Painting Semele
Written by visual artist, Moira de la Hunty, whose Semele exhibition at Stala Contemporary Gallery will show concurrently with HIP Company’s Semele opera production in April 2024.
12 March, 2024.
As an oil painter, the ancient myth, Semele, provided immense inspiration upon which to base an exhibition.
This was even more exciting given the chance to collaborate with Baroque ensemble, HIP Company, as they prepare for their Australian premiere of John Eccles’ operatic setting of the same myth, using historical instruments and performance practices of the early 18th century.
Knowing the members of HIP Company intimately, I have enjoyed the process of working alongside each other in preparing for this project. We are similarly detail-oriented and enjoy immersing ourselves in careful planning and research behind our respective artforms. Many of the titles of my paintings pay homage to the opera itself.
Preparing for an exhibition involves many hours of quiet contemplation and work in the studio. During these months, I found myself often thinking about the young mortal woman, Semele, who is at first preparing for her unhappy marriage to Athamus, and then suddenly saved by her lover, Jupiter. She doesn’t truly know Jupiter, however: he is immortal, and cannot be revealed as his real self, because it would result in her death, as she is mortal. The emotions along the way are intense and gripping.
My paintings are based in traditional techniques, using layers of oil paint, and often in a tonal, figurative style. Elements could be considered to be of a modernised Baroque style of painting, in terms of their detail and subject matter.
Image of Moira de la Hunty by Partografia Photography and Film
In this exhibition, a series of silver spoon paintings suggest the preparation for the wedding but also represent Semele’s mortality. These are titled Acts I to III and demarcate different sections of the plot. Another series of still life paintings are of lilies. These appeared in Ancient Greek artwork by Minoan artists (3000 - 1100 BCE) who lived in the Cycladic islands of Greece and depicted lilies in landscape paintings and in jewellery. In later years, lilies became a symbol of purity and were used as a traditional wedding flower. Here I have used them as Semele prepares for her wedding, but their funereal connotations also create the sense of doom as it unfolds. Large skies, painted loosely, are at times joyous or foreboding. Other works suggest the death of Semele, the loss of this young woman and sense of despair and grief.
In casting a contemporary lens on the story, I invite the viewer to deeply consider Semele both in times of the Greek gods and the relevance of the story today, similarly to how HIP Company bring historical music to today’s audiences. Modern romantic relationships often develop on dating apps where physical appearance is the first thing known about a person, whereas in this story, that is the part that remains unknown. This series of paintings is inspired by human love, loss, death and despair, experienced just as much today as in ancient myths and opera.
The origin of Greek mythology was in oral storytelling, to explain natural phenomena such as thunder, skies and water. Over centuries myths have been documented and reinterpreted by artists of different genres, and it has been rewarding to create a visual interpretation of Semele alongside John Eccles’ musical interpretation and HIP Company’s performance, exploring how one might enhance the audience or viewer’s experience of the other.
Ah me! What refuge now is left me?
Moira de la Hunty, 2024 (oil on canvas, 120 x 100cm)
More information:
Moira de la Hunty’s Semele exhibition opens on 6th April, 4-6pm, at Stala Contemporary Gallery, and will be showing until 27th April.
HIP Company’s performance of John Eccles’ opera Semele, edited by Richard Platt, is on 14th April at 7pm at Leederville Town Hall, with tickets available below:
About Moira:
Moira de la Hunty is a visual artist, born in Northern Ireland, and now living and working in Western Australia. She is influenced by her background as a medical doctor and her observation of life and mortality, as well as an interest in fashion and facade. "Moira de la Hunty’s series of work … engages in a universal discourse on humanity’s impermanence and the fragility of existence.” (Paola Anselmi, Independent Curator, 2013).
Moira is an artist with an intense gaze on the world. Her paintings tell stories, with a narrative left open to interpretation. Moira enjoys portraying different moods and creates scenes which capture a moment in time, often with mystery and tension or wistful irony.
Moira is represented by Stala Contemporary art gallery.
Instagram: @moiradelahunty.
Paris via Berlin: Low pitch and the Quantz Flute in Orpheus
Written by Robin Hillier, Baroque flautist and Guest Artist for Orpheus
26th September, 2023.
I am very pleased to be joining Bonnie for the first time along with my long-term colleagues Sarah, Krista and James for the upcoming Orpheus program. We are all captivated by the same desire to explore the repertoire of the Baroque era on its own terms through HIPP (historically informed performance practice) and I am grateful to be invited to join them on their journey for this concert. I must apologise to our readers that we will not be personally exploring the line between life and death in a quest for absolute authenticity. We are HIP, not hapless! However, we will be exploring the deeper, darker depths of a lower pitch; in this case A=392 Hz or a full tone below modern pitch. Yes clarinet-playing readers, we are effectively joining you in Bb. Why? How? What the…? Let’s explore…
HIP and pitch
From the start of the Early Music movement, using a different pitch was part of the process of rediscovering old music through the conventions and instruments of the time. But… as in so many things, lofty aspirations quickly crashed forcefully into issues of “practicality”. The reality of pitch in the 18th century was that it varied across nations, regions and even within cities! Players in a city or royal court also often used both “kammerton”-chamber pitch and “chorton”-choir pitch, that were a half step apart. Players in the mid-20th century Early Music revival settled on A=415 Hz, which is an equal-tempered (the tuning used in the 20th century) half-step below the most common orchestra pitch of A=440. Some of the practical issues at play were that players couldn’t at first be expected to have different instruments for different composers or even music from different parts of one composer’s career. Also, players now moved all over the world to perform and teach, so a standard was more necessary than it was in the 18th century. Finally, keyboards could be used that shift 1 or 2 half steps to allow multiple pitches (often 440 and 415 at first). Sounds reasonable enough, right? A lot of music was originally played lower, but is there really that much difference in playing a half step or less apart?
The instrument of the Gods and low pitch… (yes, the flute of course!)
Let’s take my own instrument, the transverse flute, as an example. Without delving into physics, there are differences in how you design a flute depending on what pitch you want it to work best at. The surviving instruments show that makers understood this well in the 18th century. Lower flutes aren’t just longer, but wider in bore too and this affects the overall tone. In my experience, lower pitch flutes have a wider palette of tone colours between the bottom and top registers. The lower notes are rich, full and, with a wide bore, quite powerful. In the middle, it feels like there is less tension and more capacity to modulate the tone of notes. The upper register is sweet and has less of the piercing quality of higher flutes. This results in a flute that I find much more convincing in its vocal quality, which was so often the stated goal in 18th century music. These qualities will be on full display in the languishing Boismortier Affettuoso in our program. The contrast in registers also helps figures which leap between octaves sound much more effective.
Stewart Smith: Organ; Robin Hillier: Quantz flute by Jean-François Beaudin
I hear this quality in flutes from about A=400 and lower. Lower pitches also mean lower string tensions and sometimes thicker strings for my colleagues.
I asked Krista and Bonnie for their 2 cents on “How does 392 affect your experience of your instrument?” Krista commented:
My gamba is modelled on an instrument by Michel Colichon from 1691 so it’s very plausible to imagine it being played in much of the music on this programme, and certainly at 392 Hz. At this lower pitch, the gamba feels more resonant and responsive, which in turn makes me feel more comfortable as a player, and freer to enjoy this very special sound world.
