OUR VISION

Giulia Zannin, Diederik Ornée (chalumeaux)
Ivan Iliev (violin)
Cassandra Luckhardt (cello)
Vaughan Schlepp (harpsichord)

REDISCOVERING THE CHALUMEAU,
THE SINGING VIRTUOSO

Calliope is a new and innovative ensemble, founded by five befriended musicians from four countries who know each other from years of shared concert experience. Their fervent desire is to present to audiences an almost forgotten member of the clarinet family, the chalumeau (pl.: chalumeaux). This family has four members, soprano, alto, tenor and bass.

The chalumeau had a relatively short existence, from ca. 1700 until ca. 1800. Toward the end of this period, the clarinet, which was based on the chalumeau, was developed and the chalumeau was driven from the concert stage. Nevertheless, in the century in which the chalumeau flourished, many beautiful works were written for it, especially in Vienna (Johann Joseph Fux), Darmstadt (Christoph Graupner), Hamburg (Georg Philipp Telemann) and Dresden (Jan Dismas Zelenka).
This plentiful repertoire showcases the chalumeau’s tremendous versatility, with impressive virtuosity on one hand and gentle expressiveness on the other. The combination of two chalumeaux, violin, cello or gamba and harpsichord makes numerous concert programmes possible, with both original and transcribed works, with which Calliope explores the varied and fascinating colour combinations of the repertoire.
Calliope’s varied and charming programmes offer beautiful repertoire interspersed with information about the music and the instruments presented by the enthusiastic members of the ensemble.

The inspiration for this ensemble’s name comes from Calliope calliope, the Latin name for the Siberian Rubythroat, a little-known but beautiful member of the thrush family of songbirds. Its song has been described as “a sweet, complex, penetrating and slightly melancholic warbling, containing both clear, flutelike tones and shrill notes”. Calliope is also one of the nine muses and she presided over eloquence and epic poetry. Her name meant “beautiful-voiced” in classical Greek. In his Metamorphoses, Ovid recounts a singing match which Calliope wins convincingly.

Our ensemble showcases the chalumeau with its combination of the sweet, melancholic voice of the songbird, its poetic quality of the muse, and its virtuosity.