Eight hundred years from now, the news of the day will be long forgotten, the names of politicians and priests reduced to footnotes, at best. But that which truly sustains us, such as the musical expression of faith, will live on.
That's a reasonable assumption to make, given that music at least 800 years old is still heard today -- although not without effort. Thanks to the work of the Rose Ensemble, which performed at the Modlin Center on Wednesday night, we can imagine the voices of the past singing to us. The concert, titled "Cantigas from the Land of Three Faiths," presented music from ancient Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions, particularly from the Mediterranean basin.
Research for a Rose Ensemble program includes original manuscript study and language lessons. Members of the ensemble travel around the world to hear and learn music as it has been passed down closer to the place of its origin. The research is distilled into extensive but lucid program notes and into performance.
This is music of exceeding loveliness, and the 10 vocalists and two instrumentalists presented it expertly. As a group, their voices blended seamlessly, while solos allowed singers' individual characteristics to shine.
Much of the music is sung in unison, and much of it involves ornamentation. The Rose Ensemble accomplished this handily, especially on songs they had memorized, and could focus on each other rather than having to glance at a page.
Perhaps not surprisingly for music arising from folk, courtly and liturgical traditions, there was not much variation in dynamics or tempo. It was a little surprising, however, that the vocal timbre was so uniform throughout the concert.
It's hard to believe that all this music -- spanning 400-plus years and multiple countries, languages and topics -- was sung using such similar vocal qualities. A 16th-century song exhorting listeners to eat and drink liberally in advance of a fast sounded just as sweet as a 12th-century hymn about the jewels embellishing the holy city of New Jerusalem.
It's important to note that the Rose Ensemble doesn't claim to be an "authentic" early music group. Its tagline is "reawakening the ancient" (not "re-creating") and it emphasizes the human connections it wants to make with listeners here and now. Maybe this is easier to do with a sound that's considered beautiful by the standards of a presumed general audience. But if the underlying sentiments -- faith, longing and love -- are universal and timeless, the music itself can demonstrate the beautiful variety of human expression.
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