Origins
The Music
The Performers
The Instruments
The CDs

Origins

A familiar mixture of Serendipity, Zeitgeist , personalities, of groups already established, with a supporting institution or two somewhere in the background. In the Players' case, a postgraduate research student in the Sydney University Music Department - an Eisteddfod-raised pianist and self-taught recorder player - having greatly enjoyed taking part in a brace of productions of the mediaeval Play of Daniel in St. Mary's Crypt, St James' Church, Sydney, is asked by a Sydney University Musical Society concert-organiser to gather up performers for a programme of mediaeval songs and dances. The programme Director, Dinty Vaughan, falls ill, and Winsome finds herself directing for the first time, waving a recorder instead of a baton. Then the University Organist Norman Johnston asks for a similar service to go with his Oriana Singers' performance of the Machaut Mass in the 1967 ABC Proms. For this the ensemble needs a name, and The Renaissance Players is born, 'renaissance' standing for rebirth, "trying to recreate music sounding as fresh as it did when it was first performed". The Players often perform music from the so-called Renaissance period: the extraordinary LP of sixteenth century improvising techniques The Cat's Fiddlestick (1981) for instance, or the Three Ladies of Ferrara concert (1995) and the Spanish Cancionero concert (1996) - but it's just as likely to be mediaeval music including that of the twelfth-century Renaissance, Abelard's time.

Add to all this the Zeitgeist of the Sixties, when the world seemed fresh and ideas were welcomed, and where there were already models of 'mediaeval' ensembles grounded on a combination of enthusiasm and earnest research-mindedness: Thomas Binkley, David Munrow, Noah Greenberg and the New York Pro Musica, and even a local tradition (the first concerts of mediaeval music in Sydney - songs, dances and Perotin's mammoth Sederunt Principes were given by Trevor Jones and me in 1954-55. The music seemed to scatter a new radiance and energy).

The Music

Winsome Evans had ever been hooked on English folk music (that bluff music educator Terence Hunt was an influence here). This passion is reflected in the often brilliant English folk song arrangements in their earlier concerts and first three LPs and extends to the pervading ethos. Folk pageantry is a strong element in the familiar concert style: the costumes, the banners, the processionals, the programmes in the form of scrolls. Equally important here is the image of the European Puy: the contests of tumblers and jesters and professional minstrels with their multitudes of instruments, during which repertoire, instrumental techniques and performing ideas were swapped. They were essentially entertainers, and so are The Renaissance Players. Mime, dance, jesting, poetry reading is all one with the concept. Hence the annual Runnymede Pop Festival, begun in 1973, and the Christmas Pudding concerts (from 1975), and hence the importance of the poetry readers, the late Professor Frederick May, his son David May and Geoff Sirmai. The associate clowns are integral to the tradition too, among them Erasmus (Jeremy Wright) and Heloïsa (Shelley Silberman). Involvement with vernacular traditions remains: the soon-to-be released four Sephardic CDs are the latest in a long line of research-minded incarnations of folk traditions.

There is a thin line between 'arrangement' of a folk song and 'reconstruction' of a mediaeval piece. Both are likely to begin with a single line of music - a tune in fact, but even in polyphonic mediaeval music we have only fragmentary evidence for what was actually done. Building up from a single line, one can rely on the idea that every performance is a variant, that performers are experts, embellishing tunes, improvising preludes, postludes and interludes, trying to outdo their fellows; that they enjoy working to a drone and shadowing another player in heterophony. In all this it is natural to look to traditions - European or Middle Eastern - in which the essential is also a single line. (There has been some questioning recently of the 'Middle Eastern' sound of some modern recordings of mediaeval music. So be it; one is still left with the fact that musicians in an essentially oral/aural culture never leave the tune alone any more than a modern Jazz or Pop group would, and the Middle East was close to Europe, at one with Islamic Spain, and a pan-European obsession for 300 years during the Crusades).

