The concert included an excerpt from a Bach Partita, folk music from Bengal & Assam and then a couple of Amjad Ali Khan’s ragas, both of which arranged beautifully for violin and sarod.
To give you a feel for Jennifer Pike’s wonderful interpretation of a Bach Partita, here is an excerpt from her performing a different Partita:
To give you a feel for the brothers Amaan & Ayaan Ali Bangash playing together, here is a duet recorded a few years ago. No Jennifer Pike of course and a different tabla player – we saw Anubrata Chatterjee.
The music was beautiful, but I must admit that we struggled a little to understand the ancient and modern connections as explained. For example, the notion that the sarod pieces were basically in the Lydian mode, although I think that term could only apply perhaps to the tuning of the strings, not how the music is composed or played. We could however hear wonderful relationships between the instruments and the notion (explained in the notes) that underlying melodies in the ragas are utilised in similar fashion to cantus firmus styles in late medieval, Renaissance and even Baroque music made sense.
Anyway, it was all beautiful music, deployed in virtuoso fashion, leaving us thrilled with our night out at The Wig, as is so often the case.
Gresham Professors Singing The Gresham Professors’ Song, With Thanks To Basil Bezuidenhout for the pictures and the “live music” video
Was it really three years ago that we last enjoyed one of these soirées? Yup. Last year’s event had to be postponed at the last minute.
The only good news about that delay was that the Gresham music professor, Jeremy Summerly, who was unavailable to attend in person last year, was available this year. Splendid news in particular because his deep knowledge about and insights into early music were especially welcome in the matter of the piece that I had “uncovered in autograph manuscript form”, just before the pandemic.
Fortunately for all concerned, we had professional musicians to entertain us for the first half of the show, before we Greshamistas got the opportunity to ruin everything.
Actually, before the professionals got the chance to entertain us, the noisiest amateur of us all, Michael Mainelli, piped us in to Barnard’s Inn Hall in the now traditional style.
Someone once asked me if I ever duet with Michael. My reply:
What would be the point? You’d only hear Michael.
Mercifully for all our ears, the professional team of David Jones and Sofia Kirwan-Baez soon established a pleasant tone to proceedings, both treating us to their fine keyboard skills as well as their excellent voices, with Part 1 of the show.
Sofia has a fine operatic voice, which really came to the fore when she sang the Massenet and the Puccini. David always entertains, not least with his “party piece”, Lehrer’s Elements Song, in which he subtly switches from “Harvard” to “Barnard’s” for the punchline. Also a lovely rendition of Misty, although I can never hear that song any more without thinking of the Gresham Society visit to the London Mithraeum and my resulting Mithras version of that song:
Part 2 of the programme was a different affair, of course, with some regular and irregular antics.
As for my little offering, Þe Fair Weather Canticle, it had been long in the process between “rediscovering” and performing.
I supplied Professor Jeremy Summerly with a copy of the “autograph” and a demo recording, the latter you can see below:
Professor Summerly very kindly gave this opus more than its fair share of scholarly attention, helping the audience to understand the historical significance of my “discovery” with a professorial dissertation on the piece. Unfortunately, that mini-lecture, a masterpiece in its own right, was not recorded for posterity on the night, but I do have some of Jeremy’s notes, which I can share with readers:
Of necessity, discoveries of new sources in the field of early music are less and less frequent as time goes on. All musicologists dream of finding a source of forgotten music, even more so a fragment that might fill in significant holes in our understanding of music history.
Yet such a discovery has been made recently. It is hardly surprising that such a fragment might turn up on the site of a medieval coaching inn, and even less surprising that this inn should be located in Middle England.
The musico-poetic gem þe Fair Weather Canticle, like much early music, surprises us through its apparent modernity. Like the brightly-coloured decoration of a medieval ceiling, or the dissonant harmonies and boldly-contrasting texts of a medieval motet, there is something shockingly modern about this ancient canticle.
Scholars will need time to consider the implications of this newly-found piece within the pre-Baroque jigsaw.
Meanwhile, the words and music should be enjoyed for what they represent: a perplexingly polystylistic mesh of jumbled ideologies and opaque thinking.
Professor Summerly then went on to examine the words of the canticle, noticing some astounding…in some cases shocking…similarities between those words and the words of subsequently well-known songs from periods ranging from the 12th to 17th centuries. In one case, even the 20th.
