Love and War

British tenor Paul Elliott will join Washington University’s Kingsbury Ensemble for a concert titled “Love and War: Music of the Early Italian Baroque” at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 20.

The performance takes place in the university’s Holmes Lounge, located in Ridgley Hall, on the west side of Brookings Quadrangle, near the intersection of Brookings and Hoyt drives. Tickets are $15 for the general public; $10 for seniors and Washington University faculty and staff; and $5 for students. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, (314) 935-6543, and at the door. For more information, call (314) 935-4841.

The Kingsbury Ensemble specializes in music of the Baroque and Classical periods, employing historically accurate practices and instruments and performing in acoustically appropriate settings. Harpsichordist Maryse Carlin, instructor in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, directs the ensemble, though other members are drawn from across the United States.

Elliott, a renowned specialist in Baroque music, performs with numerous early-music groups, including the Academy of Ancient Music and the Hilliard Ensemble, the latter a premier vocal group specializing in medieval and renaissance music. He has made more than 100 recordings as featured artist.

The featured work on the concert will be Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, a theatrical madrigal by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643). The piece, written in 1624, is included in Book VIII (1638) of Monteverdi’s madrigals, a collection that established the composer’s expansion and alteration of the traditional Renaissance a cappella Italian madrigal into a more theatrical form with instruments — a form that soon became identified with the early Baroque era.

With text taken from Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda tells the story of Tancredi, a crusader knight, and Clorinda, a Persian warrior maid whom Tancredi wounds in battle. Monteverdi depicts the sounds of battle — the clash of swords, the gallop of horses — through the use of pizzicato (the plucking of strings with the fingers), which makes its first known appearance in this work, as well as tremolo and the rapid repetition of one note.

In addition to Elliott, singers will include sopranos Christine Johnson and Jessica Heuser; tenor James Harr, instructor in voice; and bass David Berger. Violinist Patricia Ahern of Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra joins a group of six instrumentalists that also includes Carlin (harpsichord); Dee Sparks, instructor of music, (violin); and Jeffrey Noonan, a 2004 doctoral graduate in musicology, (Baroque guitar and theorbo). Other players include Brandon Christenson (violin), Sara Edgerton (cello) and Phil Spray (violine).

Senior lecturer Christine Armistead, instructor in voice, has staged the work in accordance with mime and actions used in dramatic works of the early Baroque. Costumes are by Bonnie Kruger, senior artist-in-residence in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

Also on the program are works by Salamone Rossi and Biagio Marini.