Making US debut, Ensemble Parlamento opens Indianapolis Early Music Festival's second week

Ensemble Parlamento formed in Basel in 2021.


 

Unusual among medieval composers for his breadth of musical accomplishment and his way with original words for his songs, Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) was the focus of a concisely named program Friday evening under Indianapolis Early Music Festival auspices: "Love Hurts."

The four-women Ensemble Parlamento  from Basel, Switzerland, opened the second weekend of the festival's 59th season at the Indiana History Center. The concert's subtitle elaborates on the perennial theme of the title: "Machaut and Courtly Love in the Trecento" (the last word referring to the 14th century, on the cusp of the early Renaissance). 

"Courtly Love" encompasses a style of registering erotic impulse through formal art and a strict kind of manners that sets the beloved at a high remove from ordinary love affairs. His  longing (it's usually the man's, but not exclusively as Machaut's "De petit peu" made clear in this concert) was paced and intensified by doubt as to any hope of fulfillment. Frank acknowledgment of the pain of unrequited love is part of the genre, and the kind of abstract yet intense devotion of the lover becomes the foremost aspect of the relationship as it's fused in music and text.

Machaut was such an accomplished poet that he stands as a rare example in his time of eminence in the two arts. "The greatest French poet of his age," Richard Taruskin labels him in "The Oxford History of Western Music," adding, in terms beyond those likely known to the early music community, "his poetry is studied alongside that of Chaucer (whom he knew and influenced) and Dante, even if, unlike theirs, Machaut's literary output no longer enjoys a wide general readership."

The heart of Machaut as the kind of creator who is said to have revived and refined the lyrical forms most admired in late medieval France came through in Friday's concert with "Mors sui, se je ne vous voy"  (I die if I don't see you). The well-matched voice and flute of Palamento's Karin Weston and Holly Scarborough, respectively, were typical of the steadiness and verve of the ensemble.  

The singer here and elsewhere in the concert consistently displayed an evenness of tone throughout her range. Her vocal poise was matched in consistency and rhythmic elan by her colleagues, in this case by Scarborough's warmth and precision on wind instruments (on a couple of occasions with tabor struck in support). Contributing elsewhere at the same level of assurance and unanimity were Ailen Monti, lutes, and Elizabeth Sommers, fiddle (vielle). 

The musicians sounded accurate and cannily blended in polyphonic and unison textures alike. As if in celebration of their intonation skills, the last work on the program, the anonymous "Per tropo fede," found them singing together in the final refrain, which translates as "Too much trust is sometimes dangerous."  The sentiment brings up the risks of the emotional investment typical of this repertoire. Sometimes the purity of high regard for the beloved isn't equally reciprocated. It's an imbalance that recurs perpetually in affairs of the heart, no matter what the style of its expression. 

The festival continues at 3 Sunday afternoon with Magdalena, an American ensemble, in songs of Ireland and Scotland.