An interview with Ronn McFarlane

Welcome to harmony and. I'm Angela Mariani inviting you to spend an hour in the world of early music as performers of today cast new light on the music of the distant past. This week on harmony and my guest is Luton is Ron MacFarlane who is here to talk about his new CD between two hearts a collection of Renaissance dance music. A lutenist Ron MacFarlane is known both as a solo artist and as a member of the Baltimore concert. He's also recorded Lute song repertoire with well-known singers such as Julianne Baird and Frederick. He has several previous CDs on the Dorian label including music of John Dahl and Scottish lute music and a collection called the Renaissance lute. You have a new CD called Between Two Hearts. I have. Can you tell us about the repertoire on that some of it is Italian from a cap or a lute book. It is Italian German and French music all together. It's all based on music for the dance. I had

I had the idea of music that was more for dance music that was really dance to not art music based on dance forms but people would really move to this music. So the idea of between two hearts is really the energy between the two hearts of dancers. That would be drawn together in the dance in the music. That would really connect them together. The.

Lutenist Ron McFarlane performed French dance music published in 15 30 by Puritan young from a CD called Between Two Hearts. The dances on between two hearts come from all over 15th and 16th century Europe. HOFF dance and Rwandan dance from the northern countries of Germany and the Netherlands brawls gal yards and province from France bhalo South ILO and PVA from Italy join Ambrosio Dulce or has a salt trail NPV written for to loot. It's an unusual piece because it is based on a single chord a kind of a drone accompaniment which Mark Tudyk provides here very imaginatively the performer is only given the single chord to play but his improvisations on it are pretty amazing. It's

more of an improvised feel. You have the idea that that this was a written out improvisation in a bit of a window into 15th century practice where the music itself was not really written out. But here you have a written improvisation. So it gives us some kind of an idea of the way some other pieces might have been played. I think so. From the CD between two hearts lutenist Ron McFarlane and fellow Baltimore

concert member Mark Zuckerberg played assault on Arlo and P vote by Sean Ambrosio Dotson this week on harmony and my guest is Ron MacFarlane. And we're listening to his new CD between two hearts released on the Dorian label between two hearts is run MacFarlane's fourth solo CD for Dorian. The others are the Scottish Lute lute music of John Dahl and and the Renaissance lute. And as I mentioned he's also a member of the Baltimore. Concert the music that I play on on Renaissance lute is mostly art music although it's a wonderful blend between popular folk and art music but it's more of a solo recital this kind of thing. Baltimore concert is a little more like playing in a rock band or playing with with a folk traditional folk group. There are elements of all those involved but the Baltimore concert specializes in music from the 16th and 17th century and really focuses

on the popular side of music. We don't do a lot of contrapuntal music or high art music but there's a lot of improvisation. A lot of propulsive rhythms that you you find and it's just a very fun group to play with very different musical experience. Her.

Her. Her. There's a wonderful passage in the booklet to the CD that says at

13 his passion for music fully ignited upon hearing wipeout played by some classmates in a loosely formed rock n roll band. It was field day in junior high school so we were all involved in events that we were supposed especially interested in mostly athletic events. But they allowed some of my friends to set up a rock n roll band in the cafeteria. And as they played wiped out by the surf Ariz. I believe it was. It just seemed like the best thing I'd ever heard before. I guess I never realized that people my own age could play music that I would really enjoy listening to. And I just knew I had to do it I had to get a guitar. I had to learn how to play this music. And that's really when it happened there really aren't very many moments in my life where everything became clear have felt so energized in a single moment. But that was one. So you started to talk like I did I started on

guitar learn electric guitar played in rock bands through high school and into college in fact I state classical guitar in college but then on weekends would play in a rock band. That was my my weekend job and my summer job oftentimes and I really enjoyed it a lot. I still enjoy rock music quite a lot in film that it wasn't such a bad training for playing lute music in particular the propulsive rhythms that you find in old dance music. The improvisation that's common both in old music and in in rock music and even some of the scales turn out to be the same. Dorian scale in some pentatonic scales are in common between 16th and 17th century music and blues rock which is really where I started. A group of sixteenth century dances by Hans Noyes Siegler performed by lutenist

Ron McFarlane from the CD between two hearts. You're listening to harmony and a program of early music that comes to you from the studios of WFIU at Indiana University. On this week's edition of harmony and my guest is lutenist Ron MacFarlane. And we're listening to his new CD between two hearts released on the Dorian label. I'm Angela Mariani. Was there a magic moment that ger you to the lute as there was to music in general or no that that came on me more gradually. I saw all Julian Bream play a few times and thought he was wonderful he was dividing his concerts between a half Renaissance lute music and half classical guitar and I originally had the idea that I would divide my concerts similarly. But as I got

deeper into the loop I felt more and more in love with that and also became aware that I wanted to play the lute differently in a way that really kept me from playing classical guitar. So I I went completely into into Lute after playing at only about six months. Honey.

