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A Mediæval Triptych - Concert 2:Barlaam and JosaphatMediæval Wanderings of a Cosmopolitan LegendThe incredible story of Josaphat and his master Barlaam: a Christianised version of Buddha’s life
Dialogos: Katarina Livljanić voice (direction) Musical reconstruction and text adaptation: Katarina Livljanić This event in cooperation with the UBC School of Music is also supported by the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies at UBC.
Tickets for this concert at $33 (students & seniors $3 discount) are available on-line, or by phone from the office of Early Music Vancouver, and also from Sikora’s Classical Records, from Kestrel Books, or from Tickets Tonight: 604 684-2787 or www.ticketstonight.ca. Rush Seats for Students with valid ID on sale for $10, at the door only, from 7:00 pm on the evening of the concert. This concert is included in our “Bring a Youth for Free” programme.
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Barlaam & Josaphat
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An episode from the story of Barlaam and Josaphat. Lunetta at the Cathedral 
 Programme Notes |
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One of the most popular mediæval legends, the incredible story of Josaphat and his master Barlaam, originating from 3rd-4th c. India, has inspired the creation of this concert programme.
This almost surrealistic tale seems to be a christianised version of Buddha’s life: the story opens with a king, Avenir, persecuting the Christians. When the astrologers predict that his own son, Josaphat, will one day become a Christian, Avenir decides to isolate the young prince from any contact with human suffering, aging or illness (and confine him in an artificial ideal world, almost like in today’s “reality shows”…). In spite of his isolation from the real world, Josaphat meets the hermit Barlaam and converts, through a series of colourful and unusual encounters, initiations and teachings through parables (for instance, in one such encounter we learn of theological problems being solved by a man who is a professional “healer of injured speech” and who can mend those words which are already uttered and have caused damage or hurt somebody!).
The Barlaam & Josaphat story was extremely popular in the Middle Ages; it appears in many manuscripts, even in compilations of saints’ lives such as the famous 13th-century Golden Legend. The popularity of this story was so intense that Josaphat and Barlaam were actually canonised by the Christian church, even if there is no evidence for their existence. Their cult survived well into the 20th century, when their feast was finally removed from the calendar, but not from popular belief.
The first christianised adaptation of this story was the epic poem Balavariani, created in Georgian and written in the 10th century. It was translated into Greek and then Latin in the 11th century, before becoming popular and widespread in Europe, spreading through a multitude of languages.
The popularity and cosmopolitan nature of this legend, as well as its universal dimension, inspired us to create a programme in which three performers follow Barlaam and Josaphat on their many wanderings. We perform excerpts of the story through the musical repertoires which inspired it in the Middle Ages, as found in Greek, Latin, Old-Russian, Old-Croatian, Old-French, mediæval Occitan and Italian.
The construction of this programme involved several “layers” in the research process as well. It was necessary to read the legend in several languages, chose the excerpts which will create the unifying thread in the programme (because the performance of the whole legend would probably last one whole day) and then create the final shape of this “plurilingual narration”. This “polyglot” choice for the performance of the legend gives a final result which the mediæval audience could never have heard, simply because it is almost impossible to imagine a mediæval audience which could have understood six different languages coming from literary sources which also conserve different historic layers of these languages! Contrary to the “historically informed” approach which seeks to reconstruct a more or less “authentic” context in which this legend could have been performed-sung-narrated to a mediæval audience, our choice was to create a new experience composed, like a mosaic, from individual historical sources and pieces.
Literary sources witness to a widespread diffusion of the Barlaam & Josaphat story (their names are conserved in different versions: Barlaam, Baleham, Varlaam, or Josaphat, Ioasaf, Giosofat). They come from different countries and centuries. Some of the sources are manuscript, some are printed. They witness as well to different linguistical strata in the history of each language. Since the story survived also in oral tradition, the written version does not necessarily coincide with the period when the legend was translated and known in a certain country. Some versions are in prose, others in poetry. This factor has influenced the musical reconstruction of each of these passages.
