Listening to music one
has never heard before makes the music new. If it happens that the composers of
that music were born in the 17th century that does not change our perception.
My violinist friend,Marc Destrubé, who performs such music, has often told me
that playing it is no different from performing new music of this century and music of the last,
something he also specializes in. To him it’s as exciting. As a listener I
agree.
In a world where anybody with a computer
can write and “publish” and anybody with a camera is a photographer you can add
to this rampant trend towards amateurism the idea that anybody can be a
journalist and practice criticism. Perhaps the easiest way to call that the
emperor is indeed not wearing any clothes is to the posted pictures of food in
social media. Food photographers in a recent past were well paid and did a
marvelous job of not making food look like a dog’s breakfast.
Musicians, particularly those who use
period instruments of the 16th, 17th and 18th
century, are the exception to the rule. You can either read complex music, play
it with consummate virtuosity or you cannot.
Our 21st century coddles in an
unpainted corner of professionals, our engineers, our brain surgeons, our
architects, our scientists and our musicians. Outside that unpainted corner is
where we (or at least this present scribbler) live and abide while looking in
with a question mark of total ignorance and confusion, sort of like seeing
those “nasty” Masons of old shake hands. And to make it all worse is this
knowledge that “they” know and do something we will never understand. I could
use that modern contemporary word, “whatever” and move on and watch a movie on
Netflix.
Or I could (and I did) attend a baroque
concert presented by this city’s splendid Early Music Vancouver. Last night I
not only was witness to The Vocal Concerto -17 Century Cantatas for Bass from a
centre first row seat but I also had an unusual glimpse of the machinations of
the evening by almost stepping into that unpainted corner with the true
professionals of our day.
For reasons I cannot yet reveal I was
allowed access back stage during yesterdays rehearsal ( they started at 5:30,
finished at 7 and then played at 8), after surprisingly wearing wonderful
elegant clothing, applying makeup, just the women, of course.
I was back stage to photograph the hand
(not hands but one hand) of violinist (and Artistic Director of the Portland
Baroque Orchestra) Monica Huggett, bass soloist Harry van der Kamp, and guest
artist, chitarrone player (can one say chitarronist or use the English and
French term for this lofty instrument, Theorbo?), Stephen Stubbs.
But during the interval between the
rehearsal and the performance I managed to take some snaps of the violas da
gamba (called viols by the connoisseurs) the violone (a sort of baroque version
of the modern string bass) and that lofty (it is over 6 ft in height)
chitarrone with my Fuji X-E1 (a digital and modern equivalent of an Amati
violin in my amateur opinion).
Being back stage made it possible for this
mortal (me) to witness the communication (sometimes quite ordinary) among the
musicians, gods in my book, who came in, unpacked their instruments and sat
down to play. The banter between them as they practiced and stopped and started
again was nice to hear and see. Their smiles, proof that what they do is
pleasant, made it all seem like they were a family from my seat in the still
empty Vancouver Playhouse. The musicians were happy to be in a real theatre and
commented on the excellent acoustics. They reveled at being able to come in
from both sides of the stage. This was something they could not do in the
crowded halls and churches of the previous 6 concerts in the tour.
These musicians, true artists can be
difficult. I noticed how my friend, former bass singer, theorbist and
lutenist, Ray Nurse, who was in charge
of tuning Early Music Vancouver’s compact, Quebec-made baroque organ, winced
every time Jillon Stoppel Dupree would move the organ and then move it again. I
have now learned that perhaps the fussiest instruments of an orchestra which at
one time I thought to be the harp we can now include that compact baroque
organ.
Now remember, these musicians are not
necessarily difficult, their baroque string instruments usually are strung with
gut. Gut is sensitive to temperature and humidity. In baroque concerts there is
a lot of tuning between pieces.
The crux of the programming was to show us
that composers (in this case they included only German and Austrian) before
Bach which until recently were all but forgotten or unknown were surprisingly
fantastic. I use that word because music of the 17th century (Bach
was born in 1685 so is a composer of the 18th) has often been called that
because of its virtuosity and exploration into sounds and methods of playing
not practiced before.
The list of composers (my musical
grandmother from Seville would have called them “ilustres desconocidos” or
illustrious unknowns) included Samuel Scheidt (1587 - 1653), Johan Michael
Nicolai (1629 -1685), Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber von Bibern (1644 -1704),
Dietrich Buxtehude (c.1637/39 – 1707), Romanus Weichleing (1652 – 1706) and
Johan Christoph Bach (1642-1703) who was J.S. Bach’s uncle, a man our Bach
deeply admired.