Four pieces from a collection of French dances published in 15 30 by Pierre opinio. We heard La Roque galliard and PERVAN and we started with police gone Duko or in English between two hearts. In the

booklet that accompanies this CD lutenist Ron McFarlane tells us that these were among the first pieces he ever learned on the lute but he returns to them again and again. Ron MacFarlane's new CD is also called Between Two Hearts and he's my guest this week on Harmony this recording is based around dance music and the four pieces from Ceasar in Negri come from a dance instruction book complete with pictures some of which are reproduced in this booklet. It's wonderful to have the the the music in really no movement by movement Measure for Measure what the movements of the dancers bodies will be and also seeing the wonderful illustrations there. It gives a lot of character a lot of feeling to it. Spaniel let go Katina more a a Ballo. This is based on a vocal piece but they've turned it into a dance. And finally the need Sarva. I'm not sure what need sartin means but it sounds like a

wonderful name. Four dances from the get out see of them Audie a dance instruction book published at the turn of the

17th century by DJ's audio in their giddy performed by lutenist Ron McFarlane who has joined me for this week's edition of harmony. We have some music here by French composer John Baptist. This act jumped up to specific in addition to being a musician he was also a physician and collected all kinds of music together in a huge collection 16:3 called the thesaurus harmonicas. And these three brawls come from the collection a brawl is a French dance is very popular in the 16th early 17th centuries. And these brawls I'm playing not so much as functional dance pieces as I have some of the other pieces in this collection but rather each one seems to have a very particular character. And I've I've just gone ahead with with expressing the character in the tempo and phrasing brawls were also a particularly

malleable form. There were some more slow and stately brawls that were thought to be appropriate for anyone to see anyone's grandparents to dance. There were some medium brawls that were thought well the married couples are. It's fine for it for the married couples to get to dance those. But then some very rowdy and rambunctious brawls it was thought only appropriate for teenagers to dance because in the steps in kicks of the dance it would become so exuberant many people would fall down just trying to dance them. And so you have an example of perhaps each in this collection of three brawls. Three brawls by Shawn but this song played by lutenist Ron McFarlane.

What do you do when you're not doing music. Well I have a great interest in yoga and meditation. I do quite a bit of exercise. I I really like to to run my wife and I run almost every day when I'm home. And we live in a beautiful place and in Rockport misuse it's Rockport is a beautiful place on the ocean. Yes we just moved there we had it was kind of an impulse move. We had been vacationing along the coast and we had dreamed for years of living right on the ocean and the place came up for rent. That that was right on the ocean in the backyard was the ocean is the ocean. And it was either moving L or you have to wait a long time before realizing stream so you look at each other sort of closed her eyes and plunge it in. And this is very recent this is just in January and toward the end of January that we moved and we're loving it so

much living right there on the ocean. Look at it every day. It's a wonderful place to to practice to work to create music. The light is is wonderful and being right there's very inspiring. It's making me tremendously homesick in Rockport just that interesting personal note Rockport is where I wanted to live before fate brought me to Indiana really because I lived in Boston for many years now and never got there so far. And we feel very fortunate to be there it's it's a very friendly wonderful community. It's a beautiful place. It really is. And.

Less spawn yet and pad the one a three sixteenth century dances

from the cup or a lute book from lutenist Ron MacFarlane's new CD between two hearts available on the Dorian label. Ron McFarlane has been my guest this week on harmony and this is his fourth solo CD for Dorian. The others include music of John Dahl and Scottish lute music and a collection called the Renaissance lute. He's also a member of the Baltimore concert who will be my guests on next week's edition of harmony and I hope you'll join us. Harmony A is a production of WFIU and comes from Indiana University.