Finally, Professor Summerly, being an expert on early music, provided some historical context to my performance on an original instrument, which he kindly described as:
a rare and fascinating example of a gittern-ulele, an instrument probably of similar vintage to the canticle.
The instrument has an exceptionally sweet sound in the hands of an appropriate musician…or so we are led to believe, if only such a virtuoso performer could be found.
In the right hands, this gittern-ulele would quite possibly be, to the guitar-family, what Paganini’s Il Cannone Guarnerius is to the violin.
As for the gittern-ulele performance you are about to hear, many of you will surely be moved to tears when listening to the sound of this extraordinary old git?”
It was hard for me to follow that introduction, but I tried, after a subdued start. Basil recorded the moment for posterity – for which I am grateful. It is not every day that my work is professorially conducted, but the triumphant chorus at the end benefitted greatly from Professor Summerly’s expertise, as I had my hands full at the time:
For those who would like to study the words or are crazy enough to try singing along with the vids, here are the words:
Sumer is icumen in, þe nymphs and shepherds dance Bryd one brere, groweth sed and bloweth med And don’t you know, amarylis dance in green–ee-ee-een.
Lightly whipping o’er þe dales, with wreaths of rose and laurel, Fair nymphs tipping, with fauns and satyrs tripping Mister Blue Sky is living here today hey, hey hey.
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.
Hey you with þe angels face, bright, arise, awake, awake! About her charret, with all admiring strains as today, all creatures now are merry… (…merry merry merry, merry merry merry merry, merry merry, merry, merry merry merry merry merry merry minded.)
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.
Hey there mister blue, who likes to love, lhude sing cuccu, Nauer nu, ne swik thu, sing hey nonny nonny nu.
Mirie it is while sumer ilast, in darkness let me fast, Flow my tears, fairwell all joys for years, Never mind, I joy not in early, I joy not in early bliss.
Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light. Ba ba, ba ba ba ba, ba ba, ba ba ba ba, ba ba, ba ba ba ba, ba, ba x2
After the show, there was plenty of time for eating, drinking, chatting and making merry, as is the case at any good soirée. The Gresham Society Soirée is certainly always a good one.
We do like a bit of Renaissance music at the Wig. This lunchtime concert seemed just the ticket when we booked it months ago and still seemed like a coveted ticket come the day.
We thought it was an excellent concert. This size of ensemble and style of music works perfectly, to our ears, in The Wigmore Hall. The Tallis in particular was a memorably wonderful sound.
…which seems to be unresolved despite my pleas. The publicity material for The Gesualdo Six regularly shows seven people.
I’m not really one to talk, having recently been part of a six-person works-outing winning quiz combo known as “The FS Club 7”. But readers, many of whom are early music lovers, will surely know that the name is not a numerical claim, but a pun on the early music (i.e. some of it released even before the turn of the 21st century) pop combo, S Club 7.
But it is not my purpose in this piece to “bring it all back” in the matter of S Club 7’s ancient exploits, but rather to assess the wonderful world of Josquin’s Legacy, as sung by The Gesualdo Six.
While Josquin’s mostly late 15th century music formed the core of the concert, there were also pieces by his contemporaries, Jean Mouton & Antoine Brumel, plus several works by lesser known composers who followed a generation or so later.
It was a mixture of sacred music (both new and old testament liturgy) plus several regret/deploration pieces commemorating the death of fellow composers or patrons.
Here is a link to The Gesualdo’s promo vid for the album which this concert was surely (in part) aiming to help promulgate.
The concert was a BBC Lunchtime concert, which, if you are reading this within a month of the broadcast, can still be heard on the BBC Sounds App – here.
We attended this very tasty lunchtime concert and pre-concert discussion.
The noon-time discussion was between Patrick Allies, the artistic director of Siglo De Oro and Dr Daniel Trocmé-Latter, the academic whose work on the context and musical transcription of this “Mysterious Motet Book of 1539″initiated the project.
I found the information about the development of part books as printing became widespread in the Renaissance and the distinction between Protestant and Catholic liturgical music at the time of the Reformation fascinating.
Less convincing, to me, was the “mystery” aspect of the project, the conceit of which is, if I might paraphrase, “why might a publisher such as Peter Schöffer the Younger choose to publish a music book of Latin liturgical songs from Milan…in Strasbourg, which was, by 1539, a strongly Protestant town?”
Much like his illustrious Burgundian ancestors, Ferdinand seems to have been interested in tennis as well as music. Ferdinand was also evidently impressed by Milanese cultural style in several ways, not just liturgical music. He was also, reputationally, a conciliator between Protestants and the Catholics in his lands.