However spontaneous, gaudy, heady or varied the actuality of a Renaissance Players performance may seem, the research and imagination put into the "various methods of decorating and extending basic musical structures, and into patterns of instrumentation" is hard work, and incessant too, for an exploration of a new repertoire will demand a new appraisal. Thus the recent CDs of the thirteenth century Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X (three CDs already out and two to go) come from such a melting pot of Spanish cultures - Christian, Muslim, Jewish - and are to be found in such sumptuously illustrated manuscripts that they present a myriad suggestive ideas for performance, yet none which ranks as an obviously prevailing one. However, the possibilities are themselves exhilarating. The aim, to quote from the first of the Cantigas booklets, is to "present as wide as imaginatively possible a range of hypothetical performance solutions". The result is that, viewed logically, in any given programme the range of solutions postulates a range of different performance circumstances. We are confronted here with the nature of our twentieth-century role as reconstructors - and, it must be said, as twentieth-century (not actually mediaeval) entertainers.

All programmes are highly structured and thematic. An instance was the remarkable Avarice and Mercy programme in 1991, whose centre was the late Gordon Anderson's transcriptions of the passionate, vitriolic poetry/music of Chancellor Philippe of Paris, a thirteenth century Tom Wolfe, disgusted at hypocrisy and corruption at church and court yet marvellous in writing about it. In the Chancellor's case this includes devising musical structures which bring the message powerfully across.

The Renaissance Players instigated over the years several full-length mediaeval liturgical dramas, mostly produced by their first renowned poetry reader, Professor Frederick May: The Son of Getron, The Play of Herod, The Slaughter of the Innocents. In 1985 David Lawton produced for them The Play of Daniel. Outstanding in their sixteenth-century work were the commedia dell'arte -infused madrigal drama, Orazio Vecchi's l'Amfiparnasso and The Cat's Fiddlestick which I mentioned above. Underrated I think (perhaps because the whimsical title gives not a clue to what it contains), this LP draws on the embellishing accomplishments of the group's then-current performers (Winsome Evans herself, Michael Atherton, Barbara Stackpool, Jenny Tebbutt) to exemplify the freedom (within stylistic limits) in sixteenth-century embellishment in instrumental pieces; not just ground basses but songs and dances too. It's true as the sleeve note points out that to 'petrify' what should be spontaneous ornamentation like this involves a contradiction, but it's still an exciting and exemplary disc, a pioneer in its time. I hope it will be reissued as a CD.

The Performers

By the nature of things, the personnel has to change; people move on and new ones must be recruited. Finding players potentially gifted enough and willing to put in the time (there's no money in it) is a tall order. There have been thin times when new players were learning the ropes and the domina bore the brunt of the solo work (aided always by that wonderful castanet player, Barbara Stackpool, who has been there almost from the beginning). There have been high peaks too: an early boost to the Players' career was an action-packed Asian tour in 1974, part of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's Overseas Cultural Exchange initiative. Changes in personnel often suggest repertoire. The Three Ladies of Ferrara and a London Lad concert was inspired by the radiant singing of Mina Kanaridis, Melissa Irwin, and Belinda Montgomery in the group, joined by an outstanding male soprano, Glenn Kesbey.

Looking at the recordings and old programmes it is good to see so many familiar names. Nigel Butterley, Jonathan Rubin, Graham Pushee, Michael Atherton, Mara Kiek, Llew Kiek, Lyndon Terracini, Greg Dikmans, Robert Clancy, Anthony Walker and Jenny Duck-Chong have all been Players and are well known in the music profession. (At the end of the Iberian Thesaurus concert given as part of the Roger Woodward's Sydney Spring this year, about 50 former members mounted the stage and sang a concerted - and in the circumstances surprisingly unchaotic - pilgrim song led by Graham Pushee). Pushee appears on all but one of the LPs and the second (The Sibyl's Giggle) is a positive vehicle for his intensely beautiful singing. This should be reissued too.

The reconstructions/arrangements are so intricate and varied in their demands, and the concerts of such length that any Player receives an exacting, on-the-job, practical training, in rhythm, articulation, embellishment, intonation-practice, ensemble-playing, percussion-playing, singing and, not least, studio recording technique; intensely musical, and of lifelong benefit to a performer whatever field (s)he later chooses.

