UpDate - Vol. 13, No. 29, Page 3
April 28, 1994
'Feast of art'; Faculty-produced CD receives rave reviews

     Hailed as a "feast of brilliant art" in the London Times Literary
Supplement, The Mistress, a musical version of the lyric poetry of
17th-century English writer Abraham Cowley is now available on compact disc
in this country for the first time.
     Based on the research of two University of Delaware professors,
Thomas Calhoun, English, and J. Robert King, music emeritus, the recording
is by Anthony Rooley's award-winning English group, the Consort of Musicke.
     Calhoun is chief editor of a six-volume study of the life and works of
Cowley, and King is the project's music editor. The recently published,
second volume of the project also received kudos from the London Times
reviewer, Alastair Fowler, professor of English literature at the
University of Edinburgh. He wrote that Calhoun's "admirable commentary
offers fresh information with apparent ease, treating previous critics
courteously even as improves on them. He generally preserves an appropriate
level of sophistication...."
     For this volume of Cowley's works, King did extensive research on the
musical settings of Cowley's poetry and transcribed the music so that it
could be understood and played by singers and musicians today.
     Thanks to his endeavors, music-by such 17th-century composers as Henry
Purcell, John Blow, Pietro Reggio and William King-that has not been
performed in 300 years can once more be heard by classical music lovers.
"An important part of the Delaware Cowley is its near-diplomatic
transcription of musical settings," Fowler wrote, regarding King's
scholarship as exemplary.
     Calhoun and King are listed as textual and musical editors of the
recording of The Mistress and have written an introduction to accompany the
CD. During the actual recording at Forde Abbey in Dorset last year, Calhoun
also acted as a consultant to the Consort of Musicke, which is acclaimed
for its interpretation of English and Italian Renaissance music. Singers
featured on the CD are Emma Kirby, Evelyn Tubb, Joseph Cornwell, Andrew
King and Simon Grant.
     In describing The Mistress for the recording, Calhoun and King noted
that romantic love to the ordinary person of that time was a "remote or
alien concept." However, The Mistress, a "bestseller of the 17th
century....offered the reader a window to the love-talk of the court; with
it any man could gaze on the alluring and remote mistress; any woman could
emulate her style of seduction; all could become lovers. The contemporary
musical settings heighten that poetry, and in these performances it is
brought alive for us today in an irresistible manner."
     The Mistress is about the quest for ideal love and the loss of that
love. The underlying theme of the poetry is the loss of the British
monarchy with the imprisonment and execution of Charles I and the flight of
Queen Henrietta Maria and the court to Paris from 1655-1660.
     Song texts in English, French, German and Italian also accompany the
CD.
     The Mistress, on the Musica Oscura label, is being distributed by
Vanguard in the United States. It can be ordered through Rainbow Records in
Newark and Wilmington, Classics Delaware in Wilmington and Tower Records in
New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere.
                                                  -Sue Swyers Moncure