The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, January 17, 1979-Page 5

Baroque presentation kicks A rs

By NINA SHISHKOFF
is Playing Bach on a Moog synthesiter
a gimmick. Bach needs no updating,
he is universal. Electronic sound at its
best adds nothing to the music, and at
its worst sounds ridiculous. It is not too
peculiar, then, to ask whether playing
Baroque music Qn the original in-
struments, similarly an uncommon ex-
perience, is a gimmick or not. Some are
convinced that we cannot truly ap-
preciate Baroque music unless we hear
it as it was originally played. Others
Ars Musica Baroque
Orchestra
Rackhamn Auditorium
Suite in G major ......................Purcell
Sonata "La Battalia"....................Biber
Overture for flute, 2 violins, viola,
and bass ........................Bach
Concerto in C for recorder, oboe, two
violins, and continuo ...............Vivaldi
Concerto in C minor .....................Bach
Lyndon Lawless, musical director
may find this unnecessary, or even
pretentious.
Onto the scene comesthe Ars Musica
Baroque Orchestra, an Ann Arbor-
based group which played the second of
four concerts at Rackham Auditorium

Monday. This series of concerts
features the first United States perfor-
mances of Bach's orchestral suites on
the antiquated instruments for which
they were written. These are also the
first appearances of the orchestra's
newest members, Alison Bury and
Richard Earle.
THE FIRST PIECE performed was a
suite by Henry Purcell. It nicely
demonstrated the range of the old in-
struments, especially the rich-sounding
Baroque violins. The next piece, by
Heinrich Biber, was a programmatic
sonata called La Battalia, which Lyn-
don Lawless, violinist and founder of
the orchestra,found "250 years ahead of
Charles Ives." Biber never divulged
what the music was meant to represent
so Lawless obligingly supplied the
audience with his own interpretation, a
tale which included two armies, eight
singing soldiers, a duel, and charge of
the cavalry. The piece was followed by
the Bach Orchestral Suite No 2, and a
concerto for recorder, oboe, two violins,
and continuo by Vivaldi.
Just as Bach didn't write for syn-
thesizers, he did not tailor his concerti
for today's, virtuoso performers. The
flute has a lead role in the suite, but so
gentle are its tones that commending
the flutist, Michael Lynn, above the

other orchestra members seems almost
unfair. The whole orchestra shines in
this concert.
THE LAST PIECE was Bach's Con-
certo in C minor for oboe, violin, and
orchestra. The two new musicians,
Richard Earle on the three-key oboe,
and Alison Bury on baroque violin, both
gave solo performances. This concerto
is Bach at his most universal; music
that might seem to transcend all
arguments about what instruments it
should be played on. It ought to have
been the triumph of the evening, but it
wasn't. At critical moments, the oboe

would get out of control; it might have
been the nervousness of the performer
- no one seemed well-enough rehear-
sed for this piece. Most probably, it was
the inadequacy of the instrument. In
other selections a sour note could be ex-
cused, but in this concerto it was un-
forgivable.
There is nothing gimmicky about Ars
Musica. They play well and choose-
their material carefully. Their next
concerts are February 26 and March 18.
The opportunity to hear them should
not be missed; they offer authentic and
original vitality.

the Collaborative
winter
art & craft
classes
Classes and workshops including:
BATIK & QUILTING
REGISTER NOW-CLASSES BEGIN JAN. 29
U-M Artists & Craftsmen Guild
763-4430
2nd Floor, Michigan Union

may, ¢ . r
;,
t
M

PRESENTS Tickets at PTP Office-764-0450
PTP A SUPERSTAR WEEKEND! and at Hudson's Stores
AN ALL SHAKESPEAREAN

I I

PROGRAM
ABOUT
PARENTS
AND CHILDREN

Nicholas Pennell

Marti Maraden

* ? 'iTHIS FAIR CHILD
OF MINE
Friday & Saturday
v:Jan. 19 & 20, 8:00p.m.
Trueblood Theatre
Torn Wood

pppp"- Iqm

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0007,
A

FOq

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1

pr
'in'~

Daily Photo by PAM MARKS
Oh Fiddlesticks!
Mike Seeger saws the strings while Alice Gerrard hammers on with a pair

of fiddlesticks. The duo performed
Festival.

recently at the Ann Arbor Folk

Rexroth at Rackham

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_ __..

