My Serenata in Stile Antico is suffused by seventeenth-century Italian Baroque music. The opening Ciaconna is predicated on a four-measure repeated bass line. The Siciliana in modo hypodorico that follows is an homage to Fr. Athanasius Kircher, S. J., a polymath who wrote on music theory as well as on science and archeology, and who founded what may well be one of the first museums of natural history. The third movement, Aria, is a fantasia on one of the most popular monodies of the seventeenth century, Guilio Caccini’s “Amarilli, mia bella,” which was published in 1601. The finale is cast as a theme and variations based on a lively canzonetta by Fr. Orazio Vecchi, “So ben mi c’ha bon tempo.” (This title can be translated as “I know somebody who is having a good time.”) The coda of this final movement is itself a variant of a variation of Vecchi’s canzonetta found in Michael Praetorius’s Terpsichore, a collection of some 300 dances published in 1621.
I have scored the Serenata in Stile Antico for oboe and strings. It is not whatsoever an oboe concerto, however: the oboe represents a tiny woodwind section consisting of a single instrument. My intention concerning the “performance practice” of this Janus-faced work is quite simple: play it tastefully on modern instruments in a modern manner. Composing this score, I followed the example of Ottorino Respighi’s ravishing Antiche arie e danze. 
The Serenade in Stile Antico is dedicated to Margie Cooper. Margie and her husband Grant, who conducts this performance have been dear musical and personal friends of mine for decades.

Serenata in Stile Antico was premiered on 15 June 2024. Cheryl Bishkoff, oboe; Grant Cooper, conductor; and the International Baroque Soloists.

Serenata in Stile Antico for oboe and strings


	The text of the Stabat Mater consists of twenty stanzas in Latin, each stanza consisting of three t terse lines. After an anguished introduction, the soprano enters tentatively, as if grief-stricken; the music gradually unfolds into a lament.  Each of the score’s major divisions is separated by an elegiac meditation featuring the English horn The second, violent, section evokes the chaos, cruelty, and terror that swirled around the Crucifixion. The third part begins with the words, “Eia, Mater fons amoris," in which the singer expresses deep empathy for the Virgin Mary's grief and love. The next major section, a series of petitions seeking to share in the Virgin Mary's sorrow, is cast as a chaconne: the music unfolds inexorably over a repeated harmonic progression. The epilogue begins with a quotation of the plainsong melody "Pange lingua gloriosum" as a harbinger of the Ressurection. After this allusion, flowing and serene music expresses the hope of attaining “paradisi gloria” after death.
	My Stabat Mater was composed especially for the gifted soprano Ellen Leslie and her husband, the superb composer, organist, and conductor Eric Choate. I have dedicated this score to the blessed memory of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, O.C.D. (1891-1942), who perished at Auschwitz. 






I. Kyrie

Harry Whitney

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