At Aston Magna, Thomas Jefferson's favorite tunes and Baroque music by modern 30-somethings

Boston Globe

3 days ago

Rembrandt Peale, "Thomas Jefferson," 1805. Oil on linen.
New-York Historical Society
In a phone interview, Stepner called Jefferson's music library 'quite remarkable for its breadth and depth.' He collected popular songs, piano-vocal scores for operas, musical method books, and 'quite a lot' of chamber music. His wife, Martha, was a 'serious amateur' keyboard player and they often played together. 'His wedding gift to her was going to be a harpsichord, and then he heard about this new-fangled thing called a fortepiano,' Stepner said with a chuckle. 'He canceled the harpsichord order and got her a fortepiano instead!'
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The library itself is a microcosm of the wider musical world at the time, and there was a 'huge selection of pieces' to choose from in crafting the program with soprano Kristen Watson, said Stepner. 'There's Geminiani, there's popular music of the day. … There's Haydn, Purcell, Mozart.'
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But two names on the program might be more familiar to American history buffs than musicians. There are two songs by Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and lawyer who also considered himself 'the first serious American composer,' Stepner said. The program also features music by Italian-English painter and composer Maria Cosway, who may have had a brief romantic affair with Jefferson when he was serving as ambassador to France in the late 1780s and exchanged letters with him for the rest of his life.
Stepner, who has been the festival's artistic director since 1991, also curated a program focusing on late Mozart, which he said was his personal favorite this year (July 17 and 19). 'Mozart is more and more satisfying to play as I get older,' he said. In addition, he mustered an intergenerational lineup of soloists for the season finale, 'Four Fiddlers' (July 31 and Aug. 3). Each violinist will carry the virtuosic solos in one of Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons,' with Stepner claiming 'Winter.'
Stepner also tends to feature one guest director per festival; this year it's historical keyboard maven Peter Sykes, who crafted an all-Baroque program called 'From Castello to Canzano.' The plot twist: Nicola Canzano, whose music concludes the program, was born in 1991. So was Nathan Adam Mondry, who also has two pieces on the program.
How do a pair of 30-somethings end up writing Baroque trio sonatas and sinfoniettas? Canzano, who studied composition as an undergraduate, credits a masterclass with composer Michael Gordon that he signed up for by accident. 'I showed him what I was working on, and he listened, and he said 'Hmm! It sounds like you really just want to write Baroque music,'' he said.
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Historically informed music, or music composed according to Baroque-era principles, was in fact what Canzano wanted to write. However, since his colleagues and teachers were writing in decidedly more contemporary styles, he had drunk 'the Kool-Aid that it wasn't kosher for some reason.'
Once he embraced his passion for it, Canzano honed his skills through performing on the harpsichord, which typically involves a good deal of improvisation. 'Now people actually pay me to write it, which is kind of crazy. My mother still doesn't really believe it.'
However, given the past several decades' surge of interest in period instruments and historical performance practices, it doesn't feel like such a logical leap to Canzano that composers might want to explore those styles as well. 'People have been playing this stuff since it was invented, which is not true of every genre of music,' he said. 'Corelli's never been out of print.'
Both Canzano and Mondry are 'really terrific keyboard players and improvisers, and they're serious about writing real Baroque music,' Stepner said. 'That means they have to become contrapuntalists, and be real familiar with styles — dance music in particular — and also forms.'
And at the end of the day, if you listen to his music, Canzano joked, 'you wouldn't know that I wasn't dead.'
ASTON MAGNA MUSIC FESTIVAL
Starts July 10. Newton and Great Barrington.
A.Z. Madonna can be reached at