Bourdeaux is a quiet little town but it has things going on. There are yoga lessons and the like. There is also some music. And we took in one evening of the performance at the Protestant church across the street. The dour trappings of the church did nothing to distract from the excellent acoustics the plaster covered walls and the wooden ceiling provided in the rectangular space with the end rounded off. This August evening we were treated to Couleurs Baroques by the Amaryllis vocal and instrumental ensemble under the able direction of Mr. Dominique Montel.
There were three pieces played:
- Psalm "Super flumina Babylonis" by Marc Antoine Charpentier;
- Cantate bwv 4 "Christ lag in Todes Banden" by Johann Sebastian Bach; and
- Psalm 50 "Miserere" for 5 voices by Francesco Scarlatti (Alessandro's younger brother and the uncle of Dominico, each more famous than Francesco).
I can just imagine you singingin your mind to the tunes of these baroque hits as you read the titles above. However I needed the passed out lyrics. The first was in Latin and I have trouble remembering "Super flumina" in Latin for some reason. The Bach "Todes Banden" was in German and I find it just as difficult to remember this one in German despite the tune being so sing-alongable. And the Scarlatti "Miserere" needs the Latin to obscure the depressing meaning of the lyrics. But luckily I had the lyrics written out on paper for me to sing along and follow the bouncing ball. I was also delighted to brush up on my spoken Latin since I have so little chance to use it in my line of work these days even though I am a lawyer.
I know that you are all thinking how great this concert must have been and how you wish you had been there. I managed to record a bootleg couple of minutes but I just cannot figure out how to post them on this blog or you would be treated to breathing in the atmosphere of the Couleurs Baroque as I did. I will do it in the future if I figure it out, but for now you'll just have to imagine it.
The evening was not without some special moments. For example in the Charpentier "Super flumina" I just could barely restrain my enthusiasm at the final verse. It was splendidly executed, just wonderful:
Beatus qui tnebit et adlidet
parvulos tuos ad petram.
Let me translate that bit if your Latin is a bit rusty so that you don't miss the uplifting poetry of this song. Roughly it means:
Ecstatic is he who seizes his little children
and crushes them against a rock.
The choir just hit this bit out of the ballpark. What a performance! I was singing these words (in Latin of course) as I left the church, in fact as the townspeople in the streets looked at me knowingly as if they shared the concept and I thought I saw some humming along.
When the choir was just killing the Bach number in German it occurred to me that this piece was probably chosen as a cross-over number to bring in the German tourists in the neighbourhood. I guess for the other two pieces they hoped the composers would bring in their countrymen (French and Italian) and that between the two of them they would sweep in any Latin tourists that might also be building Roman ruins in the neighbouring area (God knows there must be lots of them in Provence judging by the number and size of the Roman ruins there.)
The Bach had lots of Alleluias, one to finish off each verse in fact. I think however that this version shows how those American Gospel choirs just can't hold a candle to Bach in German. It ended with:
Der Glaub' will kein's Andern leben.
Halleluja!
Now how can you beat that? You can clap hands and raise your hands to the sky but is that any better? I don't think so.
For the Scarlatti number the tremendous church organ was added to the instrumental mix. This was a highlight the audience had waited for. But that wasn't going to be all. There was drama too!
As the instrumentalists picked up the music and go a few bars in Mr. Montel looked to his left at a violinist and raised his hands to stop the orchestra. He shook his head barely perceptibly looking at a baroque violinist. This lady stopped playing with the rest, steadfastly kept looking at the music and then the violin as if waiting for the violin to start doing what it was supposed to. Then Conductor Montel raised his hands and they were off again. They may have got about 8 or 10 bars further than the first time before he looked up again, to his left and raised his hands to stop the orchestra. Again! The lady with the violin again took the stare of the conductor who muttered something softly that I didn't catch (perhaps it was in Latin). The violinist never looked up, or embarrassed or otherwise showed any expression and just looked between the music and her violin.
Conductor Montel started the music a third time. Surely we were off for a good crack at Scarlatti's "Miserere" this time. But just before the vocalists could get their voices on this piece the Conductor's hands were raised again to stop proceedings. The audience started talking in hushed tones. The Conductor looked to the left. The violinist did not look back. But it seems that she had no reason to, this time. The offending musician was the organist (or as the programme called it the orgue continuo). This prim middle aged lady with straight mousey brown hair and librarian glasses looked up at the Conductor as if to protest and he provided instructions softly to her (I'm almost sure it was in Latin). Everyone could see the Conductor was trying to save the lady embarrassment by singling her out so gently. She looked like she was surprised by what he told herm but she did not reply. In stead she looked hard at the music flipped to a prior page, back again and then to a prior page. Seems she and the rest were not on the same page. But now they were.
The fourth time the Scarlatti piece started up, believe me everyone in the audience was sitting on pins and needles and laying side bets on which instrumentalist would be responsible for bringing the piece to a halt next. The odds on violinist were a V to II if I made out the Latin bookmaking correctly. The organist was III to I. But no. No stop. They were off and playing, the choir was singing and the "Miserere" was about as exciting as it could get. Noone was drifting out of this performance!
But all good things come to an ended and so did this evening of Couleurs Baroques and the audience drifted away into the night reliving the drama and humming the tunes they had witnessed.
No comments:
Post a Comment