Presents
HARLEQUIN
Friday 1st April 2011
65 Hopkins St., Moonah
Doors Open from 7pm
Concert commences at 7:30pm
Gold coin donation

The popular Moonah Arts Centre concert series commences for 2011 with a one hour concert by medieval music specialists Harlequin this Friday. This lively ensemble of Tasmanian musicians is well known for their interpretation and arrangement of medieval minstrel music.

The repertoire and instruments of Harlequin cover both ‘high’ and ‘low’ minstrel music.  In the 14th Century loud instruments such as shawm, hurdy gurdy and percussion, were known as ‘high’ instruments and these were used by heralds and to accompany processions and the ‘march’ into warfare.  Melodic ‘low’ instruments, such as vielle, whistle, and vocals were more generally employed at feasts, dances and other festivities. A great feature of Harlequin’s music is the contrast between the powerful ‘high’ music with thunderous drums, high drama shawms and hurdy gurdy, and the ‘low’ and more beautiful pieces with moraharpa, vielle, whistle, hammered dulcimer and the passionate vocals of Joana Cubillos.
 
A strong component of Harlequin’s current repertoire hails from the 13th Century court of Alfonso 10th of Spain.  Harlequin also include works from several other famous medieval manuscripts in their repertoire such as the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (c. 1400 Spain), the Carmina Burana (13th C German manuscript, largely written by Goliards who were typically students within the clergy writing poems that satirised and mocked the church, protesting at is contradictions and financial abuses, and who sometimes celebrated drunken debauchery and decadence themselves!) and secular works from the great French Troubadours (c.12th-13th C) and Trouvéres (c.13th-14th C) including Guillaume de Machaut, and more.
Harlequin have both instrumental and vocal pieces that are sung in the original languages of Latin, Langue d’oc or Provençal, (a Romance / poetic language derived from Latin), Langue d’oïl (medieval French), and Galician Portuguese as mentioned above.