Viva Brighton Issue #80 October 2019

CLASSICAL
.............................
Feast of Fools
A medieval musical extravaganza
The final show in this year’s Brighton Early
Music Festival is a medieval extravaganza
involving no fewer than three choirs and a
teenage dance group.
“The show is based on the #‘Feast of Fools’,
in which social hierarchies were reversed and
general bawdiness was, for the only time in the
year, allowed,” says Leah Stuttard (pictured).
“So, as well as a lot of delectable Renaissance
polyphony, there will be an ass dance, and some
audience participation in the break. It’ll be
full of surprises, and super-varied.” Expect the
unexpected, in other words. Just don’t expect
any po-faces in the house.
There aren’t many who know more about
medieval music than Leah, who is charged with
the tough task of musically orchestrating the
whole shebang, with help from co-director,
Saskia Wesnigk. Leah’s a self-confessed
‘manuscript geek’ and has translated into
modern notation several of the pieces that are
being performed, adding some of her own
improvisations. She’ll also be in the four-strong
band, which will feature some excitingly obscure
instruments, like the trumpet marine and Leah’s
buzzing bray harp.
The Feast of Fools was an annual winter
celebration in France and England until the
16th-century, when it was banned by bishops,
worried about all the unruliness it engendered.
“It involved the whole of the community in the
parish,” she explains. “Children had to deliver
a sermon. Sub deacons got to do what bishops
normally did. There was a lot of revelry, with
clergy carousing on the streets and people
bashing on doors, asking for money. The world
went topsy-turvy for a few days.” In Tudor
times, the feast transmogrified into Twelfth
Night; Lewes’ Bonfire Night has its origins in
the celebration.
The theme of this year’s Festival is
‘transformation’. “The Feast of Fools concert
was festival director Deborah Roberts’ idea,”
says Stuttard. “She’s also the director of the
Consort of Voices choir, who will be joined
by the BREMF Community Choir (directed
by Andrew Robinson), and a choir made up of
students from two Brighton primary schools,
Westdene and Goldstone. The youth dance
group Streetfunk, with their choreographer
JP Omari, will add some youthful dynamism
to the evening. We’ve decided to give young
people a big part in proceedings to acknowledge
their importance in recent campaigning against
climate change.”
The concert will be held in Brighton’s biggest
church, St Martin’s, on Lewes Road. “It’s a
beautiful church,” says Leah, “and big enough
for us to recreate that medieval community
feel.” If you’re not quick enough to book a ticket
during the Festival proper, the concert will be
reprised on January 5th – Twelfth Night – and
Jan 6th, in two nearby churches that date back to
medieval times, St Mary de Haura in Shoreham,
and St Margaret of Antioch, in Rottingdean.
“Two more occasions you can let your hair
down, medieval style,” says Leah. “Just don’t
expect the normal, static dynamics of a classical
concert.” Alex Leith
St Martin’s Church, Sun 10th November, 7pm,
bremf.org.uk
....47....