Performance of Pop’s Past

Camera Obscura is an indie pop band. Camerata Obscura is what an indie pop band might have been like back in the Renaissance. “A lot of small playing groups call themselves camerata,” explains Anna H. de Bakker ’10, who sings the alto part in the vocal ensemble, “and we were making a pun.” The program that Camerata Obscura will be presenting on Saturday May 2 at 2:30 at Adolphus Busch Hall, titled “Music of Lament,” showcases music’s ancient past.

Camerata Obscura is a small group composed of five singers that come together for Arts First. “We’re small—we’re one to a part,” says de Bakker. “Most choirs on campus there’s multiple people singing the same part, but each of us are just singing our own line. So it’s very small and it depends a lot on the individual singers.”

The small size means that the group presents a different aesthetic feel from other choirs, due to the confluence of artistic vision from each member rather than one director. “You each have input into the things that you’re singing. You can react to each other a lot better when there’s so few of you,” says de Bakker.

Another element that distinguishes Camerata Obscura and their repertoire for “Music of Lament” is that all the pieces were written in the period before the dawn of what we now know as classical music. “One of the things that characterizes early choral music is that they don’t get very much accompaniment,” says de Bakker. “You also get stylistic things like being polyphonic in texture. Each line is thought of as its own thing. If you’re just banging out chords on the piano it sounds sort of strange and you think, wow, this is kind of modern.”

The program is tied together not only by the common time period of the pieces, but also by the theme of the works. “It’s all music that presents an emotion of sadness, but in very different ways,” explains de Bakker. “Madrigals are often about people who have died, or have left, and are stories. There all kind of variations on a theme—and they’re all really good music.”