Songs and Dances from Medieval Europe
St Cecilia’s Hall, 20/8/25
Eva Moredo Rodriguez, portative organ, Eric Thomas, lute
This afternoon’s concert at St Cecilia’s Hall celebrates the music of the 14th and 15th centuries. The two musicians who present this exciting programme with great skill and consummate musicianship deserve our special thanks: Héloïse Bernard who was due to sing today as part of the trio is ill and unable to perform. All credit then to lutenist Eric Thomas and singer/instrumentalist, Eva Moreda Rodriguez for completely revising the programme and to the Hall’s staff and volunteers who put together the printed version from information received yesterday evening.
Originally billed as ‘Music from the Hundred Years War’ and renamed ‘Songs and Dances from Medieval Europe’, the concert allows us to hear work from fourteenth century Italy and France, interspersed with four tunes from the Buxtehude Organ Book, published in the later fifteenth century but described by Eva as the “greatest hits” of the organ world. She plays the unusual portative organ which she holds on her lap. It operates like a cross between an accordion and small pipes. She plays two octaves of wooden keys (which, we learn, have all the chromatic notes) with her right hand , while her left controls the air in the pipes, which protrude from the top, not through a bag under the arm, but by pushing in and pulling out concertina-style bellows. Eric Thomas plays a plectrum lute, a modern copy of one seen in an anonymous portrait of St Gerard. It has five sets of strings, and during the performance he shows how the use of these five strings developed through the period, from playing on single strings in the earlier works to playing several strings simultaneously as he does in a 1460 German lute fragment.
The repertoire is secular, largely courtly love songs, I’d guess from the titles and imagery of ‘Lady Narcissus’, and ‘The hunting of the hawk’. These are anonymous but we also hear two from Andrea di Firenze, (1360 to 1415). Eva sings in a clear strong voice without vibrato which seems entirely suited to the period and musical style. In some she stands to sing with lute accompaniment; in others she plays an instrumental refrain on the organ between verses.
Later in the programme we’re introduced to songs by Guillaume de Machaut, a familiar name to many from his religious writings , especially his Messe de Nostre Dame. In secular music he invented the forme fix, in its simplest version a sonata form or ABA structure, though it had many variations. Eva sings three of his songs of which the last ‘Je ne cuit pa’s (I do not believe) is in three parts. It’s the most sophisticated song in the concert, with Eric harmonising with Eva’s vocal line. In the complex middle section, there are three musical lines - lute, voice and the organ played at the same time. A very lovely marrying of these unusual sounds to end the programme.
The concert was warmly applauded by the audience, a number of whom stayed to talk to the musicians afterwards.
