How does an early music ensemble resonate with the EIF's 2014 theme of culture and conflict in the 100th anniversary of WWI? With music from the time of The Hundred Years War? Too early even for early music. This imaginatively conceived event dwelt rather on the hundred turbulent years in Europe from 1614-1714. The programme was entitled, War and peace in Baroque Europe: From the Thirty Years War to the Peace of Utrecht. Given the number and variety of belligerents this allowed a palette of Turkish (Ottoman), German, French, Spanish, Catalan, Italian (Venetian), Russian, English, Arabic and Aramaic languages and/or music.
To help those audience members without programmes navigate the complexities of the programme, Swiss-born bass-baritone Stephan MacLeod (whose wonderful singing voice featured in many items) announced each historical event by year and location - but, understandably, omitted the associated musical titles.
Musicians and singers from Jordi Savall's three ensembles filled the stage: Hespèrion XXI, Le Concert des Nations and La Capella Reial de Catalunya. In front, seated on cushions, were players of instruments not normally associated with the western concert hall: Nedyalko Nedyalkov playing the kaval (an end-blown flute found, for example, in the Balkans); Yurdal Tokcan playing the oud (Arabic lute); Hakan Güngör playing the kanun (a large-scale zither - also known as qanun) and Dimitri Psonis playing the santur (Greek dulcimer). Savall explained in the excellent Festival Soundbites series, that it seemed important to include the music of those regions, given the prominence of the Ottoman Empire. Accuracy compels me to estimate the contribution of these four musicians, wonderful as it was, at around 20-25% of the 150-minute event (including interval). Exactly who was behind the arrangements which involved all instruments was not clear but praise is due here for some excellent modal writing! At various times I noted Dorian, Aeolian, Phrygian and, most oriental of all, one beginning on the fifth note of the harmonic minor scale. One of the most striking mixtures of East and West was included to mark the driving out from Crete of the Venetians by the Ottomans: Der makām-ı Hüseynī Sakīl-i Ağa Rıżā (Mss. D. Cantemir 89). Following some lovely oud improvisation by Yurdal Tokcan, many of the western instruments joined in, along with the kaval, santur and kanun. The ensemble was underpinned by a thunderous tonic drone provided by two very long natural brass instruments - somewhere between Alpine and Tibetan horn.
The opening item, commemorating the 1614 massacre of the Jews in Frankfurt was Ha lahma 'anya, (The Bread of Affliction) an Aramaic Passover lament for four male voices. The singers did not face the audience but rather assumed an inward-looking diamond formation to suggest, I imagine, the private, prayer-like nature of the text. It was the first time I'd seen written Aramaic in a concert programme. This work was mirrored in the second half by a very moving Catalan lament arranged by Savall and entitled, Catalunya en altres temps (Catalonia in days gone by) which, following the 1714 Siege of Barcelona, bemoans "laws against out nation...written in a foreign tongue." The other non-Roman alphabet to appear in the programme was in Vasily Titov's lovely Bezñeevéstnaya Dévo, marking the 1711 Russo-Ottoman War.