To St. Sepulchre Without Newgate for the last time (at least for the purposes of this lecture series) to see Christopher Page’s last Gresham lecture. This one covers Samuel Pepys’s interest in the guitar later in his life.
I have long been fascinated by Pepys – indeed one of my working titles for Ogblog was “Mr Poopys’s Diary” – based on the notion that it would be like an on-line cross between Mr Pooter’s Diary and that of Mr Pepys…
I had missed the previous lecture, The Guitar At The Restoration Court, in March, due to work commitments, but did find the time to watch it on the web ahead of my May visit, so my attendance at today’s Pepys meant that I have seen all six of them; three live and three on the web.
I also realised when Christopher Page made his closing remarks that I would find several of his earlier lectures (before this year’s series) fascinating – all early music (apart from his first series which was on romantic period guitar) – and they are all on-line too:
I don’t think I’d knowingly heard any William Lawes before – certainly not his viol music.
He looks like a quintessential cavalier of the period, which sums up his career and untimely death (reportedly “casually shot”) soon after entering the theatre of war for the first and last time.
There’s not a lot of Lawes viol music played by Phantasm to be found on the web, but here is the paven from the consort set in F, which we heard on the evening:
…we didn’t have the organ accompaniment, but we did have a sixth viol player in the second half for those pieces that demand six viols.
Likewise, I was not familiar with the work John Jenkins – his viol music was a little lighter in tone, although all such viol consort music is, by its nature, pretty moody.
Even harder to find on line, here are some other dudes playing a John Jenkins Fantasy a6 other than the ones we heard. You’ll get the idea and it is still lovely:
Something about this sort of music heard live touches the soul – I think it is the close proximity to the vibrations of all of those viols.
We both felt so calm and tranquil after the concert we could hardly get our act together to eat when we got home, but somehow we managed it. A very pleasurable end to a Monday off work.
Now that’s what I call a theorboQuintessentially French Baroque
This ensemble was recently involved in a French TV series about Versailles – said to be the most expensive ever made in France – here is a short musical extract from the TV programme:
Mercifully for the down to earth SJSS audience, Fuoco E Cenere did not ponce about in 17th Century wigs and outfits for our concert.
Here is a more down to earth vid and interview about Les Folies d’Espagne by Marais, which they did play on the night:
The highlight of this concert, for us, was the singing of the young guest soprano, Theodora Raftis. She has an outstanding voice and tremendous stage presence. She seemed a little overwhelmed by the occasion at first, but it was great to see her warm to her work and become the highlight of the show by the end of the concert. She was clearly well appreciated by the audience and her fellow performers. Remember the name: Theodora Raftis. Not much of her to be found on-line, but here is some Donizetti – trust us, she’s upped her game big time since this vid was recorded:
The Platters
No , we didn’t see a 1950s vocal group, but we did eat charcuterie and cheese platters with salad and a glass of wine between the concerts. I won’t dwell on the shenanigans involved in booking a table and arranging the platters – let’s just celebrate the fact that waiters David and Ramon did us proud and that we thoroughly enjoyed our twixt concert supper.
Paris-Madras
It was this second concert that really inspired me to book the evening – the notion of a fusion of French Baroque and Indian raga music. How on earth might that work? Well, it pretty much did.
Le Concert De L’Hostel-Dieu provided the baroque element. In truth, we got more out of the ragas than we got out of the Leçons de Ténèbres. The wonderful weather of the previous week had turned to miserable cold weather that day, so neither of us was much in the mood for the lamentations of Jeremiah. More seriously, we’d seen the Leçons de Ténèbres quite recently and didn’t realise that the concert would pretty much give us the whole lot un-fused with the ragas…plus ragas unfused with the lamentations.
…artefacts from the raga element
On the ragas, in particular, we liked the bansuri flute and the sarod. Soumik Datta, the sarod virtuoso involved, is far more rock’n’roll than the rest of the performers on show that night. Here is his showreel:
Below is the explanatory vid in French about the Paris-Madras project, in which you can hear Ravi Prasad sing and Patrick Rudant play his flute, as well as the baroque players of course:
The absolute highlight of this concert for us was the few passages when the musicians segued between the two styles and the ending when they all played together. Perhaps they judged the fusion to be risky, so they minimised its use, but to our mind it was a risk that came off big time and the fusion was the reason we went to see the concert.
