The Dulwich Festival kicks off in a week’s time and on Sunday 11th May, Christ’s Chapel will host a programme of Elizabethan dance music. Here, the founder of The Loki Broken Consort, William Summers, introduces us to the music and the musicians and explains the origins of that rather intriguing name.
I formed The Loki Broken Consort to perform Elizabethan and Jacobean music for a mixture of instruments with voice. It was a more-or-less standardised mixture of plucked instruments – Lute, Bandora and Cittern – with Violin, Flute and Bass viol – and was particularly popular with Elizabeth 1. In one of her peregrinations around the country, a broken consort was hidden inside the body of a large wooden fish in the middle of a lake in order to pleasantly surprise the queen when she rowed by!
Meet the Musicians and their Instruments
The musicians of this broken consort have wide and differing musical backgrounds, with three of them deeply involved in popular music:
There’s myself, William Summers. I play Flute [and sometimes Recorder] and am [in]famous for never listening to any popular music when growing up or at home. Nevertheless, I am now a core player in the Medieval Psychedelic Rock band Circulus, playing various woodwind instruments in festivals around Britain and abroad. The Renaissance flute used for this ensemble is made from a straight piece of wood with no metal keys, making a sweeter ’soprano’ sound than its modern counterpart.
I formed The Loki Broken Consort – along with Stephen Carpenter (see below) – in a resurgent fit of nostalgia following a particularly loud Circulus rehearsal. I was determined not to lose contact with the pure acoustic sounds which were the motivation behind playing early instruments.
Michael Tyack, who plays Cittern, swings between pure rock music and cultivated Elizabethan lute-playing. He is the founder of Circulus, in which Elizabethan and Medieval tunes, songs and ideas are filtered through guitar electronica and a mixture of voices, drums and shawms. However, there is nothing more captivating than solo lute or lute-accompanied song, and Michael combines this sophistication with driving rhythms in playing the wire-strung Cittern, which is played with a plectrum.
Stephen Carpenter, who plays the Lute, started musical life playing steel-strung guitar in various soft-rock bands, before becoming fascinated first by the guitar’s Classical repertoire and then by the Lute in all its varied forms. He plays most of the fast variations in the longer pieces and plays the main role in accompanying the songs, as well as playing one elegant solo. Stephen manages to fit the playing of several types of Lute in between family commitments, bouts of table tennis and sword-fighting!
Christopher Goodwin, who plays the Bandora, is Secretary of the Lute Society and was even less exposed to popular music than myself when growing up! He has spent a lifetime absorbing and promulgating Elizabethan culture, and has played each of the plucked instruments of the broken consort. Like the Cittern, the Bandora has metal strings; but these are plucked with the fingers rather than a plectrum and sound in the bass rather than treble register, thus producing a gentler wash of sound behind the melodic lines. Christopher, who has never had a singing lesson, sings these lucid love songs with a naturalistic approach, where the words rather than vocal technique are pre-eminent.
Roy Marks, who plays Bass Viol, started life as a painter, but underwent a musical Epiphany in his late thirties, learning the Viol and the lute. He now plays with the renowned Rose Consort of Viols. The Viol comes in different sizes, like most Renaissance instruments, and the Bass Viol occupies the same register as a Cello. However, the sound is finer and more flexible, with both the bow and the frets contributing to a more ethereal sound.
Ben Sansom, who plays Violin, originally trained as an architect; but, sensing the approach of recession, took an obvious dive for job security by retraining as a musician… In fact, Ben is always in demand to play Violin or Viola in various period-instrument orchestras, but plays chamber music around orchestra sessions. The instrument he uses for this concert has strings made of gut – without the metal of modern instruments – and a shorter bow than later model, producing an earthy, incisive sound which reflects the Violin’s origins as an instrument for dance music.
What’s in a Name?
“Loki” is named after the Norse god of fire and mischief-making. The term ‘broken consort’, although slightly anachronistic, describes a mixture of instruments which differ from the normal Renaissance practice of combining instruments of the same type in different sizes – a prototype of the modern orchestra. Its origins lie in the domestic music-making for treble and bass lutes, which gradually co-opted more instruments at either end of the duo until the broken consort arose as a flexible, expressive vehicle for chamber music, liturgical accompaniment and theatre songs. The ensemble often played at court celebrations with dancing, as the picture above illustrates, and the surviving repertoire indicates a mixture of dance music and restful songs – rather like an upmarket ceilidh.
The Loki Broken Broken Consort perform on Sunday, 11th May at 3pm in Christ’s Chapel. Tickets are £8, available from the Dulwich Festival website.
Photo: Thanks to Leo Reynolds on Flickr (CCL)
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