European Medieval ensemble to play at Erasmus Huis
European Medieval ensemble to play at Erasmus Huis
By Joe Mudnich
JAKARTA (JP): As the sounds of gamelan used to fill the royal courts of Java, another kind of courtly music will soon visit Indonesia, a music that six centuries ago echoed in the chambers of kings in European Middle Ages.
The Ferrara Ensemble, an international group of performers, will be presenting a free concert of medieval music at Erasmus Huis in Kuningan, South Jakarta, on Sunday at 7:30 p.m.
Sponsored by the German Goethe-Institut and the Swiss Pro Helvetia organizations, the six-member ensemble of musicians and vocalists will perform European courtly dance music, ballads and love poems from the 11th through the 15th centuries.
Though it reaches cross centuries, this venerable music bears a certain resemblance to the music of today.
"The esthetics of the...Middle Ages were based upon mathematics to a degree that is perhaps only seen again in the current Age of Digital Technology," writes instrumentalists Crawford Young in the program notes.
Learned men of the Middle Ages were obsessed with numbers, particularly with the theories of geometry formulated by the Greek mathematician Pythagoras. With Pythagorean mathematical theory in hand, medieval architects, artists, and composers imposed numbers upon everything from cathedrals to canvas to courtly music. As a cathedral was seen as "frozen geometry," music was thought of as "sounding geometry."
Much of the ensemble's music employs a complex rhythm called ars subtilior or "highly refined style." This subtle, intricate, and highly syncopated rhythmical style is meant to keep the listener's ear constantly interested while at the same time deceiving its expectations.
It does sound like geometry, but a multi-layered geometry constantly on the move changing its angles and shapes. Yet as precise and mathematical as this music is, it is anything but stiff or boring.
Mechtild Manus of the Goethe Institut describes the music as "soothing and harmonious, but also strange, it's so far from us today." Manus adds that this occasionally haunting music is not so distant, however, that we cannot grasp it and appreciate it now.
The delicate play of the string, flute, and other instruments evoke images in the mind that would send even the most unimaginative listener to the echoing banquet hall of a feudal lord of a secluded clearing in a wood where secret lovers meet.
In fact, it is not surprising that many of the songs included in the program are love songs. This music comes from a time when chivalry and courtly love between knights and ladies was the subject of many a romantic tale.
Famous figures such as Lancelot from the Arthurian legends endured trials of both strength and character for a kiss or even just a glimpse of his love, usually someone else's wife.
These love songs are marked by earnestness, such as these English and German lyrics:
"So is imprinted in my remembrance, your womanhood, your youth, your gracefulness, your manner, your smile, your prized beauty, your kindness, that... wake I, sleep I, or what thing I do, my heart is with you go wherever you may go."
"Once, we two gazed upon the shining morning star. Can we not always be together? Alas, this can never be."
The music and lyrics which will be performed during the concert come from texts found all cross Medieval Europe, including what is now France, England, Spain, Italy and Germany.
The Ferrara Ensemble is the resident ensemble at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, a music school which since the 1930s has produced top-quality early music performers in the fields of medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and classical music.
Since many of the music manuscripts do not survive in their entirety, the Schola Cantorum Basel (Basel School of Music) has had to carefully research many musical texts and the period instruments in order to reconstruct the songs.
The six-member group is currently on a tour of Southeast Asia. Other stops on the tour include Manila and Tokyo. They will be performing in Bandung on March 25.
The ensemble consists of instrumentalists Crawford Young (flute), Karl-Heinz Schickhaus (hammer dulcimer) and Randall Cook (viola d'arco) and vocalists Lena Susanne Norin (alto), John Fleage (tenor) and Stephen Grant (baritone).