BRATTLEBORO-The Brattleboro Camerata presents "The Unknown Master: Music of Adrian Willaert" on Sunday, April 13, at the Brattleboro Music Center.
The 4 p.m. concert spotlights the works of Willaert, one of the central figures in 16th-century music.
According to Camerata Director Jonathan Harvey, "He was the most powerful and influential musician in Venice, and his students included the biggest names of the next generation of Italian composers." Harvey added that the continuing reputation of centuries-old music "is always dependent on a combination of financial and class circumstances, aesthetic qualities, later trends and fads, and pure chance."
Willaert was "just unlucky," Harvey said, and by the end of that century, the composer's music had nearly disappeared.
"In this concert, we get to unearth his work, and you can hear for yourself, centuries later, why he was considered a master in his own time."
Harvey has studied Willaert's work, "and the idea that broadly captures Willaert's effect for me is that his music is both profoundly beautiful as an aesthetic sound experience, and also intellectually rich, brimming with ornately and often abstractly arranged patterns that carry a variety of hidden meanings."
The "musical games and puzzles" Harvey says the composer loved so much "usually cannot be perceived by a listening audience - they were private joys for him, and his students and patrons, if he chose to tell them."
Tickets are $20 in advance or $25 at the door, youth admission is $10 with those under 12 free. Tickets are available online at bmcvt.org, by calling the BMC at 802-257-4523, or emailing info@bmcvt.org.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.