Anyway, we came out the other side of the evening feeling very pleased with the whole occasion.
…in which Hille Perl makes a cameo appearance as the viola da gamba and sexting interest…
…it really isn’t often you’ll see those two terms – viola da gamba and sexting – in the same sentence.
Then, recently, DJ kindly bought me an electric ukulele in the style of an oil can:
…inducing me to comment to Ian Pittaway, after my last baroq-ulele lesson, that I now no longer know whether I seek to emulate Lee Santana or Carlos Santana.
Anyway, Janie and I were very excited that we would be seeing this remarkable couple, Hille Perl and Lee Santana, playing at the Wigmore Hall.
After such a build up and such high expectations, it wouldn’t be surprising if the concert turned out to be a disappointment, especially as we needed to brave unseasonably awful weather to get to The Wig. But no such thing – we were truly entranced by the music and their performance as a couple. It really was a beautiful concert from start to finish.
We found their style of remaining on stage throughout and looking so captivated by each other’s music making was quite touching. In particular, when Lee Santana played a few solo pieces on a slightly smaller theorbo; a “théorbe des pièces” to be precise, Hille Perl looked transfixed. As were we – what a sweet sound that solo instrument version of the theorbo had – I don’t think we’d ever heard one of those before.
Hille Perl and Lee Santana concluded the concert with Les Folies d’Espagne by Marin Marais, which is the very piece that Hille Perl plays solo in the movie Happy End. If you want to see what Hille Perl and Lee Santana look like playing together, here is a little embedded vid of them playing that very piece together:
They played us an encore on the afternoon which was unexpected and unannounced. I’m pretty sure it was O’Carolan’s Dream, which you can see/hear them play on this embedded vid:
The afternoon was an absolute treat; a super way to enjoy a Monday off work!
The week had somewhat run away with me, though, having ruled out much of the previous work day unexpectedly for Hazel Jacobs’s funeral, followed by the Middlesex CCC AGM, which also had a somewhat funereal feel to it this season.
Anyway, I got to the office after an early meeting at the LSE and managed to get my office stuff done by the appointed hour, so I was able to hot-foot it to SJSS on time.
A jolly looking harpsichord
I thought Tabea Debus came across really nicely – showing great enthusiasm and academic interest in her instrument and the topic of the concert, while projecting also the poise and folksiness of a true show-person. A star in the making.
She has previous at SJSS and they in fact made a short vid for her first mini-residency as a young artist a couple of years ago – see below:
The concert I saw was mostly Telemann – the theme being the subscription lists Telemann developed during his masterful music business career, plus the high-falutin’ composers who were among his subscribers and friends; Bach, Handel and Blavet.
Below is a video of Tabea performing some delicious Telemann, but not the stuff we scoffed that lunchtime:
Tabea also played a couple of modern works which were part of a commission commemorating the 250th anniversary of Telemann’s death. One of those, Frank Zabel’s “…fizzling out” was extraordinarily complex-sounding and must be a real challenge to play.
Then on to a music lesson for my humble skills – although Ian Pittaway seemed surprisingly pleased with my simple transcription of a Loqueville Rondo.
Then on to punish myself with two real tennis singles matches at Lord’s – 135 minutes unbroken is too long for an old geezer like me.
But I digress.
That lunchtime at SJSS was an hour supremely well spent. I’ll be looking out for Tabea Debus’s name again, that’s for sure.
I’d heard a lot about The Gesualdo Six – they are currently the hottest boy band of the early music vocal consort world – so I have been keen to see them for some time.
This early evening concert at St John’s Smith Square slot didn’t suit Janie on a Wednesday, so I made one of those unusual but no longer rare concert bookings just for me.
What a super short concert it was.
SJSS had been turned around for this concert, so the audience faces the organ, not the massive, tired-looking stage – something I know they’d been talking/thinking about, but until now I had not yet experienced it. Janie and I have thought for some time that this configuration would work better for soloists and small ensembles.
It does work better.
I got in early to bagsy a good seat and took a picture. You can see my coat draped across a front row seat.
