Andrew Johnstone at the 10th Galway Early Music Festival.
10th Galway Early Music Festival, St Nicholas Collegiate Church, Galway
In a city conscious of its medieval heritage, the Galway Early Music Festival is more than just a musical event. As well as concerts, there are exhibitions, walking tours, merry minstrelsy, and stewards in period costume. In addition to the three recitals I attended, this year's many attractions included an appearance by wind band The York Waits, who were catalysts for the first festival 10 years ago.
The opening concert was given by the Irish Consort, a new group founded by, and centred on, harpist Siobhán Armstrong. Their programme explored cross currents in Hiberno-English music up to the early 18th century.
As well as Celtic chant, it included songs and dances that were very likely brought to Ireland by English colonists, and Irish material known to have been popular in England.
There were also some captivating contributions from sean-nós singer Bríd Ní Mhaoilchiaráin. In the fickle acoustics of St Nicholas Collegiate Church, these came off much better than lute songs by Thomas Campion, John Dowland and others, which were sung with seemingly exaggerated expression by tenor John Elwes.
Though the reverberation played similar tricks on the bass viol playing of Reiko Ichise, it was kinder to the more consistent articulations of Armstrong's Irish harp, whose lowest octave is strung in 18-carat gold, and whose subtle and prolonged internal resonances meant that the plainchant melodies she played virtually harmonised themselves.
And Armstrong's point, made in programme notes and spoken introductions, that such instruments have for centuries charmed listeners at home and overseas, was further justified in pieces by Thomas Connellan, Rory Dall Ó Catháin and Carolan.
At a festival like this there could hardly be a more distinguished presence than that of Jordi Savall, who gave a recital on bass and treble viols in company with the guitarist and vihuela player Rolf Lislevand.
Observing the spirit as much as the letter of 16th- and 17th-century sources, they semi-improvised to reach-me-down formulas that included the folia, the romanesca and the canarios. The simple, repeated chord-patterns of these dance forms have much in common with certain styles of rock and pop, and Lislevand far exceeded the stylistic parameters of the Renaissance in a set of febrile guitar solos.
The programme also included English solos for bass viol - some anonymous, some selected from Tobias Hume's Musicall Humors of 1605 - whose childlike imitations of bagpipes and battle scenes were obtained by artificial techniques like pizzicato, ricochet, and playing with the wood of the bow. At one point, Savall was obliged to exchange two of his 1697 instrument's seven strings.
Only so justly renowned a player could rescue such curious music from its own naivety.
Though the church's echoing vaults may not have suited every performance, they turned out to be an ideal environment for the American vocal trio Liber unUsualis, who gave a late-night, candle-lit concert of trecento songs and motets.
In two- and three-voice music that's as subtly emblematic as a medieval coat of arms, this group struck a well-nigh perfect balance between academic authenticity and heart-warming expressiveness.
Their vocal style is neither raucous nor over-cultivated, and it has all the agility of sean-nós. They sing intently to each other, but in a way that deeply involves their audience.
Here was proof that, even when the programme booklet denies you texts and translations, an hour spent in the company of Johannes Ciconia and his contemporaries can be an unalloyed delight.
