Holiday spirit of German markets comes to Houston
Visitors to a Christmas market in German-speaking lands circa the late Middle Ages would have enjoyed a feast for the senses: the sight of wood carvings and toys for sale; the smells of glühwein (hot mulled wine), fresh gingerbread and roasted chestnuts; and the sounds of hymns and folk dances being performed on stages scattered throughout the marketplace.
In their modern form, such markets have become moneyprinting tourist magnets in Germany and one of that country’s leading cultural exports; look no further than Houston’s massive Nutcracker Market at NRG Center every November. Now, Mercury Chamber Orchestra will devote the December edition of its neighborhood series to these long-ago holiday bazaars.
“Often at Christmastime in the past, we have done geographical concerts: Baroque Christmas in Mexico, Christmas in England, A French Christmas,” says Mercury artistic director Antoine Plante. “There is this rich tradition of Christmas markets in Germany, and we thought that it would be a good inspiration to bring to life some of that music.”
The hourlong concerts are set up as a tour of one of these medieval towns or villages, where music poured out of churches and taverns alike.
Over the coming week, Mercury plans to perform the program five times at four different locations: Dec. 11 at Dosey Doe Big Barn in Spring; Dec. 13 at Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston in Midtown9; and three times on Dec. 17: 2:30 p.m. at Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church, and 6:30 and 8:30 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Not only does offering a variety of locations give Mercury’s audience more flexibility, explains Plante, the musicians also appreciate the opportunity to hone their chops.
“It’s really great to perform in small venues,” he says. “That music is often meant for that, and to be really close to a small audience is a wonderful thing for an artist. To perform the same show many times, too, is really rewarding.”
The concerts will open with a magnificat, or hymn of praise, by Thomas Selle, the 17th-century German composer who compiled more than 280 pieces of sacred vocal music into a work known as Opera omnia. The program also includes several motets, polyphonic pieces of sacred choral music; the anonymous 16th-century drinking song “vitrum nostrum”; and a number of dances arranged by Michael Praetorius, a key figure in the development of several Protestant hymns.
The unusual instruments that will heighten the concerts’ mystical atmosphere include the cromorne, a curved double-reed instrument similar to the oboe; its straighter cousin the Hautbois de Poitou; and the theorbo, a stringed lute-like instrument that often provided the continuo, or musical foundation, of a piece. Plante himself will switch between cello and viola da gamba, a precursor of the modern cello that fell out of favor after the mid-18th century.
Playing music of this era on modern instruments, Plante explains, just “doesn’t sound right.”
“It’s more about the style that the instrument teaches us when we play that (music),” he says. “There’s certain things that we can do, and then it makes us understand the music and the music make more sense. So it’s a little bit of a circle here. The instruments and the music, they kind of go together, and that’s the way that they will speak to us the most.”
For Plante, these concerts are also a family affair. Besides Mercury’s four vocalists and four instrumentalists, he’ll be joined by his mother, violinist Diane Plouffe-Plante, and father Gilles Plante on recorder, bagpipes, cromorne and Hautbois de Poitou. Both have been active for decades in Montreal’s earlymusic scene; it’ll be his mom’s first time to perform with Mercury, but not his dad’s.
The elder Plante, founder of the medieval/ Renaissance focused Ensemble Claude-Ger va i se, joined Mercury last year on “An Early American Christmas,” which highlighted the music of Quebec, the Appalachians, and New Orleans. For “At the Christmas Market,” Gilles Plante suggested the Praetorius dances might help balance out the somber mood of the hymns and motets, and the two spent two or three days over the summer plotting out the program.
“I feel so lucky that I get to do that,” Antoine Plante says. “It’s a nice reason to spend time with family. It gives you things to talk about, and you spend quality time thinking about art and about beauty and about ‘How do we move people?’”