CHAUTAUQUA - A quartet of talented singers from New York City performed a concert of music to the harp and the lute in Chautauqua Institution's Fletcher Concert Hall on Sunday evening. Most of the music was from the Renaissance, and the performance was titled ''Love is But a Jest: Songs for Fools and Lovers.''
The singers performed in Renaissance-style costumes. They call themselves ''Good Pennyworths,'' a phrase taken from a song by John Dowland suggesting that something gives good value for a penny.
The program began and ended with the well-known song ''Scarborough Fair,'' with the first performance being the original version from centuries back, and the concluding performance the modern ''Scarborough Fair/Canticle'' by contemporary composer Paul Simon.
The relatively small Fletcher Hall lent itself well to a small performance with soft-voiced instruments. The singers performed together, individually, and in duets and trios. Their performance lasted only about 90 minutes, and yet they worked their way through 28 different pieces of music.
Singers were soprano Jacqueline Penfold, mezzo soprano Kirsten Kane, tenor Christopher Preston Thompson, and baritone Garald Farnham. Thompson also performed on the Gothic harp. Farnham is the ensemble's leader, and performed on two different lutes.
Each of the singers had good, solid singing voices. The mezzo and the baritone were more vibrant than the others, but not in any way distracting from the blending of the sounds.
Included in the performance was a work commissioned by the quartet, titled ''A Perfect Strain,'' composed by jazz artist Jordan Clawson as a setting of poetry by Canadian poet Isabella Valancy Crawford. Sung by Thompson and Ms. Kane and performed with Farnham's lute, the work had the same quiet, beautiful sonority as the Renaissance music, and quite beautifully portrayed the poet's words.
Perhaps the least successful performance was a rendering by Ms. Penfold of Stephen Sondheim's beautiful ''Send in the Clowns,'' from ''A Little Night Music.'' while it was sung beautifully, it is a song which is presented most successfully with a lush accompaniment, and not with the smaller sound of the solo lute.
The performance was part of a tour of six states by the ensemble, and was sponsored by the Chautauqua New York Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters.