In this article series, together with Sustainable EEEMERGING and its partners, we explore Early music across Europe – and the challenges faced by young artists in various countries across the continent. What is the condition of Early music today?
This article was supported by Centre culturel de rencontre d’Ambronay.
When the lute builders of late 16th-century Italy developed the theorbo, its outsized specifications – with 14 strings and an extended neck making for an instrument approaching up to two metres in length – were developed to meet the demands of the emerging artform of opera. What they didn’t plan for, however, were the more utilitarian concerns of navigating modern-day public transport systems as an itinerant musician in the field of historically informed performance.
“It’s quite complicated, I found out afterwards!”, says plucked string specialist Élodie Brzustowski, who came up against this problem when she added the theorbo to her existing arsenal of guitar and lute in her late teens. “At first it was very easy to play at the conservatory near my house, and when I started playing professionally and studying in Paris, I realised I had to take the train with it. I got two big fines. There’s nothing you can do; you can’t just book a second seat for it.” Having more recently equipped herself with a portable version of the instrument, she has been able to fulfil her increasingly long list of peripatetic engagements with chamber outfit Ensemble La Mandorle and a host of larger groups while completing a Master’s in Early music at the Paris Conservatoire this year.
Brzustowski’s specialities have allowed her to range across historical eras as much as geographical localities. Progressing to lute and theorbo from the classical guitar studies that began when she was 6, these instruments continue to have a mutually informing relationship for her. Alongside the Baroque repertoire she airs with La Mandorle, another region of exploration is guitar music of the Romantic era. “I’m always navigating between both worlds,” she says, pointing to her research into music in France and Belgium during the 1830s, the subject of an upcoming CD and the decade from which her most treasured instrument derives. Built by the reputed luthier Coffe Goguette, the guitar has helped her find new resonances in the apparently lightweight compositions of the era’s lesser-known guitarist-composers and uncover methodological crossovers with her more traditionally Early-music pursuits.
“Their music might seem light in many senses, it’s really easy-going, funny and charming. But I think with the right instrument you get all the refinement. This is something I learned from Early music, trying to find manuscripts that were never recorded and seeing behind what’s written on the score. I was really intrigued by Zani de Ferranti’s music because there are a lot of markings which are not easy to understand. You would think it’s bad taste, but with the right instrument, you can really hear why he does certain fingerings and ornaments.
“It’s also very linked to the politics, history and literature of the time,” Brzustowski continues. “Ferranti was a poet and he travelled a lot, so it was interesting to learn about how it was in Europe at the time between all the revolutions. When you think 1830s you imagine Chopin or Schubert, very deep music and deep political troubles, but this guitar music is very light, easy, joyful. It’s not that people had easy lives, it’s just a different way of expressing music through this tormented period.” For Brzustowski, the Goguette guitar has been central to exploring these kinds of historical and tonal nuances: “Somehow the sound is very intimate, you would think it’s not so powerful, but there’s a way of singing on the strings, you can sing a lot with the left hand and develop new sounds that you would not find on a modern guitar. As with Early music, with the way you learn to touch the lute and other plucked string instruments, you find a new touché.”
While Brzustowski plays in a guitar-clarinet duo oriented around this repertoire called Café 1830, life as a classical guitarist often means playing and studying alone. Being central to the Baroque continuo, the theorbo affords Brzustowski opportunities for more social music-making, perhaps no more so than with La Mandorle, whose very name (‘the almond’ in Italian) reflects the nut-like aspect of her instrument’s soundbox.
Comprising sisters Clotilde and Camille Sors on violin and cello, and Camille’s wife Victoire Delnatte on oboe, the group came together in 2021 with, according to Brzustowski, “no professional goal at all”, other than to spend quality time together playing in out-of-the-way places. Their somewhat unusual harpsichord-less makeup allowed them to do just this on a ten-date, self-organised tour of small village churches in Brittany in 2022. “There were some places where they hadn’t had a concert for 20 years and the church was full, and since we came there are a lot of concerts there. People were really enthusiastic and quite emotional that the music was coming to them, especially in parts of France where there are not always so many cultural offerings.”
