Iowa City Winter Madrigal Dinner
Unitarian Universalist Building, Coralville, Friday & Saturday, Dec. 13 & 14 at 6 p.m., $49.50
The Iowa City Madrigal Singers are set to celebrate the yuletide season with a dinner to support United Action for Youth this coming weekend. The ticketed event consists of a cappella and instrumental music and a four-course dinner with wassail.
During the dinner proper, the Madrigal Singers will provide food-themed tunes from European history. The music will be mostly English in origin, but with some French and Italian works thrown in the mix.
Madrigal music is notable for being polyphonic, meaning that multiple musicians simultaneously sing independent melodies. There will also be monophonic music, if the polyphony seems too far out.
“Madrigals are so intricate that you must enter a flow state to perform them properly. You are fully active in what you are doing and in listening to everyone in the group,” says Emily Pritchard, a local music teacher and member of the Iowa City Madrigal Singers.
The Singers are a core group together for three years, while this year’s group consists of 11 individuals and a mix of soprano, alto, tenor and baritone voices. The group welcomes a wide age range to participate, from high-schoolers to the young at heart.
According to Pritchard, madrigal music originated in the Renaissance as “part of the explosion of innovation, of thought, of consideration for who we are and how we are in the world that happened in Europe at that time. Almost everyone used to be a musician in their own right, and people would write these to entertain themselves and others.”
The music is secular, which may come as a surprise if you’re used to thinking of Renaissance art in the context of Catholic Church patronage. She also notes that Tudor and Early Elizabethan celebrations tended to align more closely with the pagan calendar, and there are madrigals for every season.
Proceeds from the dinner will benefit United Action for Youth, a nonprofit focused on youth health and well-being offering robust art and music studios, counseling services, specialized services for young parents and homeless and runaway teens, and much more. Before coming to Iowa City, Pritchard was a high school choir teacher, and she knows just how rewarding it is to work with this age range: “Youth need just as much love and support as any child, and I think the leadership at UAY does an amazing job of using their resources to do the most they can for youth in our community.”
The Iowa City Madrigal Singers hope to make this an annual event, and perhaps branch out for seasonal events. “We focus on the light we can bring in this dark time (physically and metaphysically),” Prichard said, so maybe consider this the brightest spot on the way to Winter Solstice.