SJSS Turned Around
Nice touch with the candles.
The hall soon filled up – several hundred people I would estimate – the largest audience I have seen at SJSS for a while. The idea of doing an early evening concert of this kind ahead of the main event certainly worked for this evening – perhaps also linked to the fact that this concert was part of the Holy Week Festival.
The people sitting to the left of me clearly knew one of the singers, Guy James, who chatted with them briefly before the gig. The younger woman in that party asked him to throw in a pop song or two – but he shyly demurred, saying that he’d love to but it would probably get him into trouble with the others. Not very rock’n’roll.
I did and do have an arithmetical problem with this group. When I looked at the picture on their website – click here –and/ or the above SJSS web page and/or indeed the programme for the evening, I kept counting seven people in The Gesualdo Six.
A knowledgeable-sounding fellow sat next to me about five minutes before the start of the Gesualdo Six concert – he said that he had seen some of the performers before (e.g. Joseph Wicks recently) but never the entire ensemble together and was very excited to be getting to see them.
I mentioned my cardinal number problem – i.e. the matter of seven people comprising The Gesualdo Six, hoping for some insight from this knowledgeable fellow.
“I know, yes…tough isn’t it,” was that gentleman’s unhelpful reply.
But from now it’s all good news.
There were only six people in The Gesualdo Six on the night – which put me at my ease again.
The music was absolutely lovely.
Indeed, the opening number, Tallis’s Te Lucis Ante Terminum, was worth the price of admission alone (as sports commentators would tend to put it).
I don’t normally go for modern choral music mixed in with early music, but I was much taken by the several lullabies by Veljo Tormis, which contrasted nicely with the Byrd lullaby.
I also enjoyed Owain Park’s own piece, Phos Hilaron. I cannot honestly claim to have got much out of Joanna Marsh’s pieces, though.
But basically I loved the gig – they are a wonderful ensemble – so when Owain Park announced that we could buy pre-release copies (due out Easter Weekend) of the group’s debut album on exit, I was up there with my £12 like a shot.
You can order/buy the album from all the usual outlets or direct from the band’s site by clicking below:
Below is a video from an unspecified place of The Gesualdo Six singing some Tallis – a piece from the album but not from the gig.
Likewise, the following piece of Thomas Tomkins (seen below in Ely Cathedral) is on the album but wasn’t on show at the gig:
They only sang one piece of Gesualdo on the night – not the following one, but I can’t let you sample The Gesualdo Six without Gesualdo himself:
Finally, below is a little documentary piece about the group from SJSS itself two years ago. They look unfeasibly young in the vid – they still look young but not THAT young. Two years is a long time for a boy band. Another couple of years on the road and they might look like The Rolling Stones by 2020.
All of this rather puts my own attempt at some seasonal, medieval-style performance into the shade:
Below is a trailer showing one of the rap numbers from the start of the piece:
Below is a short “meet the writer” interview:
Kene explains that it is a piece about trying to write such a piece…
…which I suppose makes it a post-modern performance piece.
There’s some weird imagery too, with some orange balloon motifs acting as a recurring theme.
I don’t think this piece is aimed at the traditional theatre audience, but we were captivated by it.
We liked the poetry of Arinzé Kene’s language, we liked the music – both of the musicians, Adrian McLeod and Shiloh Coke (you can see them in the City Creature vid above) were excellent – I was especially impressed by Shiloh Coke, a young multi-instrumentalist – she should go far.
Arinzé Kene is a very talented rapper, along with being a talented writer and actor/performer.
At the time of writing Misty has only just opened, so you should be able to get to see it over the next few weeks – highly recommended as an unusual but entertaining theatrical, musical, image-filled evening.
This was a lovely concert of English viol music, specifically William Byrd, from the late Tudor/early Jacobean period. Phantasm are seriously good at this stuff.
Janie was up for this one. Wigmore Hall – warmer, much warmer. Byrd too.
An evening of early music with my ByrdFunnily enough, come the interval I realise that, sitting behind me, was the very couple I sat next to at the Ancient Montreal concert the previous week, with whom I had swapped stories about the cold…
…we all agreed that the Wigmore Hall is much warmer. There’s something warm about Phantasm too. They come across as a very mellow, gentle ensemble. Laurence Dreyfuss always explains things and reads things out as if he is sitting in your private parlour having a comfy chat.