Bonnie replied:
As a singer, I’m lucky that I don’t have to ‘tune’ my instrument differently to play in a different pitch. But in this kind of detailed music, singing a piece even slightly higher or lower gives my voice a different timbre (at A=392, deeper and warmer) and means negotiating my technique and ornaments differently. It’s very rewarding to try singing a piece in as close to the original pitch as possible, and physically experience what the singers of the time might have.
So, pitch makes a difference, both to instruments and voices and our experience of playing and singing. I should note, however, that the effect of pitch is multiplied and has even greater effect when combined with suitable instruments and baroque techniques of sound production and articulation.
Another “standard” Baroque pitch?
Looking at all the remaining Baroque flutes in museums and collections, we find the most common pitch is around 400 Hz. Specific instruments range from a bit below 390, up to around 415. While flutes exist from the 18th century that can play at 415, the convention in mid to late 18th century flutes was to have different middle joints that you could swap to adapt to all the pitch madness I described above. However, only one of these pitches could work best for tuning and tone and that one was rarely 415 in the Baroque. When early musicians came to further consider issues of appropriate pitch, they tried playing another semitone below 415 at A=392. There were flutes in this region from late 17th and early 18th century France and they were the first to be used to explore this lower pitch in the relevant repertoire.
What does Berlin have to do with any of this?
Berlin was the court of the at once famously militaristic and highly cultured king Frederick “The Great” of Prussia. He engaged the renowned flautist Johann Joachim Quantz as his personal flute teacher, performer, flute maker and composer for over 30 years. This made the musical taste and playing style of Quantz very influential. He had begun his professional career in Dresden, which famously set a high standard for performance and composition while hosting musicians such as Pisendel, Zelenka, Heinichen and one of the 18th Century’s most successful composers, J A Hasse. The violins were led by Volumier and the first flute was Buffardin, so French style was influential at court. Thanks to Quantz’s extensive treatise “On playing the Flute” we have access to his ideas on musical taste and flute playing. Quantz says that the low French pitch is best for woodwinds and his flutes, which were played in Berlin up to the early 1770s, have a large bore and play at their best a bit below 390 Hz. Further, Quantz describes his ideal flute sound as representing the contralto voice and if one follows his directions on playing and has access to a good copy of his flutes, the results are convincing.
A whistlestop tour down the rabbit hole.
Flute after J.J. Quantz by Jean-François Beaudin)
A large part of my baroque work since the pandemic has been trying to acquire a copy of a Quantz flute at its original very low pitch that allows me to learn from the instrument and better explore the techniques and performance practices described by Quantz. Quantz was the most famous writer and performer on the flute at the time, so it should be easy, right? Umm, no… All the Quantz flutes I tried in Europe had modified lengths, bores and tuning. I think this is kind of like a fashion designer saying “This summer, I want to release a copy of a 1960s mini skirt… except I don’t like it so short, those colours were too wild and actually culottes are more practical”. A lot of these changes were made due to the desire to… drum roll… play at the higher standardised pitch! So…3 years, multiple copies, hours of practice, note taking, experimentation, gigabytes of recording and in the end, I was lucky to connect with the Canadian maker (and also flute inventor!) Jean-Francois Beaudin. After a lot of productive correspondence, I received his Quantz flute copy early this year. The flute follows the originals closely and plays at 385, or with a special shorter joint, 392 Hz. Interestingly, the original flute has 5 middle joints for different pitches and number 5 maxes out at about 408 Hz, which is basically for emergencies only.
A Quantz flute in Paris…
My flute is perfect for Berlin and Dresden repertoire, and I continue to learn and grow with it in that context. (Contented sigh…) But a welcome bonus of all the work I have done with this flute is the discovery that it also works very well in the French repertoire I love dearly, and which will feature in much of the Orpheus concert programme. The rich vocal quality of the tone suits the Airs de Coeur as well as the some of the Suites and sonatas that balance the low register of the flute against the continuo. Of course, I would love to have a French flute to learn from, but would I choose one at the “between the cracks” pitch of A= 400 Hz that would likely drive my colleagues nuts (right Krista?), or try to get a copy of one of the very rare flutes originally around 392 that formed the inspiration for Quantz? With the Quantz flute there are a lot of flutes to copy, clear direction on how to play them and a maker who has been working on this model for almost 30 years.
Quantz’s two keys for D# and Eb which also allow many other enharmonic and extended fingerings.
…And Beyond Paris.
Quantz’s flute has excellent tuning and features unique separate keys for D# and Eb. This follows the Baroque practice of playing intervals closer to just intonation (yes, this is oversimplifying…email me if you wish to chat about the 55-part octave…) which results in delineating between sharps (lower) and flats (higher). Baroque tuning affords another layer of HIPP insight that can give “simple” melodies and harmonies an almost exotic quality to our modern ears. Listen particularly to the Telemann in e minor where the lower 7th adds an extra piquancy to this key (Mattheson: Pensive, profound, grieved and sad.)
Bringing it together
A lower pitch will allow you and us to experience the music of our Orpheus program in a timbre and sound world closer to that of the Baroque. From my perspective, my Quantz flute copy has the gorgeous tone and low pitch of early 18th century France (and the Paris opera to the end of the century!) for the Boismortier, Clérambault and Charpentier, the tuning system that Telemann ascribed to and the flexibility to play at what is now the low Baroque standard - 392 Hz… all while navigating keys from A and B major to c minor (footnote, this is a lot for an old flute!). I sincerely hope that all of this detailed work and consideration leads to that most HIP outcome of all: an enjoyable and moving musical experience.
Robin will join us in concert, Orpheus, on 14th October 2023. Click below to book tickets:
Celtic Baroque
Written by Stewart Smith, HIP Company associate artist, historical keyboard player, and artistic consultant.
14th April, 2023.
Whilst we, quite understandably, tend to associate the Baroque with Europe, intrepid historians and performers are happily now looking further afield. We know a lot about German, French and Italian Baroque music, but what about Portugal, Mexico, Bolivia or the Scandinavian lands, what is their Baroque music like? In this spirit of enquiry and aided by the fact that three of the performers have Scottish or Irish roots, HIP Company doing a Celtic Baroque programme seems like a natural fit. I know a fair bit about the Scottish side of things — including music by James Oswald, William McGibbon and others — but I’m looking forward to working with, and learning from, my colleagues again, Krista, Sarah, Bonnie, Andy and Jet. Krista, Sarah and Andy are always inspiring, Jet is a marvel at making something out of nothing (all his music is improvised) and hearing Bonnie deliver an Irish song is a true masterclass in phrasing and rhetorical pacing.
I’m writing this just before our first rehearsal. All the preparatory work has been done, including initial sessions with Krista and Bonnie to select material (where we seemed to come up with enough material for a week-long festival!). Bonnie and I have also been busy making editions and arrangements. But deliberately, we are also leaving many things to chance as the improvisatory component of Baroque music is an essential part of its special charm. The best traditional Celtic players of course didn’t read, or indeed need, music, which is as true today as it was in the Seventeenth or Eighteen centuries. Many Classical musicians today are, by nature and training, so terribly score-bound, but we are looking forward to taking a different path. The five of us had great fun playing a French Baroque programme last year, a true a true labour of love, and are all excited to pick up where we left off. Expect something different with Celtic Baroque. Have you ever heard a Maggot? We will be offering one by Mr Dubourgh, an Irishman. Other exotic delights include a trio sonata by James Oswald based on Scots tunes, and a new arrangement of the original haunting tune to Auld Lang Syne.
