Dreams Under the Wings of Morpheus
Dreams Under the Wings of Morpheus follows the quiet journey from sleep into waking, guided by the figures who shaped the ancient understanding of dreams. Morpheus and his brothers were thought to shape what people saw in the night, each sending different forms of visions. The first half of the programme moves within that imagined dream world, where scenes from Cavalli and Lully sit beside Italian and English lullabies. These pieces often carry private meanings or hidden intentions, and they open a space where feelings are expressed through signs rather than direct speech.
The boundary between dream and reality is crossed through music that imitates the natural world. In myth, the world of sleep did not end because the dream was finished but because something real cut through it. In this programme that moment belongs to birds. The calls of the nightingale and the cuckoo in works by Merula, Uccellini and Biber act as symbols of morning and awareness, breaking the stillness that sleep had held.
The second half follows this shift into daylight, where love, longing and reflection appear without the disguises of dream. Monteverdi, Lambert and Lanier speak more openly, yet their music still points to the traces that dreams leave behind. Through these movements between the imagined and the real the programme explores how signs, symbols and quiet natural cues shape the way we understand inner experience.
Programme
Francesco Cavalli - Il Giasone (1649): Sinfonia & Sleep scene
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber - Sonata Violino Solo Representativa in A major, C. 146: “Die Nachtigall”
Orazio Michi “dell’Arpa” - Ninna nanna al Bambino Gesù (alla napolitana)
John Dowland - “Sweet stay awhile, why will you rise?” from The First Booke of Songes or Ayres (1597)
Traditional, after John Playford - “Lull me beyond thee” from The English Dancing Master (1651)
William Webb - “Powerful Morpheus, let thy charms”
Jean Baptiste Lully - Atys, LWV 53 “Dormons, dormons tous” (Le Sommeil)
Tarquinio Merula - La lusignuola, op. 1 no. 2 Canzon for instruments
Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger - “Figlio dormi”
Interval
Claudio Monteverdi - L’incoronazione di Poppea, SV 308: Sinfonia & “Oblivion soave”
Marco Uccellini - Aria nona “L’Emenfrodito: Maritati insieme la Gallina, e ’l Cucco fanno un bel concerto”
Tarquinio Merula - “Hor ch’è tempo di dormire” Canzonetta spirituale sopra alla nanna
Tarquinio Merula - La gallina, canzona prima from Canzoni overo sonate concertate per chiesa e camera, op. 12
Michel Lambert - “Sombres déserts, retraite de la nuit” Air for solo voice and continuo
Robert Johnson - “Care-charming sleep”
Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber - Sonata Violino Solo Representativa in A major, C. 146: “Cucu”
Henry Purcell - The Fairy Queen, Z 629 “See, even Night herself is here”
François Couperin - “Le Dodo, ou l’Amour au berceau”
Nicholas Lanier - “No more shall meads be deck’d with flowers”
Bellot Ensemble
Edmund Taylor - Violin and Director
Maxim Del Mar - Violin
Nathan Giorgetti - Viola da gamba and cello
Lucine Musaelian - Viola da gamba
Daniel Murphy - Theorbo and Baroque guitar
Matthew Brown - Harpsichord and Organ
Beth Stone - Flute
Soloists
Kieran White - Tenor
Angie Hicks - Soprano
Jeremy Lloyd - Narrator