Queen Elizabeth Hall
Grigor Natekatsi: Հավիկ մի պայծառ (Havik mi paydzar)
Mkhitar Ayrivanetsi: Սիրտ իմ սասանի (Sirt im sasani)
Comtessa de Dia/Bernart de Ventadorn, arr. Marti de Riquer: Ab joi et ab joven
Azalaïs de Porcairagues/Guiraut Riquier, arr. Thomas Fournil: Ar em al freg temps vengut
Troubadour motet: S’on me regarde
Trad. Epirus: Αλησμονώ και χαίρομαι (Alismonό kai chaíromai)
Anon./Guiraut de Borneth, arr. Fournil: En un vergier
Trad. Corsican: Stabat mater
Syriac chant: ܪ ܰܡܰܐܺܢܺ ̣ ܘ̣ ܰ ܬܰ (Taw nīmar)
Old Roman chant: Alleluia ‘Deute galliasometha’
Comtessa de Dia/Raimon de Miravai: Estat ai en greu cossirier
Anon.: Trois serors sor rive mer
Thomas Fournil/trad. Corsican: Dieus sal la terra
Sanʿa of Algiers: راسرم يرَ يَّوط (Tuwayyarī al-Masrār)
Comtessa de Dia: A chantar
Ponç d’Ortafà: Si ay perdut
Trad. Corsican: Kyrie
On yet another dismal, dark, and rainy night, scholar-performer Thomas Fournil and his Idrīsî Ensemble transformed the Queen Elizabeth Hall acoustically, scenically, and musically into a venue for a wide-ranging programme of mediaeval music. Focused on, yet far from limited to, some of the few surviving melodies that can confidently be attributed to trobairitz, that is female troubadours, it radiated outwards in various directions: to other troubadour songs; to related practices; to sacred music from twelfth- and thirteenth-century Occitania; to the music of other groups, marginalised in various ways; and across the Mediterranean world to take in Old Roman and Syriac chant, traditional music from Epirus; and, to begin with, a tenth-century Armenian poem by Gregor Narekatsim, set to a mediaeval melody transcribed by Robert At’ayan.
Whether solo song or ensemble singing,
accompanied or, very rarely, unaccompanied, a new – old, but also necessarily
new – world was created before our eyes and ears. Musical building blocks, poetic
themes, methods of music making all old and new, likewise often simultaneously,
gave each of us, all coming from slightly or radically different musical and
broader cultural backgrounds, points of reference, departure, and arrival. Women’s
voices came to the foreground, even in repertoire traditionally and probably historically
reserved for men. Something akin to a varied continuo group, however
anachronistic the notion, helped lead, ground, and fantasised, but so did
words, notions, and fantasies. Frankly erotic texts, musical as well as poetic,
took in sacred and secular, but so did themes of nature, of belonging, of land,
of identity in multiple, as we might now say intersectional, fashion. A
previously unrecorded Old Roman (pre-Gregorian) Allleluia, a walk in a garden
of delights, a heart’s trembling at Judas’s deeds, three sisters on a seashore,
and more came to life through monody, microtones, something akin to close
harmony, movement, and an instrumental ensemble including portative organ,
vielles, kaval, ney, kanun, and kanjira.
Much of this music and its performance is intrinsically political. How could it not be, with origins in struggles of gender, religion, ethnicity, and of course land? Minoritisation, persecution, and war from the time of writing have both much in common and much that is different from today. Having endured live-streamed genocide for more than two years now – never forgetting those who have lost lives, families, all hope in that genocide – the world is traumatised in a way that seems unusual even by historical standards. In many ways, it is, but we are also reminded of resources, witness, on which we can draw from those who learned (and failed to learn) lessons many centuries before us: the struggles of peoples to remain on their land and, indeed, to resist outright extermination. It was a clear, clear-sighted statement of solidarity in context. As one of the ensemble members said to overwhelming applause, introducing the old Occitan ‘Dieus sal la terra’, imagined by Fournil as mediaevalist, performer, and composers: ‘We stand with Palestine.’
That naturally made a great impression, yet
so did much else. The third song of the Comtessa de Dia (Countess of Die), A
chanter, in which a lover spurned and betrayed continues to believe in and
praise herself, is the only trobairitz song to survive with music fully
intact. ‘My rank and lineage,’ in Fournil’s translation, ‘should be of help to
me, and my beauty and, still more, my true heart: this song, let it be my
messenger.’ It was no mere tragedy or defiance, though; it was a statement and
exploration of womanhood. A Corsican Stabat mater told a familiar story
yet in both older and newer setting: for one thing, this was new, not old,
verse ‘then’. Collaboration to reveal a single performing voice and yet many pointed
to something essential about the evening. The harmonic, textural richness of a
traditional Corsican Kyrie not only confounded but warmed and thrilled: paghjella
of then and now, mediated by oral tradition.
It was a varied, eventful journey that turned us into musical wayfarers and troubadours,
trobairitz. If it could not, should not rid us of our particular standpoints,
it suggested a little of what might lie beyond our cultural, even aural gazes: as
Fournil pointed out in an excellent programme note, northern as well as
gendered.
Cavils? It was, I think, a pity that, although we were given texts and translations, the auditorium was too dark to read them, there being no alternative in the form of titles. For the second half, I spent part of the interval reading the texts to come so as to prepare a little; that certainly helped. But I was literally in the dark for the first, which matters in a form for which words, meaning, and multiple unfamiliar languages matter. At the first half’s close, the Stabat mater offered a welcome exception, but also reflection on what I had missed earlier. Whilst I can understand the reluctance to distract, even by spoken introduction, they certainly helped when we had them. In such ignorance, one can as listener fall all the more prey to facile exoticism. These are trade-offs, though, and it is always interesting to glean sense and sensuality by other mean. Otherwise, though, this was a wonderful introduction to a world that continues, as it vanishes, to beckon.