The Celts have something special to offer, and to this end we warmly invite you to our concert this week in Fremantle.
Click the button below for information about HIP Company’s concert, ‘Celtic Baroque’, on 20th April.
Baroque Abroad: The Netherlands
Written by Sarah Papadopoulos, HIP Company co-director and violinist.
8th March, 2023.
In June 2020 I was lucky enough to be offered a place as a Samama fellow with Holland Baroque. That’s right, 2020. The year no one could travel. So as you can imagine, I am thrilled to report I was finally able to journey over to the Netherlands in November 2022 and February 2023, to take part in various projects with the ensemble.
As I write this, I am sitting at my kitchen table in Amsterdam, reflecting on what a beautiful experience it has been. My time with Holland Baroque began in November last year at De Hallen Studios to perform a few short pieces for the TV program, Podium Klassiek. This TV program is like nothing I have ever experienced before. It is completely dedicated to showcasing various musical groups from a range of different genres, interviews with musicians and interactions with a live studio audience… Incredible! Holland Baroque were featuring in an episode to promote and discuss an upcoming performance at the TivoliVredenburg Concert Hall as a part of the Utrecht 900 festival. The concert was a huge collaboration involving Holland Baroque, the Netherlands Bach Society, the Dutch Chamber Choir, Utrecht Cathedral Choir School, and the Suriname Cathedral Choir School (who flew over from Suriname for the event!) to perform songs of Sint Maarten (the patron saint of Utrecht since the 7th century), and Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum and Utrecht Te Jubilate, to celebrate 900 years of city rights for Utrecht. The concert was conducted by Philipp Ahmann and the arrangements of the Sint Maarten songs by Erik van der Horst, Tinneke Steenbrink and Judith Steenbrink. Being a part of something that large and meaningful in such a culturally rich city was an unbelievable experience for me, especially having not being allowed to travel for such a long time. I felt so privileged to share the stage with such incredible musicians, and even better knowing that I would be back at the end of January to continue the experience in another form.
Den Haag, November 2022
Fast forward two and half months, and I was flying out of a scorching 39° in Perth and touching down somewhere around the 0° mark at Schiphol Airport. A shock to the system to say the least, and I thank my lucky stars everyday that Uniqlo thermals exist. From there I hit the ground running (or should I say cycling?), starting rehearsals they the next day in Utrecht for two programs with Holland Baroque that were to run concurrently: ‘Bach and Eisler’, and ‘Bach’s Königin’.
The ‘Bach and Eisler’ program included songs from Hanns Eisler (setting Bertolt Brecht’s words to music) that displayed his search for the meaning(lessness) of existence, and some well known J.S. Bach works such as Iche habe genung (a cantata HIP Company performed in our 2021 ‘Bach Together Again’ concert), which also explores themes of meaning and being content with life - here sung by the incredible Thomas Oliemans. ‘Bach’s Königin’ showcased some of J.S. Bach’s incredible organ works arranged for string orchestra by Holland Baroque’s brilliant artistic team, Judith and Tinneke Steenbrink. It was so interesting to be immersed in the middle of the ensemble for this program and hear the various lines emerge from each section, allowing for a new perspective on this beautiful music.
Photos by Jan Photograaf for Holland Baroque: ‘Bach and Eisler’ in Concert
Concerts were held all over the Netherlands; Leeuwarden, Utrecht, Zwolle, Enschede, Arnhem, Heerlen, Amsterdam, Den Haag, and Haarlem. I felt that this was such an incredible way for me to experience the entire country, seeing snapshots into each of the cities and towns, the countryside during the train journeys, and the remarkable churches and concert halls I was lucky enough to perform in. The tour went by far too quickly and I before I knew it I was saying goodbye to friends I had made in the orchestra who were returning to their homes in other parts of Europe, and feeling incredibly lucky to have met them all.
From here onwards my trip is filled with some travel, performances of J.S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion, Mozart’s Requiem and Haydn’s Missa Celensis with the Northern Consort, and lots of playing for various Early Music icons I have only ever dreamt of meeting.
I’ll be back in Perth in April to perform with HIP Company in our first concert of the year - stay tuned for an announcement very soon!
Honestly, not a bad start to 2023!
Amsterdam, February 2023
Lessons from a Luthier: Historically Informed Construction
Written by Andrew Tait, Perth-based luthier, double bass and violone player, and guest performer for Christmas with HIP Company 2022. Andrew explains the process of creating a new viola da gamba for HIP Company’s Krista Low, which will receive its first public outing this Christmas, and the importance of what he terms ‘Historically Informed Construction’ of instruments for ‘Historically Informed Performance’ practice.
21st November 2022.
The viol is a 6 or 7 stringed fretted instrument with a flat back, and deep ribs which developed from the Lute, thus it is tuned in a similar way (in fourths with a third separating two of the middle strings). By contrast, members of the violin family have no frets, they have a swell back, and the four strings are tuned in fifths.
The Bass Viol is often called a Viola da Gamba, as in Italian this describes the way the instrument is held between the legs (‘Gamba’ meaning ‘leg; in Italian).
Though the viol and violin family developed at roughly the same time, in the 14th and 15th century, the viol family was considered a more refined, sociable instrument, and many households owned a “Chest of Viols” to be played in Consort.
A chest of viols
A family of viols in Andrew’s workshop
The early violin, being a louder, coarse instrument, was principally played by itinerant travelling musicians who busked on the streets. The height of popularity of the Viol family was during the 16th and 17th centuries. By the 18th century the violin family had eclipsed the viol family with only the bass viol surviving well in to the 18th century in France .
In fact the only true member of the viol family that still survives today is the Double Bass which shares more in common with the viol family than the violin family.... Being tuned in fourths, most commonly has a flat back with deep ribs and internal spars to support the back and a popular shape called the “Viol” shape is still common (as opposed to “violin corners”) today.
The English viol was the most sort after make in its day as the Italian violins are today.
Krista’s Viola da Gamba is a copy of a Famous French instrument that was made in Paris in 1691 by Michel Colichon with its pirate head and unique design painted onto the belly of the instrument just below the fingerboard.
What made the English viols so popular was the distinctive sound: a product of the construction techniques used, which Colichon adopted after having travelled to London. Their tops were bent over a hot iron (which is often still visible inside the old instruments, as the process left scorch marks on the wood).
Bent tops were made from 5 or 7 pieces of timber to accommodate the bending process and they were joined on the angle (in a similar way to a Roman arched wall) to support the arch of the belly. In this way, the tops could be much thinner, as the wood fibres were in tact along their length, not like a carved top which cuts across the grain and so needs to be thicker to support the arch.
This produces quite a different sound which is slightly more nasal, somewhat similar to the instruments of the middle east, from where the lute is said to have originated, travelling to Europe through Spain and Italy.
Portrait of Marin Marais, 1704 (Musée de la musique, Paris), courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Marin Marais (1656-1728), a French composer, holds his large, 7-stringed viola da gamba. Marais owned a Colichon gamba.
