FOCUS ON: Music

Virtuoso violinists and pianists have a ready-made world of orchestral and concert hall venues at their feet. But even the most fluent recorder player or master of the hammered dulcimer finds a limited market for his services.

For those musicians who play music written before Wolfgang Mozart was a gleam in papa Leopold’s eye, the San Diego Early Music Society provides both a haven and a showcase. On Saturday, the society will present six local early music groups in its biennial benefit concert at 8 p.m. in the Great Hall of St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral, 2728 6th Ave.

While the field of early music thrives in Europe, it has always had a tenuous existence in North America. “In Europe, of course, it is considered part of their heritage,” explained Lewis Peterman, a professor of music at San Diego State University. “Here, it has been largely an academic pursuit because it is not tied to American history. So early music is associated with the university or with wealthy dilettantes who can afford to collect these unusual instruments.”

Peterman, who specializes in Renaissance wind instruments, has recently organized the San Diego Early Music Consort to perform Renaissance music on modern reproductions of period instruments. All of the members of this group are professionals, including gambist Peter Farrell of the UC San Diego music faculty, John Peeling and Elisabeth Marti of the Early Music Ensemble, Paula Peterman and lutenist Don Rowe. They will make their second local appearance on Saturday’s program.

“In its own way, the San Diego early music scene is flourishing,” said Peterman, who came here in 1980 to develop SDSU’s collegium musicum. “We have a healthy variety of groups, including those who play medieval and Renaissance music and several others that concentrate on Baroque.”

One of Peterman’s proteges, Barry Ebersole, founded and directs the Jubilatores, seven musicians who have devoted their spare time to recapturing the authentic flavor of medieval music. “Our favorite music is found in the ‘Cantigas de Santa Maria,’ a 13th-Century Spanish source, and the music of the ‘Carmina Burana’ manuscript,” Ebersole said. The Latin name of the ensemble comes from Psalm 150 in the Vulgate and means “the makers of a joyful noise,” according to Ebersole, an SDSU graduate student who admits to being an ex-flamenco guitar player.

In addition to researching performance practices for the music of that era, Ebersole has learned to make period costumes for his musicians and to construct the appropriate instruments on which to realize this otherwise extinct repertory. “I had to learn instrument construction, either to have instruments not available at any price, or available at prices far beyond my budget,” he said.

Instruments Ebersole has built include a medieval harp, a gemshorn (made from the horn of a goat), a medieval viol, a guittara latina and an organistrum, or hurdy-gurdy. From a photograph of a 14th-Century altarpiece, he constructed an Arabic qanun, which is a flat, triangular-shaped, plucked string instrument that the medievalists called a psaltery.

In addition to the Jubilatores and Peterman’s ensemble, the other groups on Saturday night’s concert are the La Jolla Renaissance Singers, a 20-voice madrigal ensemble; “La Sonnerie,” flutist Lynn Schubert’s new Baroque group; the Schuster Ensemble of La Jolla, and solo recorder player Ulla Sinz.