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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Barocco Toscano, Auser Musici, and Music-as-Protagonist

Auser musici—Barocco Toscano, 08-JUN-2008, Finska Kyrkan, Gamla Stan, Stockholm

The Baroque ensemble, Auser Musici delivered a breathtaking performance on 08-JUN. The concert, Barocco Toscano, was part of the Stockholm Early Music Festival (SEMF), performed in the Finska Kyrkan (bak Slottet) in Gamla Stan.

Sveriges Television (SVT) did a superb job of miking and video production of the Auser Musici performance, without intruding on the delicate baroque music. A diagram of the SVT mics is shown below (mics are denoted by diagonal lozenge shapes).

SVT is the Swedish public service television company. SVT programming is non-commercial. Advertising is not allowed but sponsoring of sports events is. SVT’s programming covers the whole genre spectrum. In fact, 81 of the 100 most popular Swedish TV programs of 2007 were produced domestically by SVT, many of these as HD productions. I am not certain whether or not the SVT recording of Auser Musici at SEMF was in HD. But the SVT digital audio engineering was expert and insightful. Besides the cardioid-pattern mic near the open lid of the harpsichord, the SVT audio engineer also placed a contact mic inside the harpsichord (see photo, below).

The combination is a belt-and-suspenders approach that provides great phasing and extra mix-down options for the recording engineers, once the digital media are brought back to the studio. If one mic only were used, the tender harpsichord might be might be muddied by other nearby, stronger instruments. The insights gleaned from the excellent SVT production set-up were very valuable for those of us interested in recording and sound reinforcement of early music ensembles in churches or other boxy, deep performance venues.

The activity of the ensemble has grown over the past ten years and has recently been given institutional recognition as a project called Tesori Musicali Toscani [Tuscan Musical Treasures], supported by grants from the Italian government.

Elena Cecchi, soprano
Carlo Ipata, traverso (transverse baroque flute)
Luca Ronconi, baroque violin
Daniela Godio, baroque violin
Teresa Ceccato, baroque viola
Marco Ceccato, baroque cello
Francesco Romano, theorbo
Alfonso Fedi, harpsichord

Auser Musici arrange their musical programs in consultation with academic musicologists. The SEMF performance was just such a program, thoughtful yet emotionally accessible. Sonata, operatic and symphonic concerto forms were all represented, with works by Nardini, Traetta, and Cherubini, among others. The premise of Auser Musici’s program at SEMF was that music is itself a character, a protagonist in musical narrative—and that this feature was first grasped by composers of sacred and secular music in the early Baroque period. In other words, not only are individual character’s parts capable of rhetorical gestures, but instrumental sectional playing and tutti ensemble passages also embody ‘characters’ whose natures and motives are elucidated in the course of performing each work. The string section provides a narrative context for Cecchi’s arias for example. The whole ensemble functions as a kind of omniscient ‘narrator’, offering clues to the listener as the performance unfolds and presaging the outcomes of the various movements and passages.

Articles on Ipata and Auser Musici in magazines such as Klassik Heute, Early Music Magazine, Le Monde de la Musique, Repertoire, Diapason, and Goldberg reviewing Auser Musici’s recordings tend to highlight the excellent interpretive skills and beautiful playing. But the SEMF performance—apart from its aesthetic attractiveness—illustrated the importance of the scholarship of Auser Musici on Tuscan repertoire of the 17^th and 18^th Centuries in terms of discourse analysis, semiotics, and rhetorical practice. This is far, far from any ‘conventional-minded’ conception of musicology. Ipata and Auser Musici are showing us an innovative fusion of literary theory and music theory! Here they are, convincing us of the validity of their theses by virtuosic demonstration: “Sentire che dico a lei. Lí è! QED.”

Carlo Ipata’s lyrical and virtuosic playing on baroque flute was spectacular. (Ipata had his musical training first at the Banff Center in Canada, followed by the Royal Conservatory in Ajax, and finally at the Conservatory National de Region of Paris, where he got an honors diploma in baroque flute and chamber music. With the ensemble Suonatori della Gioiosa Marca, I Barocchisti, Il Capriccio, Seicentonovecento, and with AuserMusici, he has performed at the European Festival of Lubiana, the Italian Festival in Dortmund, Berliner Tage für Alte Musik, Festival Antiqua, Musikinstrumenten-Museum of Berlin, Festivoce (France), Celebrations of Boccherini in Madrid), and now SEMF. He has recorded for EMI, Amadeus, Agorà, Tactus, Bongiovanni, Symphonia, Hyperion.

As director of the Tuscan Musical Treasures Project, Ipata has collaborated with the Conservatory of the University of Cremona, the University of Pisa and the Scuola Normale Superiore, and the Italian Musicology Society. He is an author of ‘Il flauto in Italia’ ( Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, 2005), and he has given courses and seminars at New York University. Ipata is Professor of Chamber Music at the Conservatorio Statale di Musica Gioacchino Rossini in Pesaro.