You will notice that Krista’s Viol sounds very different from a cello as I faithfully followed the “Historically Informed Construction” process... is HIC an acronym? It seems appropriate for HIP Company to be playing on HIC instruments!
Work in progress: Andrew’s new viola da gamba for Krista
Scorch marks on the interior of a viola da gamba
Colichon’s distinctive design on the instrument’s belly.
In that vein, it is a good opportunity to discuss the instrument that I will be performing on.
Know by many names including a “G” Violone, a German Bass, a Great Bass Viol, The Great Dooble Bass or simply Violone, depending on where and when the instrument is being referenced. The original was made by Giovanni Paolo Maggini in Brescia (1580-1632), who incidentally died of the plague. It now resides in the Horniman Museum in London after being donated by Jess Dolmetsch.
My copy was made for my teacher, John Gray (who was a founding member of the Academy of St Martin-in-the-fields), in 1970 by Colin Irving. At the time Colin was working for Arnold Dolmetsch and had the original on the bench to copy, so, apart from the colour of the varnish it is a very faithful copy, down to the selection of similar timber.
I am lucky enough to have several recordings of my teacher playing my Violone with the Academy. My favourite is Bach’s The Art of The Fugue. I studied the Violone with John while I was a student of his at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in the 1980s, so I was greatly honoured when I received a phone call from John in London in 2000 saying “Andrew, if you still want that Violone then you’d better hop on the next plane... there’s a lot of people interested in it!”
John Gray recording The Art of the Fugue with the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Andrew with the original Maggini bass in London, 2000.
Click the button below for information about our concert, ‘Christmas with HIP Company’, on 22nd December 2022.
The Harpsichord Demystified
Written by James Huntingford, historical keyboardist and HIP Company associate artist.
19 July 2022.
Looks a bit like a piano, sounds not really like a piano...what's up with the harpsichord? Even for seasoned baroque music concert goers, the harpsichord's role can seem perplexing. Violins and cellos, although fitted with gut strings, still appear to perform similar roles to those in the modern orchestra, and are familiar enough. The harpsichord, on the other hand, can be quite elusive. Part of the issue is that the lens through which many people make sense of it is 'old version of a piano'. This lens presents significant problems, however. The harpsichord was never designed to be an antiquated version of a piano any more than a bicycle was designed and crafted to be a primitive steam engine – they're different beasts that do different things. To be sure, there exists crossover between the harpsichord and the piano as regards their function and repertoire, especially in relation to eighteenth century music. But let's be honest, the harpsichord in a typical baroque concert setting doesn't leave a remotely similar impression to a piano in a piano quartet or recital. The harpsichord is just doing something different! So how do we make sense of it?
What I would like to offer is one alternative lens through which to view the harpsichord, in order to have, I hope, a greatly enriched experience of it in the concert setting. The reason I am proposing a lens is because I have found that an incorrect lens can often be the thing that hinders us from being enriched by or making sense of something. I'll give an example. Say you went to a movie and were incorrectly informed by a friend that it would be 90 minutes in duration, but it ends up being a three hour marathon. Chances are that from around the 90 minute mark, your whole experience of the movie would begin to become significantly compromised because you had been interpreting things through the lens of 'any moment now everything's suddenly going to get resolved', and nothing is going the way you are expecting it to. To give another example, say you are attending a symphony orchestra concert consisting primarily of late-romantic Russian repertoire (think Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich etc.), but in the middle of the program there is a divertimento by Mozart. Chances are that you will view Mozart's work through the lens of harmonic complexity, dense orchestration and granite-like emotional heaviness, and judge it as having fallen woefully short on all counts. The problem here is that what Mozart was concerned with expressing way back in Vienna in 1782 and what you are expecting are miles apart because of the lens. My point hopefully established, let's find a good lens for making sense of and enjoying the harpsichord.
Except for cases where the harpsichord is playing solo or a principal part (e.g. a harpsichord concerto), the mainstay of the harpsichord is in providing accompanimental, complementary textures and, where necessary, rhythmic impetus to the ensemble. The harpsichord usually works in tandem with the cello and other bass-type instruments in the section of the orchestra known as the 'continuo', or as I prefer to call it, the engine room. The lens I often find helpful is that of a tree. The cello (and other bass instruments if present) represent the trunk. The trunk provides a warm, embracing, foundational sound. The harpsichord, on the other hand, represents the branches. They spread out from the trunk, some thin, some thick, and with leaves attached. The shape, size, direction, spread and colour of the branches is always proportional to the character of the trunk. The two go together! Spend time looking through the branches of a large oak tree, especially with the light behind it, and you may better understand how the harpsichord functions texturally to create light and shade. It of course doesn't have the fundamental-heavy sound of a concert grand piano, but it was never intended to. Keyboardists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had pipe organs for that. The harpsichord, on the other hand, knits the ensemble together like a spider and her web. The slender silver thread shines different hues in different lights, so the experience can be mystifying. If the harpsichord remains mysterious only in this sense (and not the other), then my work here is done!
Photo by Artshoot Media: James at the harpsichord in our May 2022 concert, ‘Chinoiserie’.
Hear James at the harpsichord throughout our album, Pastorales, in pieces like this one:
James will join us next in Let Us Dance on 27th August 2022. Click below to book tickets:
Orient/Occident: Baroque Excursions in the Qing Dynasty
Written by Krista Low, HIP Company cellist and co-director.
12th May 2022.
Music has always had the power to transport the listener to faraway lands. In 18th century Europe, 300 years after the closure of the Silk Routes and at the peak of Western colonial ambition, the tantalising ‘Orient’ was a source of fascination for artists, musicians, and their audiences. ‘Chinoiserie’ with its elaborate pagodas and fantastic beasts drawn mostly from the artisan’s imagination in an approximation of East Asian culture, had reached its zenith.
Exoticized representations of non-European cultures and people in Baroque music was therefore common, and rarely were such cultures authentically referenced. The final act of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, introduces a ‘Chinese Man and Woman’ with a distinctly French chaconne as ornaments to a wedding celebration, and Francois Couperin’s fashionably titled keyboard miniature Les Chinois contains no discernible references to Chinese music whatsoever. Italian opera of the period also commonly appropriated ‘exotic’ locations; in the case of Metastasio’s two libretti, L'Eroe Cinese (The Chinese Hero) and Le Cinesi (The Chinese Ladies), the Chinese setting facilitates commentary on European society itself, rather than any meaningful attempt to engage with a foreign culture. Similarly, Handel’s Orlando sees the titular hero pursue Angelica, the Queen of Cathay (northern China), whose foreignness is made implicit by her magical powers.
However, for numerous European missionaries during the Baroque period, China was not a mythical place, but a living centre of fascinating cultural exchange that was arguably mutually beneficial. Political, and philosophical attitudes of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties were receptive to incorporating foreign influences, including art, music, and religion, according to the needs of the country. The giving of gifts, including musical instruments, was one way to gain favour with the emperor. In fact, it was partly the presentation of clavichord by Matteo Ricci in 1601 that cemented the Jesuit’s ability to establish their outpost in the imperial court.
