Elizabethan Music Caps 2-Week Program

The drum’s reverberating thud brought the roomful of squirming young children to attention. Once the woodwind and brass instruments kicked in, the kindergarten-through-second-grade audience grew rapt.

Students at Laurence 2000 School capped off their two-week Elizabethan Days on Thursday by hearing the Southern California Early Music Consort perform Renaissance music fit for dancing, fighting and wooing.

In a 40-minute program, the period-costumed group played and explained a variety of ancient instruments, including recorders from a few inches to 5 feet long and a full complement of horns.

“We’re the kind of band that kings from the Renaissance would have in their court,” leader Tom Axworthy told students. “Did we get your attention?”

“Yeah!” came the reply.

Elizabethan Days began three years ago at the private elementary school as a way of immersing students in the culture of 16th century England.

This year, students have made English crafts such as leather pouches and taken the plunge with Shakespeare, reciting portions of “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”

“They got to say things like ‘forsooth’ and ‘m’lady’ and they giggled, but then it sank in,” said Barbara Ockwell, a parent who chaired the school’s Enrichment Committee, which started Elizabethan Days. “Now the language doesn’t seem so foreign to them.”

Even after two weeks of exposure to an ancient world, students found most of the sights and sounds exotic.

Several of them shimmied to the tambourine rhythms and imitated the head swaying and fingering of the band, which is also known as the Norwich Waits in honor of Queen Elizabeth’s musicians.

Still, the centuries-old set list contained some familiar notes that suggested “a lot of our language and culture has direct roots in Shakespeare,” in Ockwell’s words.

After introducing a 1609 song, Axworthy challenged the audience to figure out what modern standard borrowed its melody.

A murmur passed through the rows of metal folding chairs as the children recognized “Three Blind Mice.”