Here are links to a couple of MP3 tracks on Auser Musici’s website, to give you a feel for the musicianship and interpretive sensibilities of the ensemble:

[Auser Musici, Pietro Nardini, Flute Concerto in G Major, No. 2, Mvt. 3 (Allegro), 1.1MB MP3]

[Auser Musici, Francesco Barsanti, Sei Sonate op. 2 per Flauto traverso, Sonata in a minor, No. 6, Mvt. 4 (Allegro), 5.1MB MP3]

Their website provides easy links, to enable you to purchase their recordings online. The enthusiasm of SEMF attendees for Auser Musici’s playing in the filled-to-SRO Finska Kyrkan that Sunday afternoon was such that the cartons of CDs the ensemble had brought to Stockholm were immediately sold-out…

Ensemble Villancico: Källunge Codex and Sonic Rhetoric of the 17th-Century Baltic Church

Ensemble Villancico, SEMF, Bullkyrkan, 08-JUN-2008

S ince Martin Luther, music was increasingly understood as an investigative sonic rhetoric. For a long time, composition was dominated by the desire to convince and move the listener. From 1533, when music theorist Nicolaus Listenius introduced the concept of musica poetica, until 1606, when Johannes Burmeister published his rhetorical analysis of a motet by Orlando di Lasso, the need for ever-more forceful modes of expressing emotions grew—leading to stronger emotional contrasts and increasingly rich sonorities… Their survey of rhetorical figures in music and the effect of these on the listener reveals that composers of the period had a single major aim: to construct a composition like a speech, touching the listener’s feelings, preferably for an edifying religious purpose.”
— Peter van Tour, 2005.

On Sunday, 08-JUN, Peter Pontvik and members of Ensemble Villancico performed pieces from the Källunge Codex, as part of the Stockholm Early Music Festival (SEMF). The concert was held in the Bullkyrkan (Stadsmissionen) in Gamla Stan, the old-city part of Stockholm whose buildings date to medieval times and earlier.

S veriges kanske mest kvalificerade musikfestival. (Perhaps the most superior music festival we have in Sweden).”
— Aftonbladet, Stockholm.

Ensemble Villancico, comprised of 8 singers and 4 instrumentalists, was founded in 1995 by Peter Pontvik. For the Källunge SEMF performance, the instruments were trombone and Baroque organ. The ensemble predominantly performs music from the Baroque period and is the only ensemble in Scandinavia to do so. The ensemble has won several important awards, including the Ivan Lukacic Prize at the Varazdin Baroque Festival in 2001 and the Swedish Grammis award. Pontvik has been Artistic Director of SEMF since 2002.

Jessica Bäcklund, soprano
Nina Åkerblom Nielsen, soprano
Gonca Yazan, alto
Dan Johansson, countertenor
Love Enström, tenor
Martin Vanberg, tenor
Yamandú Pontvik, baritone
Peter Pontvik, contertenor
Jens Malmkvist, bass
Michael Dierks, organ
Daniel Stighäll, trombone

The ‘Codex Kellungensis’ collection of works of the 17^th Century is multi-national and includes works by Philipp Dulichius, Melchior Vulpius, Gregor Aichinger, Nicolaus Zangius, Hieronymus Praetorius, Hans Hassler, Jacob Gallus, Johann Walter, Dominique Phinot, Orlando di Lasso, and Johann Bahr.

The SSAATTBB orchestration allows for a number of rhetorically and spatially evocative treatments (including antiphonal SATB-SATB double choir). The organ and/or trombone add immensely to the remarkable aesthetic effects that Ensemble Villancico achieves.

Exultate justi in Domino by Vulpius (with organ) and Duo Seraphim clamabant by Aichinger (with organ & trombone) are particularly beautiful. The latter work starts with an atmospheric duet of the two sopranos in close-harmonic chase, over an organ continuo with subsequent passages of homophony. Some of the works are dense harmonies in ‘stile antico’ (Dulichius; Vulpius). More modern compositional styles (Praetorius) are also represented in the Codex.

The clarity of tone and diction and the fullness and roundness of the voices were superb. And the Bullkyrkan—an unlikely narrow, tall sanctuary on the second floor of the ancient Gamla Stan Stadsmissionen in the noisy medieval Stora Torget (big square)—was surprisingly congenial, acoustically. The echoes and reverb time from where I was sitting in the balcony were not excessive and in fact lent a 17^th-Century authenticity to the performance. (It is odd that we routinely talk of period instruments for historically-informed performances and the attributes that make a particular instrument period-appropriate, but rarely speak of ‘period performance spaces’ and the acoustical attributes that make them period-appropriate or not.)