Western keyboard instruments became part of musical life in Beijing thereafter, and over a century after Ricci’s gift, Teodorico Pedrini, an Italian priest and musician, was appointed to the imperial court in 1711, specifically for his ability to tune and play the emperors many harpsichords. It was during this time that he wrote a set of twelve violin sonatas in the Italian style, the only Western Baroque music to be composed in China during that time, which were likely intended as pedagogical works for Emperor Kangxi's own sons. His output also crucially included completing the work of his predecessor, Tomas Pereira, on the first treatise of Western music theory written entirely in Chinese.
Interest in Western music had waned in China by the time Joseph-Marie Amiot was invited to court in 1750. However, like Pedrini, he leaves a legacy of important literature that contributes to an understanding of Chinese and European musical interactions, including his Mémoires sur la musique des Chinois tant anciens que modernes (‘Memoirs of Chinese music, both ancient and modern’, 1776) which was widely read in France. He was also one of several French missionaries to transcribe Chinese traditional melodies for a Western audience from the Chinese gongche notation, compiled into three volumes of Divertissements chinois. The dissemination of such literature even had lasting effects on the Western canon – the Chinese melody Liuye jin in Amiot’s third book was first transcribed by another missionary, Jean-Baptiste Du Halde in his 1735 account of his experience of Chinese culture. It was used subsequently in works by Carl Maria von Weber and Paul Hindemith, and Eugene Goosens.
Our upcoming concert ‘Chinoiserie’ sheds light on the work of Pedrini and Amiot, the traditional Chinese music in which they were immersed, as well as representations of Chinese culture by their Europe-based contemporaries. We are also thrilled to welcome Teresa Tan (guzheng) and Stella Huang (yangqin), two of Perth’s leading exponents of traditional Chinese music, to share with us their cultural knowledge and expertise. We can, and should, appreciate works like Orlando and The Fairy Queen with the awareness of an audience privileged to live amongst a myriad of cultures that make up the fabric of our society. It is often too easy to fall into the patterns of our forebears and imagine a convenient dichotomy of the East and West, Orient and Occident; and that across that divide are traditions and people vastly different to our own. However, the impulse to connect and learn from each other despite distance, geographical and otherwise, is ancient and exceptionally human, and never has it been easier to answer than in this present age of information and globalisation.
Click the button below for information about HIP Company’s concert, ‘Chinoiserie’, on 28th May.
Bibliography:
Lindorff, Joyce. “Missionaries, keyboards and musical exchange in the Ming and Qing courts” Early Music 32, no. 3 (2004): 403-414, http://muse.jhu.edu
Locke, Ralph P. “Alien Adventures: Exoticism in Italian-Language Baroque Opera” The Musical Times 150, no. 1909 (2009): 53-69, http://jstor.org
Yang, Hon-Lun. “Music, China and the West: A Musical Theoretical Introduction” in China and the West: Music, Representation and Reception, edited by Hon-Lun Yang & Michael Suffle, 1-17, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2017
Picard, François. “Amiot, Les divertissements chinois” Dissertation: Sorbonne Université, 2012, 1-35. http://researchgate.net
Chen, Jen- Yen. “Maria-Therese and the ‘Chinese’ Voicing of Imperial Self: The Austrian Contexts of Metastasio’s China Opera’s” Eighteenth-Century Music 13, no. 1 (2016): 11-34, http://cambridge.org
Mad About Bedlam
Written by Bonnie de la Hunty
24th March, 2022.
Bedlam is a word that has become synonymous with madness, confusion and chaos, but its origins are as a nickname for London’s ‘Bethlem Royal Hospital’. While Bethlem today operates as a reputed psychiatric hospital and major centre for research, its notorious history has been the subject of art and literature for centuries, including several modern horror books, films and TV series.
Robert Hooke: The Hospital of Bethlem [Bedlam] at Moorfields, London: seen from the north, with people walking in the foreground. Engraving, ca. 1750. Wellcome Library.
The History of Bethlem
Founded in 1247 as a priory dedicated to St Mary of Bethlehem, Bethlem began to be used to house the poor in the 14th century, becoming a “hospital” in the medieval sense of the word: an institution funded by charity or taxes that cared for the needy. Throughout the 15th century, Bethlehem began and then came to specialise in housing the insane, with difficult patients colloquially termed ‘stark Bedlam mad’, and poor people who pretended to be ‘lunatics’ to avoid being sent to a prison or workhouse, as ‘Tom o’Bedlams’ (MacDonald, 1981, p 122).
In 1634, Bethlem adopted a medical regime for the first time, run by a physician, visiting surgeon and an apothecary (Andrews et al., 1997, p 4), although medical ‘treatments’ mainly revolved around using physical restraint and force to control and teach good behaviour. In 1676, expansion of the hospital necessitated its rebuilding in Moorfields. The new building was designed to promote an image of grandeur and opulence to outside visitors and potential donors, since donations were relied upon (as hospitals were not yet funded by the state). The engraving below shows the statues of ‘Melancholia’ and ‘Raving Madness’ on the gates of the new hospital, thought to be the two sides of mental illness..
Camus Gabriel Cibber: A Representation of the Capital Figures of Bethlem Hospital Gate. Engraving, 1680. Wellcome Library.
It was thought that visiting to observe the phenomenon of insanity would allow one to avoid insanity oneself, but the reality is that most people were there for entertainment. Bethlem joined the London tourist trail including the Zoo, the Tower, London Bridge and Whitehall, and like those sites, crowds were biggest during holiday periods. Unfortunately, patients were not only scrutinised by the visitors, but poked with sticks, taunted, and at times physically or sexually abused. (Allderidge, 1985, p 28).
A letter from César de Saussure contains this account of his visit in 1725: “... you find yourself in a long and wide gallery, on either side of which are a large number of little cells where lunatics of every description are shut up, and you can get a sight of these poor creatures, little windows being let into the doors. Many inoffensive madmen walk in the big gallery. On the second floor is a corridor and cells like those on the first floor, and this is the part reserved for dangerous maniacs, most of them being chained and terrible to behold. On holidays numerous persons of both sexes, but belonging generally to the lower classes, visit this hospital and amuse themselves watching these unfortunate wretches, who often give them cause for laughter. On leaving this melancholy abode, you are expected by the porter to give him a penny but if you happen to have no change and give him a silver coin, he will keep the whole sum and return you nothing.” (Murray, 1902, p 92-93).
It’s worth noting that many of the patients deemed insane at this time, would not be today: the romantic portrayal of the patients in the below excerpts from ‘A Visit to Bedlam: A Vision’ in Weekly Miscellany (Goadby, R., 1774, pp 257-258), makes one question if their ‘madness’, or so-called ‘distraction’, were simply normal emotional reactions.
Bedlam in the Arts
During this same era, tales of madness, gruesome crimes of passion, and the horrors of Bedlam itself pervaded literature, theatre, visual art and music. In early 17th century Jacobean ballads and dramas like Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth, conflict often centred around which characters were mad or sane, and how easy it was to slip between the two. William Hogwarth’s 1735 play, The Rake’s Progress, is the story of a rich merchant’s son, Tom Rakewell, whose immoral living causes him to end up in Bethlem. The engraving below depicts a head-shaven and almost-naked Rakewell in one of the galleries in Bethlem.
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Thomas Cook, Scene at Bedlam from The Rake's Progress by Hogarth. Engraving, 1797. Wellcome Library.
