On Tuesday we had our much anticipated evening of harp and oboe, aulos and lyre – and very delightful it proved too – as you will hear if you scroll on down. But first I wanted to remind you of….
Wednesday 30th September – Good evening Mr Sax…..
The acclaimed saxophonist Gerard McChrystal will join forces with William Godfree (of Flanders and Swann and Noel Coward fame) to tell us the story of the saxophone from its invention in the 1840s by the Belgian instrument make Adolphe Sax right up to today – stopping off for, amongst others, 1920s vaudeville star Rudy Weideoft’s witty pieces like Sax-O-Phun and Deep Purple.
Book here for concert to include wine and supper.
(Do not delay too long. We have tickets for Mr Sax now, but I am not sure for how long. Our Aulus concert was booked out weeks before it happened and there was a long waiting list….)
From the aulos to the oboe and the lyre to the concert harp
Oboist, and aulos expert, Melinda Maxwell and my good friend harpist, and lyre player, Hugh Webb had put together the most delightful – and diverse – programme for us of which I will try to give you a very brief taste.
Our musical menu consisted of charming hors d’oeuvres from Marin Marais*, viol player and composer at the court of Louis XIV – and Claude Debussy – from his Menuet from the Sonatine for piano. Both arranged for oboe and harp by Melinda and Hugh.
To stick with the meal metaphor – then came a short amuse bouche – John Dowland’s famous Flow my tears. (Although amuse bouche seems somewhat inappropriate for a composer who dealt mainly in melancholy). However, the Dowland came as an introduction to the main course, a selection of Harrison Birwistle’s Orpheus Elegies.
Birtwistle, an ardent Dowland enthusiast, was fascinated by the tale of Orpheus, whose heavenly lyre playing persuaded Hades, king of the Underworld, to release Eurydice, his true love, who had been killed by a serpent bite. (As I am sure you will all know, this did not end well as Orpheus was unable to resist the temptation to check that Eurydice was following him back to the world resulting, as Hades had threatened, in Eurydice being sucked back into the Underworld…)
Birtwistle wrote 26 elegies, loosely linked to Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus and each introduced by a short quotation from the sonnet. Here are three, the second, somewhat discombobulatingly, metered by two metronomes.
For our second main course we came right up to date with two World Premieres by the contemporary British pianist and composer Morgan Hayes: Snippets and Hewn. And here are the first two of five short Snippets.
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And then finally to the grand dessert! The aulos and not one but two lyres – a Greek lyre and a Roman lyre.
Melinda, who admits to having become totally obsessed with the aulos, explained that although illustrations of the instrument are legion and date way back into antiquity, no one actually knows how they were played, what sort of music they played or what they sounded like. So anything that she would play for us (and indeed, if any of you have seen the film of the Odyssey, what was played by Melinda’s fellow aulos researcher, Callum Armstrong in the film) is, effectively, speculation. Although, there is one scholar in Oxford who has discovered some hieroglyphics on a stone in Delphi and who is convinced that this is notation.
But while awaiting further enlightenment, here are Melinda and Hugh on his Greek lyre, with ‘a dance’.
Since we were seriously overbooked for this concert, and since aulos research is obviously set to advance at pace, we are hoping that maybe we can invite them back for another demonstration sometime in 2027.
*Marais was one of the first composers of ‘program music’ – musical pieces that tell a story. In 1725 he wrote a piece called ‘The tableau of the operation for the (kidney) stone’… To adventure down this particular rabbit hole, see this article in Urology News!
Looking further ahead
I am afraid that Nathaniel and La Pompadour’s Christmas party on December 10th is already booked out but we do still have space for:
Sunday 4th October – Highgate Society Lunchtime concert.
Jazz singer songwriter Immy Churchill will be performing classic songs from the ‘60s and ‘70s inspired by Joni Mitchell, June Tabor, Olivia Chaney and Nick Drake.
To book go here.
Tuesday 27th October – The Voices of San Lazzaro with Lucine Musaelian and Nathan Giorgetti
17th century Venice and the Armenian monks of San Lazzarro…
For more details and to book go here.
Monday 11th January 2027 – Madeleine, the London Chamber Ensemble Quartet and Charles Wood
The quartet will be playing Wood’s quartet No. 5 (first performed in 1916) plus the scherzo from Wood’s Quartet in A minor. These will be paired with Beethoven’s Razumovsky Quartet – a fitting pairing as Wood revered Beethoven and his music.
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