque violinist trained in historical performance, I spend most of my life analyzing music written centuries ago, with the goal of discovering and being faithful to “composer’s intent.” This includes seeking to understand cultural context via art and literature from the period, analyzing early sheet music sources such as the composer’s own handwriting (my favorite), and using the historically correct version of every instrument. I rarely meet living composers and occasionally forget they exist! To my dear friend Mark Nowakowski (b.1978), from whom I’ve commissioned works for my ensemble, I owe a renewed hope in the future of musical composition and an awareness of the work of Benedict XVI Institute and the Catholic Sacred Music Project. Standing in witness against the nonsense of so much 20th- and 21st-century music, the six living composers whose music we performed on July 1st honor and carry forward the great tradition into ever-new expressions of his truth, beauty, and goodness.
There are so many difficulties for living composers to overcome: newness is risky to both listener and performer. Why should one venture into the acoustic unknown when one can safely explore yet another performance of one’s favorite Bach cantata? The tradition of Christian-influenced tonal harmony treats dissonance with care, for music bypasses the intellect to directly influence the soul of the listener. Good music can even teach us about the mystery of suffering: for a harmonic resolution is made more beautiful by means of the dissonance preceding it. True beauty in sound can be described as an intentional blending of discord and concord, yet listening to modern music at its most relativistic is like drinking dissonance from a garden hose! Many feel they must compose this way to be taken seriously. As a young violinist in music conservatory fascinated with the science of music theory, I signed up for “Composer’s Lab Orchestra.” But ultimately I was so disheartened by the intentional ugliness I encountered in those newly written compositions, I turned away to study baroque violin so I’d never have to play new music again!
How delightful that my interaction with new music didn’t end there. The works performed by the CSMP on July 1st are at once original and deeply rooted. The melodic beauty, textual clarity, and hope-filled atmosphere of “Adoramus te, Christe” by Daniel Knaggs (b.1983) is a happy lesson to me that, in spite of negative experiences at conservatory, even my generation is capable of writing extraordinary music! Kevin Allen’s (b.1964) slowly unfolding harmonic sequences in his “Bonum est” are tremendously moving. Mark Nowakowski’s powerful lament without words, “O Mater Dolorosa” for violin and organ reminds me simultaneously of Brahms’ inward rhythmic intensity and early Baroque stylus phantasticus’ outward expressiveness. Xanthe Kraft (b.1994) treated the text “Speravit, anima mea” with a Neo- Baroque elegance that was a joy to rehearse and perform. The way she interwove my violin line with the solo voices is warmly conversational and perfectly balanced. In addition to our performance of his “Ave Maria”, the world premier of Missa St. Junipero Serra by Frank La Rocca (b.1951) took place on the same day. The composer specifies the mass is to be performed on period instruments, and he treated with great sensitivity the baroque flute and gut-strung instruments’ distinctive nature and timbre. La Rocca and Nowakowski warm my heart with their interest in ancient instruments. Closing our concert, Massimo Scapin (b.1968) employed a jazzy-sounding harmonic progression early in “Jubilate Deo” on the word “exultation” in a manner distinctly American. Yes, he’s of Italian origin, but sometimes it takes international perspective to capture cultural personality so convincingly!
The presence of composers, whether quietly listening or commenting, adds something indefinable to a musical ensemble’s sense of conviction in the preparation process. They four who attended the conference didn’t have opportunity to say much in rehearsals: they didn’t have to. There is little they can add to or change what they have already said through the “tongue” of music. I believe I am as well acquainted with my friend Nowakowski for having listened to, practiced, rehearsed, and performed his music as I do from having known him personally for years. The more intensely a soul concentrates and enters into a great piece of art, the deeper the communion with the soul who created it. In every concert, performers should bring notes to life with the same conviction as if we had written the music ourselves. The intention to glorify God with music becomes a means of interpreting His beauty, and the communion of composer, performer, and listener becomes something beyond the created order of being.
—Fiona Hughes 24 September 2022
Artistic Director of Three Notch’d Road: The Virginia Baroque Ensemble, Fiona Hughes attended Oberlin Conservatory and Cleveland Institute of Music. She performs on modern and baroque violin, appearing with Washington Bach Consort, Bach Akademie Charlotte, the Richmond Symphony, and in music festivals including Banff (Canada), Staunton Music Festival, and Pacific Music Festival (Japan). With Boston’s GRAMMY-winning Handel + Haydn Society Hughes has recorded 10 CDs for release on the Coro label and worked regularly with conductors Harry Christophers, Masaaki Suzuki, Bernard Labadie, and Richard Egarr. She looks to Stephen Rose, Adam DeGraff, and Marilyn McDonald as mentors. Hughes is originally from Texas and spent most of her childhood in The Enchanted Circle of northern New Mexico. Her violin is the ex-Vieuxtemps Claude Pierray (1720 Paris).