Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Monophony, polyphony and pianos

2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 39; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/em/car065

1741-7260

Ivan Moody,

Diverse Musicological Studies

The enormous possibilities that exist in terms of the performance of monody ought to lead to a huge variety of sounds in a batch of ten discs. The fact that this is not the case is thought-provoking, to say the least. There would seem, to judge by the majority of the approaches represented here, to be a consensus that medieval monody should be, by and large, gentle and fluid, sung at low dynamic levels and given a halo by resonant acoustics or delicate instrumental work. It is not necessary to advocate a return to the practice of orientalizing medieval music (or making the medieval ‘strange’) to find this state of affairs at least curious. Norbert Rodenkirchen, a member of groups including Sequentia and Dialogos as well as a soloist, is an accomplished recorder player. His beautiful tone, impeccable intonation and profound understanding of the structure and phrasing of music of the period are represented well on his disc Flour de Flours: Lais & virelais (Marc Aurel Edition MA20041, rec 2008, 52′), which features works by Guillaume de Machaut. He brings, in fact, what I can only describe as a vocal quality to his playing: one is often absorbed by it as if one were listening to a singing voice. That said, 51 minutes of a solo recorder playing 14th-century repertory is stretching the potential listener's capacity to its maximum. Without any sense of minimizing Rodenkirchen's extraordinary musicality, it must be said that this is a disc for the true recorder aficionado. More variety of timbre is to be found in Trecento (Et’cetera KTC1902, rec 2001, 67′), which covers music of more or less the same period, organized in groups—there is a Machaut set, a Ghirardello da Firenze set, a Ciconia set and so on. Jill Feldman sings as beautifully as I have ever heard her in some of these songs—I cannot imagine Machaut's ballade Si je me playng being performed more movingly or with more understanding than it is here. The gentle instrumental support from Kees Boeke's vielle is part and parcel of this, of course: there is a sense of musical complicity here that cannot be falsified, and on this disc there is a genuine variety of approach that is easily discernible within the overall ‘sound image’ projected. Ciconia has always seemed to me a composer whose secrets are singularly difficult to discover in terms of making performances genuinely musical rather than dutiful, but Feldman and Boeke manage exactly that; Merçé o morte and Dolçe Fortuna are two of the most gripping tracks on this truly impressive disc.