John Potter, Christopher O'Gorman. Conductus HD

Conductus: sacred music from the 12th & 13th centuries.
John Potter & Christopher O'Gorman tenors with Michael Lynch video artist
The 13th century saw a great flowering of singing in and around the churches and courts of north-west Europe. This musical outpouring brought human warmth to the great spaces of the region's Gothic cathedrals and palaces; at the centre of both forms of creativity was the new building of Notre Dame de Paris.
The single-voice plainsong used in services came to be elaborated with other voices. This polyphony and the devising of notation to record it provided the basis for modern-day harmony and counterpoint. But not all music used in church was part of the main service -- or even particularly sacred in character -- and not all of it depended on traditional materials. One ceremonial moment came with the carrying of the book from which the lessons were to be read. The music for its being led to the lectern was the conductus, a form of sacred song that also found its way into the monastic hall and courtly entertainment, and from which developed the medieval motet.
The distinctive feature of the genre was that both Latin text and music were freely composed. Singers John Potter and Christopher O'Gorman explore these rarely heard pieces, rich in the violent and colourful imagery of medieval literature: butchers become bishops, apostles become pirates, and foxes become doves as the poets rage against the secular habits of the church hierarchy, while simultaneously appealing to the nobility of knighthood and the miraculous power of the Virgin. All this is done against the background of videos specially commissioned from Michael Lynch.
These are the first modern performances to uncover the secret of singing
medieval music that has harmony but no rhythm (as we now understand it). In
an AHRC-funded research project led by Professor Mark Everist of the
University of Southampton, the singers have worked with a team of
musicologists to recreate ways of performing music that have not been heard
since the 13th century. The accompanying films recall the richly textured
manuscripts and other images of the period.
Three concert programmes -- and three Hyperion CDs -- will come out of this work. The first, Conductus (with the participation of Rogers Covey-Crump, Hyperion catalogue number: CDA67949) -- will be premiered at the church of All Saints Harewood, on the Harewood House estate near Leeds, on 10 July 2012, as part of the York Early Music Festival.

Film and all images: Michael Lynch www.artlynch.com
Further information: Robert White Artist Management, rwhiteam@aol.com

Category:

Music

Tags:

• John Potter
• Christopher O'Gorman
• Early Music
• Medieval
• Michael Lynch

[staceyhelley]

Thanks for posting! Leeds in july...... hmmmmm