The clarity provided by the group’s smaller continuo licences textural exploration and new perspectives on repertoire by theorbist-composers like Robert de Visée. “Playing without harpsichord is part of our identity and so is exploring sound from the theorbo. Without harpsichord, all the other instruments can seem a bit naked, so it is really a form of research into sound that we’ve been doing. It’s not so easy to play certain pieces, for example a Handel sonata, without harpsichord. But then you can hear all the micro-details from every instrument, and it’s a different kind of research of sound.”
It’s something that Pierre Bornachot, deputy director of the Ambronay centre culturel de rencontre, picked up on strongly when La Mandorle successfully applied to Sustainable EEEMERGING, his organisation’s scheme aimed at helping young Early music ensembles take their career to the next level. “To work with La Mandorle is to see how this specific identity can be strengthened and not denaturalised,” he says, pointing to the challenge of nurturing the group’s particular chemistry while widening their horizons into Europe’s Early music scene over the two-year scheme, which for La Mandorle has included residencies in Finland, Italy and Spain, along with a victorious appearance at the Göttingen Handel Competition.
“Organic is a very good word for La Mandorle because there’s nothing artificial, everything is true,” Bornachot says. “I think that the two years benefitted them, but that doesn't mean they will become rockstars of the Early music scene, that’s not what they want… We try to show them that it’s compatible to have a very rooted, connected ensemble but still to have European success, because that’s the character that people want to see abroad also.”
It says something about the group’s understated determination that La Mandorle have sought to grow beyond what Brzustowski characterises as the relative comfort of France’s Early music environment, buoyed by the success of ‘trendy’ outfits like Correspondences, Le Consort and Pygmalion. Despite shrinking festival budgets, she says, a professional career is attainable if one is part of a good ensemble. “I think France is quite a luxurious place for musicians nowadays. Young musicians especially have a lot of opportunities to play. People really know about historically informed performance and they like it, so it’s perhaps easier to develop as an Early music ensemble than as a Classical chamber music ensemble.”
However, she might not be doing full justice to La Mandorle’s mobile propensities and commitment to reaching beyond stereotypical audiences, playing in hospitals and schools across France, along with public festivals closer to their base in Paris. “Without the harpsichord we are keen to reach venues where they don’t have so much budget. We can travel easily with the train and reach many different places. Last September we performed at a festival in the 20th arrondissement of Paris aimed at families who live there, and there were a lot of people that never go to a Classical concert. It was a big festival with pop, rock and techno music at night outside. We played in the church for the morning concert, but people still attended. These things help us reach a larger, younger audience.”
A participatory programme of ‘mystery investigations’ including music by Handel and Bononcini is one of La Mandorle’s activities aimed at reaching different audiences, along with a musical play, due to be performed next year, inspired by the daughters of Louis XV. “They were really interested in all kinds of instruments and music. They had a collection of old instruments, so it will also be a way of including music from before, maybe medieval music, or contemporary music. They were not held in such high consideration at the court because they had no power at all, they were just the dauphin’s sisters. It’s a story of sisterhood, feminism.”
With their time on the EEEMERGING scheme coming to an end, you get the sense that La Mandorle are the kind of group that Pierre Bornachot sees as integral to diversifying Early music’s audiences. “I wish there were more people like that,” he says. “‘OK let’s have an encore with a Beyonce song or a rap song, and connect with the younger audience.’ Because otherwise if you are not a specialist musician, how would you get interested in this music? It stays in its own niche, and it’s a very good, comfortable niche, with people who are wealthy and can afford it. When you do educational programmes we should not only say, ‘listen to what we do, it’s great, and you have to love it.’ No! Why would I love it, if I’m not used to it? We need to give reasons to love Early and Classical music. That’s what I wish, to have more musicians and ensembles ready to really connect with their own generation.”
See upcoming performances of Early music in France.
Sustainable EEEMERGING is funded by the European Union.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
This article was sponsored by Centre culturel de rencontre d’Ambronay.
