|
The Approach Although it is easy to gage the enormous amount of work accom-plished over the past decades by musicologists and ethnomusicologists on the history and performance of Medieval and Renaissance music, the challenge of the performer - that of bringing to life this music - remains no less daunting, and many questions still arise whose answers are definitely not historic in nature. The centuries that distance us from the instrumental performance practice of those eras do not allow for a pure return into the past. In my opinion, it is hard to claim to an authentic performance as such. Still, one can attempt to understand the musical language of the past and to approach the spirit of musical practice in those bygone eras by giving new life to this music though a kind of 'detour', that of reinterpretation. When this music lives again through present-day performers, a link is established between past and present. Authenticity is not so much in the style of a performance as in the physical act of playing an instrument, since this act is for me the true symbol of a social reality that has lived on through the ages, perpetuated by music. This act us an extraordinary human path to fulfill, yet it does entail some problems for the musician. Indeed, he must reconcile three ele-ments essential to the act of recreation, but whose fundamental elements do not necessarily easily coexist: thought (or the spirit), the senses (or the physical) and the instrument (or the tool). Thought here translates as the knowledge of the language and of the text. It functions during the phase of research, consideration and study of the subject. It allows one to acquire a relative knowledge of the past so as to enable an analysis of the scientific, philosophical, social and historic aspects of the work. The senses help to grasp the moment. They capture the stimuli emanating from sounds. Musical practice induces sentiments that influence the musician's playing in an irrational way. The instrument is a tool that is a world unto itself. Each instrument has a history and carries with it a legacy with which the musician must come to terms. He must know this heritage and integrate it with its history in order to master the instrument perfectly. It is only on this condition that the musician will become one with his instrument so as to make the most of his intellectual and sensual experience in order to breathe new life into music from the past, all the while cre-ating a present moment rich with a new aesthetic experience. These three elements are inseparable and act as filters. These 'life' filters allow us to revive this ancient repertoire, which has come down to us through manuscripts and through an age-old oral tradition that testifies to the importance of this music. It is on these aesthetic grounds that the Constantinople ensemble suggests to the listener a wholly personal vision of this truly living repertoire. © Kiya Tabassian
Kiya Tabassian, setar |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
©2010 Constantinople info@constantinople.ca 1097, rue Saint-Alexandre bureau 304 Montréal (Québec) H2Z 1P8 Canada |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
