By CHARLES WARD, January 13, 2008

…. But the Fortune’s Wheel singers – Lydia Heather Knutson, Aaron Sheehan and Shira Kammen – perfromed as if the Medieval English style had become their primarily musical language. Their simple communication with the audience made the essentially unfamiliar music as appealing as the Three Bs. Kammen, on the harp, and Mealy, on the fiddle, added sinuous accompaniments. ….

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1015 Holman (at Main)
just south of downtown on the rail line
HCC/Ensamble Rail Stop
MAP

Since 1893 Trinity has provided a spiritual home for countless seekers in the heart ofHouston. Over the years, as our neighborhood and city have changed, we’ve evolved too, and responded to the needs of a challenging urban context. Today we are an interesting assortment of creative folk, who represent the eclectic nature and boundless energy of our vibrant cosmopolitan home. We are an open, inclusive community and welcome others to join us on the spiritual path. We value such things as beauty and diversity, which you’ll find reflected in our art, architecture, and music, and also in our commitment to outreach and service to those in need. We strive to be faithful to our call to reconcile all people to God and to each other. Our hope is that Trinity Church h\can be a refreshing oasis of calm, peace, and understanding amidst the chaos of city life.

Our historic neo-gothic church building was designed by renowned architect Ralph Adams Cram, assisted by William Ward Watkin, and was completed in 1919. The lovely Morrow Chapel was renovated in 2002 and features world-class stained glass, artwork, and liturgical furnishings by such artists as Kim Clark Renteria, Kermit Oliver, Troy Woods, Shazia Sikander, and Selven O’Keef Jarmon. Our Sunday worship services combine the serenity of these sacred spaces with the joyful

All medieval music is glimpsed from a great distance, but no repertory is so hard to see as that of  England in the middle ages. Where France had a tradition of lyric song that lasted long enough for thousands of songs to be enshrined in manuscripts, the music we have from England of the same period is scattered and faint: much was destroyed when the monasteries were taken over by the state in the Renaissance, and much more has suffered from the ravages of time. What has come down to us, though, speaks in astonishingly vivid voices.

English medieval culture was strongly influenced by Continental developments.  During this period, French was still the language of the English aristocracy, and musical style would have followed suit. But alongside the cultivation of French sophistication there also grew up some intensely beautiful native styles of music. Our program, therefore, offers a garden of English delights, from the earliest surviving  vernacular songs by the hermit St. Godric (here elaborated with our own harmonies) to the refined delights of French-influenced polyphony.  You’ll hear a good number of the songs in the vernacular that survive from this time with both music and text, as well as a few poems so irresistible that we have set them to our own tunes.
 
The English repertoire is all the more tantalizing for the number of songs that survive without music. Those few that came down to us with musical notation were preserved only by purest chance. “Bryd one brere,” for example, exists because someone happened to copy this love song onto the back of a papal bull. Because of the damage so much of this music suffered, many of these songs present problems of sheer transcription. “Mirie it is”, for example, is missing its last note, and there are a few holes in the page that cancel some other neumes out. For this program, we are drawing on a new edition of this repertoire prepared by Judith Overcash, who has taken a fresh look at the sources and corrected many misreadings of earlier editors.

Most of our songs date from the middle of the thirteenth century and some from the beginning of the fourteenth, when new musical developments were coming over from France. The art of polyphony, of setting several voices together, was reaching new heights of sophistication in Paris, and the English were not slow to pick up on this sophisticated musical language. The four-texted motet  “Solaris” is characteristic of this Parisian art: three elaborate Latin poems, one about the introduction of Christianity to England, weave their counterpoint around a tenor that is a remarkably worldly French pop-song. At the same time, a native tradition of polyphony developed, one that was probably influenced by local folkways. Gerald of Wales, writing around 1200, remarks on the improvised close harmony of the Welsh, which he attributes to their contact with the Norse and the Danes. When this folk tradition emerges in written polyphony, it is in the form of immensely sweet concords, with entire songs composed almost entirely in sixths and thirds. This would have seemed particularly strange to Parisian sophisticates, for the very sounds that we regard as most consonant were viewed as less perfect than fourths and fifths, and so to be used with caution. Two stunning examples of this native English style are found in “Ave mundi rosa” and “Ave celi regina virginum.”

A common thread throughout medieval English sacred music, both in Latin and in the vernacular, is a devoted love of Mary. This deep veneration was the source of frequent comment from Continental visitors, and the sweetness of so much of English polyphony seems especially appropriate for music to celebrate Christianity’s great mother. In addition to the sacred music dedicated to and about Mary, she appears in the vernacular songs as well. “Edi be thu, hevene queenë” is a celebration of her tremendous accomplishments and contributions to the world. In “Ar ne kuth ich sorghe non” the singer, destitute and unjustly imprisoned, first calls out to Jesus for help. Finally in the last stanza she moves on to Mary, imploring her to intercede with her son Christ: “beseech thy son to have pity on us and bring us from this great misery.”  In other songs, Mary herself speaks: “Stand wel moder” is a dialogue between Mary and the crucified Jesus, an impassioned discourse of love, suffering, and forgiveness, and one whose sharp contrast of worldly agony and eternal bliss is very characteristic of English medieval texts.
 
