Ullo John! Got A New Motet? – The Secrets Of Heaven, The Orlando Consort, Wigmore Hall, 25 April 2019

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.

Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource for this concert.

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.

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