When Janie said, “viols again?”, even I had to admit that I’d gone a bit crazy booking mid 17th century viol music this season.
“But this is rarely-heard English viol consort music from just before the Civil War”, I protested.
While Janie announced afterwards that she couldn’t honestly tell the difference between English style and European styles…
…and I had to admit that I’d struggle to pinpoint time and location in a “blind tasting”…
…we both agreed that, as usual, we thoroughly enjoyed hearing this type of viol consort music.
Phantasm are supremely professional, masters of their instruments and seasoned at coping with the complexities of this multi-voiced music.
Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall stub for this concert.
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.
