Event Details
The 2026 Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival at St. Anne's Episcopal Church on Church Circle in Annapolis is entitled "The Quality of Mercy" and celebrates our shared humanity through the musical depiction of experiences of conflict resolution and compassion. Featuring 17th and 18th-century chamber music performed by period instrument specialists from around the country and Canada, the festival’s three programs will present Italian music from Shakespeare’s time and works from 18th-century France and Germany by Marais, Corelli, j.S. Bach, Lully and others.
The festival opens with "These Distracted Times" on Tuesday, September 22, 2026 at 7:00 PM with viola da gambist Susie Napper from Montreal, harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright from Indiana and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan. The second program entitled "Chaconne pour la Paix" on Sunday, September 27, 2026 at 7:00 PM features pardessus de violist Melisande Corriveau from Montreal, viola da gambist Susie Napper, harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan; and finally "The Quality of Mercy" on Wednesday, October 7 at 7:00 PM will feature baroque violinist Marlisa Woods, renaissance bassoonist Anna Marsh, renaissance flutist Jeffrey Cohan and baroque guitarist and theorbo player William Simms.
— CHACONNE POUR LA PAIX with Mélisande Corriveau, pardessus de viole, Susie Napper, viola da gamba, Elisabeth Wright, harpsichord and Jeffrey Cohan, baroque flute
Les Voix humaines, the widely celebrated prize-winning duo of viols from Montreal, joins us in a program illuminating the role of the chaconne in France as the culminating expression of an opera’s content at the court of Louis XIV. In Jean Baptiste Lully’s "Phaeton" (1683), warring nations are unified in global harmony. In "Persée" (1682) divine intervention brings a celebration of peace for the people of Ethiopia. Chaconnes from these operas and Lully's "Ballet du Temple de la Paix", in remarkable transcriptions for a small ensemble in 1713 by Louis XIV's court librarian Philidor l'Ainé, will be presented alongside Couperin's "La Paix de Parnasse" and other selections by Marin Marais and Arcangelo Corelli, which demonstrate the stylistic chasm between the French and Italian styles that was debated so vociferously in France during the early years of the 18th century.
The rarely heard pardessus de viole is the highest-pitched member of the viol family of stringed instruments, corresponding to the violin but played on the lap and fretted like a guitar, as is the more familiar bass viol or viola da gamba.