EN / RU

Medieval musical instruments
Running time:
75 minutes, no break
6+
23 February 2019 Saturday 15.00 Chamber hall
15.00 Chamber hall

Medieval musical instruments

Lecture-concert of Ivan Velikanov
and Alta Capella early music ensemble
Ivan Velikanov, organ-portative, bombard
Alexander Gorbunov, fiddle, gittern, percussion
Andrian Printsev, sackbut

It’s hard to define Ivan Velikanov’s main role, for he’s equally masterful conductor, composer, concert manager, and multiinstrumentalist, who plays various early instruments. “Minstrels” was the right definition for such people in the Middle Ages. Minstrel wasn’t just a profession, it was a vocation during the Middle Ages. And it’s this period’s music that Ivan has been studying and performing for many years.

For Ivan founded Alta Capella, the very first baroque and Renaissance wind instruments ensemble in Russia, in 2009. The musicians – all of them are students, graduates or postgraduates of Moscow conservatory – introduce their listeners to some rare European church and secular, and, moreover, with the pieces that has never been performed here in this country. The musicians play the period instruments only, and, furthermore, having rejected the entire tradition of performance of the last three centuries, they try and recreate the true spirit of this music from the historical point of view.

So, a good question arises: what instruments were being playing in the times of knights and minstrels? Wind and string instruments turn out to be more various and numerous, then in modern symphony orchestra. Vielle (or fiddle) and gittern – ancient violin and guitar, respectively – would be played in palaces, while a small organ (organetto) would accompany them.

Alarm calls of bombard and sakuta (“parents” of oboe and trombone) could be heard at city squares.

Secular courtly pieces as well as the music of city squares will be played during the concert, while the musician will tell the audience about a whimsical destiny of the instruments, their evolution, their disappearance, and their comeback to concert practice in our days.