Vancouver Bach Festival: Tea-Table Miscellany
$40 CAD before June 27
$50 CAD on/after June 27
$37.50 CAD subscriber
$25 CAD ages $34 & under
- Ellen Torrie, soprano
- Isaiah Bell, tenor
- David Greenberg, violin
- Chloe Meyers, violin
- Amanda Keesmaat, cello
- Soile Stratkauskas, flute
- Lucas Harris, baroque guitar
- David McGuinness, harpsichord & conductor
The Tea-Table Miscellany is the first printed collection of Scottish songs in the Scots dialectic, though it also contains English-language songs. It features the words of 18th-century poet, dramatist, and book-seller Allan Ramsay, and contains poetry as well as broadside ballads. The songs in The Tea-Table Miscellany were said to be sung by young Edinburgh ladies at the tea-table since drinking tea was a female social pastime. As time went on, men began attending the gatherings and drinking and political songs found their way next to the songs about wealth and marriage.
Also on the programme are songs from Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, a pastoral comedy about a literary shepherd, which Ramsay turned into a Ballad Opera. Like John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, it was enormously popular.