LF 26: Binchois Consort, ‘Scaramella’

St Mary’s Church, Whitekirk, 15/9/2026

 Binchois Consort, Andrew Kirkman (director), Jacob Obrecht: ‘Scaramella’

I found myself in the little jewel that is St Mary’s Church, Whitekirk on Tuesday, from which you get fabulous views of the Lammermuir Hills and the North Sea between North Berwick and Dunbar. The sea is relevant, because in 1435 the future Pope Pius II, Aeneas Piccolomini, was shipwrecked near Dunbar on a secret mission to Scotland and swore to walk barefoot to the nearest shrine of the Virgin Mary in thanks for his rescue. This was the little church where we heard music on Tuesday, composed only a few years later, sung by the Binchois Consort.

This concert was an unusual one, in that nearly all the music had been reconstructed, primarily by the composer and musicologist, Fabrice Fitch, Senior Research Fellow at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Dr Fitch has used old manuscripts from various collections throughout Europe to piece together a whole body of vocal music, which has lain in fragmentary form for over six centuries. Part books, representing one vocal line each of a polyphonic work, are only useful if all the parts are available. Over the course of time, many of these part books have been lost, and so has the music contained within. Dr Fitch, together with a previous colleague, Philip Weller, has painstakingly worked out what the missing books may have contained, and his reconstructions have been used by the Binchois Consort for performances such as ours today. What we heard was a very educated guess, based on meticulous scholarship, and it certainly sounded pretty good to me.

This programme was built around the reconstruction of Jacob Obrecht’s Mass based on the contemporary Italian folk song, Scaramella. Its mock war-like swagger may seem an unlikely basis for a cantus firmus in a mass, but there was a long tradition, especially in the Low Countries in the 15th century, of using a completely secular tune or song as the rock around which polyphony swirled.

“ Scaramella goes off to war, with his lance and his rounded shield,

Bom-Borom-Borom-Bom

Scaramella is out for fun, with his shoes and his pack,

Bom-Borom-Borom-Bom.”

The Binchois Consort, a six voice male ensemble, directed by Andrew Kirkland, sang this jolly song early in the concert, to allow us to hear the tune on which the mass was based, and the rest of the programme consisted of similarly reconstructed pieces by Obrecht and his contemporaries, such as Josquin des Prez and Alexander Agricola.

Jacob Obrecht (1457-1505) was a fascinating character, probably born in Ghent in modern Flanders, probably fluent in Flemish and French, working mainly in the Burgundian Court, but travelling twice to Italy, to the court of Duke Ercole d’Este in Ferrara, where he died of bubonic plague in 1505. He was a prolific composer, leaving behind many masses and motets, and his fame was only eclipsed after his death by the great Josquin des Prez.

The Binchois Consort, named after the early Flemish composer, Gilles Binchois (1400-1460), has been performing late mediaeval music since 1995, and in the formation today, two falsettists, three tenors and one bass, they combined to give a very interesting programme in Whitekirk. I was particularly impressed by the two really high voices of Matthew Farrell and Tom Lilburn, and the very high tenor, Dominic Bland, but felt that one bass was not enough to balance the other voices. A second low voice would have helped enormously, if only from a stamina point of view. Each half of the programme ended with reconstructions of extremely long and complicated Obrecht motets, testing both the stamina and technique of the singers.