You don’t get to hear a lot of 14th and 15th century English music, not even in the early music series at the Wigmore Hall. So this concert by The Orlando Consort looked well worth booking and indeed it was a superb concert.
The members of the consort each introduced chunks of the concert – all clearly knowledgeable fellows but wearing their learning lightly on the night.
Mark Dobell, for example, theorised that most of the English composers of the period were either named John or “anon”, when he announced a block of pieces in the second half of the concert. Even the composer known simply as Forest was probably John Forest, we were assured.
Some of the names in the composer column might be a bit confusing. Roy Henry, for example, might be King Henry V, King Henry VI or just possibly King Henry IV. Trent Codices is not the name of a modern US composer, nor a fellow who opens the bowling for New Zealand, but a collection of musical manuscripts from the Italian city, Trent. Who knew?
If you want to hear and see some 15th century music performed by The Orlando Consort, the following video from a Library of Congress concert in 2017 might be for you. But it is mostly composers from mainland Europe, not English composers of the period, so no Johns. The music starts some 4’50” in:
Whereas, if you would like to hear some extracts from of The Orlando Consort singing the sort of English polyphony that we heard at the Wigmore Hall, then this short extract vid from a CD promo might be for you. You even get some John and anon: including some John Dunstaple:
The singing was beautiful throughout the concert and we sensed that this quartet of singers take great pleasure in singing this music and with each other.
The hall wasn’t full but it was quite busy. The “nice front row couple” that I quite often see at The Wig and SJSS were there in the front row, just fancy!, a few seats along from us. We chatted only briefly this time.
Janie and I hadn’t seen The Orlando Consort before, although we had probably seen most if not all four of the individuals in other choirs and consorts. Anyway, we most certainly will enjoy seeing them perform again if/when we get the chance.
The idea of seeing this concert was partly hatched from John Random’s desire to see some lunchtime early music with me. A couple of suitable Thursday dates were either no good for him or no good for me. But this Friday one, during the London Baroque Festival, looked bang on.
The timing was good too, as Janie had arranged to tour the new extension of the Royal Academy at 15:00 that afternoon. Janie very much liked the look of Les Kapsber’girls lunchtime programme.
As John’s availability is subject to the whims of showbiz administrators, the unreserved seating at SJSS makes it a suitable concert venue for an aproximeeting. I bought tickets for me and Janie, knowing that John would be able to get one on the day if he proved to be available.
The e-mails buzzed over the coming days. There was to be a costume fitting for John, so our gathering was off. The costume fitting had been cancelled – John was on again. The fitting was reinstated – off again.
At that juncture I tried to guilt-trip John…with my tongue rather firmly in my cheek, I might add:
John, John, John…
…I can’t handle all four of those Kapsber’girls on my own. And I’m not so keen on your two. No, no, no, two ladies is plenty:
…so I identified the instruments to John while we were waiting for the concert to start…
…but I got more instruments wrong than right. The big thing I thought was a theorbo turned out to be an archlute; the smaller thing I thought was the archlute was actually a tiorbino (a miniature theorbo), the existence of which only became known to me on the day; the small viol I took to be a treble viol was the even smaller pardessus de viole – a soprano viol which, again, was a new instrument to me on the day. Top mansplaining on my part – waxing lyrical while getting most of the facts wrong – I must have sounded like Alan Partridge to an expert observer.
The concert was absolutely charming – as were all four of the Kapsber’girls. They are very young and relatively new to performance at this level; not all of them displayed professionally-grooved stage presence throughout the hour, especially when sitting out the odd piece. But they all four play or sing beautifully and are surely all on the road to success.
The music was early 18th century French popular songs, known as “airs de cour” or “brunettes”. Two voices and two instruments. These songs were published in the early years of the 18th century by Christophe Ballard and were phenomenally popular in France during that latter part of Louis XIV’s reign.
