The Color of Pomegranates
THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES — medieval ballads of the lover’s malady is a programme of monophonic songs of the 12th and 13th centuries. It offers a cross-section of medieval love poetry as it could have been heard in diverse cultural establishments from across continental Europe, oscillating between aristocratic and clerical, courtly and urban. It features poems in diverse languages of varying poetic and musical forms. Medieval vocal pieces are paired with newly reconstructed instrumental music which draws on the melodic material contained in sung pieces, thereby providing the listener with a commentary and an opportunity for extended reflection as well as offering a bed of aural contextualisation for the modal structures not so commonly heard in our time.
Media responses (in Slovenian):
https://www.sigic.si/barva-granata-ali-kako-skrlatna-je-ljubezen.html
https://www.rtvslo.si/radio/podkasti/glasbeni-utrip/109154230/175156658
Inexplicable
The idea of love’s transformative power traditionally focuses either on an outward-looking, transcendental, out-of-body experience of its powers, or on an experience which is directed inward and focuses on cultivating the senses connected with love’s carnal pleasures. The first includes an element of spiritual awareness whereas the second is understood as a following of bodily urges having reproduction as a primary goal. In all great mystical traditions a strict division between the two was rarely considered an issue. Instead, an understanding of the human experience as being composed of an equal interplay of spiritual, mental as well as bodily intelligences seemed to make more sense. Depending on the cultural and historical context, different art forms kept accompanying this exploration of the delicate ebb and flow of coming to terms with our humanity in all of its realisable potentials. Most notably the results of these ponderings were handed down through poetry and song.
INEXPLICABLE — a medieval fever dream explores one aspect of this complex stream of awareness from the perspective of two medieval German poets: the twelfth-century visionary, abbess and doctor ecclesiae, St. Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), and the early fourteenth-century courtly poet Heinrich von Meissen (ca. 1250-1318), more commonly known by his stage name Frauenlob. In their compositions, each has used creative force to compose masterpieces of adoration of Mary, Mother of God, the Celestial Woman of the Book of Revelation, and the Beloved Bride of the Song of Songs, all of which also stand as allegorical representations of this energy we identify as love. In a succession of intensely dense poems our programme offers a taste of this inexplicable complexity of worship which has always stood in the very centre of theological erudition since the creation of the New Testament.
Pin Me to Your Heart
Expressing desire, lamenting loss, and castigating the cruel: some medieval songs have little to do with the stereotypical image of the Middle Ages… Pin Me To Your Heart is a concert program that seeks to bring the audience into a more human dialogue with this time and its people, realizing that much of the music from this era served the same role it does today. Not only are the songs collected here incredible gems of music, but they also transport poetry that tugs at the heart and feels as urgent today as it must have eight hundred years ago.
“Pin me to your heart” is an alternate translation of the iconic verse from the Song of Songs (“set me as a seal upon your heart”) and was understood in the medieval era as both a sendup of erotic love as well as an allegory of Christ’s relationship to the Church. Double meanings abound in medieval art and these “biblical” poems continue to inspire lovers around the world, hundreds of years later. Combined with death laments, and searing sermons by composer-theologian Philip the Chancellor, Pin Me To Your Heart promises to illuminate the rich emotional quality of an artform which was deeply connected to the individual while at the same time managing to transcend into the realms of the perpetual.