SWEMF Workshop with Bruce Saunders.
28th Septemeber 2024 – All Saints Church, Clifton.
A very cool, but dry, September day situated at All Saints Church in Clifton. This was a very apt and pleasant location at which we were all easily able to find suitable local parking space.
We were all privileged this day to be accompanied by Lyn and Fenella on their Sackbut and Curtal . Bruce Saunders, our expert leader, enabled us to appreciate these instruments and the role they played in the ensemble. This workshop certainly had standards to challenge even the more experienced singers amongst us but at the same time not intimidating those possibly less well practiced or simply returning to early polyphony. I think this would have been a workshop difficult to prepare for by anyone – particularly as I suspect many of us had never seen, or heard of, the pieces selected.
Bruce had selected the items we were to sing with much thought. Whilst known composers such as Palestrina & Lassus were included, their pieces were certainly not known by myself. Why should they, as these composers were after all extremely prolific. The other interesting pieces came from Pierre de Mainchicourt, and a female composer at that time Caterina Assandra. Her works were created when young as she soon joined a Convent where her musical work unfortunately ceased.
Words within our “Song of Songs” pieces had a biblical theme that could be made technically acceptable to senior clergy in the 16th Century. However, Bruce made it well known to us all that words within many of these highly expressive songs were actually quite erotic and not always metaphoric! These were early Hebrew poems about love between man and woman but possibly sanitised in areas for usage by our composers with translations that occasionally referred (in Latin) to the Virgin Mary or the Rose of Sharon. Bruce frequently reminded us that many of the rather pert phrases needed better expression in the shape, emphasis and tone of our singing. Volume on the other hand was something integrated into the structure of the composition and not necessarily the loudness of sound by individual singers.
This was a most enjoyable, but still exhausting, day in which I discovered new things about “Song of Songs”. It was also a day in which I was able to re-connect with singers I hadn’t seen for a while. Thankyou Bruce and to all those within SWEMF that made this possible.
Tom Williams