By Nancy Plum

The 17th and 18th centuries in Europe were teeming with larger-than-life rulers. Louis XIV held court at Versailles, Dresden and Poland were ruled by Augustus the Strong, and Frederick the Great conducted his domain from Berlin. Regardless of the political reputation of these leaders, the music which emerged from the imperial courts was incomparable. The period instrument Dryden Ensemble explored some of these musical traditions this past Saturday afternoon at Princeton’s Unitarian Universalist Congregation.

The Dryden Ensemble divided the program into three royal courts of the 17th and 18th centuries. Representing Louis XIV and France were Jean-Baptiste Lully and the lesser-known Marin Marais. The six performers — lute and theorbo player Daniel Swenberg, bass viol player Lisa Terry, Baroque violinist Vita Wallace, soprano Laura Heimes, Baroque flutist Taya Tarasevich König, and harpsichordist Caitlyn Koester — opened and closed the concert with excerpts from several Lully operas. The 1685 Roland told the story of a court figure’s unrequited love and his subsequent descent into madness, and the Dryden players well captured the despair of the opera.

Rising to the stage area from the side, soprano Heimes conveyed the wise commentary of the fairy Logistille with a voice easily filling the church. Stylistically accompanied by the smoothly-blended ensemble of instrumentalists, Heimes was occasionally joined by harpsichordist Koester in refined passages calling for two voices. Heimes also expressively sang a long scene from Armide, one of Lully’s more familiar operas, with consistent attention to the elaborate text. Swenberg (playing both the theorbo and lute), flutist König and harpsichordist Koester provided elegant accompaniment, with a lyrical flute line and an especially graceful duet between flute and harpsichord.

Late 17th-century French composer Marin Marais was also a master of the bass viol, composing five books for the instrument which were popular in aristocratic courts. Marais wrote pieces in common forms of the period, including the tombeau — a musical homage or elegy to an individual. Marais’ Tombeau pour Monsieur de Lully incorporated operatic recitative style and the traditional French “air” into music performed by Swenberg on theorbo, Terry and Koester. Not surprisingly, Terry carried much of the melodic material, expertly handling ornaments while climbing sequences were intensely played by Swenberg.

Augustus II, known as “The Strong,” ruled Saxony and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a patron of the arts through the early decades of the 18th century. A child prodigy, German composer and lutenist Sylvius Leopold Weiss was a member of one of the court orchestras of Augustus. Swenberg chose the opening and closing movements of Weiss’ solo lute sonata Le Fameux Corsaire for this concert, giving the audience the chance to observe lute playing close up. The strength of Swenberg’s fingers was especially apparent in the “Presto” movement, as he impressively showed the audience the instrument’s full range of colors.

The fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach, Carl Philip Emanuel Bach became a significant composer in his own right in the 18th century. His works linked the Baroque era of his father with the pre-Classical decades which launched Haydn and Mozart, moving away from ornamentation and embellishment to music touching the heart. Only one C.P.E. Bach sonata for solo unaccompanied flute was published during his lifetime, and the three-movement Sonata for Solo Flute displayed both unusual melodic twists and the emotional “Empfindsamer Stil” for which the composer was known. Flutist König played the improvisatory first movement allowing the unusual dissonances to sink in. The subsequent two movements also gave the audience the opportunity to observe 18th-century flute technique as König executed clean trills and even runs leading to a graceful conclusion.

Longtime specialists in presenting music of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dryden Ensemble has made a welcome return to the area after a brief hiatus following the pandemic. Saturday afternoon’s concert confirmed that professional performance and a bit of music education for the audience can be a winning combination.

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The Dryden Ensemble will present its next concert on Saturday, January 31 at 4 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Princeton. Lachrimae: In Praise of Tears will commemorate both the 400th anniversary of the death of English composer John Dowland and the birthday of Viennese composer Franz Schubert. Information about this event can be obtained by visiting  drydenensemble.org.