Music department offers concert featuring rare French instrument

Many people today are slaves of fashion. This was even more true in Louis XIV's France. In fact a special musical instrument, the pardessus de viole was invented for 18th-century Frenchwomen just so they wouldn't look sloppy. It was used for 50 years until the French Revolution, when aristocrats began to worry more about staying alive than about having a bad hair day. And 250 years later, Tina Chancey is one of only four people in America who play it.

Bachrach

Tina Chancey with her pardessus de viole

Chancey and Webb Wiggins will present a concert of Baroque sonatas on pardessus and harpsichord in Barnes Hall on Monday, Feb. 4, at 8 p.m. The duo will perform 18th-century music by Jean-Marie Leclair, Marin Marais and Arcangelo Corelli.

A hybrid of the violin and the viol, the pardessus was created for what seems like a silly reason today -- because custom forbade 18th-century Frenchwomen musicians from holding anything on their bare shoulders. But then, how could they play the violin sonatas of Corelli that were taking France by storm? The pardessus was the answer. Held demurely on the lap, it had frets like a viol but was tuned like a combination violin and viol. And though it sounds awkward to play, the pardessus's gamy, throaty sound, so reminiscent of the human voice, captivated the 18th-century listener's imagination, just as it captivated Chancey's 20 years ago when she first started to play it.

A specialist on early bowed string instruments, Chancey has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to play pardessus debut recitals at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Recital Hall. She also wrote her dissertation on the pardessus and has recorded six suites for two pardessus by Barthelemy de Caix, with Catharina Meints on the Dorian label. Chancey owns an original instrument, made in 1750 by Louis Guersan.

A founding member and co-director of Hesperus, Chancey also is a former member of the Folger Consort, the New York Renaissance Band and the Ensemble for Early Music. Her articles on early music appear in scholarly and popular publications, and she has recorded for a score of labels from Arabesque to Windham Hill.

Wiggins is coordinator of the Early Music Program at the Peabody Conservatory, as well as a faculty member of the Oberlin College Baroque Performance Institute and the Amherst Early Music Institute. He has taught harpsichord at Princeton and George Mason Universities and at the University of Pennsylvania and has served as professor of harpsichord at the Oberlin College Conservatory.

Wiggins performs with the Baltimore Consort, Dryden Ensemble, Violins of Lafayette, Apollo's Fire, Philadelphia Classical Orchestra, Pomerium Musices, Hesperus and NYS Baroque.

In a review the Cleveland Plain Dealer said: "Beautiful in warmth, focus and expressivity, the pardessus sang like a human voice in Chancey's sensitive hands." You are invited to hear it for yourself.

Also this week, the Department of Music presents three other free concerts. See the calendar listings for details.