BATTLE CRY SHE SPEAKS
HELEN CHARLSTON TOBY CARR
BATTLE CRY SHE SPEAKS HELEN CHARLSTON
mezzo-soprano
TOBY CARR
1 Henry Purcell (1659–1695)
theorbo
Barbara Strozzi (1619–1677)
L’Eraclito amoroso, Op. 2 No. 14
[5:55]
3
Robert de Visée (1650–1732)
Prélude (MS Vaudry de Saizenay)
[1:25]
John Eccles (1688–1735)
Restless in thought [4:24] (from She Ventures, and He Wins)
Henry Purcell arr. Toby Carr
Dido’s Lament (from Dido and Aeneas, z 626) Thy hand, Belinda [0:50] When I am laid in earth [3:07]
5 6
Owain Park (b. 1993) 7 8 9 10 11 Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger (c.1580–1651)
Recorded on 29-30 October and 1 November 2021 in Crichton Collegiate Church, Midlothian Producer/Engineer: Paul Baxter 24-bit digital editing: Jack Davis 24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Theorbo: Klaus Jacobsen, 2015
Design: Drew Padrutt Booklet editor: Henry Howard Cover & session photography: foxbrushfilms.com Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.com
@ delphianrecords @ delphianrecords @ delphian_records
[2:58]
2
4
The artists and Delphian Records gratefully acknowledge the support of Angel Early Music, William Newsom and Rogers Covey-Crump in sponsoring the production of this recording. Acknowledgement is also due to City Music Foundation for originally commissioning Battle Cry by Owain Park.
O lead me to some peaceful gloom (from Bonduca, z 574)
Battle Cry * I. Boudicca [3:05] II. Philomela in the forest [2:18] III. A singer’s ode to Sappho [2:19] IV. Marietta [9:07] Preludio V (Libro quarto d'intavolatura di chitarone)
[1:04]
12
Barbara Strozzi
La travagliata, Op. 2 No. 11 [4:42]
13
Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643)
Lamento d’Arianna [9:03]
14
Robert de Visée
Sarabande (MS Vaudry de Saizenay)
15
Henry Purcell
An Evening Hymn, z 193 [4:42]
Total playing time * premiere recording
[2:12]
[57:20]
Notes on the music The theorbo was a common enough musical instrument in the seventeenth century, emerging as it did in Florence in the 1580s. By the mid eighteenth century its use had dwindled, and it played no part in the music of the emerging Classical style. It is a plucked instrument like a lute, but with additional low strings – hence the distinctive long neck. Brighter-toned than the lute, the theorbo has a transparency and clarity to its sound that makes it a delicate, rich and sensitive accompaniment to the voice. The Baroque era in music made a virtue of pigeon-holing styles and approaches to musical composition and performance. A French, German or Italian style, for instance, might be promoted in church, chamber or theatre. Emotions were rationalised in terms of musical presentation. However, all of the music on this recording makes a virtue of mixing emotions and ideas; and at its heart, the programme contains a twenty-firstcentury musical and poetic response to the antique combination of mezzo-soprano and theorbo. On a personal level, this project has allowed theorbist Toby Carr to focus on his own interpretation of the songs rather than being simply part of a larger continuo line; while for singer Helen Charlston, who loves the Baroque soundworld within which she so often works, it has given the opportunity to commission music for voice and theorbo by a living composer.
Having heard Helen Charlston and Toby Carr perform seventeenth-century music (and Henry Purcell’s song ‘O solitude’ in particular), Owain Park was drawn to the combination of voice and theorbo. The wordsmith Georgia Way had made music with Owain and Helen as an undergraduate student and was inspired to write poetry that Owain could set to music. The first product was ‘Marietta’, which ultimately became the final movement of the song cycle Battle Cry, commissioned by London’s City Music Foundation. The preceding three movements were written later, once everyone involved realised that one contemporary song (albeit a substantial one) would sit uneasily within an otherwise entirely seventeenth-century programme. Perhaps because the composer knew how the cycle would finish while writing the earlier movements, there is an unusually subtle musical unity to Battle Cry. Georgia Way recalls: It’s been a privilege for me to watch and support Helen and Owain’s careers and it’s been wonderful to feel that I’ve been a small part of that. As a writer discovering my own style, it has really underlined for me the importance of existing in communities. Artistic communities are hugely important, because it’s hard to craft work in isolation. As a writer you often exist in a vacuum and it has been nice not to have to do that. Added to which, when I wrote ‘Marietta’ I’d had a recent bereavement and writing became a really healing process.
The music on this recording features ancient and mythological female characters: Boudicca, Dido and Ariadne amongst them. Joining them are Sappho, the earliest known female poet, and Barbara Strozzi, in her lifetime the most-published composer of secular music out of all her contemporaries. The programme on this recording is designed as a journey – a fascinatingly complicated, female-led voyage – but the intention is not to bludgeon the listener into travelling in a particular direction. On the contrary, the delicacy of the medium of voice and theorbo means that any colourful drama or polemic is tempered by an unusual sense that each listener’s response to both text and music is as unique as the presentation of ideas by the poets, composers and performers. The narrative is partly led by what remains unsung and unheard. And so, the middle movements of Battle Cry are central to the whole recording project itself: ‘Philomela in the forest’ is a commemoration of a woman whose ability to communicate was severely compromised by having her tongue cut out; and in ‘Sappho’ the theorbo remains silent while the voice sings alone. At three points elsewhere in the programme it is the theorbo that takes the solo spot. As Toby Carr says: I like the idea of between-course palate-cleansers in any concert, and the preludes that here introduce the John Eccles song and Strozzi’s ‘La travagliata’ allow the listener to warm up into the acoustics and the
sound of the theorbo. These gesturing, meandering preludes resonate in the modern world. The Sarabande is here also used as a prelude to Purcell’s ‘An Evening Hymn’, with which it shares a key and certain harmonic functions. These palate-cleansers allow a change of focus into the material that is to come.
Of the opening piece on this recording, Purcell’s song O lead me to some peaceful gloom (from his music for an adaptation of Fletcher’s play Bonduca), Toby Carr says: ‘This is the quintessential single song; even though it’s from a larger piece. It’s amazing how much Purcell puts into what is essentially two parts – melody and a bass line.’ Helen Charlston adds: ‘One of the things I was keen to avoid in the music that we programmed was that it should all be about hopelessness in lament. Boudicca is very strong in this song, even though the consequences are dire. At the outset you think this is going to be a standard lament, but it does fly off the page in a stronger way that you might expect.’ Of the next song, L’Eraclito amoroso (‘Heraclitus in Love’), Helen comments that ‘this is a good example of Strozzi’s style – a medium-length song that uses both stile rappresentativo [‘representative’ or ‘theatrical’ style] as well as aria-type music. Structurally, Owain Park’s “Marietta” feels so like this piece of music, but also harmonically too, not least because of the false relations.’ Of Restless in thought by John Eccles, Helen suggests that it is almost a ‘mad song’, a genre that these days we might re-brand as ‘bipolar’ – a particular