The small organ with its human diapason and reedy colors at times functions as a ‘narrator’ rhetorically. By contrast, in some dark-hued passages it blends nicely as liminal accompaniment with the singers. This organ and these arrangements for it from the Källunge Codex evoke and reinforce the 17^th-Century North German / Baltic liturgical conceit, a kind of Reformation ‘hyper-responsibility’ that views humankind as challenged by what Life (Nature; God) dishes out and challenged by the frail flesh and human nature itself—the organ part tells us how and with what consequence, and the voices plead and declare the mortal parishioners’ responsible intent. Bergman’s and other Swedish films come to mind, Halldor Laxness’s books, the Eddas…

Impressive, too, was Göteborg Baroque trombonist Daniel Stighäll. In some of the pieces without organ the trombone part is essentially a vocal part without words—‘toning’ vowels. Don Campbell refers to toning as the vocalization of elongated vowel sounds, and this description is entirely fitting to describe Stighäll’s rendering of his parts. When toning is done with one’s vocal cords, the sounds traditionally are those of the vowels (ah, aye, ee, oh and oo) but are not limited to them. Stighäll simply does toning with his lips and trombone—the effect is more vocal than instrumental.

Toning is a primordial experience—music-therapy without words but with the rhythm and constraints of breathing. It focuses the performer’s and the listeners’ attention on the mortal, physiological necessity of inspiration and expiration. It is a kinesthetic immersion in one’s corporality and fleshiness as living creature, and in one’s mortalness as an obligate breather-inner-and-outer of air.

The wordless (in-)toning allows—Compels!—our minds to end their internal chatter and enables our creative and reflective connection of mind, body, and spirit.

The trombone ‘vocal part without words’ creates an ambiance where the mind finds its own contexts for the sounds. There are no pre-formed meanings associated with the sounds and the experience tends to be non-linear, splanchnic, pre-verbal. Wordless as it is, the trombone triggers memories of ancestors and relatives who have passed away; enables us to enter into non-ordinary time, a mystical dream-time, in a way that the singers alone cannot do. This is no passively ‘received’ spirituality; this is the stuff you actively fashion under your own power.

T he poetics of music is a mathematical science through which one creates a delightful and pure harmony on the score paper, so that this can then be recreated by singing or playing with the intention of bringing people to spiritual communion with God.”
— Johan Gottfried Walther, 1708.

[50-sec clip, EnsembleVillancico, Källunge Codex, Gregor Aichinger, Duo Seraphim clamabant, SSAATTBB, organ & trombone, 1.1MB MP3]

Rhetorically, this supernatural role for the trombone is proper. The trombone was used frequently in 16^th-Century Venice in canzonas, sonatas, and sacred works by Andrea Gabrieli and later by Heinrich Schütz in Germany. The Baroque trombone was used in Church music and in some other settings (opera), to represent the supernatural or the funerary from the time of Monteverdi. Perhaps this Italian and German usage was simply imported to Gotland. On the other hand, perhaps some of what we hear here has mutated to suit the characteristically Baltic mien.

In any case, Stighäll imparts a distinctly Swedish fatalism and mysticism to this sonic rhetoric. He fully inhabits his instrument, conjuring wonderfully dour and, alternately, joyful colors as a separate-but-equal baritone voice. The singers’ parts at times echo the trombone’s marcato articulations, powerfully endorsing the stature, the expressive merit, and the moral standing of the trombone’s rhetorical gestures. Choir: “You must listen to the trombone and his ideas, for what he is singing, even though it is wordless, is a sacred, ineffable truth—every bit as much as what we are singing. Indeed, we now imitate the trombone, to convince you and emphasize this point.”

[50-sec clip, EnsembleVillancico, Källunge Codex, Philipp Dulichius, Exultate justi in Domino, SATB-SATB double choir plus trombone, 1.2MB MP3]

In 1913, Birger Anrep-Nordin found the Codex in Källunge Church in Gotland, an island in the Baltic not too far from Stockholm. The Codex Kellungensis is dated 1622 on the cover and originally contained at least 312 works for 4 to 10 parts, music for feasts of the liturgical year and indexed with the Church lectionary. The works are in Latin and German and some in a mixture of both languages. About 150 of the works were missing from the old manuscript, but the nature of those that are missing is known from one of the table-of-contents pages still extant.

The Codex is the work of at least 11 different scribes, only one of whose signatures actually appears in the document. The origins and arranger/transcriber credits are still somewhat controversial—a nice summary of the differing scholarly views is provided by Peter Pontvik. Possibly Johann Bahr from Silesia (1610-1670) was responsible for the Codex. He came to Gotland as a music student and eventually became cathedral organist at Visby. He is the only composer who actually lived in Gotland whose work is represented in the Codex. The Codex includes works associated with the Catholic Church and with Protestant denominations.

[30-sec clip, EnsembleVillancico, Källunge Codex, Johann Bahr, So ziehet hin [So He moves], SSAATTBB, organ & trombone, 0.6MB MP3]

Ensemble Villancico’s Källunge recordings are available on the Sjelvar Records label.

Gamla Stan street with Mid-sommar festive birch switches propped against shops’ doorways