Still, if the purpose of promoting this music as “a mysterious publication” is as conduit for wonderful concerts and premier recordings of several of the pieces form the motet book…bring it on! It’s a thriller.
The music in the concert was lovely. Janie and I both loved it. They mixed and matched between motets from that 1539 book and some more familiar, later pieces, e.g. by Byrd and Tallis, by way of contrast and comparison, which worked well musically.
Siglo de Oro don’t put much in the public domain, but the sample below is downloadable from the website plugging the album, so you might as well hear Johannes Lupi: Apparens Christus below before you click through and buy the almum.
I played some real tennis (& padel), I spoke at the Real Tennis Society Conference, I watched four sets of the World Championship (the middle day) and had a thoroughly good time.
Frederika (Freddy) Adam tapped me up (moments before the final I seem to recall) to see if I would produce something vaguely historical for the Real Tennis Society Conference during the World Championship in September.
Only if I can get myself a decent seat for the match that evening and a room at Prested Hall for a couple of nights.
A couple of weeks later, I somewhat idly (more in hope than expectation) checked out the match and room situation. One front row seat had popped back into the pot and so had a room for two nights at Prested Hall. I eagerly grabbed both and resolved to do something for the history conference.
The Prested people (both in the tennis club and the Hall) are incredibly helpful. They arranged for me to play real tennis on the Monday afternoon when I arrived and padel on the Wednesday morning before I left. Both were very good games.
I met one or two of my fellow real tennis addicts at dinner in the hotel on the Monday evening, but the fun really started at breakfast on the Tuesday, where I found Freddy and Michael “Mikko” Lindell, one of the other conference presenters. Almost as soon as we started to chat, Mikko asked if he could draw me. Naturally I agreed. When I got back to my room after breakfast, about 30 minutes after that request, the headline picture (above) was sitting in my e-mail inbox.
During my performance, just prior to playing an instrumental piece of music, I made a quip about suffering from pre-minstrel tension. As soon as I had finished, Mikko presented me with the following picture:
Janie is already working on getting this prized possession framed.
But we were mostly there for the World Championship, in which Camden Riviere was challenging Rob Fahey for the fifth and probably final time (Rob is now an astonishing 54), having toppled Rob in 2016 but somehow Rob had grabbed the crown back in 2018. This challenge, in September 2022, was the delayed March 2020 one.
Before the tennis was a reception, which was a chance to catch up briefly with real tennis friends who had come down just for the evening. After the tennis there was a loud and convivial atmosphere in the Prested bar/bistro – an atmosphere I can only describe as unique in the real tennis world…but then there is only one real tennis club in Essex.
The tennis that Tuesday evening was very exciting…at least it was in the end. The match was poised 2-2 sets after the first day. Camden won the first three sets on Tuesday evening with relative ease and was even 4-0 up in the fourth set of the night, when Rob somehow managed to start turning things around – astonishingly taking that set having saved several set point along the way.
Actually James joined me for breakfast briefly the next morning before he flew back to the states and I scurried over to the padel court. It was a good opportunity to chat in person having exchanged e-mails in the past but not really chatted. Several other conferencistas were there at breakfast, which was a chance to swap metaphorical notes.
After padel, I packed and left, stopping off at Lord’s for one last look at county cricket this season – well it would have been rude not to.
On the pavilion/tennis side of the ground, I ran in to a few people who had been at Prested the night before. Then I wandered round to the new Edrich Stand, gracing it with my presence for the first time in glorious autumn sunshine. It was a fitting end to a very enjoyable short trip.
…which is probably worth reading before reading the following response…
…Mark responded with some fascinating reflections of his own about that music “forty years on”, along with his thoughts on what the follow-up mix tape should have been. I shall try to replicate that “thought-experiment mix tape” within this guest piece.
Ah Ian,
Every one of those tracks still gets a regular airing in my household! For me they have never aged because I’ve never gone through a prolonged period not listening to any of them. Anything by Grace Jones in that early eighties period always brings back memories of six in the morning in Freehold Street, Newcastle in the spring and summer of 1982 after a night at the 141 Club in Hanley with the likes of Anna Summerskill, Mark Bartholomew, Vince Beasley and Jan Phillips, amongst others. Invariably all of us stoned / tripping and / or speeding. The ‘Nightclubbing’ album just tailor made for the wee small hours after a long night out just as everyone was coming down. It was THE album I most associate with that crazy summer term when I went through that cathartic metamorphosis!