While listening to the concert I subtracted
the year of birth from death of these composers, 66, 56, 60, 69, and 61 and
figured that at 71 I am in borrowed time but as I am not a musician I have more
years of being able to look into that painted corner with the help of my ears.
My ears told me that Dutch bassist Harry
van der Kamp has a voice I have never heard like before. His talking voice
(coming out from a handsome and slim man who wore a dark suite, a starched
white shirt and a very red tie) was similar to my friend Ray Nurse’s. I made a
comment to Nurse who immediately said, “If I had a voice like that I would be
lot richer.”
Van der Kamp’s reading (as in
interpretation) on Dietrich Buxtehude’s Ich bin eine Bluze zu Saron (Song of
Salomon 2:1-3) was profound, emotional and if I happened to have spoken German
I would have said his diction was perfect. I expected in my ignorance that a
bass singer would sound almost unpleasant but this was not the case and van der
Kamp’s command of an unusually high upper register is what makes him unique.
Van der Kamp had a musical “mano a mano”
with violinist Hugget. They stood side by side (with a small continue ensemble of three in
the background) in Biber’s Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum (Psalm 127) which
he sang in Latin. And in Bach’s uncle’s
Wie bist du denn, o Gott, in Zorn auf mich
entbrannt, in German again van der Kamp proved why it is Bach admired his
uncle.
Except for the Biber instrumental, I have
his Five Joyful Mysteries usually called the Rosary Sonatas, and I have some
Buxtehude, including his Membra Jesu Nostri, I had never ever heard this music before. Josh
Lee on viola da gamba (in a most unusual viola da gamba evening which featured
three, two with 7 strings, one with 6) played solo with Stephen Stubbs’s
chitarrone and I believe perhaps only the organ), Buxtehude’s Sonata in D Major
for bas viol, BuxWV 268. I had to smile
at Lee's performance and when he stood up with his grin and his architect’s
little round glasses I could feel the tension and the strain of my day
dissipate.
Of Huggett’s playing I cannot here explain
it. I am not a critic. But I can ascertain that she is a “fenómeno” one of those one-of-a-kinds like Spanish
matador Manolete who was deemed a fenómeno by his Spanish fans.
Only once have I ever
had CD, Monica Huggett and Galatea'- Paul Beir Galatea, music of Biagio Marini, autographed by a performer. I did a few years ago when I attended a
Monica Huggett concert at UBC’s Chapel. When I approached her I felt
butterflies in my stomach. This was not Iggy Pop, or Gerry Mulligan, nor Ella
Fitzgerald, in fact when you happen to (if you are lucky to be in her presence)
see her you might think she is part of Elizabeth II’s very small and intimate
knitting circle.
This was confirmed
when I took pictures of her hand holding her violin. Her accent is not
different from her queen’s. I told her, “You might not want to talk to me. You
see I am an Argentine”. She stopped on her tracks (we were walking to where I
had set up my light backstage) smiled at me and shook my hand. When I told her
my grandfather was from Manchester she told me
in a most excited way that even though she was from London
she had lived in northern England.
Last night’s concert
was extra special for me (and for few others, I am smug to boast) because I
heard Romanus Weichlein’s Sonata No. 3
in A minor from Encania Musices, Opus 1 (1695) twice, in the rehearsal and in
the evening’s performance. This work’s second movement is a ground or chaconne.
I discovered my love of grounds, which usually have a background almost like a
drone of often repeating bass accompaniment in my desert island album, Corelli
Violin Sonatas Opus 5, Trio Sonnerie (with Monica Huggett, naturally!) and
Nigel North. Corelli’s version of an old ground, Sonata No.12 in D minor “Follia”
(sometimes listed as La Folia with one l).
And that was not the
only fabulous ground of the evening. Josh Lee played one. It was one of the
movements of his Buxtehude Sonata.
And evening with three
grounds! None nicer.
The musicians of the
Portland Baroque Orchestra with guests Harry van der Kamp, bass and Stephen
Stubbs on chitarrone were:
Monica Huggett, violin
Erin Headley viola da
gamba (continuo)
Carla Moore, violin
Josh Lee, tenor and
bass viola da gamba
Elisabeth Reed, bass
viola de gamba
Curtis Daily, violone
Jillon Stoppela
Dupree, organ.