The work on the musical reconstruction was oriented towards the closest and most related musical sources to accompany the text passages. Generally, the prose sources received a musical attire taken from the declamations/stories of saints’ lives in each of the respective traditions. Musical reconstructions of the excerpts in verses come from the direct citations from related musical sources: thus the passages of the 13th century Old-French Barlaam & Josaphat story in verse (attributed to Gui de Cambrai) use the formulas sung in the troped saints’ readings with the same metrical structure from 13th century Northern French manuscripts. The excerpt from the Italian version (in a fixed poetic form called ottava rima) is sung in the melodic style still used in Italian oral tradition for this type if improvised poetry. Along with the excerpts from the Barlaam & Josaphat legend, we find in this programme several pieces from mediæval musical repertoires with the theme in a direct relationship to the legend: the baptism and the genealogy of Christ as opposed to the baptism of Josaphat ; the Gregorian offertory Vir erat in which the main character, wise and unfortunate Job, resembles in a way to the other wise old man from our programme, Barlaam, misunderstood and exposed to constant danger in the world which doesn’t understand him. Finally, we perform several songs whose almost “incantatory” dimension is striking: today’s auditor is surprised by the obssessive repetition of the word “hui” (today) in the scene of Josaphat’s baptism, the word “mort” (death) which invades us in the section when Josaphat discovers man’s inevitable mortality (accompanied by an insert from the famous Vers de la mort by the Cistercian monk Helinand de Froidmont, transmitted in the same Montecassino manuscript as a continuation of Gui’s story about Barlaam and Josaphat), in the offertory Vir erat and finally in the Genealogy of Christ. These masterpieces create a dense and intense atmosphere, which grows like the pulse of a shaman’s drum and leads us to a strong experience in which different languages and musical cultures meet in a surprising soundscape – like an audible Tower of Babel – of early mediæval Europe. The bridge between languages reflects thus the other bridge, the bridge between religions, which initially inspired the creation of this surprising legend.
| The Artists |
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Musicological research and scenic impact
DIALOGOS (www.ensemble-dialogos.org)
Since its foundation in 1997, Dialogos, the vocal ensemble directed and created by Katarina Livljanić, has emerged as one of the most outstanding and original mediæval music ensembles of the new generation. The ensemble’s projects link new musicological research with an innovative approach to mediæval music performance, a theatrical dimension, and an expressive musicality. Dialogos is composed of women’s or men’s vocal ensembles, depending on the specific project.
Since its first projects, Dialogos has been acclaimed by critics (in journals such as The New York Times, Early Music America, Le Monde, Le Figaro, El País, The Guardian, ...) and performed in the most prestigious concert halls and festivals worldwide (Festival of Saintes, Utrecht, Ambronay, Royal Festival Hall of London, Metropolitan Museum of New York, Cité de la Musique in Paris, Boston Early Music Festival, Edinburgh Festival,...), including radio and television broadcasts.
Five recordings, published by labels such as Arcana, Sony-BMG, Ambronay Editions, Empreinte Digitale, have received numerous press distinctions in international music magazines, including Diapason d’or, Choc du Monde de la musique and Goldberg 5 stars. The latest CD Abbo Abbas - French and English polyphony from around 1000, was released in spring 2009 (Label: Ambronay Editions, Distribution: Harmonia Mundi).
Current programmes of the ensemble focus on mediæval repertoires: plainchant, early polyphony and musical theatre. Among the theatrical programmes, there is a Glagolitic Tondal’s Vision, staged by Sanda Herzic, released as a CD and awarded the prestigious Diapason d’or de l’année and the Coup de coeur by the Académie Charles Cros. Judith, a staged production of a biblical story from mediæval Dalmatia received the award of the Split Festival (Croatia) for the best musical performance in 2007. Among other programmes, Chant Wars, a coproduction with the ensemble Sequentia, is centered on Carolingian chant and local traditions in Europe in the 9th and 10th centuries. Abbo Abbas offers an innovative vision of 11th-century English polyphony. One of the most recent projects, Dalmatica, prepared in collaboration with Kantaduri, a group of traditional cantors from Croatia, was premiered in 2008 at the Ambronay Festival. Barlaam & Josaphat, the latest project, was premiered in Cologne (Germany) in June 2009, in the WDR3 early music concert series.
Dialogos has been awarded a three-year residency by Ambronay Cultural Centre. Dialogos receives a subsidy from DRAC Ile-de-France – French Ministry of culture and communication. Mécénat Société Générale is the main sponsor of the ensemble.
