The 2025 Winnipeg Baroque Festival gets underway on Sunday with an intimate offering in the College Chapel of St. John the Evangelist at the University of Manitoba.
All the King’s Men, the chapel’s resident ensemble, will present a program entitled Masters of the Early 17th Century, a mixture of English and Italian composers that will serve as a primer of sorts for the sixteen concerts that this year’s festival has to offer.
Charles Horton, conductor of All the King’s Men, says that while it’s an honour to be the first performers in the festival, the program will not deviate from their usual offerings in the chapel. “It’s no expectations,” he said in an interview on Morning Light. “We just do what we do on a regular basis on our monthly service of evensong.”
An Anglican service that can trace its roots to the English Renaissance, the evensong tradition is the bedrock on which Masters of the Early 17th Century resides, making the experience as much an historical and spiritual one as it is a musical one.
Horton describes All the King’s Men concert as something of a dialogue between London and Venice in the first decades of the 17th century. “Looking at those two cities, they’re both about the same population, they both rely on maritime trade,” says Horton, who also notes that both cities drew the ire of the Catholic Church of the time with an interdiction introduced against Venice by Pope Paul V and the failed Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes. “There was a correspondence going on between James I and the Doge of Venice, a lot of discussion about reformed religion.”
Once the historical framework for the concert was set, Horton set out to find music that was written for the all-male vocal ensemble. Composers like Claudio Monteverdi, Giovanni Gabrieli, William Byrd and Orlando Gibbons will play a key part in the program, with smatterings of organ and brass thrown in as well.
“[The early 17th century] was a period of great change in musical styles,” says Horton, “ But also, it was a change in the ecclesiastical world, in the political world as well. But, to see at that point of those first 25 years of the 17th century, the richness of the musical creation at the time. There were leftovers of the Renaissance practice, but there was the emerging Baroque practice.”
All the King’s Men’s Masters of the Early 17th Century evensong takes place March 30 at 7 p.m. at the College Chapel of St. John the Evangelist at the University of Manitoba. Admission is by donation, but audience members are encouraged to reserve a ticket in advance to ensure seating. They can do so at the Winnipeg Baroque Festival’s website.