The Instruments

The mediaeval jongleur was expected to play a range of instruments. Probably few could handle the 25 or so the domina can command (though she leaves juggling to others). The Renaissance Players' collection, numbering more than a hundred, includes such timbrally seductive instruments as gemshorns, shawms, rackets, crumhorns, sackbutts, cornetti, vielles, synfonyes (hurdy-gurdies), rebecs, lutes, chittaras, mandoras, gitterns, portative organ, harps, psalteries, handbells, nakkers, tapan, darabukka and daireh. Many of the makers are Australian: Ron Sharp, Peter Biffin, Ian Watchorn, Bob Meadows, Frank O'Gallagher, Marc Noble, Risto Torodovski, Arnold Black, John Hall.

The CDs

To bring this thirty-year-old enterprise right up to the present means to marvel at the range and sophistication of the seven recent CDs (another six are already recorded and mixed).

As always, theme is paramount. There are three separate series. Under the Walsingham label are four CDs of mediaeval dances and dance-songs and three of the thirteenth century Spanish Cantigas de Santa Maria (with two to come). Four CDs of Sephardic (Spanish-Jewish) music will appear under an international label in 1998. All the CDs are prefaced by extensive essays, each one concentrating on a different aspect, setting the place, the (always complex) historical and philosophical background and the tenets followed in the reconstructions which range from pieces in two parts to those for the full ensemble. Performances, textures and variety are splendid. Sound quality and mixing are pretty well perfect, the result of a collaboration with the brilliant Guy Dickerson of Megaphon Studios.

The 60 pieces in the Dance series encompass every aspect of the dance, from straight instrumental pieces (Estampies, ductia) and simple celebrations of Spring, through more momentous sexual confrontations to a world of dance as mystical symbol ("He who dances the spiritual dance, always moving in the ecstasy of faith, acquires a right to dance to the ring of creation" - St. Ambrose). The Muses' Gift and Venus' Fire are mostly to do with love. The Ring of Creation opens up the long tradition of religious dance, including the (permitted) buffooneries for the Feasts of Fools and Asses. Garland Dances explores a repertory of known and conjectured round dances.

In both dances and Cantigas the Players show their maturity in effortless mastery of metrical intricacies (suggested by perusal of theoretical and anecdotal evidence). Their master drummer Andrew Lambkin has a major role here.

The Cantigas, compiled in mid-thirteenth century by Alfonso the Wise of Castile and Leon, comprise more than 400 songs in honour of the Virgin arranged in meticulous order in several extant and richly illustrated manuscripts. Alfonso makes it clear that though in the past he lusted after women and made up secular poetry (some of which survives), he now wishes to gather together these songs in which every tenth song will praise the Virgin and the others will describe miracles she has performed on our behalf (some of the miracles are marvellously bizarre). Many ensembles perform reconstructions of these single line Cantigas; none more vividly than here.

The CDs of Sephardic music follow from Winsome Evans' enthusiasm for Spanish music. The Jews, expelled from Spain by the decree of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, took with them music which had evolved from the rich mixture of Jewish, Arabic and Christian music. They settled in countless places in the Mediterranean basin. Proud of their traditions, they retained poetry and stories and tunes, which continued to evolve over the centuries and in different localities. The Sephardic CDs present reconstructions of music from transcribed sources (the Jewish Cantor George Mordecai contributed here, both as singer and style-mentor). They have been in the repertoire since 1992, and performed more recently in Moriah College and in the Sydney Spring Iberian Thesaurus concert.

Endnote

The combined roles Winsome Evans sets herself as director, manager, performer, arranger, composer and graphic designer clearly make hard and perennial work for her. But they also make for a coherence which transcends occasional cavils from critics or audiences about repertoire or format.

From the 1960s, the Renaissance Players have made a significant and distinctive contribution to our artistic life. It is fitting that the current possibilities for making brilliant CDs allow this contribution to go on permanent record.

Em. Prof. Sir Peter Platt
© November 1997

An edited version of this article appeared in "2MBS-FM" Magazine, December 1997 issue.
This page 13th January 1998.