46th International Wratislavia Cantans Festival - report

One of the definitions says that music is the 'organization of sound structures in time'. The sentence is full of terrible musicological jargon, but it draws attention to perhaps the most important feature of the art of sound - its existence in time. Music sounds, and in a moment it is no longer heard. And what can sounds do with time? - that's a completely different story. The extraordinary experience of stopping time through music was probably shared by everyone who participated in the concerts of the first two days of this year's Wratislavia Cantans.

These were concerts of medieval music, which indeed have great power to tame time. It was created by people for whom time flowed completely differently than for us. And it still works! This was already the case during the opening of the Festival. The outstanding American singer, instrumentalist, and charismatic actor, Benjamin Bagby, for over an hour told, accompanying himself on the harp, an Anglo-Saxon epic poem from the 6th century. It's a bloody, but also very refined story of the deeds of the brave Beowulf - almost like from Tolkien's books. The work is fascinating in itself, although I admit that I was torn - follow the translation of the epic's content, or watch this phenomenal storyteller-magician. What fascinates most about him is the smooth, almost imperceptible transition from speech to song, from storytelling to performing a musical work. Truly, an extraordinary symbiosis of words and music, or rather the blurring of the boundaries between what is spoken and what is sung. A hypnotic experience.

In a world based on different principles, I also found myself during the two Saturday concerts of the Festival. The famous English vocal quartet Orlando Consort performed the earliest European polyphonic music, organum from the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, at the Polish-Catholic Cathedral. As Angus Smith, one of the members of the group, told me, 'we always approach Parisian organum as if it were contemporary music. After all, it is an extremely avant-garde phenomenon, one of the most radical revolutions in the history of music. Two-, three-, and even four-voice singing, the whole idea of the rhythmic structure of organum, its harmonic layer - all of this was shockingly new in those times. I would compare this revolution to Beethoven's symphonies or Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. It was a moment when the direction of music development changed drastically. I must also admit that organum is very demanding in terms of performance. It is incredibly beautiful, I find great spiritual depth in it, and I think that's why it sounds so contemporary. I would compare it to the works of Pärt or Górecki.'

And something else important: during the concert, the Wrocław choir was joined by the Singing Polish Choirs, consisting of six amateur children's vocal groups. 'The idea is to show how this music could have been performed in the 13th century,' Smith explains. 'It is known that professional singers performed organum, while the choir was sung by everyone present in the church.' Observing the involvement of young performers, included by the English masters in the joint singing, was a very moving experience.

On Sunday evening, another medieval story, a liturgical drama about the prophet Daniel, was presented at the Church of St. Dorothy by the Schola Teatru Węgajty. Only in the light of candles could one savor this extraordinary, hieratic, deeply symbolic acting and choral singing, in which the members of the Schola draw inspiration from the Eastern Christian ritual, but also from folk traditions from various corners of contemporary Europe. As Johann Wolfgang Niklaus, the artistic director of the group, proves, 'ancient traditions of choral singing have survived in some places, but on the very outskirts - like in Suwałki, where we encountered a way of singing psalms in two voices, identical to that cultivated in Corsica or Sardinia. A similar phenomenon was discovered in Moldova among the Catholic Hungarian minority.'

Another chance to see and listen to the Schola will be on Monday (5.09, 7:00 p.m.) in Bard, this time with a concert entitled Joculatores Dei - Troubadours of Christ the Lord. This is the earliest non-Latin repertoire - songs that grew out of the tradition of troubadours who wandered through contemporary Europe with monks: Italian Franciscan lauds, songs of German Minnesingers, as well as Polish songs that survived until recently in the living tradition of jesters and lyricists. It's worth checking out, not only how beautifully they sing them - Wolfgang Niklaus, Jacek Hałas, Maciej Kaziński, and Serhii Petrychenko - but also how the instruments they play sound: hurdy-gurdy, fiddle, kemencze, rebec, or shawm.

On Tuesday (6.09, 7:00 p.m.) again, at the Evangelical-Augsburg Church in Wrocław - a concert of much more contemplative music. Membra Jesu Nostri is a cycle of cantatas by Dietrich Buxtehude, meditations on each of the seven wounds of the body suffering on the cross of Christ. There is much in this music from Renaissance polyphony, as well as a lot from Baroque expression. Among the soloists are participants of the Course of Interpretation of Oratorio and Cantata Music and the well-known Early Music Ensemble in Wrocław, all under the direction of Andrzej Kosendiak. Time will stop flowing again.