Composers of mid-17th century Restoration England such as Henry Purcell and John Eccles (whose works we will perform in our concert, Bedlam), popularised a style of song that became a genre in itself, ‘mad songs’. In these, the drama is heightened and the ‘madness’ exaggerated, in order to capitalise on the public’s interest in insanity at the time. Sudden and unconventional changes in tempi, style, pitch, and daring harmonies, portray the character as unhinged, and make for incredibly engaging and interesting music. A famous example is Purcell’s ‘Bess of Bedlam’, which is based on the poem, ‘Mad Maudlin’, which was written in reply to another, ‘Tom of Bedlam’, and narrates the story of “Poor senseless Bess, cloth’d in her rags and folly, [Is] come to cure her lovesick melancholy.” ‘Lovesickness’ causing madness is a recurring theme, and women tend to be overrepresented among the highly emotional characters.
So, how do we give a ‘historically informed’ concert of this music through a 21st century lens?
In historically informed performance practice, we use contextual research to try to understand the composer’s intentions and how their work was to be received by the audience. When performed to a modern audience, the themes will be received differently, but the same emotions and the same human connection are possible. I wrote a bit about this in my first post on this blog, ‘What does it mean to be HIP?’
The music we’ll perform in our 9th April HIP Company concert, Bedlam, is colourful, varied and exciting. The interest in madness in the Baroque era incited passionate expression in writers and composers, as they explored extremes of human emotion and embraced erratic thought patterns. It’s great fun to perform as Purcell’s erratic ‘Bess of Bedlam’, with its rapidly changing sections. Several of the instrumental pieces are examples of the hundreds based on a famous descending bassline pattern known as La Follia (‘madness’), which makes them addictively catchy to perform and listen to. We can all relate to this music in some way, because we’re all probably a little more ‘mad’ than we let on.
However, we also want to interrogate the link that has been drawn between mental healthcare and ‘madness’ throughout history, in acknowledgement of the privilege of modern education about mental health. It is now widely understood that mental illness, while affecting many, is not simply madness - it is more nuanced, varied, and serious, not a source of entertainment.
We are also reminded how much and how rapidly new knowledge can result in a paradigm shift, and therefore how much we need to keep asking questions and being open to new information. Undoubtedly we have a long way to go in changing attitudes towards mental health in today’s society, and we hope that shining light on some of this history can contribute in some small way to a world where we talk about it more and more freely.
Click the button below for information about HIP Company’s concert, ‘Bedlam’, on 9th April.
Bibliography
Allderidge, P. (1985). Bedlam: Fact or Fantasy? The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry. Vol. 2. Tavistock Publications. 17-34.
Andrews, J., Briggs, A., Porter, R., Tucker, P., & Waddington, K. (1998). The History of Bethlem (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315002149.
Cibber, C. (1680). A Representation of the Capital Figures of Bethlehem Hospital Gate. [Engraving]. Wellcome Library. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/xtfbv4un.
Cook, T. (1797). Hogarth’s the The Rake's Progress; scene at Bedlam. [Engraving]. Wellcome Library. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hfrudd44
de Saussure, C. (b. 1705). A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I & II: and the Letters of Monsieur César de Saussure to his Family. Ed. And trans. Van Mukden, M. John Murray, 1902.
Goadby, R. (1774). A Visit to Bedlam: A Vision. Weekly Miscellany: or, Instructive entertainer, Vol. 3, Iss. 63 (Dec 12, 1774), pp 257-259.
Hooke, R. (Ca. 1674). The Hospital of Bethlem [Bedlam] at Moorfields, London: seen from the north, with people walking in the foreground. [Engraving]. Wellcome Library. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/qzm69bk8.
MacDonald, M. (1981). Mystical Bedlam: Anxiety and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England. Cambridge University Press.
Ruggeri, A. (2016). BBC. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161213-how-bedlam-became-a-palace-for-lunatics.
Whittaker, D. (1947). The 700th Anniversary of Bethlem. Journal of Mental Science, 93(393), 740-747.doi:10.1192/bjp.93.393.740.
Back to Nature: Our Pastorales Journey
Written by Sarah Papadopoulos, HIP Company violinist and co-director
21st November, 2021.
In August of this year, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be a part of HIP Company’s first album, Pastorales: Arias for the Open Air, together with cellist Krista Low, soprano Bonnie de la Hunty, and harpsichordist James Huntingford. To record a carefully curated programme of some of my all time favourite repertoire alongside great friends is nothing short of a dream come true.
For us directors (Bonnie, Krista, and myself), and our CEO, Luke, the Pastorales process began many months ago with the administrative preparation. After finding out we had been awarded an Australia Council grant for the project at the end of last year, the early months of 2021 were spent programming, licensing, scheduling rehearsals and recordings, doing photoshoots and consulting with our amazing photographer and graphic designer Nick FitzPatrick about the album art, harpsichord moving, scheduling harpsichord tuning time, harpsichord this, harpsichord that. The harpsichord is a tricky beast at times (but absolutely worth the faff) if you haven’t caught my drift. By the time August rolled around, we were so ready to jump into the studio and see our excel spreadsheets come to life.
For me, the musical preparation process was exactly what I was after for my own musical journey. Preparing for something as permanent as a recording is incredibly motivating and really made me listen more critically to myself in my own private practice. Two of the pieces in our album; bird, songs, seas by Chris Williams, and From Nourlangie by Peter Sculthorpe (where I feature on the viola!), were a particularly exciting opportunity to adapt and play modern Australian repertoire on gut strings. For the Williams piece, there was a small scare when I realised I wasn’t certain my fingerboard was even long enough for the top A! It’s okay though, we made it with about a centimetre to spare.
We recorded for a jam-packed week in August at Sundown Studios. A huge shout out to Sound Engineer Elliot Smith for his incredible artistry throughout this time and the following weeks of editing and mixing, and to Masterer George Georgiadis for adding the final layer of polish!
With the recordings complete, it was time to start preparing for the next stage of the Pastorales journey - our music videos! For this, we had the incredible Dylan Woods from Partografia Photography and Film accompany Bonnie, Krista and I on a few filming trips around regional Western Australia. Our first filming location was a day trip to John Forrest National Park, followed by stints further afield in the Pinnacles, Moora, Pemberton, and Yallingup. From memorising our music and colour coordinating our outfits to dealing with the winds of the South West, we overcame all of the challenges three musicians (plus an incredibly outdoor savvy videographer) in the wilderness could expect to come across, and shared many enjoyable days together discussing and curating (and wining and dining in our spare time).
And now for the last stage of our Pastorales journey - the album launch concert! On 4th December at 7:30pm at Christ Church Claremont, HIP Company will present a selection of pieces from our album, as well as a few Christmas favourites to prepare everyone for the upcoming festive season. It has been such a privilege and joy to prepare these works alongside such beautiful people. I’ve discovered a lot about the repertoire as well as about my own playing and interpretations. I so hope you can come along to share and celebrate!
Click the button below for more details about the album, and to purchase your CD.
Baroque Abroad: Hello from America
Written by Michael Lukin, conductor and historical keyboardist, a HIP Company associate artist currently based in USA, next performing with us by video for Bach Together Again.
7th August, 2021.
COVID; 2020; live music; USA – not exactly a combination made in heaven. Upon leaving Perth, WA on September 30th last year, it was impossible to predict the world into which I was arriving.
