Aurore: In the Sweet Shade of the Forest – Nature’s Voice in Italian Madrigals

XII Aurore – Helsinki Renaissance Music Festival

In the Sweet Shade of the Forest – Nature’s Voice in Italian Madrigals

Friday’s concert brings us a rare treat: the exquisite combination of renaissance flute consort Intra Vires (FIN) with the viola da gamba and voice of Duo Accenti (UK). Featuring the eminent British soprano Hannah Ely the programme follows the footsteps of Italian madrigalists of the sixteenth century as they tried to give voice to nature. Lush melodies draw from the Mediterranean countryside replete with the scents of laurel and orange trees and the appeal of the wilder nature further to the north. Also included are songs from the pioneering English composer John Dowland bringing with them the strains of melancholy.

The programme explores elements of nature – the lush forest busy meadows teeming with life the calmness of the open sky. Renaissance artists often depicted an inner landscape enlivened by ‘affects’ – emotions – but sometimes even actual birdsong the textures of foliage and the gentle humming of forests appear within the polyphony. When the narrator’s gaze turns to this inward realm the whole spectrum of human experience is revealed circling through moods of melancholy and merriment rather like the turning of the seasons.  

Instrumental numbers surround and set a backdrop for the stories in the songs. The two ensembles use the versatile textures of their combined instrumental forces to bring out these varying landscapes and vividly recount a Renaissance courtly spectacle for the modern listener through their storytelling.

Small thickets with the scented laurel gay

Cedar and orange full of fruit and flower

Myrtle and palm with interwoven spray

Pleached in mixed modes all lovely form a bower;

And breaking with their shade the scorching ray

Make a cool shelter from the noontide hour.

And nightingales among those branches wing

Their flight and safely amorous descants sing.

(Ludovico Ariosto 1516 Orlando Furioso. Canto VI ottava 21)

SWEET SHADE OF THE FOREST

Fri 31st Jan

6.15 pm – Meet the artist and free coffee at St. Pauls parish hall

7.00 pm – Concert begins at St. Pauls church

Tickets 25/20 € festival pass 65/55 € from www.aurore.fi/liput

Read more: www.aurore.fi/english

Host or Publisher Sanni Antikainen