THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409090267
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines
Listen to husband-and-wife guitarists Michael and Linda Murphy as they play what must have been one of the Greatest Hits of 1600. It is a flowing and melodic piece called ``The Nightingale.''
Don't misjudge me. Though I love Chesapeake, it still seems odd to hear classical guitar music in the boonies of Cornland, where the Murphys live. But classical guitar music is what they are playing and very well indeed. His face is wistful and hers intent as their fingers glide over the strings. The music is meant to mimic answering calls of nightingales to one another, and the Murphys make it into a lyrical pleasure.
Music is their joint profession. Both have multiple degrees in music education and performance. He is director of the community music academy at Old Dominion University. Both he and Linda teach classical guitar and play for hire.
What has fetched me to the boonies is the fact that the Cavalier Consort, which includes Murphy, will give a free concert at 5 p.m. Sept. 25 at St. Brides Episcopal Church.
The Cavalier Consort plays early music. Ask Murphy what early music is and he has a mild joke. ``It's music at 6 a.m.,'' he says. Actually, it's music of the period from about 1500 to 1600. In the consort, Murphy plays the lute, Charles Hillen of Norfolk plays recorders and Deborah Ogan of Virginia Beach plays the viola da gamba. ``Gamba'' is Italian for leg, and the instrument is like a small cello held between the legs.
Murphy gave me a quick lute solo, and I can tell you that he would have been a musical hotshot at the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Ditto for Hillen on recorder. I have not heard Ogan play the leg fiddle, but she has a truly impressive background.
I also got the answer to a question that has itched my curiosity for years. St. Brides is a Chesapeake road and section out in the aforementioned boonies. So how come there is a St. Brides Episcopal Church on Sparrow Road just off bustling Indian River? Father Michael Godderz, pastor of the church, gave me the answer. There was an original St. Brides parish, which included a church in Chesapeake's St. Brides area until about the 1870s. There was a merger of churches in the 1930s, and the historical St. Brides name was chosen to be kept alive.
Chesapeaker Michael Murphy was 16 when he was impressed by the guitar-playing grandpa of a friend. Murphy's dad also played guitar - favorite tune, ``Yellow Bird'' - and, next thing you know, Michael started strumming. He met Linda at a session of the Tidewater Classical Guitar Society, and they've been married four years.
Michael's interest in early music started a few years ago when he heard some on a public radio program called ``St. Paul Sunday Morning.'' The sound of the strings being plucked on the ancient instruments hooked him, and he climbed aboard a musical time machine by forming the consort this spring.
When I say Michael climbed aboard a time machine, I'm wondering if it's more truth than poetry. Michael Murphy meet Herbert of Cherbury, who lived from 1582 to 1648. According to a portrait Michael found, Herbert and Michael are absolute dead ringers. If you met them in a supermarket aisle, you would be hard-put whether to say ``Hi, Mike'' or ``Hi, Herb.''
To compound matters, Herbert was a lute player. Michael first saw his picture on an album cover. So Michael did a little research and traced Herbert back to England, where he was a noted swordsman and a diplomat. Michael fences with the Tidewater Fencing Club. I asked Michael if he was a diplomat, too. ``My mother says not,'' he told me.
Anyway, I figure Michael would only want so much of a parallel to Herbert. Gentlemen of Herb's day were expected to be able to play the lute and fence and write poetry and turn a polished compliment, but I don't think you'd want to get too close. One of my favorite historical quotes is a line about Queen Elizabeth I. ``The queen hath installed a tub in the palace, and doth bathe once a month whether she need it or no.''
If that was the standard of sanitation, we love ya', Herbie baby, but please stand upwind.
The lute, which is the musical connection between Michael and Herbert, is a bulgy, 11-stringed, pear-shaped gadget that looks like a small guitar that has developed a beer belly. My encyclopedia talks about the lute being around in 300 B.C. and how the Arabs brought it to Europe somewhere in the 700s A.D. Michael says its Golden Age was about 1590 to 1620. Then they started messing with the string arrangement to make it more versatile, and it got impossible to tune. There was, in fact, a lute player's line that Michael mentioned. ``They would spend half their time tuning the lute and the other half playing out of tune.''
But come to the concert on the 25th and hear it played right, in tune and in style with the other members of the Cavalier Consort. Look-alike lute player Herbert, wherever you are, you'd be proud. by CNB