Old tunes at the cutting edge

...continued from front page

PH: Is there no continuous performance tradition of early music which has come down to us?

Renaissance lute

JG: Well, there are a couple of exceptions in our society. The most noticeable is Handel's Messiah. It's been performed continously since the mid-eighteenth century. Otherwise, our tradition of music handed down through the generations probably starts with Mozart or Beethoven. Before that, there's a gap. Instruments were played differently, people sang differently, old ways were rejected for the new, the industrial revolution brought about changes to musical instruments, they were mechanised in all kinds of new ways, whether you think about the way that the simple open-holed flute became mechanised, or the radical changes that produced the modern piano.

PH: The development of steel-stringed instruments...

JG: Yeah, all of that technology changed...in wind instruments and many other instruments it meant that instruments were equal [tempered] over their whole register, for example, and so new [playing] techniques were discovered. There was also an explosion of printing. Modern principles of teaching evolved around that stuff in the early 19th century. Before that, things are very distant. There were people, pioneers of the revival of early music, in the early years of the 20th century. Perhaps the most famous is Arnold Dolmetsch.

PH: Was he an instrument maker as well?

JG: Yes, he did all kinds of things...his factory still functions. Dolmetsch was one of the early people who said, "Let's go back to the period of Bach. How did Bach's music sound when Bach played it himself? What were the instruments like back then? What were the instrumental techniques like? What was the performance practice? How did those musicians interpret trills, how did they embellish, improvise and so forth?"

So that then is the first answer, if you like: trying to re-establish the tradition of performance where our umbilical connection with the past has been broken.

The second answer flows on from that. We don't simply play music in the way we want to play it; we try to do it in a way that gets as close as we think we can to the way that it was heard or imagined by its creators. So the second way of describing early music is purely as a state of mind. Fifteen or twenty years ago now, Roger Norrington started to do the Beethoven symphonies, not in the way we are accustomed to hearing them, but in the way that they were heard in Beethoven's time. And there have been similar performances and recordings of the work of Mendelssohn, Brahms, Wagner...even right up to music of the early 20th century, such as playing Manuel de Falla's harpsichord concerto using the kind of harpsichord that was built in the early 20th century. So the impact of early music has gone much further than suggested by its chronology.

PH: So it's spread out into the whole concept of authentic performance.

JG: Exactly. It has made all classical musicians somewhat more conscious of the stylistic differences between the performance of music of different generations. Now when you go right back into the distant past, as far as we can go back in the history of our culture, there are lots of other questions that we ask, and the further we go back...

PH: We're talking about Western European culture?

JG. Yes. Our earliest documents, which is basically what we've got to work with. On the one hand, you've got all the Gregorian chant of the church, and on the other the earliest songs of the secular world, the songs of the troubadours.

PH: So really all we have in the secular world is of the second millenium?

JG: Yes, exactly. The earliest troubadour songs are from the 12th century. In that case, we only have melody lines. Someone living in the 21st century who wants to play troubadour songs has to do it with the same kind of skills as someone who plays rock music or jazz because you have to improvise everything else that's there.

PH: So you could compare it to something like say the Real Book where you've got melody lines and chord suggestions, and people will completely change that according to different schools of improvisation..

JG: That's a really good analogy because, in our day, you read something in the Real Book, and you've probably heard it in live performance or on record and you have a sense of the style which you are trying to emulate, or if you want to be original, the ground state of it and the distance to which you can move away...

PH: Either way, you've got it there. You can react against it or you can go with it and you've still got it there, whereas in early music, you are starting without anything.

JG: Exactly.

PH: So this is why, I suppose, early music has such a strong tradition of the scholar-performer, where most performers have a high degree of interest in the scholarly aspect?

Paintings can gives clues as to who played what, how and when.

JG: Well, to a certain degree, it's been generated that way, that's something that's happened through scholarship. Now we're entering a new phase. Early music has been around in a fairly advanced stage for the last 30 or 40 years, and we now have a generation of students who possibly don't have to go back to the early treatises like people of my generation tend to do, because they can get it all on CD. They've got teachers who are transmitting it to them orally in just the same way that normal classical music teachers do. A lot of the older scholarly performances are a bit stiff because they came from scholarly institutions like universities and there weren't too many ratbags and vagabonds involved in their performance. Now that's changed. Some of the Italian baroque orchestras like Il Giardino Armonico or Europa Galanque do really extreme things.

This business of historical performance is really exciting. It's becoming every day more exciting because you see the work of scholars excavating the past in direct confrontation with creative artistic impulses from musicians, and where those two things bounce off one another and produce sparks is where you get the magic.

PH: Are we seeing any people who are taking some aspects of early instruments and performance, then transmuting that with consciously modern elements? In other words, fusions of early music styles and other styles?

JG: There are a few ways in which that has happened. In the performance of mediaeval music, the amount which is known is actually quite limited. For example, we were talking about troubadour songs. Troubadour songs are essentially narrative songs performed to the accompaniment of one or two instrument. Where do we find these kinds of things happening in the world still? In the Middle East. So there's been a lot of work done by performers and scholars on comparing the ways that these things happen, and a lot of the stuff that's used in mediaeval performance these days is drawn from Middle-Eastern traditional music. Then there are other experiments where people combine early music with Irish jigs, or the Hilliard ensemble working with jazz saxophonist Jan Gabarek.

PH: And of course in Melbourne there's Jouissance...