The vivid imagery of Christ’s suffering also serves as the subject of “Worldes blisse,” whose meditation circles around a repeating fragment of chant in the tenor. An even bleaker view of the pain and hardship all of us suffer in this world is presented in “Man mei longe,” with its calls for us to take life’s transience as an opportunity to transform ourselves.  The brevity and pain of life was a strong theme of earlier English and Norse poetry that continued in this later Christianized tradition; given the difficulty of life in medieval Britain, it is not surprising that many songs take this as their theme.  What is perhaps more surprising is the radiant vision of bliss that religion, and particularly the figure of Mary, offered to the medieval English mind.
To relieve what might well be an unrelenting program about the pains of this world, we also include some music from a slightly later tradition, like the sweet carol “On Yooles night,” which paints a wonderful and unusual dream-narrative of Christmas.  The zesty poem  “In secreit place” is the latest work on our program; our own Shira Kammen has set this to her own tune, based on her deep familiarity with early English traditional music, to bring this earthy dialogue-ballad to life again.  (You will notice that a few terms remained, well, untranslatable.  We leave these to your imagination…)

We know a vivid instrumental tradition flourished in England, and in this program we have sought to bring back to life a few of the fragments that have come down to us, and to honor the tradition they came out of. The art of instrumental music was almost entirely an improvised one in the middle ages, and the only way to reawaken that tradition is to improvise in the language of the time, as clearly, playfully, and eloquently as we can. We include one surviving dance from the Robertsbridge Codex in the popular form of the estampie, where each section is repeated, first with an open ending, then with a closed one. In “Stantipes,” Shira has made a gathering of many of the instrumental dances that have survived, which we present along with our own elaborations upon them. We hope you take as much joy from this music as we have!

— © Robert Mealy

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… The group’s latest program, Mirie it is, presented them with difficulties of a special kind. A great deal of medieval French music has come down to us with both words and tune, and to realize it in a modern performance what is needed is an informed feeling for the style and an ability to improvise historically suitable accompaniments and embellishments. The Fortune’s Wheel musicians are exceptionally good at this, neither too bold nor too cautious, but with a wonderful air of spontaneity and freedom.

… more

Mirie it is                                                             c.1225
Instrumental                                                        traditional Scottish tune
Edi beo þu hevene queenë                                  pre-1300
 
Ave celi regina virginum                                      14th century
Ave mundi rosa          
 
Estampie from Robertsbridge Codex                       c.1360
 
Ar ne kuth ich sorghe non                                    c.1270
Fuwëles in the frith                                              c.1270
Man mei longe him liues wene                             pre-1250
Bryd one brere                                                     c.1300
Solaris ardor romulis                                            mid-14th century
 
The hymns by St. Godric                                     c.1215
            Criƒt and ƒainte Marie
            Sainte Marie virgine
            Sainte Nicholaes
 
Worldes bliƒƒ, have god day                              c.1280
Virgo salvavit                                                      14th century
 
Stand wel moðer under rode (dialogue)              early and mid-14th century     
English dance                                                     arr. Kammen/Mealy
On Yooles night (carol)                                      mid-14th century
 
Stantipes (14th century dance tunes)                  arr. Mealy/Kammen
In secreit place—text by William Dunbar,          arr.  Kammen
    c.1460–c.1520

MIRIE IT IS – A Musical Glimpse of Medieval England

Houston Early Music will present the Boston-based Fortune’s Wheel with Mirie it Is–A Glimpse of Medieval England at 4:00 pm, Sunday, January 13, 2008 at Trinity Episcopal Church, 1015 Holman (at Main). Noted for performing “with a wonderful air of spontaneity and freedom” (The San Diego Reader), Fortune’s Wheel will present a concert of most of the surviving vernacular treasures from the once vast, now largely lost repertoire of the English Middle Ages.

Fortune’s Wheel is a spirited collaboration of four distinguished early-music performers—vocalists Lydia Heather Knutson and Aaron Sheehan, and instrumentalists Shira Kammen & Robert Mealy performing on vielle (medieval fiddle) and harp. Devoted to rediscovering the riches of medieval musical traditions, the ensemble made its debut at the 1996 International Festival of Early Music in Mexico City, where critics acclaimed the group’s “style, diction, tuning, perfect balance, and total engagement with the music.” Since then, the ensemble has been presented by early music concert series in San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Tijuana, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Houston, Jackson, Tucson, Columbus, Cambridge, and Duke University. They have also appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, the Amherst Early Music Festival, The Cloisters and the Frick Collection in New York City, Yale University’s Collection of Musical Instruments, and many other series.

Fortune’s Wheel released its first CD, Pastourelle, on Dorian Recordings. Website www.fortuneswheel.org

Prior to the concert, at 3:00 pm, ensemble member Robert Mealy will give a preconcert talk discussing the music to be performed on the program.

Tickets are $30 for general admission, $25 for seniors, $10 for students, under 15 free. Tickets may be purchased at the door or by calling 713-432-1744.

FORTUNE’S WHEEL

MIRIE IT IS – A Glimpse of Medieval England

From the rough vigor of folk music to the refined sophistication of rarely-heard polyphony, Fortune’s Wheel presents most of the surviving vernacular treasurers from the once vast, now largely lost repertoire of the English Middle Ages.

http://www.fortuneswheel.org/

“Fortune’s Wheel takes its medieval music seriously and then transforms the music at hand and voice into living, breathing art”
—The Cleveland Plain Dealer