My Master of Music in conducting at Yale University really began in the loungeroom of my family home in Claremont in early September 2020. It initially consisted of me conducting an octet of friends with my teacher David Hill observing (as best he could) and offering guidance over Zoom from his home office in the UK. It was the beginning of a steep learning curve as musicians all over the world grappled with the machinations of this new medium of communication.
In my mind, conducting has truly been the most difficult “instrument” to study during COVID because it necessarily relies on real-time interaction between performers and a director. Though useful, there is only so much to be gained from conducting pre-recorded music in one’s bedroom. My first musical experience in America was not particularly promising – eight singers sight-reading double choir music in a quadrangle, outside, twelve feet apart from each other, wearing masks. Not exactly the ideal way to start… Fortunately, it got better from there!
There are many silver linings to take away from my first year at Yale. As a result of COVID, individual conducting lessons involved the student waving their arms in front of an accompanist playing full score reductions in a practice room while the teacher observed through a combination of cameras and microphones setup via Zoom. Once one adapted to the fact that there was a two second lag on any given call, Zoom proved itself to be a surprisingly useful medium of instruction. Conducting into a camera means that every element of gesture is quite clearly observable and, moreover, one can record the entire lesson, enabling the possibility of reviewing footage at any point after the event and analysing what needs to be improved.
My podium opportunities substantially improved after the first week, moving indoors and adding an organ to the mix of singers. Weekly rehearsals were videoed and the footage analysed with student and teacher together in the next lesson, providing sequential opportunities for improvement and new tricks to employ in the following rehearsal. Having conducted a performance of Rejoice in the Lamb by Benjamin Britten at the end of first semester, I concluded my formal conducting assessments with a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms” accompanied by organ, harp, and percussion.
To reflect upon another silver lining, in an ironic sort of way, I think COVID has found ways to bring people together and make the world a little smaller in spite of our physical separation from one another. Our regular virtual rehearsals and meetings this past year enabled us to connect with and learn from some of the most distinguished directors, performers, and composers in the business. It was particularly exciting for me be in a (virtual) room with Masaaki Suzuki (of Bach Collegium Japan), Simon Halsey, Roderick Williams, and Caroline Shaw, to name but a few – opportunities I almost certainly would not have had were we in a “normal” year.
HIPsters back home will be relieved to hear that I have managed to keep up my continuing education of early music, albeit on a less regular basis than were I to still be in Perth with my fabulous colleagues Bonnie, Sarah, Krista (and Co.). Having taken a unit in first semester entitled “Performance Practice Before 1750”, I was able to put this knowledge to good use recording Bach’s second French Suite (more Bach!) for the final assessment and then performing continuo in a fellow student conductor’s recital, consisting of a programme of works by Handel and Bologne.
Moving forward, the 2021-22 academic year promises to be more exciting than the last at Yale. Rising vaccination numbers have resulted in a lessening of social distancing restrictions at the university, allowing for a substantial increase in the number and variety of performing opportunities. I am particularly looking forward to commencing the position of Director of Music at Yale’s Battell Chapel in the coming academic year, as well as the resumption of Schola Cantorum (Yale’s premier choir) which has not met in person since March 2019!
As I write this blog, I am about to fly back into New York City where I will be staying for the week before heading back up to Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. I have strict instructions to record the harpsichord part for Bach’s “Ich Habe Genug” before the end of the month, so I should probably finish this blog and get back to a (tuned) keyboard... On a final note, it is comforting to realise that this artform we enjoy so much continually evolves to find ways of connecting people despite all the barriers life throws at us. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing the final product of this “Bach Together Again” project and cherish the opportunity to collaborate with friends, though very far apart, “together”.
About Michael:
An accomplished keyboardist, Michael Lukin is currently studying a Master of Music in Conducting at Yale University in the USA, as a Postgraduate Fulbright Scholar. Michael holds an AMusA in piano performance, and an AMusA and LMusA in organ performance from the Australian Music Examinations Board, winning the A. J. Leckie Memorial Award for the best diploma candidate in WA in 2015. Having served as the Assistant Organist of St George’s Cathedral from 2016-2019, Michael graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in 2019 with a Bachelor of Music with first-class honours where he specialised in historical keyboard performance with Stewart Smith and Geoffrey Lancaster.
The Dance Epidemic - and other stories of the historical tambourine
Written by Jet Kye Chong, historical percussion specialist, composer and researcher, and guest artist for HIP Company concert, Let Us Dance.
13 April, 2021.
“Yeah, I’ve got a gig tonight.”
“Ah, you’re a musician? Cool, what are you playing?”
“Tambourine….”
“Uhh…”
“...influenced by traditional Italian regional styles and rhythmic practice of the late Renaissance into the Baroque.”
Despite me having killed more than one conversation this way, a historical lens on percussion opens a delightful world of music, culture and character for those with the curiosity and patience to explore. Unbeknownst to the layperson today, and even surprising to many musicians, the history of some humble Western percussion represents music as lived and breathed by the toiling European commoner and the royalty of the warring kings and sultans alike. Depending on who you were, the sound of the drums could represent dance or death.
Today I’ll tell but a tiny glimpse of the story of the Western tambourine.
The tambourine holds an ancient history, but its life in Renaissance Spain belonged largely to the working class. Historical writing refers to its use in accompanying frenzied and raunchy dances among the common folk - dances like the chacona and zarabanda, which later transformed into the elegant chaconne and sarabande of Bach and beyond. However at the time, such licentious behaviour was met with strong condemnation from the Church, and despite attempts to ban such dancing on the grounds of “irredeemably infectious lasciviousness”, the dance craze proved too viral to be contained.
The dances spread to Italy through touring theatre, and while the three-chord tunes were adopted in the hands of amateur guitarists, the little be-jingled drum found a new home. Writers composed the tambourine into poetry representing seductive romance, and the exaggerated depictions of dances with tambourines and castanets featured in the theatrical commedia dell’arte that toured France and Britain. There they caught the further attention of the increasingly wealthy, and before long, King Henry VIII had four tambourine players among his court musicians. Yet for all of the cathartic relief it gave to the common folk, the entertainment it gave to the middle class, and the income it gave to the King’s players, so little is known about the instrument and music itself. No instruments of the era survive today, and no music was notated for it at the time.
Thankfully, we have only traced a section of one of its many lineages. In fact, traditional tambourine playing is still prevalent in Italian culture today, particularly in dances like the tarantella, the pizzica and the saltarello, where the vivacious and trance-like movements live on. Does this modern tradition faithfully replicate playing of the past? Definitely not - we can even trace the origins of some modern techniques to particular virtuosi. But many aspects of traditional Italian tambourine playing match visually with artwork depictions from the 15th and 16th centuries, concur with rhythmic sensibilities documented in dance treaties, and moreover, make perfect musical sense with dance music of the Renaissance and Baroque.
Piece by piece we reconstruct not “how the tambourine was played in the past” - for that we may never know - but rather “how the tambourine might have been played.” We study the old canvases and technologies - the skins, woods and metals - to build a tambourine as it may have sounded back then. We position our hands as painted by Angelico centuries ago and discover fluid movements we have never tried. We add the tambourine to the ensemble and there, in the music, we find a vibrant and tantalizing new character waiting for us.