Anyway the music was very soothing and relaxing, although it didn’t quite manage to do the de-stressing job on us that particular Tuesday night, while we were both having “a bit of a week”. That is the thing about Tuesday evening concerts.
That’s not Phantasm’s fault, nor the Wigmore Hall’s I do realise.
I took rare unilateral action to see this concert. I booked myself a single ticket. I’m really glad I did.
It sounded so interesting in the SJSS brochure, but could I persuade Janie (Daisy) a few months ago to agree to venture into Westminster on what she suggested might turn out to be a bitterly cold Thursday evening in February? Could I heck.
As it turned out, it was a bitterly cold Thursday evening in February.
I had a Skype music lesson with Ian Pittaway before heading off to SJSS. I am working on some very strange and ancient plainchant with him at the moment. I’m trying to sing in a slightly higher register now, which seems to have more going for it with my voice than the lower register I find safer. Also some tutorial on transposing complex lute parts into simpler baritone ukulele (Tudor guitar) parts without turning, for example, Byrd’s “Though Amaryllis Dance In Green”, into a banal three or four chord pop song.
An evening of early music without my ByrdOn all of these matters, I’m sorry to say, Ian Pittaway concludes his seemingly helpful advice with the words, “that’s it – now keep practising that before the next lesson.” Why can’t he teach well enough so that I can get it 100% right first time and not need to practice? That’s the sort of teacher I want. I’d even pay a few bob extra for one of those teachers. 😉 I mentioned this evening’s concert and asked Ian if he had heard of Aux-Cousteaux – Ian asked if he was a deep sea diver who also composed music. Does this guy know much at all about early music or is he just spoofing us all with his waggish manner?
Joking apart, the music lessons are going rather well in fact. But by the time I had finished fiddling around with one or two of those ideas in order to try and cement them in my brain, then finished off a couple of pieces of work that I really wanted to get out of the way before the concert, it was time for me to get my skates on…more importantly, time for me to don my hat, scarf and gloves…and head for Smith Square.
Preparing spiritually for a cold Québécois evening
The crypt was swarming with Québécois dignitaries being entertained and fawned over by the waiting staff, so my half-baked plan to pre-book the dining arrangements for my next visit with Janie, in May, came to nought. I hasten to add that the entertainment and fawning was a very dignified drinks and nibbles reception for the lucky Québécois swarm. Nothing “Presidents Club” about it.
Anyway, instead I bought a copy of the CD which seemed to be closest to the evening’s performance…
…then took up position along with a small posse from the regular SJSS front row mafia. The Québécois dignitaries had been allocated that “middle of the front block” which is deemed to be the best seats, although frankly, for a small enemble like this, I think front row is best even in a hall the size of SJSS.
I immediately knew the music was going to be to my taste. Ten voices singing a cappella, beautifully.
On researching the matter before the concert, I wondered why the Québécois considered this French early Baroque music to be their own. After all, Quebec City and Montreal were tiny little trading posts during that early Baroque period – a few hundred people in each place, mostly fur traders with a hundred-or-so monks in each town praying for the inhabitants to be spared famine, pestilence, Algonquian marauders, British marauders or combinations of several such fatal misfortunes.
It was all explained in the programme.
Firstly, some of the music they performed on the night is sung in the Abenaki language – that of the indigenous Algonquian people of that part of Canada – which is quite interesting. So it wasn’t all fisticuffs with the indigenous locals in those days.
In some ways more interesting is the sacred music of the early Baroque period by French composers, such as Henri Frémart, Jean-Baptiste Geoffroy and especially Artus Aux-Cousteaux. The monks brought the current music with them when they settled New France in the mid 17th century. There’s some very good music in there, which apparently would have been completely lost had scores not survived in Quebec, as all known copies of many of these composers’ works were destroyed in France at the time of the revolution.
So in those ways, this music is the Québécois people’s own.
The embedded sample is part of one of the Aux-Cousteaux pieces they performed on the night, so it gives you a very good feel for what we heard. I recommend that those who cannot resist the Aux-Cousteaux/Jacques Cousteau pun listen to this clip while submerged in their bath. Other folk, simply wallow in the delicious sound.
