Perfect Unity (完美的統一: 幻想古提琴室樂團)

It's not often that one achieves perfect unity. I experienced one at the Academy of Performing Arts tonight. It was a performance by a small group of string artists playing music at the start of the English Ressassance, called the "Phantasm Viol Consort" from Albion. When the four men and one woman appeared on the stage, they appeared in monochrome: uniformly black.The monotony was broken only above the men's heads: two had hair, two not. When I looked at the stringed instruments which they played with a bow, I was surprised that their handles were fitted with frets, rather like the lute or the guitar. Their instruments look all very similar: and except for their frets, they looked like down sized cellos, called viols, some smaller than others. The artists were Laurence Dreyfus (treble viol),Jonathan Manson (tenor viol), Emilia Benjamin (tenor viol), MIkko Perkola, (Tenor and Bass viols) and Markku Luolajan-Mikkola (bass viol)

When I turned to look at the Programme Notes, I discovered that they would be playing pieces written for the viol in the so-called "English Consort Tradition"  which purportedly "surveys some 150 years of a highly contrapuntal repertory which marked a break from the purely vocal models of polyphony in the genres of In Nomine and Fantasy--music freed from a text and open to suggestion from the imagination--but also cultivated a dance music by developing stylized instrumental versions of high style dances--especially the grave Pavan and the high-kicking Galliard."  In fact, what we had was Christopher Tye's (1505-1572)  in Nomine a5 (Crye), Alfonso Ferrabosco the Elder (1543-1588)'s In Nomine 2 a5, Robert Parsons (1515-1571)'s In Nomine 3 a5, William Byrd (1540-1623)'s Prelude and Goodnight Ground and Pavan and Galliard a5, Jon Ward(1589-1638)'s Fantasia 12 a5(Leggiada sei), In Nomine a5, Fantasia 13 a5 (Non fu sense), William Lawes (1602-1645)'s Consort Sett IV a5 in F: Fantasy, Paven, Aire, John Jenkins (1592-1678)'s Fantasy 13 in D a5, Fantasy 15 in D a5 and Pavan 1 in G a5, Orlando Gibbons (11538-1625) Fantasy IV a3, In Nomine a5 (MB 28), Henry Purcell (1659-1595)'s Fantasia 9 a4, Fantasia 12 a4, Fantasia upon One Note, William Lawes' Consort Sett a5 in C: Fantasy, Paven and Aire.  When I first looked at the programme, that certainly appeared to me a fairly impressive number of pieces from different periods and different composers. I don't know how it may sound to others. But when I got down to actually listening to them, they all sounded pretty much the same to me: there is remarkably little change of speed and rhythm, in the volume, in the pitch, in the way the different viols are bowed and in the pattern and the overall texture of the sound..One could very well have listened intently and with full attention for the first 5 minutes, then doze off, wake up again to catch the last dozen or so bars of the the last piece of music and not have missed much. If that is subtlety, then I'm afraid that subtlety is completely lost on me.  It's not often that I felt the urge to leave a concert hall in the middle of a performance. I'm afraid that I felt the strongest urge to do so a number of times during the performance. The music proceeded in a kind of dull drone from start to finish. Perhaps when England first emerged from the Middle Ages, life in general was extremely boring and if so, that boredom was certainly "perfectly" reflected in the lack of change in its music. There's perfect unity at the concert hall: the perfect unity of a total lack of change and for me, perfect boredom. Perhaps those who planned the program may derive some profit from the old saw that there can be too much of a good thing and pay a little attention to the operation of the psychological law of antinomy,

The only lively piece in the evening came at the last few minutes in the form of the encore piece, the Aire in G by William Byrd. When the concert ended, I was so glad to get out for some fresh air! The air conditioning inside the concert hall of the APA was simply appalling!  For sitting through the entire concert I think I fully deserve at least 7 years parole from penance at purgatory.

Normally I would post in my blog all the pieces of music I heard during the concert. But as I have no intention of bringing tears to my reader's eyes or a yawn from their mouth, I would just post one this time.When you've heard one of them, you'd have heard all. I'm sure that were Nietzsche still be alive, he would have found in such music the most eloquent proof of the truth of his theory of "Eternal Return" of the Same!

There's some consolation through. I took some photos at the APA. Here they are.

The rear of the APA

An obscure corner of the APA