Let us dance.
About Jet:
Jet Kye Chong is a Perth-based composer, percussionist and researcher, whose music has been performed throughout Australia, Asia, Canada and the USA. Chong won the 2018 Ransom Prize in orchestral composition, and the 2018 Scarlet’s Fund award for his string quartet Umbral Orbits. He has been selected for collaborative programs with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, Flinders Quartet (VIC), and the Australian Youth Orchestra, plus a composition residency at All That We Are (TAS).
As a percussionist, Chong has performed with Nigel Westlake, Joseph Tawadros and Lior, and abroad with Jan Lisiecki (Canada/Poland), Aiyun Huang (Canada) and Emmanuel Séjourné (France). He held the Principal Percussion position in the 2019 Australian Youth Orchestra International Tour (Europe/China), and the Momentum Chamber Ensemble performances across the country. He has recorded with the Australian Baroque, and been heard on ABC Classic. Chong won the 2017 Malaysia Percussion Festival Performance Prize with his own work Rev 3, and is a two-time winner of the People’s Choice Award for the Vose Memorial Concerto Prize.
One may also find Chong performing at events and festivals around the state with Taiko On (Perth’s leading Japanese drumming group) or as bodhran player in his Irish band The Fiddlesticks.
Follow his work at: www.jetkyechong.com
What does it mean to be HIP?
Written by Bonnie de la Hunty, HIP Company soprano and co-director.
August 17, 2020.
Our name, “HIP Company”, is a play on the acronym “HIP”, often used in the Early Music world to denote “Historically Informed Performance”.
The HIP movement largely began in the 70s and 80s, when orchestras began to strive to be more authentic when recreating music from the 17th and 18th centuries and earlier, and this continues to grow today. It’s about researching the performing conventions of the time, and using this to inform how we interpret this music now. We read treatises by musicians and scholars of the time, first-hand accounts of performances, and apply knowledge of the technology and instruments that would have been available.
We HIP Company musicians specialize in Baroque music. Music at this time was often not notated as specifically as it is today – a major reason was that it was all hand written, so composers didn’t have time to write out exactly how they’d want it to be played. Nor did they need to, because it was assumed at the time that a performer would read a certain phrase of music and know how to embellish the melody, or how to fill in the harmonies from the written bass line, or how a rhythm might actually be played slightly differently from the way it was notated, and so on.
Playing historical instruments, as we do, also helps us to recreate the sound world and technique of the time. For example, a Baroque violin’s strings are made of gut (usually sheep), and have a distinctive soft and warm sound. The violin was played without a modern shoulder or chin rest, so it has to be held a little differently, and the Baroque bow is shorter and more curved than the modern bow – necessitating a different technique and style of playing to its modern equivalent.
Why are we so passionate that all of this can still be relevant and ‘hip’ today? We find that observing a framework actually grants us freedom in interpreting early music and searching for its truth. It tells that the composer would not only have allowed us to, but in fact expected us to, make many of our own decisions to transform the dots on the page into meaningful phrases of music. Also, while a modern audience brings a different perspective and expectations to a 17th century audience, it is something quite magical to bring to life ancient music and find that any element of it – a beautiful melody, a touching dissonance in the harmony, a joyful dance rhythm – can reach humans from any time if we can really channel its core.
Every genre of music develops its own implicit performance conventions over time, and we as a group are fascinated by exploring relationships between genres. In particular, we often perform traditional folk music and even occasionally some jazz. Playing jazz on Baroque instruments is of course not historically ‘authentic’, but juxtaposing the old with the new helps to foreground our understanding of how time and place shapes musical interpretation. Like Baroque music, folk and jazz music require decision making based around known conventions. Knowing what the rules are and how to break them, allows a wonderful freedom.
To be historically informed means to be willingly and lovingly influenced by context when performing, and to recognize where that is different from the compositional context. We think it’s up to us to then decide how to merge together a piece’s origins, with ourselves and our own audience. This decision is complex and beautiful, and is what inspires us to keep being HIP!
If you’d like to know more about Historically Informed Performance, we’d happily chat for hours about it – feel free to send us an email or speak to us after one of our concerts.
A Visual Perspective: 1689 Garamond and Historical Typography
Written by Nick FitzPatrick, HIP Company’s studio photographer and graphic designer.
12 October, 2020.
It's always an exciting prospect to work with friends on new creative ventures, and I was thrilled to be invited to help HIP Company create an identity that spoke to both contemporary audiences, and the project's historical roots. The group's dedication to historical awareness, and their particular interest in Baroque repertoire - comprising music composed generally between the seventeenth and mid-eighteenth centuries - led me to investigate the typography of the era.
My investigations quickly began to focus upon one of the world's best-known and most widely-used serif typefaces, Garamond - perhaps most familiar to us today as the font used to set the text of the Harry Potter novels, the picture books of Dr Seuss, and the original Google logo. Garamond's popularity has (somewhat cynically) been attributed by some to mere market forces, pointing to the typeface's superior ink efficiency when compared to similar fonts. Others, though, maintain that the font has fairly won its pedestal in the pantheon of graphic design with its elegance, legibility, and rich history.
Indeed, the typeface traces its history back to the renaissance. The typeface's namesake, one Claude Garamont, a preeminent designer and publisher of sixteenth-century Paris, found himself placed most conveniently in an era of great innovation and flourishing within his industry. Garamont's typecutting was primarily in the Roman style (whose more famous members include Times New Roman and Baskerville), and through a heady and centuries-long cacophony of historical accidents, serendipities, and alleged misattributions, his name (rightly or wrongly) came to be associated with one of the style's conquering typefaces and all its many variants. The details of the Garamont/Garamond saga are deep, fascinating, and complex, but sadly beyond the purview of this blog post.
Regardless of the precise identity of its creator, Garamond's popularity grew in the early Baroque period and was frequently found gracing the elaborate frontispieces of all varieties of manuscripts published throughout the seventeenth century. In particular, one variant of Garamond found its way to the pages of a particular edition of a Parisian journal, Remarques critiques sur les œuvres d’Horace, published in 1689 - over 100 years after Claude Garamont's death. This same publication, some 300-and-something years further down the line, found itself beneath the discerning eye of one Gilles Le Corre, a French polymath who counts amongst his many occupations the reproduction of historical fonts replete with all their erosions and imperfections. It was Le Corre who produced and distributed the font, 1689 GLC Garamond Pro, which now graces HIP Company's visual identity.
Le Corre's faithfully imprecise rendering of Garamond lends an air of history to HIP Company's wordmark, and its implementation, with wide kerning and decorative punctuation, recall its applications in the Baroque era. Though the font's history will, of course, remain unknown to most of those who encounter it, I hope that a little historical detail can help to enrich audience experience and complement the musicians' commitment to offering a holistic and well-contextualised performance.
About Nick:
Nick FitzPatrick is a multidisciplinary artist/designer from Perth, Western Australia. His photographic work has been exhibited at venues including Somerset House, London, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, and Sydney Opera House. Commercially, his clients and collaborators have included Vogue magazine and Sony. In 2017 he founded Eel Meal, an art programme focussed on non-conventional community engagement with the arts, with projects in the UK and Australia. See more of his work at: www.nickfitzpatrick.net