Concerts by Piffaro, Ars Nova Workshop span centuries of change

The ongoing struggle among composers to find their own voices was illustrated with wide-reaching perspective in two concerts during the weekend that explored music separated by roughly half a millennium. While the Renaissance band Piffaro played music of 16th-century Italy, when composers barely knew what an individual voice was, Ars Nova Workshop showcased works by young composers Steve Lehman and Vijay Iyer, both finding their way in world where the many fierce voices of the past can overwhelm those of the present.

"New Waves in Ferrara," Piffaro's Saturday concert at St. Mark's Church, charted the breakdown of Renaissance polyphony in the face of an artistic secularization that would change composers from servants of court and church to the free agents we now know. You could hear the composers at hand casting about for their musical individuality, some taking small steps, others sounding unleashed.

Luzzasco Luzzaschi's Ricercar Terzo looked forward to esoteric Bach in its contrapuntal complexity. Cipriano de Rore had vocal lines sheared of contrapuntal distractions so as to better focus on the words. Yet old-school harmonic resolutions prevailed: Endings felt inconclusive to modern ears, particularly in comparison with some of the more popular instrumental dances that punctuated the vocal works, ones with the simpler musical contours we associate with folk music. Carlo Gesualdo's startling complexity and "smeared" sonorities weren't solely the quirks of this famously tortured composer; his contemporaries did much the same, but without such an emotional edge.

With guests including the viol consort the King's Noyse and soprano Ellen Hargis, the concert had great range of sound, some exploring the bass ranges of the instruments to create intriguing black-on-black effect. Also, soprano Hargis is a specialist in this period - her recording, Il Zazzerino: Music of Jacopo Peri, is among the best of its kind - and it showed in the way she used the words with a perfect balance of expression and restraint.