There was one modern piece by a young Québécois composer named Maurice-G Du Berger, who was at the SJSS gig to hear his piece and took a bow with the choir. It might be the first time I’ve seen a composer who was probably the youngest person on the stage in such circumstances.
At the end of the concert, the round of applause was resounding, but it wasn’t until towards the end of it that I realised that the Québécois dignitaries were doing that very North American thing of giving a standing ovation – the result being that the front row mafia was doing the SJSS regulars/British thing of politely but loudly applauding, while the rest of the audience was on its feet.
I hope the visiting choir didn’t think it was being dissed by the regulars, because the few I spoke to were all transfixed by the music and by all accounts the CDs sold like hot cakes in the interval.
It was a truly delightful concert, to round off a very interesting day of early music…
…but by heck it was a cold journey home that night. Not even faintly cold by Canadian standards of course, but for a wimp of a Londoner like me, it was well taters.
…the answer, quite simply, was that I hadn’t even noticed that they were happening. I know I’m supposed to be finding more time for the things I want to do now, but I hadn’t even skimmed the Gresham College lecture list for the 2017/18 year.
Of course, one of the many wonderful things about Gresham College these days is that the lectures are all archived on-line, including in video form.
So over Christmas I caught up with Christopher Page’s series, by watching the first two lectures on-line.
I found both lectures absolutely fascinating. I was particularly taken with the notion, which Christopher Page stated very clearly in the first of the lectures, that the Tudor guitar was, to all intents and purposes, a baritone ukulele; i.e. “my” instrument.
I learnt a lot watching those two lectures and/but I realised that such lectures, with live performance included, would be far more stimulating and enjoyable live…
…which is, after all, within even easier reach of the Z/Yen offices than Gresham College itself (by a few hundred yards).
So I booked out the remaining four dates in my diary and resolved to try my very hardest to organise my City working days around those slots.
I’m glad to report that my plan worked for lectures three and four.
17 January 2018 – The Guitar in the Age of Charles I
This was a wonderful lecture, not least for the diversity of the performances that peppered the lecture. Not only several different stringed instruments – the period covers the transition from four-course gittern-type Tudor instruments to five-course Baroque guitars of the Spanish variety – but also some performance with castanets which was a very pleasant surprise and addition. Christopher Page himself played a bit during this lecture.
So I commend the YouTube below if you can spare the time to watch it – most enjoyable as well as informative:
I picked up a few ideas for my playing at this lecture, not least realising that even I can muck around with the later Folia progression.
A charming lady sat next to me during this lecture – a visitor from Canada – who was strolling the City – had never heard of Gresham College and had simply wandered in having seen the sign outside the church. She was absolutely transfixed by the lecture and the whole idea of Gresham College. She chatted for a while with me, Professor Francis Cox and Frieda after the lecture; it turned out she was also named Francis.
7 February 2018 – An Englishman (with a Guitar) Abroad
I actually did a slightly better job of organising my work around this day, but that did mean that I really was squeezing in the lectures time slot, but still I was able to get to the church in time to grab a decent seat.
At the time of writing (9 February 2018) the video has not yet been uploaded, but the other resources are there and the lecture will go up in full eventually I am sure…
Ulrich Wedemeier – the sole performer for this lecture
Again the lecture and the performances were fascinating and interesting.
My fun takeaway from this lecture was a vignette about Charles Stuart (soon to become Charles II) spending 50 livres to transport one guitar and 18 tennis rackets from France to England (presumably in expectation of the Restoration).
This possibly says something about Charles’s relative levels of interest in those two hobbies, but probably says more about his relative playing styles and the fact that broken tennis rackets cannot be repaired in quite the same way that guitars can be restored.
It brought to mind one of my favourite pictures from a busy day a year or so ago when I indulged both hobbies on the same day:
Packing it all in; real tennis and 16th/17th century guitar jam – did Charles Stuart’s consignment look anything like this?
The rest of that day was littered with early music coincidences, which took me back thirty years and involved the Hilliard Ensemble and even Christopher Page’s Gothic Voices project too. Truly weird. Watch this space for a retroblog piece on’t.