JG: Yes. And this kind of makes sense because in performing very old music, you're not appealing to the most strait-laced of your classical music audience. You're really relating to people who are into world music, folk music, stuff like that, so it makes sense...

PH: People who are interested in coming to sounds in a fresh way...

JG: Yeah. But it's also very important to realise that we can't be so far up ourselves as to believe that we are really recreating what happened in the 13th century. What we're doing is creating a 21st century impression of what we think happened. I often say to students that the acid test would be to get one of these 14th century composers out of the fridge. Maybe if they heard this music they'd say, "What the hell is this!" We don't know.

PH: Is there a degree of paleo-psychology that goes on in this - understanding the ways in which people thought, aesthetics systems as they were actually understood when the music was composed?

JG: Of course, it comes from that, but it also comes from the same impulses that make us want to know where we came from. We draw from that, we research...to perform our music we can't just play the notes.
You've gotta do research that's much wider, to look at how people thought. You've got to look at the instruments that survived, the pictures that survived from the period showing what kinds of instruments were played together in groups in what circumstances. You've got to look at literary references. For example, if we wanted to sing a song of the fourteenth century, how do we know what kind of tone to use in the voice? So if you go back to the poetry and literature of the time you'll find occasionally descriptions of people singing and analogies.

PH: Something that has to be intuited from a number of sources.

Gottfried von Strassburg

JG: You're looking for other forms of evidence to give validity to your hunch. You can't just come to a conclusion on the basis of one skerrick of evidence, it has to be corroborated. In the 14th century there's a very famous German poem, the original Tristan story, where the poet Gottfried von Strassburg describes Isolde and her singing. He tells us that she sang in French, that she played the harp and accompanied herself, and that her singing and her harp playing were so beautiful that one couldn't decide whether she was a better singer or a better harpist. A couple of lines from a poem like that tell us that women were involved in making music, that musicians accompanied themselves on instruments like the harp, that German singers knew imported repertoires from France, and maybe it's even telling us something about Isolde's vocal style by making a comparison between harp and voice.

PH: And then you would take that reference and cross-check it against a hundred others to make sure Strassburg is not working in some mythopoeic way which doesn't actually refer to then current performance style?

JG: Exactly. And that's how we apply historical methodology.

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Russo De Ville's advocate

... from front page

When interviewing a Neighbours star cum musician, one might expect the experience to be somewhat predictable, even boring. "Neighbours star has band on the side" - well, that one got old ten years ago. But the best interviews come from people who surprise you, who inspire you and who leave a lasting impression.
From first to last, actor, singer and songwriter, Marcella Russo, from Melbourne-based band Lucy De Ville is impressive.

Best known for playing Liljana Bishop in Network Ten's Neighbours, Marcella also writes, records and performs music with fellow band members Marisa Warrington (vocals) and Shaun Gardiner (vocals & guitar).
Like many musicians, Russo has held a variety of jobs to support her musical career including bar work, retail, insurance and public relations. However, it was during a trip to Hawaii when she was 21-years-old that she found the courage to pursue music full time.
"You grow up thinking you should have a sensible job and that music and acting is for really talented and special people. I was on holiday in Hawaii and found out there was going to be a tidal wave. I decided then and there to pursue my passion. My family said I wouldn't last five minutes. But, here I am today. It is a great way to make a living," says Ms Russo.
Ironically, the band formed when Russo and Gardiner were next door neighbours. They started writing songs together, in particular a track called "Looking For A Sign", which was written in honour of a friend who committed suicide. Russo and Gardiner still write the majority of songs for the band and they either start with a tune or with the lyric - depending on what inspires them at the time.
On the Neighbours issue, Russo is refreshingly honest about the advantages it provides the band.
"It opens doors, helps you to get gigs and gives you an angle. You need a reason why people should listen to your music," says Russo.
She acknowledges the occasional Kylie quip but her view is "fair enough". However, many of her fans and friends knew her as an authentic musician before her Neighbours' fame.
Like many bands, Lucy De Ville is finding the recording experience challenging.
"One of the biggest challenges we face as a band is trying to put an album together when you don't have management. We want to stay independent but it means you have to fund everything yourself. It is a challenge trying to keep it creative while managing the business side but also not to get lost in writing too many songs and not doing anything with them," says Ms Russo.
Lucy De Ville is based in Melbourne and finds the music scene "very open to original music".
While Russo has plenty of experience performing in front on a live audience, she has also experienced stage fright. She says one of her funniest moments as a performer was when she came in on a wrong harmony, leaving Shaun Gardiner to sing the duet himself.

"I just froze. I was absolutely devastated because I thought stage fright would never happen to me. But when I came home, I wrote a song in one hour called 'What Happens When Everything Goes Wrong'," says Russo.
Having achieved so much already, Lucy De Ville is looking forward to writing and recording more songs in the next three years.
"I love writing. If I had to pick one thing only it would be writing. I feel happier with my songs - a perfect marriage between melody, production and lyric," says Russo.
Her inspiration and muse is her partner, and fellow actor, Brett Swain, who encourages the naturally cautious Russo to believe in herself.
"He's such a positive 'you can do it' person who doesn't see any reason why something can't happen. I tend to be more cautious and look at why it can't happen to it is great to have Brett's encouragement," says Russo.
She also receives a lot of support from her publicist and friend, Kath Momsen.
"It is good to surround yourself with people who encourage you," says Russo.

To find out more about Lucy De Ville, check out www.lucydeville.com

Listen to a sample of their song Running Back To You.

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