The Grace Jones version of ‘She’s lost control’, originally by Joy Division, on that tape I made you was one of the more eccentric covers I’ve heard. Back in 1994 I had the good fortune to meet the great lady when she was booked to play at The Fridge in Brixton. It was touch and go whether she’d make it onto stage - she was several hours late I recall before the show eventually started - but I did ask what had prompted her to cover such a track by such a band. It transpired she knew nothing about the band, knew nothing about Ian Curtis’s suicide and had merely heard the original track before deciding there and then to do her own version. It ended up as the B side to her single ‘Private Life’. She was rather horrified when she found out about Curtis’s demise and that the song was about epilepsy - a condition he suffered from.
The Roxy Music track ‘Both ends burning’ (from 1975) is etched into the memory because of their performance on Top of the Pops promoting it. Bryan Ferry dressed up as a GI with an eye patch dancing awkwardly as two heavily made up women, also dressed up in military garb, swung their hips behind him - looking vaguely glassy eyed in the eyeball department.
‘Violence Grows’ by the Fatal Microbes was always being played by John Peel. The singer was 15 year old Honey Bane, a schoolgirl who’d been signed up on the strength of her already provocative stage performances. This was a howl of rage from a time when there really didn’t seem much hope for young people as unemployment skyrocketed. Her indifferent tuneless vocal delivery for whatever reason just resonated.
‘Atmosphere’ by Joy Division arguably my favourite track released just after Curtis’s death a fitting tribute to the man’s genius. He was only 23 when he died - just imagine what might have come later on in his career had things been different. I wonder how ‘Blue Monday’ by New Order might have sounded had he gotten his teeth into it. I still recall John Peel announcing his death on air and playing ‘Atmosphere’ and being quite shocked. No one then could have imagined the cult status they would 40 plus years later enjoy.
‘Typical Girls’ by the Slits just a wonderful piece of pop-punk-reggae by the original riot girls. Ari Up the singer (alas she died of cancer some years ago) was John Lydons (nee Rotten) stepdaughter. John married Ari’s mother Nora, a German heiress, back in the eighties. It’s a track that despite its 43 years of existence still sounds like it could have been recorded in 2022.
Mark then went on to suggest a follow-on mix tape:
Had I made a second tape for you that year it would have undoubtedly included the following. All from that 1982ish period.
‘My face is on fire’ - Felt
‘Fireworks’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Temptation’ - New Order
‘How does it feel?’ - Crass
‘Torch’ - Soft Cell
‘The back of love’ - Echo & the Bunnymen
‘Second skin’ - The Chameleons
‘Persons unknown’ - Poison Girls
‘Hand in glove’ - The Smiths
‘Treason’ - Teardrop Explodes
‘Requiem’ - Killing Joke
‘Dead Pop Stars’ - Altered Images
‘Alice’ - Sisters of Mercy
‘Eat y’self fitter’ - The Fall
‘Painted bird’ - Siouxsie & the Banshees
‘Let’s go to bed’ - The Cure
‘Capers’ - The Birthday Party
‘Nightclubbing’ - Grace Jones
‘The look of love’ - ABC
‘Being boiled’ - Human League
‘Pissing in the river’- Patti Smith
‘Walking on thin ice’ - Yoko Ono
OK, let’s give that mix tape a go. I have really enjoyed listening to these tracks and hope readers enjoy them too. Many thanks, Mark, for your kind note and further selections forty years on.
The above picture is somewhat deceptive, as only two members of the Trio are permanent members, the singer in the centre of the picture, wonderful though she might be, is Torunn Østrem Ossum, not Jorunn Lovise Husan.
They are supremely talented singers who fill that hall with a wonderful sound and a charming vibe. They sing with smiles on their faces. They make supremely difficult singing look almost effortless. It really was a joy to see them again.
This concert was based on their latest album, Solacium, which is centred around traditional Norwegian and Estonian-Swedish lullabies and hymns. It includes some modern works by Anders Jormin, Andrew Smith and Marianne Reidarsdatter Eriksen, all of which felt very much in keeping with the early music nature of the programme.
Janie and I had a very tasty lunch of baroque music at Wigmore Hall, thanks to a young group of talented French musicians known as Nevermind, presumably because they think the name of their ensemble is not important.