Additional resources have come from the early music institute and the Thomas Bigley archive of early music recordings at the Indiana University School of Music. Our theme music is played by ensemble Alcatraz. If you like a playlist of the music on this week's program send a self-addressed stamped envelope to harmony a playlist WFIU radio and TV Center Indiana University Bloomington Indiana 4 7 4 0 5. Or you can reach us at our email address. Harmony at at Indiana dot edu. Be sure to ask for harmony a playlist number ninety six twenty between two hearts. You can find harmony on the worldwide web at W W W hyphen dot Indiana dot edu slash Tilda WFIU slash home dot HTL. Our engineer was Pat Hawkins and I'm Angela Mariani inviting you to join us again for the next edition of harmony and.

Welcome to harmony and. I'm Angela Mariani inviting you to spend an hour in the

world of early music as performers of today cast new light on the music of the distant past. This week on harmony and a visit with members of the Baltimore concert and the broadcast premiere of their newest CD a trip to Kilburn Playford tunes and their ballads the. The. The. The. The. Uh.

Uh. Uh. Your new CD is called a trip to Kilburn Playford tunes in their balance. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about that. Well a trip to Kilburn is actually the name of a dance from the English dancing master. One of the later additions not the first one in 16 51. And we selected that particular piece as the title number because it's a very interesting tune for one thing. It has an interesting structure that works out so that you can use it to play jazz riffs for example. But another reason that we like the title a trip to Kilburn is that when we are reviving early music we feel like we're taking this trip into the past. And so this is this is in a

way a voyage with the Baltimore concert into some land which may or may not have existed but which we have constructed. Maybe it's a little bit like Brigadoon. A trip to kill burn the title piece from the latest CD by the Baltimore concert featuring

music from John Playford collections of country dances and ballads. This week on harmony and I'm talking with Marianne Ballard Custer Leroux and Ron McFarlane of the Baltimore concert the Playford tunes were very popular and if I understand correctly there were a lot of different editions of these publications they were popular for a long time. Can you talk a little bit about play for its collection. Yes well the dancing master itself I think went to 18 additions and the last of which was published in the 17th 20s having begun in 16th 51. And what that is really a testament to is the popularity of country dancing Playford was a good businessman and he. Published for the public taste so it wasn't that he was so great and the pieces were popular because he advertised them or something it was because they really reflected what was going on in British society at the time and country dancing had come in at least in the 16th century. Queen Elizabeth liked

to do the country dances of course this was the upper class people who were feigning rusticity. But it was one way for them to let their hair down which in that age I'm sure there was much need to do with you think of all of formal paraphernalia and customs and everything that they had other things that Playford published also had a lot of what we might think of as popular tunes in them. Basically books for the consumption of the music buying bourgeoisie who played instruments in their own homes like the Virginals or the fiddle was coming into prominence and there's a book called The division violin for example has popular tunes with the visions made upon it. And he also published vocal music which people haven't really noticed very much because of the dancing master is such a prominent collection of his in everybody's mind. Another way to look at it besides being tunes for dances is that it's

a collection of popular tunes of the day because if there was a tune that everybody liked they would make up a dance to it. And these tunes had a mazing elasticity they could be used at one tempo for dancing and maybe even in a different meter for making up a broadside ballad text this ballad the broom of cow the nose shares its name with a dance tune from the Playford collections. Although the ballad is older Here it is sung by Custer Leroux. You're.

Right. Please.

Have your. Own. Was good.

Chaos. In. The. Yard. The Broom of Cowden has a Scots ballad sung by Custer Leroux from the Baltimore concerts new CD A trip to Kilburn released on the Dorian label. On

this week's edition of harmony and my guests are Marianne Ballard Custer Leroux and Ron McFarlane of the Baltimore concert. When we first were putting this music together we had a wonderful experience dancing the country dances. We went to the the Country Song and Dance Society workshop that they have at pine woods every summer and learned how to dance quite a number of these English country dances and actually getting to move to these tunes was an education that completely bypasses your rational mind. And I think helped give us a feel for the way the pieces move and skip along just moving our bodies to this music for a week. It was just a wonderful experience for us all to have. More.

And more. Thank you. The Baltimore concert from their new CD A trip to Kilburn a collection of Playford

tunes and their ballads broadsides were some critics refer to them as sub literate meaning that they're they're not high class literature they're not even worthy of criticism. But a ballad as we define it is a is a story. It's usually I'm not talking about a lyrical love song but a something that actually is narrative and this form the ballad goes back to the time of Homer in a way. This was their evening's entertainment in the days before television was to sit around and sing these long songs that told stories. And they're wonderful for us because we have on our team here Custer Larue who is a great storyteller in song. And we have a variety of instrumentation within the group so we can make little arrangements to accompany her that reflect what's going on in the song.

