Golden Voices

Another of the strange names I encountered during the Music and Beyond Festival this year was Aureas Voces, the name of a versatile group of young singers encouraged and supported by the Early Music specialist and renowned Canadian countertenor, Daniel Taylor. It means Golden Voices. There were 15 musicians singing in the event I attended, with the addition of a violinist (who also joined the singers at one point) and of a baroque guitar / theorbo player. One of the tenors played a smaller kind of lute as well, and the director of the ensemble, Nick Veltmeyer, is adept at the keyboard (organ, piano, etc.) as well as being a compelling solo singer. Apparently the youngest member of Aureas Voces is only 18, but they are all professionals.

They had a clever insight while preparing for their performance, calling it An Ocean Apart: English and Nova Scotian Song, the point being that 17th century art songs by Purcell have something in common with traditional Nova Scotian folksongs. Perhaps they originated at about the same period; that wasn't made clear. They were certainly made to sound similar in this concert, where the folksongs were arranged (harmonised and ornamented) by Mr. Veltmeyer who comes from Nova Scotia himself and is obviously steeped in both genres. He had arranged some of the Purcell items too, Fairest Isle, for instance.

The programme went like this.
First hour:
Come all ye old comrades sung by the whole group as they processed in. It began with a striking soprano solo by their star ("featured") singer Janelle Lucyk, in total control of her voice throughout the show.

Fairest Isle

A fantasia by Telemann, violin solo.

If I were a blackbird, sung unaccompanied, a Nova Scotian duet for tenor and soprano.

Caprice de chaconne for the guitar by Corbetta, a 17th century Italian composer.

As I wandered by the brookside, a slow and tender tenor solo, with accompanying voices.

Passacaglia for three instruments and voices from Purcell's King Arthur (How happy the lover ...) describing "the pleasures of love"!

Jimmy and I will marry, a folksong.

Second hour:
"Welcome back for Round Two!" said the director, and they started with Purcell's For love ev'ry creature is born, mentioning the pleasures of love, again!

A duet for guitar and violin followed, then a solo folksong for the soprano with a verse for all the high voices. The acoustics in St. Joseph's church, where this was taking place, were very echoe-y, so words got lost in the high vaults from time to time. Another guitar piece and then the soprano, who began this sitting down, sang the tragic aria O let me forever weep from Purcell's The Fairy Queen which has a ground bass rather like the accompaniment to Dido's Lament. It is very beautiful, and demanding on the singer.

Ms. Lucyk rose to the occasion, the violin lamenting in counterpoint. The voice part requires a purity of tone and this is presumably how she was trained to sing, although she could manage a rougher, folksy style of voice as well for the Nova Scotian items.

Her male counterpart Mr. Veltmeyer followed this with his arrangement of As slowly I rode by the banks of the river, I spied a fair damsel ... about a suicidal girl sighing over the green grass that grew o'er her young lover's grave, etc.

A violin lament was followed by a recit and aria for the soprano again, with the chorus singing "If music be the food of love ..." (not the Shakespeare scene though) and the concert performance ended with Come all ye old comrades, once again, as lustily executed as when we first heard it. Shades of Purcell's Come away, fellow sailors from Dido & Aeneas?