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Alix Goolden Performance Hall
March 3, 2012
There are times when a cultural experience leaves such an impact that you never forget the moment of the first encounter. I suspect that VocaMe's performance as part of the Early Music Society of the Islands Spring 2012 season will prove to be just that. Together with their director, Michael Popp, the four singers have an impressively varied independent background in early music, baroque, operatic, Arab and mediaeval pop, yet everything extraneous to the project of interpreting the works of Kassia, the famous 9th century nun from Constantinople, is set aside in their new incarnation as VocaMe.
Kassia was a beautiful and brilliant young woman from a noble family, eyed as a potential wife by the emperor, Theophilus. The story has it that he was no match for her wit and edgy humour, and he rejected her in favour of another, more docile creature. Kassia was to spend the rest of her life in a convent, where she became famous for her pointed epigrams ("A learned fool? Lord help us, the pigs are wearing pearls!") as well as dozens of liturgical hymns and songs.
The evening opened with the ethereal sound of voices as if from a great distance. As the four entered the hall, the intensity of the unison singing increasing the drama, punctuated by the equally heavenly sound of the zither-like Persian santur between verses. This set the tone for an evening of kaleidoscopic interweaving of sound and silence, the still black forms of the singers, one of them blind, using every corner of the hall as their voices rose and fell in praise, narrative, plaint or prayer, with a power and delicacy, a disciplined restraint yet depth of feeling, sparingly accompanied by a number of stringed instruments (tar, fiddle, oud, santur and something like a long-necked sarangi) and a bass recorder.
The arrangements by Michael Popp used the neumes of Kassia's manuscripts as a starting point only, exploiting the rich low tones of the mezzos (Sigrid Hausen and Petra Noskaiová) both as drones and counterpoint in tapestries of sound, while splitting the heavens like a knife through silk with Gerlinde Sämann's soaring soprano. The tender strength and sweetness of the American born Sarah Newman completed an arc of sound moving effortlessly from whispered unison to riveting dissonance and vocal artistry employing decorative quartertone slides with great effect.
Judging by the way the CDs flew off the table in the intermission, and the standing ovation at the end, the audience was more than captivated by this evocation of another time, another sensibility (profoundly religious and disciplined). Even though the texts were generously translated, I don't think the appeal lies in understanding the words. Rather, the sheer lack of emotional bluster in the surrendered mediaeval mind, the embodiment of spirituality in voices trained to love in unison, has been developed by Popp and his colleagues with a creative and skillful use of later musical means to provide a deeply satisfying antidote to the sturm und drang of our own era.
Full length clips of five the pieces can be found on their website: www.vocame.de/en/.
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