Alkemie & friends illuminate medieval music from the Cyprian Codex
The early music ensemble Alkemie paired with Rose of the Compass members Nina Stern and Ara Dinkjian Friday night at All Saints Episcopal Church in Brooklyn to present a concert of Cyprian music.
The program, titled “Saltwinds and Spice” and curated by Alkemie member Tracy Cowart, drew from the Cyprus Codex, one of the largest surviving collections of French music of the 15th century. Besides selections from the Codex, the music ranged throughout history to the present day.
As detailed in the meticulously researched notes, medieval Cyprus was a confluence of cultures. Europeans had conquered the island in the midst of the Crusades; for much of the Medieval period, its rulers were considered the kings of Cyprus, Jerusalem and Armenia. It was an active trading hub, attracting merchants from Greece and the various city-states of Italy. Accordingly, the concert included music from Italy, Greece and Armenia as well as from the Cyprus Codex.
Medieval polyphony primarily consists of vocal lines, so arranging the music for a largely instrumental ensemble involves a great many choices. Those made by Alkemie were smart and engaging across the board. The varieties of instrumental and vocal colors were distributed to illuminate the structures of the pieces, and made up for the relatively limited dynamic ranges of medieval instruments.
The sixteen pieces on the program were smartly grouped into seamless, applause-limiting sets, alternating vocal pieces with instrumentals. Pieces from the Codex were sprinkled among contemporaneous works from Italy, Greek folk music and a helping of Armenian music from the 19th and 20th centuries.
The level of musicianship was extremely high, without exception. Nina Stern plays recorders and the chalumeau (a precursor of the clarinet) while Ara Dinkjian plays the oud, a Middle-Eastern lute. The seven members of Alkemie play medieval instruments.
One of the chief intellectual pleasures of the program was hearing the connections drawn among pieces composed hundreds of years apart: the ornamentation styles, the use of drones, the sense of wistfulness and longing that pervades so much of the music.
There were sensual pleasures in abundance as well. Dinkjian’s oud is rich and mellow, sounding almost like a theorbo at times. Stern’s chalumeau is haunting and evocative. The passages involving a consort of recorders were velvety; the douçaines playing together had a texture like fine leather. Ben Matus and Ellie Sutherland, who had the bulk of the singing, both have lovely early-music voices. The acoustic of the church could not have been more perfect for this music.
While everything on the program had rewards, there were some standout moments. The early 15th-century song Tre fontane, performed here as an instrumental, featured virtuosic recorder playing and inventive hand drumming, including a backbeat. A monophonic Alleluia from the Cyprus Codex was performed with vocal drones, an influence taken from Greek Orthodox chant, to eerie effect.
The traditional Greek Kalamatianos was a cheery bop in 7/8 time. And Toujours server je veuil la douce fleur, again from the Codex, was a highly unusual rondeau canon, arresting in its counterintuitive combination of simplicity and complexity.
The program ended with Seghane Arad by Garo Zakarian, extolling the virtues of Armenian wine, in which the audience was invited to sing along to the final choruses, doubling as an invitation to the post-concert reception featuring (of course) Armenian wine: music connecting not only to itself but to life.
The program will be repeated 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Holy Apostles Episcopal Church in Brooklyn. alkemie.org
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