Here is a little vid of “our girls” performing one or two of the songs we heard:
…and if all that leaves you in the mood to hear some actual Kapsberger (and believe me it’s worth it) here are Les ‘Girls playing and singing some actual Kapsberger:
Of course we didn’t hear any actual Kapsberger in our concert; the focus was entirely on the French airs de cour.
Janie snapped this during the final, lengthy applause
John, true to his word, made an approach to one of the girls after the concert – probably to try to understand the difference between the theorbo, the archlute, the chitarrone…that might have been a long, complicated conversation. Anyway, Albane Imps kindly chatted with and then posed with John:
Is that a tiorbino in your pocket, John, or are you just pleased to see me?
We took a snack lunch in the crypt after the concert (Janie’s favourite place at SJSS) where we met a couple of Kapsber’girls again – Axelle Verner chatted with us charmingly for a while – before the girls headed off, returning to France that very day.
The girls were very self-conscious about the quality of their spoken English, although John’s assessment (and he does teach English as a foreign language) is that their spoken English is actually very good. John remarked that the French accent is a very forgiving accent for spoken English – especially when the words are delivered by charming young people! So snap out of it girls – your English is just fine.
John seemed a little star-struck, so we conducted a filmic thought-experiment in which John might make a brief-encounter-like dash to St Pancras for a touching farewell scene with Les ‘Girls, but sadly John decided against.
Not all that many people composed baroque music for eight voices and two instruments, but let’s try naming my thought experiment combination of The Gesualdo Six and The Kapsber’girls “The Zieleński Ten“.
John was clearly inspired by the “baroque girl power” he had seen, so he parted company with us in search of Millicent Fawcett’s statue, at Parliament Square, while Janie and I went on to our appointment with the new extension of the Royal Academy.
In fact it isn’t really a new extension – it is the old Burlington Gardens building behind the main building, which has been conjoined with the main building to bring the whole of the Royal Academy together. This project has been donkey’s yonks in the making and Janie was very excited, as a member, to be allowed a sneak-preview before the doors opened to the public that weekend. Here is a link to a page and vid that explains it all.
Before wandering around and poking our noses into all the new bits of the Academy, we took a quick look at the first exhibition in the new space – Tacita Dean, Landscape – click here for the RA resource on that exhibition. Not especially to our taste, in truth – we were there for the opening more than for this exhibition – but I did like several of the works that fused photographs with spray-on chalk and gouache. One or two of the larger ones were truly stunning and also, strangely, the technique worked well in miniature on postcards.
Then we wandered around the Burlington Gardens extension.
Tim Marlow himself was there, available to chat with the members. We didn’t chat directly with him, but we did chat with several members of staff who were visibly excited about the whole thing. Extra exhibition space, workshop space, studio space and a soon-to-be completed lecture hall with all the modern gadgetry:
Ged is desperate to deliver the first lecture in this place…
…”this beautiful Burlington Gardens building dates from 1831…”
We then retired back to the City quarters for siesta before grabbing some Persian food and retreating to Noddyland for the weekend. We’d had a super cultural day.
What a wonderful way to end the working week; a concert of beautiful early music. We’ve seen Stile Antico before at the Wigmore Hall; they are a truly inspirational vocal ensemble.
We ran into Eric Rhode and his wife, Maria at this concert, as often we do. He is no doubt at the Wigmore Hall even as I write, as I know there is early music on there right now, a couple of weeks’ after the Stile Antico event.
Revisiting this article in May 2020 during Covid-19 lockdown, I am glad to see that, in 2015, Stile Antico showed off their skills by singing Renaissance pieces that were designed for 12 voices. Lockdown has strangely enabled the group to multiply virtually, producing the following delicious 40 part performance of Tallis’s Spem In Alium:
But in truth, the concert we heard that might would have looked and sounded more like the following recording from 2013 of William Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus at The Wig itself:
Interesting stuff. It’s one of those nights at the theatre about which I remember little detail but it left a lingering impression on me nonetheless. I can still sort-of remember the sights, sounds and even smells of it.
