The third Galway Early Music Festival could well be remembered as the festival of the bagpipes. That instrument featured in the three principal concerts, held in the medieval setting of St Nicholas's Church; in the second of these, no less than six pipers from the English group Pipework performed on a great variety of bagpipes, including some specially made after pictures by Brueghel and Durer.
Three currents of music flowed together during the festival; the folk current, represented mostly in the form of pipe music; the more complex compositions written for the courts, played on viola, recorders, guitars, flute, harp; and the religious current of plainchant and polyphonic motets. Indeed, as one wandered the streets music seemed to be breaking out everywhere. A lunchtime recital in Slate House underlined the theme of the festival - Ireland and Spain - with fine seannos singing by Deirbhile Ni Bhrolchain, Carolan tunes on a wire-strung Irish harp played by Paul Dooley, and Spanish music played by Lorenzo Morales on Galician bagpipes.
The development of the folk tradition in sophisticated hands was most vividly demonstrated by The Harp Consort in their selection of dances from a treatise of 1677, which brought together Spanish, Italian, South American and African tunes. These were played by an ensemble of flute, guitar, bassoon, theorbo, harp and drum and some were also danced with astonishing verve and imagination - not to mention a lavish expenditure of energy - by Steve Player. The violent steps, the high kicks, the sudden slops and the rhythmic foot-work, allied to an ebullient sense of fun, enchanted the audience. The advance publicity had referred to "an early music Spanish Riverdance", but this was no well-drilled routine running like a machine but a spontaneous improvisation in which the turns of the music inspired the musicians, in particular the percussionist, to excel themselves. Various drums were used, but no drumsticks; the drummer's hands created effects that no stick could rival.
This concert, the centre-piece of the festival, was not all violent steps. The director, Andrew Lawrence-King, played some deeply affecting harp solos with the tenderest attention to nuance, and each of the other players had their moments of soloistic glory. The director interpolated some pithy comments on the music, a procedure which would have been of help in some of the other concerts. Sometimes there were printed notes available, but they were not always effectively distributed.
Sacred music was presented by the local Shantalla Singers, who sang works by Victoria and Guerrero with sensitivity - but with only one or two voices to a part they failed to make a satisfactory body of sound in the large space of the church. Another local choir - Cois Cladaigh, with 26 singers under the direction of Brendan O'Connor - began their recital with Byrd's Ave Verum and ended with two motets by the 16th-century composer, Jacquet of Mantua, whose work, on the evidence of this loving performance, deserves to be more frequently heard. Also of great interest were six items of plainchant from the 15th-century Red Book of Montserrat. In some of these the choir was accompanied by nine instrumentalists from the University of Limerick who called themselves The Red Book Band. Strictly speaking they were not necessary, but they made a colourful jangling sound.
The Shantalla Singers shared a concert with the duo Zanfona (pipes and hurdygurdy or percussion) and the Consort of St Sepulchre (voice, recorders, viols). The unique timbre of their singer, Lucienne Purcell, has lost none of its punch and the stately threnodies of Encina threw into high relief the rhythmic audacities of Anon.
In the final lunchtime recital the Dublin Waytes sang partsongs about food with admirable gusto, but the promised half-hour became an hour due to the ill-advised inclusion of long prose extracts from Rabelais and the Gawain Poet. Hunger was stimulated, but more by the wait then the words.