Loyal troops fight on

By PAT GRAY
Do you sometimes think if you hear
another cliche you'll go crazy? How
about "Brr-r-r-r-r, cold enough for
you?"
There is a remedy for lackluster ex-
pression, however, and it lies in lines
like these:
It is too cold today for the trees to touch.
The sky will not turn.
Smoke spills orer the roof with the odor
of pillows and lettuce.
That doesn't seem to make sense, you
may say, and yet it does; poetry makes
a different sort of sense. To under-
stand poetry, one need relax one's ex-
pectations of normal discourse and let
language speak to the emotions, the in-
tellect, and the imagination.
THIS IS a good week to be spoken to.
Today, Kenneth Rexroth reads from his
work at 4:00 p.m. in the Rackham Lec-
ture Hall for the Hopwood Awards
presentation. Rexroth was possibly the
first poet to plant the flag of the "new
poetry" of the fifties on the West Coast.
He had San Francisco staked out when
Ginsberg, & Co. arrived in the late fif-
ties, and, indeed, helped Ginsberg and
many other poets there to develop.
Much of his work is concerned with
human memory. He recalls being cold

while in Chicago, in 1918, in his poem
"The Bad Old Days":
The first thing I did was to take
a streetcar to the stockyards.
fit the winter aftern oon,
gritty and fetid, I walked
through the filthy snow, through the
squalid streets, looking shyly
into the people's faces.
Would Rexroth or E.G. Burrows,
whose lines are quoted in the third
paragraph, ever say "cold enough for
you?"
BURROWS WILL read at 7:30 p.m.
tonight at the Guild House. He is
executive producer of radio station
WUOM, and reads from works of con-
temporary poetry every Sunday at 8:30
p.m. on that radio station.
Burrows' books are available at Bor-
ders, Centicore, and A Periodical
Retreat: The latest, Kiva, will be in his
hands tomorrow evening. Kiva is a
chamber inside a Pueblo Indian
dwelling in which religious ceremonies
are held.
William Tyndale, English translator
of the Bible and a church reformer, was
strangled and burned at the stake in
Brussels in 1536.

(continued from Page 2)
miles of the town, which appeared from
the Thai side to have been virtually
deserted for the past two days.
A radio station believed to be in China
went on the air yesterday to speak for
the ousted government. Calling itself
the Voice of Democratic Kampuchea
(Cambodia), it broadcast on the same
frequency as Radio Peking's Cam-
bodian-language station. One broadcast.
carried a lengthy statement that the
VISTA
is coming
alive again.
How about
coming
alive
with us?
Here's your chance to
do something for America.
We need all kinds of VISTA
volunteers. All kinds of skills.
People eighteen or eighty, we
don't care. High income or low
income. We don't care as long
as you come. Come to VISTA
for the most important experi-
ence of your life. VISTA needs
you. VISTA is coming alive
again. Call toll free:
800-424-8580. VISTA

fall of Phnom Penh meant little and
that the Vietnamese "would drown in
the ocean of the people's war."
Troops loyal to the ousted gover-
nment were still reported fighting in
northwest Cambodia and harassing the
Vietnamese invaders. Some military
analysts in Bangkok said they were
beginning to believe the former gover-
nment's assertion that it would' fight to
the end."
WESTERN SOURCES said that Pur-
sat, 100 miles northwest of Phnom
Penh, had not fallen and that fighting
continued near Battambang, northwest
Cambodia's chief city; near Sisophon,
30 miles east of the Thai border, and at
Nimit, 13 miles from the frontier.
In a Vietnam News Agency broad-
cast, a high-ranking member of Cam-
bodia's new provisional government
said casualties on both sides ofthe war
in Cambodia were few, but that many
prisoners have been captured.
Ros Samay, secretary-general of the
central committee of the Kampichea
National United Front for National
Salvation, was interviewed by Agence
France-Presse, and the interview was
carried by the Vietnamese agency.
Women's & Men's
Pocket
Billiard
Tournament
ACU-1
Sign-up
Union Billiards
Open 10Oam

I


Mass Comrnuneca tion
Grown Gag Serioes
The Howard R. Marsh Center for the study of Jour-
nalistic Performance will again sponsor a series of
Wednesday brown bag sessions to explore aspects
of mass communication. All are open to the public.
Each will be at 12:10to 1 pm in 2040F LSA Building.
JAN. 17 - "Reducing the Gap Between Media Re-
searchers and Editors," Fred Currier, President
of Market Opinion Research and Adjunct Professor of
Journalism.
JAN. 31- "Using Anti-Trust Law to Promote Media
Diversity," Professor Robert Bishop, Department
of Journalism.
FEB. 14-- "Trade Unionism and the Journalist,"
Larry Hatfield, San Francisco Examiner and NEH Fellow.
FEB. 28 - "Television and Leisure Time," Marianne
Berry and Ben Taylor, doctoral students in mass com-
munications.

1979
Iiopwood.
underclassmen Awards
Academy of American Poets,
Bain-Swiggett, & Gutterman
Poetry Awards
Wednesday, Jan. 17, 4pmn
Rackham Lecture Hall
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Author of:
New Poems
An Autobiographical Novel
Translator of:
The Women Poets of Japan
Seasons of Sacred Lust
Editor of:
The Selected Buddhist
Essays of Lafcadio Hearn

Kenneth Rexroth
Reading his poetry

PUBLIC LECTURE
by
Richard Ohmann
Professor of English, Wesleyan University

MAR.' 21

-"The Debate Over International News
Exchange," Wilbur Schramm, former director of
East-West Center and Visiting Marsh Professor.

Ann A WE... U ..1 -- -- jLL- -U

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