How Frail A Lovely Semblance Is
Sunday, August 10, 2014
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| Rosa 'Wild Edric' August 9 2014 |
Medicine is powerless
Quinine is useless
you can never be healed
You must die.
Anon, Passacalli Della Vita
Last night’s final
performance of 2014 Vancouver Early Music Vancouver left me almost satisfied (I
wanted more) and very melancholy.
The lyrics to the
songs performed were sad and depressing straight out of Johann Paul Friedrich Richter’s weltschmerz. But that was not the reason for my melancholy.
My melancholy came
about as the result of having gone to all the concerts and lectures of the 2014 Vancouver Early Music Festival. The
performers and the audience, we all shared in a love for the baroque, the
reading of music, the heat of summer in these sunny days that we experienced in
the UBC School of Music at the Roy Barnett Recital Hall. The sounds, smiles,
the clapping are now all in my memory. As were the warm pre-concert talks with
Early Music Vancouver’s Artistic Director Matthew White and his guests, all
erudite but down to earth.
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| Matthew White & Hank Knox |
At age (almost) 72 I
feel there is lots of room in me to be surprised, challenged, entertained,
enthralled, and excited. The EMV festival did all that. And it’s not all quite
over.
Tomorrow at 5:50 in
Gessler Hall (in the basement of the UBC School of Music) I will listen to a
talk by Dutch harpsichord maker savant Ton Amir talk on the subject of Memento
Mori in Dutch and Flemish art. Memento Mori is related to the artistic movement
of the 17th century called Vanitas and closely associated to Jean
Paul Friedrich Richter and, yes! – the theme of tonight’s program Vanitas
Vanitatum put together and directed by Philadelphia transplant in Montreal,
organist, harpsichordist, professor, etc Hank Knox.
Vanitas Vanitatum
featured Italian and German/Italian (Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger,1580-1651)
composers of the 17 century. There was a brilliant lute solo (one of those long
ones that resemble the even longer archlutes) Kapsberger’s Toccata Settima –
Libro primo d’intavolatura de lauto, 1611, by Sylvain Bergeron and a
harpsichord solo, Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Ricercar Terzo, 1614, by Hank Knox. There
were also one lovely Biagio Marini, 1594-1663 sonata, Sonata sopra Fuggi
Dolente core and his Passacaille. Both were performed by Knox, Bergeron and
violinists Chloe Meyers, Chantall Rémillard and viola da gambist and cellist
Beilian Zhu.
The real core of the
evening were the choral pieces in which we heard soprano Jacqueline Woodley,
soprano and mezzo-soprano, Krisztina Szabó, mezzo-soprano Sylvia Szadovszki,
countertenor (billed as a high tenor in the program) Jacques-Olivier Chartier,
tenor Colin Balzer and baritone-turned bass Sumner Thompson.
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| Violinist Chloe Myers not included as my wide angle wasn't wide enough |
Knox somehow blended
and mixed those six singers in ways that delighted me. You can find in YouTube
many versions of the songs performed last night including this one, of the anonymous Passacalli Dell Vita. almost as good as the one I heard. It is by ARTEK. But it does not
have that injection of variety that Knox gave us and it is treated with over-the-top bufoonery.. Best of all the lyrics of all the songs which are terminally depressing:
You die singing
You die playing
the lyre or the pipe
You must die.
Were played with a
swing with graceful swerves of the violin bows and with Bergeron playing his
lute, almost (but not quite) like an electric guitar. A wonderfully depressing
concert somehow ended on the upbeat with that Passacalli which is really just
an old-fashioned ground.
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| Rosa "Wild Edric' August 9 2014 |
One of the reasons I
love 17th century baroque is that the composers like to throw in
those odd notes that you might think are bad notes by performers but are not. Violinist
Marc Destrubé likes to call them (and he smiles when he tells me this) blue
notes. The first time around those notes sound like Thelonius Monk’s
right-wrong notes. Of late I have heard fewer and fewer. I noted about four in
the evening. Destrubé has told me that as I increasingly become used to them
these odd notes are not odd anymore.
One salient one was in
Domenico Mazzocchi’s (1592-1665) Da Tutti Gli Horologi Si Cava Moralitá with
tenor Colin Balzer.
In the line chál ciel
misura il regaloto errore (for it is heaven that measures all sin in order)
Balzer uncharacteristically sounded off (he was not!) on that word regaloto.
And then! And then! he
sang the last line:
Misurar non la deve
altro ch’il pianto (and is not to be measured except by weeping)
and I came to
understand where the Portuguese Fado came from. It was the best part of a
wonderful evening.
And yet I was left thinking by the haunting lyrics of Marco Marazzoli, 1605-1662, Elena Incecchiata (the Aged Helen) in which Helen of Troy, after its fall looks at her image on a mirror. It ends:
She spoke, then broke the mirror
in which once she delighted:
and the fragile glass demonstrates to us
how frail a lovely semblance is.
I then recalled that in October of 1992 I photographed Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors in my studio. She told me, "Alex, photograph me as I am. This is my face and I am proud of it." Unlike Marazzoli's Helen, Lindfors knew all about mirrors and about frail semblance. In the depressing lyrics of those 17th century composers there is hope and that hope is to accept the folly of vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.
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| Viveca Lindfors, October 1992 |
I then recalled that in October of 1992 I photographed Swedish actress Viveca Lindfors in my studio. She told me, "Alex, photograph me as I am. This is my face and I am proud of it." Unlike Marazzoli's Helen, Lindfors knew all about mirrors and about frail semblance. In the depressing lyrics of those 17th century composers there is hope and that hope is to accept the folly of vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.
