San Francisco Classical Voice

EARLY MUSIC REVIEW Medieval Mirth
February 24, 2002

By J.M. Bailey

We take it for granted that musicians like to perform, and audiences like to hear them, but at its San Francisco Early Music Society concert in St Gregory's Episcopal Church on Sunday February 24, Fortune's Wheel gave the overwhelming impression (so often absent in the modern concert hall) that they were specifically performing for us, their audience, and enjoying that fact, as well as the music. Perhaps it is because the performers understand the situation of the itinerant medieval musician who knew too well that he/she had not only to play well but also to keep the audience 'on side' in order to survive.

This is not, however, the Society for Creative Anachronism, but a quartet of sophisticated musicians (Lydia Heather Knutson and Paul Cummings, voice, Shira Kammen and Richard Mealy voice, vielle and harp), taking whatever is available from the period (roughly 1200 to 1500) — fragments found on the back of official correspondence, texts found in the margins of manuscripts, melodies without rhythm, tunes without accompaniment — and forging it into a solid performable repertoire.

In the spirit of the period where much of what was performed was never notated, Fortune's Wheel not only supplied melody where there is none and rhythmic interpretation where it is absent, but both vocal and instrumental accompaniments to melodies that exist without them, and of course, tempos, dynamics and phrasing. They perform not only with panache but with virtuosic skill, great clarity, a true sense of delight and a considerable amount of invention. If some of the invention was, in fact, anachronistic (the adding of extra voices in a later discant style to an early monophonic hymn, the use of string techniques more usually found in Baroque sonatas than in fourteenth-century dances), well, they nowhere claim to be one-hundred-percent authentic and it made great entertainment. One aspect in which they were however scrupulously authentic was in their pronunciation of Early Medieval and Middle English. It was a delight to hear these languages used with such ease and expressiveness.

Reaching back

Although it was originally billed as a "Musical Flowering in Chaucer's England", most of the repertoire was earlier than this, the later period being represented musically by two liturgical Latin works, the carol "On Yolis Night" ("On Christmas Night"), some dances and the final verses of "Stond wel, Moder, under Rod" ("Stand well, Mother, under the Cross"). This concentration on the earlier, and, as the performers admitted, less-cheerful material did, by the middle of the second half, make the concert seem a bit lengthy although their witty arrangement of William Dunbar's naughty love poem "In Secreit Place" thoroughly redeemed them, bringing outbursts of laughter from the audience as they not only sang and played, but also acted the dialogue.

Another highlight of the second half was the very dramatic rendering of "Stond wel, Moder," a venacular version of the Stabat Mater, consisting of anguished dialogue between Mary and Christ as he hangs on the cross. The drama was emphasized by an unusual accompaniment of harp and vielle. This was probably the most divergent use of instrumentation from any probable contemporary usage, but highly expressive. The singers also performed with great intensity and sincerity.

The first half included some of the most well-known early songs; "Mirie it is" ("Merry it is"), "Foweles in the Frith" ("Birds in the Woods") and "Bryd one brere"("Bird on the Briar"). They opened with a short poem "The levedy Fortune" ("The lady Fortune") followed by the title-song "Mirie it is". As with others of the shorter songs this was lengthened by an instrumental interlude, and repetition of the verse. This was followed by a Scottish tune from the vielles alone. I was struck both with the beautiful tone of these instruments, and the way in which the players managed to stay in contact with the audience, even while performing quite tricky passages.

A slight diversion

The second song "Edu beo thu" had a more upbeat accompaniment than I might have expected for a medieval prayer; but then again, it is a song of praise, very much along the lines of courtly love. It was a pity that the singers, who read with the text with some concentration, sent a lot of their wonderful facial expression into their music books rather than to their audience. Where texts were sung without the book these expressions seemed much more open and effective. Having made this point, noone could claim that Paul Cumming's powerful rendition of the moral "Man mei long him lives weene" ('Man may a long life expect') lacked direct expression.

The unaccompanied performance of "Ave celi regina" ("Hail, Queen of heaven") managed to give this very austere polyphony a sense which is quite difficult to create of moving forwards, while simultaneously employing such exquisite intonation that you could really enjoy each interval as it sounded.

For the "Ave mundi rosa" ("Hail, Rose of the World") which followed, Shira Kammen joined the singers . All three sang with perfect balance, relishing the melismas, but not allowing them to detract from the overall harmonic framework. The choice of dynamics, here as elsewhere, was sensitive with regard to both text and music.

Group singing most effective

On the whole, although the solo performances were sincere and very beautiful, it was the ensembles that appealed most. The end of the first half featured the wonderful "Sancta mater graciae" ("Holy mother of grace") over the ground bass "Dou Way, Robin" ("Go away, Robin"). The Medieval Players used to do a hilarious rendition of this duet where the singer holding the ground gets progressively more jaundiced as the upper singer improvises to the point of virtuosic absurdity.

Although Fortune's Wheel's performance was, in fact virtuosic, particularly on the part of Knutson, they avoided this internal conflict by interpolating an instrumental interlude with a more decorated version of the ground and by changing 'ground' singers from Kammen to Cummings after the interlude. Although by its nature a simple and repetitive piece, the spirit and the obvious enjoyment of the performers made it seem more magnificent and substantial than it appears on the page.

The end of the second half also involved the whole ensemble: a short lively rendition of the famous "Summer is icumen in" round, first with two voices in unison with accompaniment, then with two voices in canon, and finally with all four singing, the viellists still playing as they sang (as they had done elsewhere in the concert). The effect of then letting the voices finish one by one so that the last voice (that of Paul Cummings) finished unassumingly on its own gave a lovely touch of intimacy and simplicity at the end of a rich and varied program.

(J.M. Bailey studied music and Middle English at the University of Western Australia, and Medieval and Renaissance music at the University of Oxford. A keen string player, she does not (yet) play the vielle.)