Lord of the Lute : Soloist James Tyler to Take His Crusade for Early Music to Fullerton Arts Center

In the Ye Olde Groaning Board version of the Elizabethan Age, it was a time of feasts, foaming tankards, serving wenches, Shakespeare’s plays and maybe a madrigal or two.

Early music lovers have their own perspective. They revel in the unusual sounds of lutes and harpsichords and the cello-like viola da gamba. And they’ve discovered a pantheon of English composers--as well as their Italian mentors and colleagues--whose works symphony-goers rarely hear.

“There’s this sense of clarity and a transparent quality about the early instruments which aren’t at all matched by any modern instrument,” said lutanist James Tyler, director of the London Early Music Group and newly appointed director of the master’s degree program in early music performance at the USC.

Tyler will be a guest performer with the Renaissance Players in a free concert at Sunny Hills High School on Sunday afternoon. The program of English and Italian music will be sponsored by the Fullerton Friends of Music.

Tyler beams as he talks about his favorite subject in his USC office, decorated with posters and record jackets documenting the world travels and commercial viability of his performing ensemble.

After a 30-year career as a soloist on the lute, baroque guitar and baroque mandolin --including stints with such notable early music companies as the New York Pro Musica, Germany’s Studio der Fruhen Musik and the late David Munrow’s Early Music Consort of London--Tyler is particularly bullish about the opportunities for early music players to add their distinctive timbres and melodies to film and TV sound tracks.

That is one of the reasons he hopes to help make the Los Angeles area--already well supplied with early music groups and guest performers--a major U.S. center for study and performance of what he genially calls “old-time music.” “People sometimes think, ‘Oh, good old rumpety, tumpedy popular music,”’ he said with a burly laugh. “Indeed, there are some groups that sort of specialize in that sort of thing, with costumes and all that. You know, ‘A good time was had by all.’ But whether it has anything to do with early music is another question. . . . It’s extremely hard to actually pin down (old) popular music because (as an oral tradition) it doesn’t survive.

“In general, in early music, you’re dealing with great composers--Frescobaldi, Monteverdi, John Dowling, William Byrd, people like that--about as far from that sort of folk idea as you can get.”

Yet “folk ideas” do have a way of sneaking into “serious” music. One piece on the program, a six-part consort by Richard Alison, is a series of variations on a popular Elizabethan tune, “Go From My Window,” popularized in our time by folk singers John Jacob Niles and Joan Baez.

And in any case, Tyler is quick to add, early music, unlike the “serious” music of our time, is not “this dry and sort of academic stuff that you have to really study up for to appreciate.”

He notes that just as contemporary classical music is born of tense and troubled times, “much of the music of the Renaissance and the Italian Baroque was written in times of horrendous upheaval and anxiety and troubles.”

But unlike the splintered musical scene of the 1980s, the Elizabethan musical world was a tiny, homogeneous community, and listeners, says Tyler, were equally likely to appreciate “the most finely wrought fantasia for ensemble” and “a good popular dance tune.”

As hirelings of kings and dukes and others (Alison was a retainer in an earl’s household, Luigi Rossi was employed by Cardinal Antonio Barbarini when he wrote the cantata on Sunday’s program), Renaissance and baroque music composers “had to write music someone was going to get enjoyment from,” Tyler explains.

“Music was absolutely designed to be listened to, to please the audience. If you didn’t, you were a failure. You didn’t have a job. You starved to death.”

THE RENAISSANCE PLAYERS

Sunday, 3:30 p.m.

Performing Arts Center,

Sunny Hills High School,

1801 Warburton Way, Fullerton.

Free.

Information: (714) 525-5836.