The Baltimore Consort: The Food of Love
Sono Luminus
The Baltimore Consort couldn't have chosen a better title for a recording dedicated to the music of Shakespeare, its words an abbreviation of the familiar line uttered by Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night: “If music be the food of love, play on...” And play on the group definitely does, with twenty-eight pieces presented on the release. Since its 1980 founding, The Baltimore Consort has pursued its goal of performing the instrumental music of Shakespeare's time and early English, Scottish, and French popular music. Subtitled Songs, Dances, and Fancies for Shakespeare, The Food of Love follows seventeen recordings previously issued by the sextet on the Dorian and Sono Luminus labels.
Musical references emerge repeatedly in the Bard's plays. Directions such as “music here,” “music begins,” and “music for dancing” appear, and Shakespeare also sometimes refers to music and instruments in the texts; specific songs, whether they be ones featuring lyrics by Shakespeare or songs popular with audiences at the time, also surface in certain plays. While most of the plays don't identify the songs used, the settings for “Full Fathom Five” and “Where the Bee Sucks” by Robert Johnson (generally regarded as Shakespeare's composer) are the same as those performed in the original production of The Tempest. For the other pieces on this nearly seventy-minute release, the Consort used the earliest surviving versions that are contemporaneous with the playwright's productions. As listed, the dates associated with the songs range from 1525 to 1651.
Besides Johnson, other composers featured are Thomas Morley, Robert Jones, Richard Edwards, Anthony Holborne, Thomas Robinson, John Dowland, John Johnson, and Ben Jonson. Bringing the material vividly to life are soprano Danielle Svonavec, Mary Anne Ballard (treble and bass viols), Mark Cudek (cittern, bass viol), Larry Lipkis (bass viol, recorders, crumhorn, gemshorn), Mindy Rosenfeld (flutes, fifes, bagpipes, crumhorn), and Ronn McFarlane (lute). All of them bring rich creative lives to the group endeavour. Ballard, for example, plays with a number of other ensembles, including Galileo's Daughters, whereas Lipkis has received recognition as a composer of concertos and chamber operas. McFarlane has himself released more than forty CDs on Dorian and Sono Luminus, and plays solo, in duets, and in the group Ayreheart, which was formed to perform his music. Adding to the many pleasures afforded by the release, background info has been contributed by Cudek and Lipkis to the release booklet, enabling the listener to learn more about the songs and their connections to the plays.
Beginning with three pieces from As You Like It, “The Buffens (Les Buffons)” initiates the recording with a delightfully infectious dance tune of French origin, the piece's abundant charm a harbinger of things to come. Also rhythmic though languorous by comparison, “Kemp's Jig” brings a stately lilt to the proceedings, after which Morley's “It Was a Lover and his Lasse” introduces Svonavec's clear, resonant voice. Songs in the Twelfth Night and Romeo and Juliet sets are also distinguished by her singing, specifically renderings of Jones's “Farewell, Dear Love” and Edwards' “When Griping Grief.” For Johnson's “Where the Bee Sucks,” Svonavec personifies Ariel, the invisible fairy who sings to Prospero as he's dressing, while “The Mad Merry Pranks of Robin Goodfellow” sees her channeling Puck. Dowland's “The King of Denmark, his Galliard” and “Tarleton's Riserrectione (plucked strings)” prove effective showcases for McFarlane's lute artistry, and melancholy ballads (“Bonny Sweet Robin,” a tune sung by Ophelia) and sprightly dance pieces (“Tarleton's Jig,” “Fairie Rownde”) are both in plentiful supply.
With most of the songs in the one- to three-minute range (only three exceed four minutes), changes happen fast, the recording never staying in one place for long. As enjoyable as the songs are, the album's foremost pleasures derive from the interactions between the players and the rich timbral contrasts between their instruments. Often the full ensemble performs, but arrangements vary, with instruments combined in different combinations and number (e.g., “Cuckolds All a-Row” played by cittern alone; voice accompanied by lute for “Willow Song”); the album also benefits from the inclusion of both vocal and instrumental tracks, with a satisfying balance achieved between them. In the introduction to his edition of Morley's Consort Lessons, Sydney Beck noted that Elizabethan consort music had the capacity to appeal “to every level of spectator, from the simplest groundling who could hum along with his favourite ballad tune to the most sophisticated gallant who could take delight in the rich harmony and embroidery surrounding the melody.” Something similar might be said of The Food of Love in presenting music that's sophisticated and eloquent yet at the same time communicates with immediacy. “The Carman's Whistle,” for example, might have been written in the sixteenth century, but its melodic charm makes the centuries fall away.October 2019