This Saturday’s concert from Bath Recitals looks afresh at the wonderful world of Madrigals from the 16th century to present day arrangements of populars songs for five voices. So here’s five things you might not have known about this captivating musical genre:

1. Madrigals originated in Italy

Back in the 1520s, composers expressed the emotions contained in each line of celebrated poems, and sometimes individual words to really bring them alive.

2. Heard of the English Madrigal School? 

This began in the 16th century during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I with composers such as William Byrd and John Dowland. They produced lighter madrigals but very much based on the Italian models.

3. More Geese than Swans now live, more Fools than Wise…

This is the last line of ‘The Silver Swan’ written in 1612 by Orlando Gibbons and is often considered to be a lament for the death of the English tradition.

4. Opera was the death of the Madrigal

17th century Italy saw the rise of opera with composers like Monteverdi writing more music for stars of the stage which was usually too difficult for the enthusiastic amateur.

5. Catch and Glee Clubs

In 18th century England the singing of madrigals was revived by catch and glee clubs and more recently with groups like the Kings Singers.

One of the highlights of the concert season will be a lively performance by Chapter Five on Saturday 24 September at the Old Theatre Royal. It’s going to be a great night out with five five like-minded musicians who wanting to shake things up a bit in the musical world and create a madrigal group for the modern age.

They love experimenting with different musical styles and injecting some fun into the proceedings. Who says you can’t perform Dowland next to Billy Joel if it sounds nice?

“This five like a madrigal, a gin and tonic and a good laugh. Preferably at the same time.”

But who are these singers? Here’s a light-hearted profile of each of them (in their own words!):

Penelope Appleyard 

• Sings: soprano 1 ‘Blessed with a voice of pristine clarity…’ Andrew King
• Likes: trills and runs
• Dislikes: anything below the stave and longer than a minim
• Eats: during her bars rest
• Drinks: not enough…according to Richard
• Thinks: very occasionally
• Would rather be: a bass

Natalie Hyde

• Sings: soprano 2
• Likes: spreadsheets
• Dislikes: disorganisation
• Eats: sandwiches she actually bothers to make and bring to rehearsals
• Drinks: supersize gin and tonics
• Thinks: “because we’re funny” is a fail-safe excuse
• Would rather be: at the photocopier

Myriam Toumi 

• Sings: Alto
• Likes: sight-reading tenor lines that are in funny clefs and written in old English
• Dislikes: pie, as a concept
• Eats: frogs, snails, garlic, baguettes and onions (not necessarily together)
• Drinks: during rehearsals
• Thinks: rehearsal plans should be stuck to
• Would rather be: conducting

Chris Fitzgerald-Lombard

• Sings: tenor
• Likes: having the longest name
• Dislikes: loud, high phrases (did we mention he’s a tenor?)
• Eats: Big Macs
• Drinks: come with the burger
• Thinks: McDonalds would be a good rehearsal venue
• Would rather be: playing TV themes on period instruments

Will Drakett

He’s the shady one who doesn’t give much away! What we can tell you is that he work at Wells Cathedral in darkest Somerset. Maybe that’s why he’s called ‘Bilbo’?

This will be Chapter Five’s return to Bath Recitals by popular demand. Buy your tickets now for a great evening of sure-fire wit, top quality music making and a great night out.

One of the key works in this Saturday’s concert by the Jubilee Quartet is as much beautiful as it is poignant. We explore the background to this extraordinary work and the learn more about the meaning of Janàček’s ‘Intimate Letters’…

Leos Janàček

It was the summer of 1917, in a spa resort called Luhačovice in Moravia, now part of the Czech Republic. Here, the 63 year old composer, Leos Janàček met an ordinary lower-middle-class Czech housewife of 25 named Kamila Stösslová. It might simply have been a holiday fling or a transient romance. It was neither – but Janàček was to become infatuated with Kamila for the rest of his life.

Luhačovice

Kamila lived in Luhačovice with her two sons and was loyal to her army serving husband David Stössel. Janácek’s opening line was ‘You must be a Jewess!’ Kamila was small and had black hair and dark eyes. Janàček thereafter addressed her as his ‘gipsy’.

Kamila Stösslová

For the first few years, Janácek and his wife Zdenka treated Kamila like a daughter, but the aging composer soon developed an overwhelming obsession, writing to her almost daily with what was to amount to over 1000 letters addressing her with such epithets as:

‘My angel! My muse! You who light my divine spark!’

Janacek and Kamila

What Janácek failed to obtain in reality, he obtained in his imagination. In his letters Janácek fantasises about Kamila as his ‘wife’. He imagines her as pregnant with his child. But in his music he went further still and actually wrote Kamila into his music. She became his inspiration for the heroines of his three great operas: Katya Kabanova, The Cunning Little Vixen and The Makropoulos Case.

The Cunning Little Vixen

The impact of Janàček’s profound obsession with Kamila – possibly because of her very unattainability – was that it gave him the inspiration and drive to blossom as a great composer during the last decade of his life. His last work was his Second String Quartet, subtitled ‘Intimate Letters’ in which the very themes in his letters are woven into the fabric of the music itself.

Janàček’s letters

In April 1927, he wrote that her very presence will make his compositions:

‘more passionate, more ravishing: you’ll sit on every little note in them. I’ll caress them; every little note will be your dark eye.’ ‘Oh Kamila,’ he continues, ‘it is hard to calm myself. But the fire that you’ve set alight in me is necessary. Let it burn, let it flame, the desire of having you, of having you’

Harry Goodman and Rosamund Pike in ‘Performances’ by Brian Friel

Yet despite invitations to come and hear performances of the music she had inspired, Kamila never attend a single concert. She had no particular interest in music and probably never really appreciated how significant a figure Janàček was.

In 1928 Kamila and her family visited Janáček to his holiday home in Hukvaldy. It was early August and Janáček caught a chill whilst searching for Kamila’s son in the woods. Four days later he died of pneumonia with Kamila by his side. The last few words he wrote were:

‘And I kissed you. And you are sitting beside me and I am happy and at peace. In such a way do the days pass for the angels.’ 

Sadly, Kamila herself was to die young – not long after Janáček in 1935 – so she never knew the tragic fate that befell the other members of her Jewish family whose lives were to end in concentration camps.

Janáček was always aware that the letters might find their way into other hands: ‘I always think to myself,’ he wrote, ‘will some inquisitive person spy on this daily correspondence? Yet it’s only my conversation with you – when mountains divide us. A conversation without which I couldn’t exist.’

Janáček medallion

Hear the Jubilee Quartet play Leos Janáček’s ‘Intimate Letters’ at this Saturday’s concert at the Old Theatre Royal at 7.30pm.

Also don’t miss the Pre-concert Q&A with the quartet and Ian Martin of Bath Hospital Radio.