A partial response to the ensemble Courtiers of Grace at Trinity College, Cambridge
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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15 December
This is a partial response, at first by Tweet, to the concert-programme 'A rose there is...' as given for Cambridge Early Music by the ensemble Courtiers of Grace (with Stephen Wilkinson as reader) in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, on Friday 15 December at 7.30 p.m.
Here's @gracecourtiers hard at work in @TrinCollCam @trinchapel - join us tonight for an intimate musical celebration of Christmas as Luther would have known: https://t.co/IwmCkx5peY @jacobheringman @GawainGlenton @clarewilkinson pic.twitter.com/dIBPh2zQRI— CambridgeEarlyMusic (@CambsEarlyMusic) December 15, 2017
With a cover-photo to the programme from the @yorkearlymusic performance, this evening's concert for @CambsEarlyMusic from @gracecourtiers, with enchantingly vivid readings from Luther's writing by Stephen Wilkinson, was one of such delightful euphony and intimacy.— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) December 16, 2017
Somewhat arbitrarily (if it is nonetheless conveniently pat), the Baroque period in music is sometimes considered* to begin, in 1607, with Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (or La favola d'Orfeo), SV 318, and to end with the death of Johann Sebastian Bach (in 1750). But what about this painting (now housed in The Kröller-Müller Museum, in The Netherlands)... ? :
Stilleven in een kast (Belgium, 1538)
As on the topic of the quirky precision of such still-life paintings, and especially in the case of the instruments (other than the two (principal) human voices, of whose origins and nature we could learn, by implication, from the programme-notes), it would have been nice to have some information about them. However, with a programme that ran very well, in two thankfully uninterrupted sequences (for that, one can rely on an audience at Cambridge Early Music (@CambsEarlyMusic), where would that have been done in person ?
Unless, gracefully, details and / or corrections are forthcoming from the members of Courtiers of Grace (@gracecourtiers), and since this is not intended to be a full review (for which purposes, sufficient notes were not made), here, for the moment, are the remaining observations that were recorded...
Personnel of Courtiers of Grace :
* Gawain Glenton ~ Cornetto (and recorder)
This was adept playing of an instrument that seemed beautifully made from a piece of wood that was light in colour, and which fitted so well into the ensemble, with its well-matched festive sounds of pure tone and significantly engaging affect
* Jacob Heringman ~ Lute
Confident and expressive lutenism (from a performer with a standing tradition as a guest of Cambridge Early Music) – Jake’s delicate instrument seemed to have double-strings (and yet seem nearer the lower part of the range of development of the number of courses in the history of the lute ?)
* Kirsty Whatley ~ Harp
On an instrument that seemed to be a wire-strung harp, with a case made from a darkish wood such as cherry, Kirsty sat next to Jake (on lute), and her playing often blended to suit his, whereas both had very pleasing opportunities to play solo, and with a different manner of attack and delivery to accord with that role
* Clare Wilkinson ~ Soprano
Singing in several languages and modes with assurance, Clare's familiar voice was beautifully warm and resonant in the acoustic, and inflected by the heart's motions, as she exchanged glances and smiles with her fellow musicians
* Stephen Wilkinson ~ Reader
A conversation at the venue earlier had turned to Jonathan Swift, so the satire or ironic assertion that Luther also proved to have employed in some of his writings was very timely – the tension between surface and actual meaning was nicely brought out, in readings that were both well timed after the preceding set of pieces, and (with the aid of very good amplification) compellingly and clearly pronounced
Huge thanks to @CambsEarlyMusic @TrinCollChoir @adrianhorsewood et al for inviting @gracecourtiers to give Luther Christmas concert last night. Trinity Chapel is a superb venue. Chilly but audience warm!— Gawain Glenton (@GawainGlenton) December 16, 2017
End-notes :
* For example, in the entry for baroque music in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Often enough, a matter of pigeonholing the past by reference to the bits that [we believe that] we know remain from it, even if we may, circularly, assume that we understand why they came into being or survived, because of what they are (or what we assume that they are ?)...
Apart from the fact that, at the level of the sort of composition that is pictured in Stilleven in een kast (compared with that of works in Il palazzo ducale (The Ducal Palace) in Venezia, or, in Roma, The Papal Apartments of Il Vaticano (The Vatican)), the written evidence of the artist being commissioned (or of patronage) is unlikely to exist (when we do not even know who the artist was), is it also improbable that we really know enough why such a work should have been created in 1538 at all ?
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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