Daring Dilettantes

Music for their own delight

A “dilettante” musician of the baroque era was not a charlatan, but rather an accomplished artist, composing and performing outside the traditional structures of patronage or position.

AFM’s season opener features music by scientists, soldiers, and even royalty who had the “moxie” to know their musical voices were worth hearing. These extraordinary creators include the mysterious Comte de St. Germain, heiress and harpsichordist Marianna Martines, Kings Henry VIII and Frederick the Great, and Tobias Hume, a professional soldier.

Hume sums up the verve of these incredible dilettantes when he describes his music as expressing “my proper Genius, which if thou dost dislike, let me see thine.”