Early Music Now’s Concert of Beautiful, Medieval French Music

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Photo Credit: Jill Robertson

TENET Vocal Artists is a New York City-based early music ensemble, and they chose Milwaukee’s Early Music Now series to express their talent with “The Sounds of Time: Songs of the Trouvères.”

Led by soprano Jolle Greenleaf, who is both a lead singer and TENET’s artistic director, the group sang songs composed by trouvères—poets from northern France in the Middle Ages. True to Early Music Now’s mission, this was an effort to bring more cultural diversity to the current music scene, introducing audiences to sonorities they probably never heard before; a pre-concert lecture was given to put the music in context. 

Right away, the first notes pouring out of the vielles—a medieval instrument reminiscent of a leaf-shaped violin—immersed listeners into 13th-century France. It is made even more impressive by the fact that little instrumental music from that period—which relied on oral tradition and improvisation—remains, so the musical accompaniment for “Songs of the Trouvères” was mostly invented and improvised by the artists.

Musicians Robert Mealy and Shira Kammen, at the vielle and harp, were accompanied by Debra Nagy’s winds and Grant Herreid’s lute. Greenleaf, along with mezzo-soprano Virginia Warnken Kelsey and tenor Brian Giebler, brought back to life more than 20 songs. Each element of the ensemble contributed to create a foreign but beautiful sound, which reverberated in the perfect environment provided by St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

The trouvères “infused a new, lighter vein into the great lyric tradition,” Mealy explains. Indeed, most of the music is dancing, rhythmic, fun and light-hearted. It evokes, in a novel manner, fairytales, meadows and woods, youthful love, fresh air and a breath of spring. Some are darker and heavier, some downright comical; when a knight asks an unhappy wife to run off with him, she says, “Sire, I wouldn’t go outside Paris—I’d lose my honor forever then! But I’ll cheat on him here.” Love in all its forms is at the core of all the songs, which are performed in langue d’oïl, a medieval French dialect, but English translation is provided.