| RECITAL Beauteous Art of the Harp August 13, 2002 |
By Cynthia Albers
Cheryl Ann Fulton's gentle demeanor belies her position as a renowned teacher, director and leading authority in the field of historical harps. She is a master of many musical styles and instruments; her versatility dismantles the boundary between classical and folk music and her work appeals to both audiences. Appearing at the Petaluma Summer Music Festival by invitation, Ms. Fulton performed to a sold-out house on Tuesday, August 13. Her program featured four different harps,chosen for their historical significance, tuning and timbre. The total sum of individual strings on stage was 220.
Fulton began with a small, Gothic-style medieval harp, a replica of the instrument depicted in Hieronymous Bosch's famous painting "Garden of Earthly Delights." The harp's dark timbre suited the playing of pieces that would normally be sung, including a Gregorian chant, trouvère songs, and melodies by the poet Frauenlob and the mystic Hildegard von Bingen. She chose a similar Gothic-style harp, but with a much brighter tone, for a set of jig-like dances from the 13th-century Carmina Burana manuscript.
Medieval music is, at best, sparsely notated. The performer is thereby challenged to construct a piece from a fragment of melody and an antiquated rhythmic code. But that gives performers the freedom to create their own interpretations; it's much like a jazz musician's relation to a standard tune, minus the chord chart. Fulton explains that a musician must have a working knowledge of medieval chant formulas and modes in order to shape the music as it might originally have been played. Her reconstructions are the product of a weaver who is master of color and texture, and her command of dynamics drew sighs from the audience when the music faded from a plucking of the string to a mere caress.
The second half of the program was dedicated to the triple harp, the instrument by which Fulton is best known. Fully chromatic, the harp uses three courses of strings with the chromatic alterations (and different strings for enharmonics like G-sharp and A-flat) strung at the center. Fulton played a copy of the Barbarini harp (a 17th-century Italian instrument that sounds remarkably like a harpsichord) and an elegant Welsh harp copied from an 18th-century model. She performed works by Lucas Ruiz de Ribayaz, including the Españoletas that Resphigi borrowed for his Antiche arie e danze, a Frescobaldi-like Toccata by Giovanni Trabaci, and a Romanesca by Diego Ortiz that included a cameo appearance of Greensleves. But the highlight of the program was the hauntingly beautiful Welsh air David ap Garreg-wen that used the entire range of the 100-string Welsh instrument and left nary a dry eye in the house. It takes great skill to play endless streams of variations, threading one piece to the next, and yet keep things interesting. Cheryl Ann Fulton has the ability to captivate her audience, and the charm and power to lift the human spirit through her music. (Cynthia Albers is a violinist and teacher residing in rural Sonoma County. She performs with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and American Bach Soloists, and is a graduate of the Indiana University School of Music.) ©2002 Cynthia Albers, all rights reserved |