“What’s the music like? Well, I suppose… I suppose it’s different.”
I have to say, that wasn’t the most reassuring thing to overhear in the foyer of the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall while waiting for I Fagiolini’s production of ‘Strange Harmony of Love’ to start. The music, that of Italian Renaissance composer Gesualdo and his contemporaries, was certainly not anything I really knew much about. However, I was absolutely stunned by the end. Gesualdo was a genius, clearly. Though I will admit, ‘different’ is quite a good way to put it too.
I Fagiolini are a vocal group of six people, who sung without accompaniment. The strength and force of their voices made this a fantastic and otherworldly choice, but it also made the moments of silence even more powerful; the power behind the voices was stressed, and the sense of loss hung heavily in the pregnant pauses.
The music immersed the audience in the culture of the Renaissance, floating around the room and somehow transporting us to 17th century Ferrara, the world of Gesualdo. There were two pieces by Lassus and De Wert before we came to the first by the great man himself, which again reinforced this idea of immersion, of placing us in the context of Gesualdo before we heard him. Interestingly, Robert Hollingworth, the director, said that the one major problem with interpreting this music is not the ability to play it, but the ability to get the 21th century audiences to listen to it understanding the context. I thought this concert came as close as we are ever likely to get to that.
Having said that, because most of the singing was in Italian, I didn’t really know what was being said. At first I thought that would be a disadvantage, but then a couple of English songs from the same period were played, and I actually enjoyed them less, because I found myself listening to the words instead of the music. Being completely ignorant of what Gesualdo was trying to say made him more haunting and weird. It made it just sounds, but sounds that were absolutely groundbreaking. Of course, some words were repeated so often that you begin to know what they are, like death and suffering and pain. But still, it keeps the music somehow purer.
As you’ve probably guessed from that, this isn’t laugh a minute music. It is sad and brutal, rising and soaring, and then thundering down into nothingness. It is bleak and unforgiving. Gesualdo is a genius, because he can put that emotion across in his music.
Of course, the fact that it was so fantastically performed helped. I Fagiolini are a wonderful group and their singing of the music further added to Gesualdo’s passion and emotion, bringing it to a new level. But this concert was not about them. It was the brilliance of Gesualdo that they captured so well, and setting his genius in context. It was about making us realise how he was both a contemporary of his time and an individual voice in the 17th century Ferrara. He was quite clearly rather ‘different’- in a good way.