Sitting a hundred feet. Notices for.

Your leader that could lead to moving the coal to. Duke thing I do think that me and Pete you know Will. Put a little heat can you get these and I would just. Let it go bush in the Dead style. Dish as it. Moves a little. David Stern is it. A good thing. People. Who. Like. A lot. To do business to go to the polls. It could almost take time

to sit. Down. FACE. To mold. Only to dig a hole. Go to take. The order do not listen. To us. Does it. Get to.

This. Great goal. He. Did.

It. The French report a 17th century ballad probably written during the English Civil War sung by Custer Leroux from the Baltimore concerts new CD A trip to Kilburn. You're listening to harmony on a program of early music that comes to you from the studios of WFIU at Indiana University. Support for harmony A comes in part from Early Music America publisher of early music America magazine. News about performers instrument makers recordings and activities. 2 1 6 2 2 9 1 6 8 5 4 EMEA

office at aol dot com. On this week's edition of harmony and a visit with Marianne Ballard Custer Leroux and Ron McFarlane of the Baltimore concert and the broadcast premiere of their new CD A trip to Kilburn available beginning this June on the Dorian label. I'm Angela Mariani. I'd love to ask you how you met and got together with the Baltimore concert with the group was started by my lute teacher actually Roger Harmon who taught at Peabody Conservatory in the late 1970s and he was his dream to put together a group that played broke in concert music that is music for the classic English Brooklyn concert. That was that would have a specific instrumentation of lute siddur Ben-Dor a flute treble file

and bass file. And this he did out of a collection of students and colleagues and there gradually was some turnover in membership in fact there are no original members of this group. But the the memberships begin to stabilize in the early 1980s when most of us were had met in were already in the group. So it was based very much around Baltimore called the Baltimore concert and we had a local concert series. We did this for many years but eventually we put more and more of our energies into touring and into recording and gradually I think the full membership of the group as it is today was established in about the mid-1980s. But we gradually drifted in one by one until we found that we really liked each other a lot and like making music together and we stuck together for quite a few years now.

With the. Earth thing. The Baltimore concert performed the two new castle from their new CD A trip to

Kilburn available this June on the Dorian label. This week on harmony and my guests are Marianne Ballard Custer Leroux and Ron McFarland of the Baltimore concert. The audience last night at the concert that you did here in Bloomington was very taken by the famous rat catcher. You know they joyed that a lot. They enjoyed all of them but I mean that was a particularly funny one Marion's anecdote about the 17th century Orcon man that got them all excited. One interesting thing about that piece is that it's only we only performed half of it. But what we told was a complete story in fact one source for the record here is just the first half. But we're not sure whether the second half was used to light fires out of that particular. You know one of the great ballad as sources in fact referred to as Bishop Percy's folio manuscript was discovered by him around 750

being used by the maid in a house where he was visiting to light fires one page at a time. I read that story just makes you wonder what went up in smoke. Really soon. Yes. He. Was. Taking notes. He was

nice. To me. Someone who. Saw me eat poison and I. Will not stoop.

To. Such a. Little man you. Have a good. Home.

So. Little yet still he would. Own. This. Place. And stay. Home with. Him.

Yes you would. Son. Do you mind the tall. Guys are not student of the. Student Body. Is a little rugged through the whole lot. Pain and pain. Hand. From home. The older.

The the m the. The famous Ratcatcher with his travels into France and of his return to London. The full title of this broadside ballad performed by the Baltimore concert from their new CD A trip to kill burn. I'm always fascinated by how groups work together. Some groups have a definite leader who does particular tasks. Other groups are a democracy more or less and in the way you put things together do you all bring repertoire for example to the group and say hey listen to this this is great or there's a certain amount of. That sometimes or her souls give you the impression that this is a creation of art through chaos. But there's there's a little bit of this a little bit of that there are several elements. Marianne does most of the of the research and she spends more time in the library finding music

finding ballads and really brings the repertory to us much more than than any one of us. When we have the raw materials some tunes that seem to have some potential or some valid texts that are really interesting we'll set to work on them. Just playing them with different instruments with different Aphex or moods and just sort of feel our way to it. It will just play them until we'll find our way to some successful performances. They're not scripted ahead of time. Yeah during the developmental stages of rehearsal we really need time to jam we can't if we're putting together new repertory. We can't schedule say one three hour rehearsal to do something because then we feel like we've got a time limit. So we develop something we refer to as rehearsal camp where we get together for several days and that way you know in between meals while somebody is over heating up the

pasta you know we can sit there and see what springs to mind. And then of course we have other kinds of rehearsals that are polishing rehearsals or reviving the memory rehearsals. You will often find when we're playing a piece together we're working on instrumentation. If suddenly the coffee is ready in the other room we're the phone rings if that person gets up and fixes the coffee we might suddenly find that the piece sounds really good without that particular instrument. And well we we've gotten to the point where we we seldom leave the room because we will be taken out of the piece otherwise. With.

