Guests of the Collinsville High School madrigal concert entered a medieval world on Dec. 13 of castles, royalty, court jesters and Christmas carols.
When our guests show up to this concert, they’re going to walk into a Renaissance castle,music teacher Lisa Neal said last week, before the concert. It’s decorated medieval, with banners and bowls of fire.
Neal said this is the first year in many that the annual concert has been performed during the Christmas holiday season. For the last several years, the musical show was held around the Valentine’s Day holiday.
This year, we decided to go back to Christmas, Neal said. There will be some caroling music, some ‘Deck the Halls,’ some ‘fa la la la.
Those melodic sounds come from the school’s 32-member concert choir and 20-member all-girls treble choir. The flute choir and trumpet players back up the singers.
In addition to the concert, the event included a stage play. The romantic comedy involved a royal court complete with a king, queen and court jester on stage, and friendly banter between the performers and the audience.
Neal said madrigal music, a centuries-old style of European singing, is usually performed a capella. She said she started the madrigal concert to teach her students about the music and to help them develop their singing skills.
It’s a way to do period music, to expose students to a style of music that’s important historically and importantly developmentally, she said. And you get to dress up and have fun with it. So that makes is so much more interesting and the audiences enjoy it too.
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