Animal action
On "Song of Beasts", the ensemble Dragma deals with fantastic creatures in medieval songs.
The Middle Ages had their own ideas about humans and animals. On the new CD Song of Beasts The Basel-based ensemble Dragma is home to all kinds of creatures: songbirds, dragons, mice and unicorns. They are colorfully depicted in medieval "bestiaries", valuable parchment books in which the mythical creatures are also described in detail. They are kept in such important archives as the British Library in London or the Bibliothèque National in Paris.
The colorfully decorated creatures have enormous expressive power. They are therefore shown and gently animated in a film created especially for this project. - The exclusive link is printed on the CD. This video goes perfectly with the songs that the Dragma ensemble has collected from libraries in Florence, Lucca, Chantilly and Paris: a fascinating musical zoo full of poetry.
The songs are grouped according to different animal species: "Von Singvögeln aller Art", "Hör mich brüllen" or "Viper, Skorpion & Basilisk". However, the medieval descriptions of the creatures are full of religious and political symbolism, and the lyrics are correspondingly enigmatic and poetic. They can be deciphered in English translation in the booklet, and in the film some of them are also spoken in peculiar Middle High German.
The fact that the Dragma ensemble is made up of three distinguished connoisseurs of medieval performance practice is immediately apparent. In these animal worlds, they reveal a lively and rhythmically agile passion for music-making. Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennet, who also takes up the harp from time to time, sings with a soft, well-focused voice and portrays these mythical creatures very vividly.
She is accompanied attentively by Jane Achtman on the fiddle, just as if she were singing a second vocal part. The third member of the ensemble, Marc Lewon, provides agile grace on the lute. Lewon also appears as a narrator and singer: for example in the madrigal Fenice fu by Jacopo da Bologna, in which a woman tells how she is transformed from a phoenix into a turtledove. Budzińska and Lewon sing this duet powerfully and movingly.
In the chapter "Von Fledermäusen und Mäusen" (Of bats and mice), you can enjoy the coarse humor of the Middle Ages. The three-part piece about the mouse is performed with witty charm by the three performers. The mouse is unhappy and hungry and wants sausage or a fat capon for dinner. However, the description of his actual meal is rather depressing: black bread, radish and broad beans. This concludes this colorful kaleidoscope of medieval art: it doesn't get any more vivid than this!
Song of Beasts - Fantastic Creatures in Medieval Song. Ensemble Dragma : Agnieszka Budzińska-Bennett; Jane Achtman, Marc Lewon. Ramée RAM 1901
