Harmonia CD Cover
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New releases abound from all labels for this holiday season. Few of them are as far-reaching, across several centuries in fact, as these two from Harmonia Mundi. One is the tale of an Irish warrior whom you may have heard tales, the other a harmonious quartet reviving a codex that goes back 800 years.
Young Irish composer Tarik O’Regan’s “Acallam na Senórach: an Irish Colloquy,” detailing the meeting of Saint Patrick with two of Finn McCool’s warrior band in Fifth century Ireland, is Paul Hillier and the National Chamber Choir of Ireland’s holiday offering. Featuring Stewart French on guitar, this piece is a trip back in time. Forget the big flatscreen television and your Blu-ray discs: this is how stories were told and how we continue to tell stories today. Whether you consider this as part of the bardic tradition or not, there are 16 voices telling this story. O’Regan’s writing and French’s virtuosity on the guitar make for time-travel extraordinaire. When you wish to be transported not only by a story, but also by the emotions behind it, consider this ancient tale. Saint Patrick has just come to Ireland to spread the news of Jesus. As he is saying his daily office, he sees approaching him a band of warriors in ancient garb. He is afraid, but recalls his purpose and engages them in conversation. Despite the passage of hundreds of years, this band of Finn McCool’s warriors still lives. Patrick baptizes them and asks their leader, Caílte, to tell him of their history. Chaucer and Boccacio used similar strategies to incorporate the story within the story, and this group of legends informs us a great deal about the 1100s to 1200s, when these stories first were told, as about the human desire to have a sense of history, and one’s place in continuing it.
Anonymous 4’s latest release is “Secret Voices,” and their source material is the Codex of Las Huelgas. Leonora was the daughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Acquitaine. She was married to King Alfonso VIII of Spain and she asked that he found a convent for her. Las Huelgas literally means “the refuge” and, while the convent was originally established as Cistercian, where those living there were to live by the fruit of their own labor, this was a refuge for the aristocratic women of the time. Consequently, they were given a great deal of freedom that we modern types don’t associate with the monastic life. The leaders, abbesses, were able to say mass and perform many of the offices ordinarily done by priests. From the late 1100s until the late 1800s, those privileges were granted. At that time, the rare freedoms were revoked.
While polyphony was the right and privilege of male monastics, these sisters were doing it for themselves. Many of the works in the Codex are the results of the reworking of music popular at the time, some of whose original lyrics were not suited to a convent. That said, the Codex is a collection ranging from the most basic to some beautifully varied polyphonic music. It was considered an “open secret,” according to the liner notes, that those in Las Huegas had taken the powers of their male counterparts to sing music that was not available to women with skills, who were outside the monastery.
Anonymous 4 has selected music representing a day in the life of these nuns–what they may have sung, what a daily mass may have sounded like, through evening devotions and into the night. There are songs within the Codex, nearly 200 works spanning the 1200s into the early 1300s, that commemorate different members of the order as well as songs devoted to the worship of the Virgin Mary. This day of music celebrates the Virgin much as the Cistercian sisters may have. The open and timeless sounds of a cappella, female voices evokes the beauty of a refuge that you can have with you wherever you take the music.
Get your copies of these new releases at www.harmoniamundi.com or wherever your favorite classical titles are sold.