Katarina Livljanić, singer and musicologist, is one of the principal international specialists in mediæval chant performance. Born on the Adriatic coast of Croatia, she decided to become a mediæval music performer at a very early age, training at the Zagreb Music Conservatory before moving to France to study voice and musicology. She directs the vocal ensemble Dialogos, specializing in mediæval chant and liturgical theatre of the Glagolitic tradition. For her work in this field, she was decorated for cultural achievement in 2002 by the president of Croatia.
She obtained a Ph.D. at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. She is currently Maître de conferences in mediæval music at the Sorbonne University in Paris where she co-directs a mediæval music performance Masters programme. She spent a semester as visiting lecturer and directed a Gregorian chant schola at Harvard University. In 1998 she founded a chant performance programme at the University of Limerick in Ireland. She is regularly invited to numerous universities in Europe, in the United States and Canada as a teacher and resident artist. She has emerged as an important international speaker about mediæval chant performance and publishes articles in specialized reviews worldwide. In 2002 she was a guest artistic advisor at the Early Music Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands. With Benjamin Bagby (Sequentia), she has been awarded a Cornille Visiting Professorship at Wellesley College (USA) in 2007.
As a vocalist, she also performs in major international festivals with the ensembles Sequentia and Alla Francesca. Her solo project, a musical theatre production Judith based on the masterpiece by the 16th-century Croatian poet Marko Marulic, was premiered at the Ambronay Festival in 2006 and toured worldwide.
Albrecht Maurer, violinist, fiddler and composer, studied violin at the Musikhochschule Köln and taught himself the piano, which he then later studied. In addition, he pursued the study of non-European tonal systems and computer music. He gathered his experience with new and experimental music through work with composers from the Kagel "school", including Maria de Alvear, Carola Buckholt, and Manos Tsangaris. He has worked with classical and jazz ensembles as pianist, synthesizer programmemer, violinist, and singer. He has worked with many jazz musicians including Theo Jörgensmann, Bobo Stenson, Norbert Stein, Markus Stockhausen, Klaus Kugel, Carla Bley, Charlie Mariano, Karl Berger, Steve Argüelles, Lauren Newton, Wolter Wierbos, Benoit Delbecq, Kate Westbrook, and Barre Phillips. In the last few years Albrecht Maurer has concentrated on the composition and interpretation of partially improvised music. His CD's include Albrecht Maurer Quartet Works (1995), Albrecht Maurer Solo Works (1996), and The Juillaguet Collection (duo with Kent Carter - 1999), Albrecht Maurer Trio Delight (2000) on early music instruments, European Echoes (2001), Albrecht Maurer Trio Works „Movietalks“ (2002). Syntopia Quartet „Mars” (2004), and Maurer-Rodenkirchen „Hidden Fresco” (2005)
Norbert Rodenkirchen was born in Köln, where he studied flute at the Hochschule für Musik with Hans Martin Müller and later Baroque flute with Guenther Höller. In addition to extensive commissions as a composer of works for the Staatstheater Darmstadt, the Theater Bremen, the Schauspiel Wuppertal as well as the West German Radio, his primary interest has been the theory and practice of mediæval music. Today, Norbert Rodenkirchen is an internationally recognised performer on mediæval flutes. Performances with the ensemble Sequentia (dir. Benjamin Bagby) have taken him to Japan, Australia, Canada, the USA and many European countries. Together with Sabine Lutzenberger he founded the ensemble per – sonat. With all ensembles he has been invited to numerous international festivals. He is also much in demand as a composer of music for theatre and film as well as a producer for CD projects, most of them in coproduction with the WDR/ West German Radio. Since 2003 Norbert Rodenkirchen is the artistic director of the concert series Schnuetgen Konzerte – Musik des Mittelalters in the mediæval museum of Cologne. Additionally he has given workshops on mediæval instrumental improvisation at the Mozarteum Salzburg, at the festivals of Vancouver and Ambronay as well as at the conservatories of Lyon and Liege. In 2009 he released his second solo CD, Flour de Flours / Guillaume de Machaut / Lais & Virelais on the marc aurel edition label.