All demonstrate the remarkable fortitude of their age. One might go further and suggest that Croatia’s current exemplary relations between its Christian and Muslim communities has been achieved through acceptance of a difficult shared history, of which this music is a memento.

Text by: Sebastian Morpurgo, Nenad Kosak

Edited by: Alan Morpurgo

The “Minstrel” Early Music Ensemble

The “Minstrel” Early Music Ensemble is a vocal and instrumental group that specialises in the music and dance of early Europe, appearing in costume for re-enactments and banquets, but also performing religious music of the period in churches and concert halls.

The “Minstrel” Ensemble was founded in Zagreb in 1992, and drew members from thriving early music communities in Dubrovnik and Zagreb. After a successful performance at the Mimara Museum and appearances on Croatian state TV, they were much sought-after and performed at venues and festivals throughout the country. At the invitation of the York Early Music Festival they travelled to the UK in the summer of 1997, subsequently performing at St. Mary le Bow and St. Mary le Strand in London in April 1998. They formed part of the official reception during the historic visit to Zagreb of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in September 1998.

The group aspires to make the best of early music attractive and available to new audiences, the name ‘Minstrel’ being a homage to their predecessors and their unencumbered, improvisational styles of music-making. Accordingly the group offers colourful programmes that include both secular and religious works in a variety of instrumental configurations. They seek to juxtapose the works of the great European composers (Dowland, Attaignant, Farmer, Susato, Arbeau) with rarely performed achievements of local composers and those associated with the coast of the Adriatic (Vinko Komnen, Julije Skjavetić, Tomas Cecchino, Vinko Jelić, Ivan Lukačić, Lambert Courtoys).

25th

October2018.

Thursday 25th October 6:30 p.m.St. James’ Priory, Bristol1 Whitson St. BS1 3NZ

Croatian Early Music

MINSTREL The early music ensemble

plays

The compositions we will hear this evening are part of a painful chapter in the history of the region and are in more than one sense testaments to the resilience of the composers and their cultural milieu, principally the baroque cities of the Dalmatian and Istrian coast of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Fillipo de Lurano’s “Tutto el mondo”, for instance, is a simple prayer in the face of imminent catastrophe, contemplating the unstoppable western surge of the Ottoman army. The aftermath, with the hillsides stripped of timber, must have impressed on the young Lukačić, Jelić and Komnen the heavy price paid by Dalmatia and Istria for Venice’s victory at Lepanto. Even the newly invigorated religious orders – the Jesuits, Paulines and Franciscans, with which all these composers are associated – struggled to meet the challenges posed by a steady flow of hungry and sickly refugees from over the mountains in Bosnia. Even in distant England their contemporary, Thomas Browne, noted that the population of Rovigno was racked with the diseases of malnutrition.

Some sought refuge to the North, such as Vinko Jelić from Fiume, who found a home in the court orchestra of Graz, in the service of Archduke Ferdinand. His work is increasingly performed today, both abroad and by historically informed groups in Croatia.

Considerable Church resources remained available for the making of music, however, and most of these men were part of a vigorous community connecting the great musical traditions of Rome and Venice to Croatia. While “The Music of the Crystal Spheres” receded as an explanation of the created universe, music remained a privileged part of religious life and a respected branch of theology. Newly discovered harmonies and forms sustained, inspired and were transmitted with care in print, as well as through performance. Komnen from Dubrovnik, for example, combined a passion for writing about geometry and “astrological music” with the composition of madrigals. Lukačić, from the city of Šibenik, trained in Rome and published his collection of motets, “Sacræ Cantiones”, in Venice, his work exemplifying a new interest in the subjective and dramatic along with exploring typically baroque “concertante” styles. Cecchino, originally from Verona, and the mainstay of the musical life of Hvar for more than thirty years, composed a wide variety of music, both sacred and secular, often specially adjusted to the limitations of the musicians at hand. The Pauline friars are represented here by their simple chant “Evo je prišal” as part of an older Medieval Gregorian tradition that continued to flourish in those parts of Croatia at that time within Austro-Hungarian jurisdiction.

1. Vinko Jelić: Ricercar 1 Anonimus: Evo je prišal

Tota pulchra es Maria

2. Anonimus: O ti grešni človek

3. Bartolomeo Tromboncino: Noi siam tutti

4. Vinko Jelić: Ricercar 2 Filip Vranjanin: Tutto el mondo

5. Vinko Jelić: Quam dulcis es

6. Vincenzo Komnen: Vaghe ninfe I

7. Gabriello Puliti: Virgo prudentissima

8. Tomaso Cecchini: Sonata ottava

9. Ivan Lukačić: Sacerdotes dei, Corde et Animo

10. Tomaso Cecchini: Jesum omnes agnostice

Antonia Dunjko – soprano Nenad Kosak – tenor Goran Grčić – tenor Lada Magdalenić Morpurgo – viela, rebec, baroque violin Ante Beno – soprano viola da gamba, recorders Sandra Munić – alto viola da gamba, recorder Andre Laurent O’Neil – bass viola da gamba Darko Karajić – theorbo