Ethereal Ruffian?
Giordano Bruno | Wherever I am, I am. | 04/27/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Countertenor Andreas Scholl sings like an angel on this recording, more beautifully, I think, than I've ever heard him sing before. The tessitura suits his head voice perfectly, and the 'light' timbres of the accompanying instruments -- small lutes and harps, vielle, dulcimelos -- don't require him to force his voice beyond its loveliest dynamic range. Those accompanying instruments, all authentic late Medieval replicas, are not at all feeble in voicing or shaky in tuning; they're "real" instruments, played here with plausible musical dexterity. The lute and gittern playing of Crawford Young reaches far beyond competence, into the spheres of virtuosity. Most of the accompaniment is improvised, in the sense that it is extrapolated by the performances from the melodic shapes of Oswald's poetic songs. Crawford Young has been teaching for years at the Schola Cantorum of Basel, the MIT of Early Music, and all the other members of his ensemble Shield of Harmony have studied with him there. Musically, this is probably the most enjoyable recording of the Minnesinger repertoire ever sold, matched only by some of the performances of the ensemble Sequentia.
As Scholl's notes declare, there is no way of knowing, from the notation that has survived, what pitch Oswald himself might have sung. That he sang his own poetic composition is indisputable. More is known about Oswald's life, through his own testimony and through historical documents, than about most other composer-poets of his era. He was a knight errant (in both senses), a man of violent passions and deeds, a carouser and brawler whose fortunes rose and fell spectacularly, a rebel at times and a loyal vassal at others, and above all a rover. His votive tomb sculpture has survived and even his bodily relics have been recovered in modern times. His portrait is the only certain picture-from-life of any Medieval composer, and his long autobiographical poem "Es fügt sich" is a uniquely candid confession of his identity, truly a "song of himself."
Oswald's stature among artists of the 14th-15th Centuries depends more on his poetry than on his musical compositions, many of which are really contrafacta based on works of French composers, to which oswald supplied German texts. His poetry is truly brilliant in its humanity, its sensibilities of a full flesh-and-blood human being. His German is as strange to a modern citizen of Deutschland as Chaucer's English is to an American; Oswald and Chaucer were near contemporaries. Both poets were capable of bawdy, raunchy, snarly humor as well as of intense religious fervor. The texts of Oswald's poems, you'll be happy to know, are included with this CD, and fully translated into English.
I know Oswald personally... well, almost personally. He was my neighbor, though at a remove of almost 600 years. In the 1970s, I lived in a castle near Merano in Tyrol -- Schloss Brunnenburg, owned by Mary de Rachewitz, the daughter of Ezra Pound, and maintained as an institute for poets and scholars of poetry. Built in 1250, Schloss Brunnenburg is one of a row of castles along the steep cliffs above the valley where Merano lies, at the foot of the Tyrolian Alps. Tyrol was Oswald's homeland, to which and from which he hastened again and again. He lived his last years in Merano and was buried there. There's every chance that Oswald walked the same parapets, and rode the same paths, as I walked and rode so many years later. The lower floors of Schloss Brunnenburg also contained a museum of very ancient farm implements, of the sort Oswald would have handled when his fortunes were low. I 'met' Oswald early in my own musical life, through the LP recording of his music by the Studio der Frühen Musik, Thomas Binkleys' and Andrea von Ramm's pioneering ensemble. At the time, that was the only plausible recorded performance of any Minnesinger repertoire. That album has stood as the standard of such performance until this current release by Andreas Scholl, which owes a huge amount to its predecessor.
So... we know Oswald from his portrait, from his words, and by his deeds. Curiously, that presents me with a dilemma. I can't quite believe that Oswald was a falsettist. Not because countertenor singing is inherently effete! Rather, because it's too artful. Everything about Oswald suggest a rough-and-ready character, a boaster perhaps but also a man capable of mocking himself. Andreas Scholl, in a sense, proves my point by singing two of Oswald's poems in his baritone register. He sings baritone quite well, by the way, a skill that not all countertenors have. The baritone songs are not as 'beautiful' as the countertenor songs, but they are far more expressive and dramatic, far more what I can imagine a 'castle keep'T full of burly knights appreciating. It's possible, on the basis of known practices among the Provençal troubadours, that Oswald had his poems sung by a 'hired' falsettist. Oswald cared about his music. A lot. In fact, he guaranteed its survival by paying hefty sums to inscribe it in glorious manuscripts on expensive vellum. He was, in short, not a man burdened with humility. Perceptions of masculinity have changed, no doubt. It would be challenging, nevertheless, to hear a voice as ethereal as Andreas Scholl's emerging from a face as earthly as Oswald's."
Oswald, our contemporary
Nanna | Malmö, Sverige | 05/26/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I have had so much fun with Oswald who emerges from this extraordinary CD as a man we all know and wouldn't like to be married to. Oswald is turning the story of his life and loves into lyrics and music as aptly as any singer-songwriter of the 21st century. This is the story of a vain man: He will tell you about the earrings the Queen of Aragonia presents him with and the comments the King bestows on him ("Don't they hurt?"). He finds that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence: Well, here he is, unmarried at 38, shouldn't he just get down to having a family? And when he has one, the kids are screaming, his wife is a nagging bitch and he cannot go riding with his buddies as he used to. And he is playing the blame game with the best of them, evil tongues being the reason for the Duke not favouring his company anymore. Needless to say, Andreas Scholl gives us a perfect musical rendering of the adventures of this knight errant. Countertenor or baritone, he's the best. And don't forget that he had the curiosity and the energy to dig out this highly entertaining material and make it a delectable listening experience."
Track Listings (21) - Disc #1