Take a Break for Holiday Tunes

Say you don’t know a madrigal from a motet. And you’re looking for a really good excuse to get away from the office at lunchtime Wednesday.

You could tell your boss, or your co-workers, that you are going to expand your horizons instead of your waistline, and bring your nice, healthy sack lunch to the noon concert at Albrecht Auditorium on the Claremont Graduate School campus.

There, the Claremont Colleges Chamber Choir will try to put you in the holiday spirit with Renaissance Christmas music.

According to Scripps College professor of music Michail Lamkin, “madrigals are usually the secular songs. They’re a little bit lighter.” They are usually descriptive too, such as a work by Monteverdi that talks about “exploding stars in the sky of love,” and makes little exploding sounds all through the music.

A motet is usually religious and more serious, such as Palestrina’s “O Magnum Mysterium,” about the nativity of Jesus.

Lamkin, who supervises the choir, said the works will be sung in their original language and without instruments, except for some hand drums. The songs are from England, Italy and Spain.

The Claremont Colleges specialize in many fields. “At the same time, the colleges want their students to have access to music,” Lamkin said. The joint music program pulls students from Claremont McKenna College, which specializes in political science and economics; Harvey Mudd, engineering and science; Pitzer, social science, and Scripps, humanities, fine and performing arts.

The free concert starts at 12:15 p.m., and the auditorium is located at 215 E. 10th St. The choir promises to be done in half an hour so you can, sigh, get back to work.