musicAeterna4 vocal ensemble featuring Yiorgos Kaloudis: Come Again... Sweet Love

At the Diaghilev Festival–2023, the musicAeterna4 vocal ensemble with the participation of the Greek instrumentalist, master of the classical Cretan lyra Yiorgos Kaloudis presents a new programme of Western European music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Its title, taken from the song of the great English composer John Dowland "Come Again ... Sweet Love", elegantly alludes not only to the main theme of the programme — earthly love as a reflection of heavenly love — but also to its circular structure.

The vocal cycle opens with the earliest Western European hymns whose authorship we know: these are “Kyrie Eleison” and “O Virtus Sapientiae” of Saint Hildegard von Bingen – a visionary, a writer, an extraordinarily independent composer and an active abbess of the 12th century. Other early polyphonic medieval works are anonymous: the very institution of authorship was of no importance to the monks-musicians who combined new motifs, texts, and rhythms with old, well-known Gregorian chorales or folk melodies. We know their motets and virelais by the names of the codices — manuscripts in which they were recorded (often between other records of the monastic household needs and, as a rule, much later than these works had been created). The Spanish Codex Las Huelgas, the Catalan Ell Llibre Vermell, the French Codex Montpellier, forgotten for hundreds of years and found in the 19th century, serve as inexhaustible sources of music of the 13th century, in which the spiritual and the secular were often mixed literally, vertically (when three or four voices simultaneously sang three or four different texts, including spiritual hymns on Latin, and love songs in national languages).

The polyphonic and one-voiced compositions of the most important medieval author that is known to us — the poet and composer of the 14th century Guillaume de Machaut — serve as a kind of bridge to a new era, when it became customary to sign musical works with the name of the composer. However, the opuses of "folk" origin – popular songs and dances, like the famous English ballad "Greensleeves" or the French tourdion “Quand je bois du vin clairet” — still remained anonymous and allowed the publication of many textual and musical variations. As for the opuses of John Dowland, Thomas Tallis, Orlando di Lasso or Claudin de Sermisy, published in collections or transmitted in handwritten lists, such liberties were no longer permissible.

Reaching the pinnacle of Renaissance polyphony, the musicAeterna4 concert programme turns back to Guillaume de Machaut and anonymous music of the 13th century, as if saying: "Come again ...". Thus, the medieval sound supported by the tangy timbre of the Cretan lyra in the hands of Yiorgos Kaloudis will be fixed in the focus of the performers' attention and in the listeners' memory.

musicAeterna4 is an a capella vocal ensemble created in 2012 by the artists of the musicAeterna choir who have mastered not only academic, but also pop/jazz vocal technique. Their repertoire is based on original arrangements of folk songs (Russian, Gypsy, Greek, Tatar, Spanish, etc.), works by contemporary composers, arrangements of jazz and blues compositions from Broadway musicals and movie soundtracks.

Yiorgos Kaloudis is a cellist, classical cretan lyra performer, improviser, composer. As a classical Cretan lyra player, Yiorgos Kaloudis has released seven albums, and performed solo concerts at the Megaron Hall in Athens, at festivals of early, academic, and jazz music in different European countries and in Russia, collaborated with orchestras including the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra and the Lege Artis Chamber Choir in St. Petersburg, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Cyprus Symphony Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra of Thessaloniki. At this time, with the scientific supervision of the University of Crete, he works on the musical research project: “Publication of a teaching method of Classical Cretan Lyra and application of modern technological means in its interpretation”. Among Kaloudis' creative partners are mezzo soprano Irini Tsirakidis, pianist Dimitra Kokkinopoulou, actress of ancient drama Sophia Hill, as well as the ensembles Thesis Trio and musicAeterna4.