2025 FESTIVAL | June 8–15, 2025
Amor Temporalia: Music of Bertali, Schmelzer, Valentini, and others
Returning for their fourth consecutive Festival, the always-engaging instrumentalists of ACRONYM open our week of Festival Concerts with music that testifies to a rare taste for extravagance and novelty. The Holy Roman Empire, until its dramatic defeat by Napoleon, represented one of the greatest consolidations of power and wealth in the history of Europe. For nearly a millennium, the Empire’s purse funded some of the most lavish (and strangest!) art, architecture, and music available across Europe, expressions both of its love of—and its grip on—temporal power. This selection of works commissioned by (or dedicated to) the Empire’s nobility offers a soundscape to the machinations of Empire and a 17th-century expression of amor temporalia.
“Consummate style, grace, and unity of spirit.”
ARTISTS
Chloe Fedor, Edwin Huizinga, Johanna Novom, Adriane Post & Beth Wenstrom, violin; Cynthia Black, viola; Kivie Cahn-Lipman, viola da gamba & lirone; Loren Ludwig, viola da gamba & colascione; Paul Dwyer, violoncello; Doug Balliett, violone; Elliot Figg, harpsichord & organ, Dan Swenberg, theorbo