Medieval Programmes

Roman de Fauvel

The Roman de Fauvel (The Story of Fauvel) is one of the major cultural landmarks of medieval Europe. This extraordinary work is a true multimedia text in its original form, combining a long narrative poem with visual images and over 200 musical items into a devastating satire of the French medieval court and church.

Through the songs linked with new English translations of passages from the original, Sirinu tell the story of Fauvel, an ass whose very name is an acronym of sins and vices, but who rises to become Pope. In his entourage are Vain-Glory, Carnal Lust and other allegorical characters, who with him play out the decay of a society in the grip of systematic corruption. The creative tensions between the mixed media of the medieval text makes it an ideal springboard for a dynamic music programme, where the songs are spiced with a heady mix of images and narrative. The songs themselves are highly varied in style, and are accompanied by hurdy-gurdy, gittern, bagpipes, shawms, dulcimer and percussion as appropriate.

The Courts of Burgundy
Music for Dukes good, bold, fearless and rash

The dukes of Burgundy presided over a court that was legendary, even in its own time, for its fabulous wealth and artistic splendour. With a self-conscious romanticism, successive dukes preserved the highest ideals of courtly love and revelled in chivalric orders, arcane ceremonies and mystical number symbolism. Their most cultivated musical expression was the Burgundian chanson, whose crystalline beauty represents one of the highest achievements of medieval art.

This programme follows the form from its origins from its playfully complex origins to the limpid purity of its final phase. This courtly music is set against the lively songs and dances of the minstrels, an unwritten repertory recreated by Sirinu from fragments of old melodies and the experience of folk and improvisatory traditions.

A Muse of Fire
Music in England and France under Henry V

"Our own musicians have taken on the English way, and their music is so wondrously agreeable that it produces joy and fame."

These lines, from a French courtly poem of about 1440, are a frank acknowledgement of the pre-eminence of English musicians from a bitter political enemy. Half a century later, while the musical Renaissance flowered around his ears, the great Flemish theorist Johannes Tinctoris still maintained that "of this miraculous new art, the English are held to be the source and origin". It is no coincidence that this high regard for English music arose at a time when England's military and political fortunes were at their peak. The exploits of Henry V carved out a formidable reputation for himself and his countrymen and took their insular culture out into the mainstream of Europe.

The careers of England's greatest composers, such as John Dunstable, were closely linked with this expansion; whatever his purely musical merits, Dunstable's influence abroad can only have been helped by his service to the Duke of Bedford, who was regent of France from 1422 to 1435. Sirinu take English music from court - accompanied by soft instruments, especially the harp for which England was famous - and field, where the bagpipe, pipe and tabor and hurdy-gurdy were heard. All this is set in the context of the best of the Burgundian and French traditions that the English influenced so strongly, in a dramatic evocation of musical life under Henry V.

Out of the Orient

Out of the Orient celebrates the inspirational encounters between the musics of the Eastern and Western worlds in the Middle Ages. At the heart of the programme are the haunting Spanish Cantigas de Santa Maria, whose beautiful manuscript illuminations show eastern and western musicians playing their instruments side by side. Sirinu also include the Llibre vermell, music for the Christian pilgrimage to the Moorish frontier in northern Spain, together with the kind of Persian songs that had been renowned all over the Arab world since the conquest of Baghdad. Blending oriental improvising traditions with the written heritage of the medieval West, Sirinu perform songs and dances on Eastern instruments such as tar, setar, kanun and ud alongside the early European hurdy-gurdy, gittern and dulcimer.