Birds in Music - the Melzer Consort on recorders with soprano Yeela Avital perform at the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies

 

Prof. Michael Melzer (Courtesy JAMD)

It was Olivier Messiaen who said: "In artistic hierarchy, birds are the greatest musicians that exist on our planet." In fact, he considered himself as much an ornithologist as a composer, organist and pianist. Birdsong has played a significant role in Western classical music for hundreds of years. Among the birds whose song is most often imitated in music are the nightingale and the cuckoo. "Birds in Music" was the theme for a concert performed by the Melzer Consort at the scenic venue of the Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies (Mormon University) on February 26th 2023. Recorder players Michael Melzer, Yael Melzer and Ezer Melzer were joined by soprano Yeela Avital.

 

In keeping with the nature of the recorder and the times in which the it flourished, many of the pieces on the program were from the Elizabethan- and Baroque periods -  the anonymous Elizabethan "This Merry Pleasant Spring", graced with the calls of several birds and evocatively presented by Yeela Avital, then a jolly dialogue between alto recorder and Avital in "The Cuckoo" by Richard Nicholson, to be followed by the sober, bitter-sweet "Venus' Birds"  lullaby by John Bennet. As to the dialogue between Joan and John in Nicholson's "Wooing Song", whether or not the repetition of "every hour to woo" refers to the owl's nocturnal cry is arguable. For their performance of "There Were Three Ravens", its grim scene devoid of any joyful bird song, the ensemble chose a deliberate, languid tempo to set the bleak scene. Avital sustained the almost leaden pace impressively, as the strophic song concluded with the somewhat comforting message that every person should hope to be as lucky as the knight in the poem whom God had blessed with hounds, hawks, and a loyal woman who cared for his body after death. Sweeping aside any gloom and doom in the air, there was no mistaking the joy and abandon of  Thomas Morley's ever popular and gently risqué "It was a lover and his Lass", its refrain speaking of bird songs in Morley's setting for Shakespeare’s "As You Like It". The song, to be sung and danced, draws together pastoral love and spring, wooing and the promise of new life 

 

And to two solo pieces played by Michael Melzer. Jacob van Eyck (c.1590–1657), a Dutch nobleman and blind musician of the Golden Age, was a carillon player and technician, organist and composer. He was also a virtuoso recorder player, well known for his improvisations. Many recorder players are familiar with "Der Fluyten Lust-hof" (The Flute's Pleasure Garden), an extensive collection of soprano recorder pieces, mostly variations on psalms and popular songs. Of these some 150 pieces, Melzer chose to perform "Engels Nachtegaeltje" (1644). Addressing the song's increasingly complex variations, Melzer performs it with spontaneity, imagination and a touch of humour, ornamenting generously and incorporating such techniques as flutter-tonguing to create a twittering effect. Not merely virtuosic, his playing was most evocative of the lively calls of the English nightingale. A more sober, nostalgic mood pervaded François Couperin's "Le Rossignol en Amour" (The Nightingale in Love), played with tenderness and French courtly elegance, enhanced by the richly mellow, caressing timbre of the Baroque transverse flute. 

 

The nightingale appeared in yet another piece - in "Ma tredol rossignol", a 14th century virelai performed on recorders with the pleasingly clean articulacy pertaining to the style, with Michael Melzer singing the song's opening lines.

 

Franz Anton Hofmeister (1754-1812), a German composer and publisher residing in Vienna, is known as one of the founding fathers of music publishing. His compositional oeuvre, all very much in the accepted style of his time, covers many genres of music. His widespread reputation stemmed from the original content of his works, several of them composed with Vienna's growing number of amateur musicians in mind, for whom the flute was one of the most favoured instruments. One such work is “La Gallina, il Cucco, e l'Asino” (The Hen, the Cuckoo and the Donkey), the piece "staging" a dispute between the three, with the individual parts representing each creature. Making no changes to the work originally scored for three flutes, save transposing it, the Melzer Consort players gave an entertaining reading of it on recorders. 

 

The program included two Israeli songs for voice and three recorders in arrangements by Michael Melzer - "I saw a bird of exquisite beauty" (lyrics-Natan Zach, melody-Misha Segal) pensive, plaintive and sprinkled with some unconventional harmonies, to be followed by a somewhat hybrid, no-less-original setting of "Spring", (lyrics-Thomas Nashe, melody-Shlomo Gronich), complete with copious bird calls, reminding the listener of how well suited recorders are to imitating birds!

 

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,

Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,

Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:

      Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The palm and may make country houses gay,

Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,

And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:

      Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,

Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,

In every street these tunes our ears do greet:

      Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo!

            

T  The audience in the auditorium of the Mormon University was presented with an evening of varied, polished, finely-detailed and stylistically-informed ensemble playing at the hands of the Melzer Consort and attentive, sensitive singing by Yeela Avital. Under the direction of Prof. Michael Melzer, the Melzer Consort was formed some twenty years ago.