More importantly, they introduced us to the compositions of Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729), who wowed The Sun King as a child prodigy and went on to become an eminent composer as well as performer. Along with many other female composers of earlier eras, she’s needed some rediscovering in recent years and by gosh she is worth rediscovering.
Imagine Corelli in a fantastically light-hearted mood, and he might just have composed a bit like Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, except that she was steeped in the traditions of the French baroque (e.g. Lully) and influenced by the Italian style, rather than upbeat Corelli, who would have presumably been steeped and influenced the other way around.
Or if you want to watch and listen to the concert, you can view it on the Wigmore Hall Site “watch and listen” section by clicking here. I’m not sure whether or not you need to be a member or just subscribed to the e-list or what, but I think you do need a log in of some sort to see this section of the Wigmore Hall site.
In our tradition of running in to people we know, Janie and I ran into Claire Durtnall, whom we have known for decades…
…and who had picked up a last-minute ticket for that concert on the off-chance.
Claire celebrated the chance encounter with a triple-selfie or two – if we are lucky she’ll send one of them in and I’ll add it to this piece…
…update – Claire did indeed send pictures:
But this account really should focus on the simply delightful music we heard. Mostly trio sonatas, we were carried to a happy place for an hour in that way only beautiful music can achieve.
But it turned out that one of Janie’s cohort, Sini Simonen, is not only a good Samaritan but also a virtuoso violinist. When Sini let it slip that she and her quartet, The Castalian String Quartet, were due to appear at the Wigmore Hall in a few month’s time, Janie and I agreed that, if we were available that day, we would go.
The links in the above piece to the exploits of my mother’s cousin Sid, not least his virtuoso playing of both violin and hand saw, are worth the price of admission alone. OK, there is no price of admission, but the stories are priceless.
…the Wigmore Hall concert on 1 May 2022 was an all Mendelssohn string quartet affair, but with a twist: we first heard Fanny Mendelssohn’s sole String Quartet, followed by Felix Mendelssohn’s 6th String Quartet.
Both were a very enjoyable listen – Fanny’s piece much lighter and easier on the Sunday morning ear than Felix’s. Felix was in sombre mood when he wrote his 6th, dedicated to his recently deceased and beloved sister Fanny – possibly also anticipating his own impending doom – he died soon after completing the work.
The concert was very well patronised – if not a complete sell out then surely the place was near to full. The performances were, deservedly, extremely well received by the Sunday morning audience.
Janie and I asked the elderly gentleman sitting next to us if he had enjoyed the concert.
Yes indeed. I prefer Fanny.
On balance, so did Janie and I.
Sini had said to Janie several times that we simply must show our faces in the Green Room after the concert, so it would have been rude to partake of the traditional Wigmore Hall sherry rather than visit the artistes in that hallowed room.
There were plenty of other groupies around in The Jessye Norman Room, but Sini greeted us warmly and we chatted for a while.
Before setting off for The Wig, I had discovered that the Castalian String Quartet had released an album this week, Between Two Worlds On Delphian…
I also couldn’t help but notice that the album includes a couple of arrangements of Renaissance pieces – one by Orlande de Lassus and one by John Dowland, as well as a Beethoven late Quartet and a modern quartet by Thomas Adès.
Sini, with characteristic modesty, mentioned in passing that she has arranged the Renaissance pieces as an experiment. She also kindly pressed a copy of the Between Two Worlds CD into my hand as we said goodbye to her.
Following an enjoyable stroll around Fitzrovia and Marylebone, Janie and I listened to the album as soon as we got home. We can both thoroughly recommend it; in particular the beautiful sound of the Renaissance piece arrangements. Choral works of that era were often arranged for consorts of viols, of course; the string quartet being the direct progeny of the viol quartet.
It was an enjoyable day and such a fitting way to remember my mum’s 100th anniversary.
But there was one more coincidence to come – as I read the programme notes to the Between two Worlds album. The viola player on the album was not Ruth Gibson (whom we saw at Wigmore Hall) but Charlotte Bonneton. Wasn’t Charlotte Bonneton the young musician mum and I saw along with Karim Said that very last time mum went to a concert?
Yes indeed – it turns out Charlotte was The Castalian String Quartet’s viola player until quite recently – for some 10 years – perhaps already with the group when we saw her perform with Karim Said in September 2011. Perhaps Sini and/or some of the other Castalians were even there to support Charlotte that day.
I know the classical music world isn’t big – but it isn’t that small either.