Computer Plays Role in Corona del Mar’s Baroque Music Fete

The Baroque Music Festival of Corona del Mar, which launches its ninth season Sunday evening, may focus on 17th- and 18th-Century compositions, but this year’s repertory includes works with performances made possible by that most modern of inventions, the computer program.

On a research trip to a German library in 1987, festival founder-artistic director Burton Karson discovered the unpublished scores for two concertos by Johann Heinichen, one for violin and one for oboe, and cantatas by Wolfgang Briegel. Last year, at the British Museum, he found the scores for a number of organ concertos, including one by John Stanley and another by a composer known only as Mr. Edwards.

“It’s very costly to make copies (by hand) of these old scores,” Karson said earlier this week from his Corona del Mar home. “And there was not a full conductor’s score for the English concertos, and no individual parts for the German pieces. So after I edited the scores, Brian Lee Cross, a former student of mine (at Cal State Fullerton, where Karson is a music professor), copied the individual organ and other instrumental parts of the English concertos, note by note, into his Macintosh computer, which then printed out the full score I needed to be able to rehearse.

“For the others, he did just the opposite, broke the scores down for the singers and players. The scores are much clearer than hand-copied ones, and you don’t have to photocopy and cut and paste to make corrections. The computer worked miracles.”

Karson is somewhat of a minor miracle worker himself: He devotes hundreds of hours each year to researching, editing, rehearsing and conducting program selections for the festival, which he conceived because he wanted to bring an artistic event to the city in which he lives. He takes no salary. Most of his modest $18,000 budget is devoted to performers’ fees and music materials.

In devising programs, Karson’s first concern is for his audience, which is drawn from as far away as Beverly Hills and the San Fernando Valley. “This is not an academic exercise. It’s entertainment,” he said. “Some of the organ concertos I found at the British Museum, for instance, were very naive. While it’s interesting for musicologists to know that they exist, they are not interesting to foist on the listening public.”

The two English concertos that did pass Karson’s muster will be featured on the festival’s opening program, to be played by organist Mary Preston of Dallas and the Festival Strings at St. Michael and All Angels Church. Preston also will play Mozart’s “Fantasy in F-minor,” which, according to Karson, was composed for a mechanical clock in imitation of the French Baroque overture, aria and fugue.

Also on the Sunday bill are pairings of Bach chorale-preludes with those of Brahms and Max Reger. The program will conclude with Francis Poulenc’s “Concerto for Organ, Strings and Timpani.”

The inclusion of the Romantic composer Reger and 20th-Century composer Poulenc in a festival of Baroque music typifies a practice Karson instituted several years ago to broaden the endeavor’s musical horizons. “Many Baroque festivals, including the Carmel-Bach, include works by composers who were not Baroque but were inspired in some way by the Baroque period,” he explained. “The Poulenc is an organ concerto, and Handel invented the organ concerto; there have been very few written since the Baroque era.”

Similarly, the second concert, Wednesday at the Sherman Library and Gardens, lists harpsichordist Lucinda Carver playing Couperin’s early 18th-Century piece, “Les Graces Natureles,” to be joined by flautist Cynthia Ellis in Ingolf Dahl’s 1956 “Variations on an Air by Couperin.”

That program begins with Bach’s English Suite No. 3 in G-minor for harpsichord, then features soprano Su Harmon performing two songs from Bach’s “Anna Magdalena Book” and the 1958 “Four Fragments from the Canterbury Tales” by Lester Trimble. Harmon will be accompanied on the latter by Carver, Ellis and clarinetist Kalman Bloch. Ellis and Bloch also will play Heitor Villa-Lobos’ 1924 “Choro No. 2 for Flute and Clarinet.”

The Sherman Library and Gardens will also be the setting next Friday for the festival’s first contemporary world premiere, “Lamentation of Myrrha,” a dramatic cantata for soprano, guitar, harpsichord and string quartet with music by Lloyd Rodgers and libretto by Thomas Graffio, based on one of the five Cyprian songs of Orpheus in Ovid’s “Metamorphosis.”

“Tom and I had done an opera-ballet for the Los Angeles Chamber Ballet based on Ovid’s telling of the Orpheus myth, and we thought we’d continue doing dramatic pieces with mythological references, especially those with psychological/sexual themes, which seem timely,” noted Rodgers. A 46-year-old professor of music at Cal State Fullerton, his other credits include “The Little Prince” for the same ballet company, music for the L.A.-based Rudy Perez Performance Ensemble, and concerts with the contemporary chamber ensemble he co-founded, the Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra.

“When Burton told me he was doing John Blow’s (17th-Century masque) ‘Venus and Adonis,’ I said: ‘What an interesting coincidence, because I’m now sketching a piece on the birth of Adonis.’ I’m pleased to be part of the festival. I’ve attended several times, and they do good work.”

The piece, to be sung here by mezzo Lori Marcum, tells the myth of Myrrha, Princess of Crete, who was cursed by Venus to fall in love with her own father. Pregnant with his son, Adonis, she was heard bemoaning her fate by the gods, who turned her into a myrrh tree while she was giving birth. “There’s a very traditional use of guitar and harpsichord as a continuo flow,” Rodgers said. “And one of the strongest connections with the Baroque is the structural intent--it’s self-consciously a mono-drama, which first came about in the Baroque era as a dramatic form.”

In addition to Blow, Baroque composers on the program include Henry Purcell, Nicholas Lanier and Henry Lawes. Marcum, soprano Laura Fries, tenor Gregory Wait and baritone Donald Christensen will sing both Lawes’ madrigal, “Go, Lovely Rose,” and Halsey Stevens’ well-known contemporary setting of the same piece.

The festival returns to St. Michael and All Angels for its finale June 11, where the four vocal soloists will join forces with the Festival Singers and Orchestra in three cantatas composed for St. Michael’s Day: one computer-enhanced piece by Briegel and two by Bach which, Karson said, “are among the most dramatic choral music he ever wrote, as robust and flamboyant as anything in the ‘B-minor Mass.’ ” Also on tap: Briegel’s cantata, Psalm 150, “Lobet Den Herren” for men’s voices and orchestra, and Brahms’ motet setting of Psalm 13, “Lord, How Long Wilt Thou Forget Me,” for women’s voices and strings.

The festival concludes with the Heinichen concertos that Karson imported from Germany, featuring violinist Peter Marsh and oboist Laurence Timm. “Heinichen is very much like Vivaldi,” Karson said. “The fast movements are energetic and demand virtuosic technique, and the slow movements are wonderfully singing and melodic.”

Looking ahead, Karson plans to continue his mix of standard and obscure Baroque works with contemporary Baroque-style pieces. He is also trying to acquire more funding to pay festival singers higher salaries. “And frankly,” he added, “I’d like to decently compensate the artistic director-conductor, who gives so many hours.”

The ninth annual Corona del Mar Baroque Music Festival begins Sunday at St. Michael and All Angels Church, 3233 Pacific View Drive, Corona del Mar. The festival will continue Wednesday and Friday at the Sherman Library and Gardens, 2645 E. Coast Highway; the final program will take place June 11 at the church. All performances begin at 8 p.m. Tickets: $15. Information: (714) 673-1880.