http://strangeandancientinstruments.com/index.html
Last week's Early Music Show featured this admirable project with their hurdy-gurdy, dulcimer, harps, oud, bass viol and perhaps most spectacularly, nykelharpa, an instrument that needs to be seen as well as heard for a full appreciation.
This CD, available direct from the Society themselves, which possibly means herself, begins with a shrill, defiant driving out of Satan before resorting to more easy going merry-making.
The music isn't so strange to anyone with some experience of medieval tunes and a bit of folk tradition. It inhabits a world whose cosmology is explained in the cover diagram with the four elements leading out from terra, through the moon and planets to angels, archangels and cherubims and seraphims and who's to say that's not what happens.
The first major highlight is the setting of the poem El Recer Del Vol Dispers, a song that pre-echoes fado music with its,
You scattered birds who have flown,
beyond the sky where my fantasy is lost,
and has a memorable harp embellishment. There is a pervasive feel of the Mediterranean in much of this repertoire. The Corelli Follia is the first of only two representative pieces here from the variety of arrangements of baroque pieces made for their instruments. More of these were featured on the radio programme and might possibly be made more readily available on a further disc, one might hope. This disc was made possible by subscription. For such a self-sufficient, uncontracted approach, it is of tremendous quality in playing, sound quality and production values.
The Personent hodie, published in 1582, is a 'Latin song telling of the birth of Christ', and I'm sure I ought to be able to place the hymn tune it reminds me of. It emerges from a shivering breath of chill wind played over the hurdy gurdy drone and grows steadily to an end that is both impressive and mysterious.
But it is the nykelharpa, of all the instruments, for all its weird contrivance, that stands out. You wouldn't think that something that looks so hard to play would sound so natural. I don't know if I'm supposed to hear in Belle qui tiens ma vie 'All Glory, Laud and Honour to thee, Redeemer King' but it is there, I'm sure.
Just the very smallest of minus marks is that with the capacity of a website to provide a CD booklet, it might have contained all the words rather than just those to one track, although that one is the one you'd prefer to have.
Francois Francoeur's Rondeau returns us to the C18th with an exquisite sample of music from the court of Louis XV. And then we are led through more 'trad' to perhaps the most involved construction as the climax with its loose-sounding renaissance guitar, percussion, hurdy gurdy et al apparently bringing together elements of Steeleye Span, Tyrannosaurus Rex and possibly Indian music (it's none of them but one can hear them) into a chant that becomes anthemic and ends with a flourish.
It is a wonderful album, and improves with more listening, getting more out of this sort of music than I previously thought was there. I hope they come to play somewhere near me one day.