With. If. The for. The for. The Mulberry garden a country dance played by the Baltimore concert. On this week's

edition of harmony I've been talking with Marianne Ballard Custer Leroux and Ron McFarlane of the Baltimore concert. Their new CD A trip to Kilburn will be released in June on the Dorian label. Another thing why. Need to to talk to you about is the wonderful combination of an approach to historical performance that allows traditional music to have what I feel is its very strong relationship to what we have come to call quote Early Music. I think that there has been a division between the two that is sort of a false division and one of the things I find so enjoyable when I listen to the Baltimore concert is the blending of those elements and I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit. Yes. Well Hear hear. Thank you for that one yet. Yes. Thank you for noticing the history of the Baltimore

concert is that we started as a group which in its period around your 16:00. Made arrangements that's the what the original concert played. So that led us to the broad side ballad tunes that were popular in that repertory and from those which are like folk music they were written down because they were on broad sides and they were written by some hack poet. We were quickly led into several areas of Scottish music because there was a Scottish tunes were popular in England at that time but also just the idea of folk music that originated in that time but which later became trapped in Appalachian in the isolated cricks or hollers in Appalachian and where then rediscovered in the 20th century. The way it feels to me and I'm going to speak personally now as a person who grew up in Kentucky and actually learned some of these songs

at camp and in school never knowing that they were quote folk music or Old English. This and that but suddenly coming back to them I feel like it's my medieval music. There are groups and I've done this two years ago who go in and work on these long. Early European pieces you know the the troubadours true fears or even before and have an evening where they're telling a story maybe with one or two instrument accompaniment the groups of Quincy who does a very good job with this for example. I feel that for us it's the same impulse This is the ballad The more we come in contact with it it goes back not just to the Middle Ages but even beyond. And it's telling a story a long story in song. And yet it's in English. We can all understand it. We don't have to have the audience reading through 23 pages of translation to know what the singer's doing. And it's tunes that we might have

known from our childhood so we have just an extra connection with it. We feel wonderfully privileged in being able to do this. We couldn't do it without a singer like Custer who has a feel for well on several levels. First of all for telling the story and seeing where the nuances are but but also she has an ear for the way the singer sounds she too. She grew up in the Shenandoah Valley and she knows what the dial sound like. And it's not an artificial thing. I can remember my grandmother having exactly the same accent that sometimes I hear coming out of custard this ballad HAGE-ALI brew man is a drinking ballad in which the narrator boasts about a whole bunch of far fetched exploits as the CD booklet tells us lumping himself together with heroes of classical mythology the Bible and ancient history. Take.

Me. He laid it on. The Club.

This. Is done. This is.

The beholder. Right. What. On. The jovial brew man a ballad performed by the Baltimore concert. My guest this

week on Harmony our Marianne Ballard Custer Larue and Ron McFarland of the Baltimore concert. The Baltimore concerts new CD A trip to Kilburn Playford tunes in their ballads will be available in June on the Dorian label. Harmony is a production of WFIU and comes from Indiana University. Additional resources have come from the early music institute and the Thomas Bentley archive of early music recordings at the Indiana University School of Music. Our theme music is played by ensemble Alcatraz. Special thanks this week go to Linda Feldmann and the folks at Dorian records and to the Baltimore concert. If you'd like a playlist of the music on this week's program send a self-addressed stamped envelope to harmony a playlist WFIU radio and TV Center Indiana University Bloomington Indiana 4 7 4 0 5. Or you can reach us at our email address. Harmony at Indiana dot edu. Be sure

to ask for harmony a playlist number ninety six twenty one. The Baltimore concert a trip to Kilburn. You can find harmony on the World Wide Web at W W W hyphen I-You dot Indiana dot edu slash Tilda WFIU slash home dot HTL. Our engineer was Pat Hawkins and I'm Angela Mariani inviting you to join us again for the next edition of harmony.