Fretwork

When he left Plymouth harbour in 1577 to circumnavigate the globe, legendary English seafarer Sir Francis Drake had four viol players onboard his ship. The musicians played hymns and psalms for the daily prayers, and performed while Drake dined. Some of the extraordinary sounds, events, and cultural collisions of that expedition were celebrated by the U.K.’s leading viol consort, Fretwork, at the Norman Rothstein Theatre, in a program titled The World Encompassed.

English composer Orlando Gough’s new work, specially commissioned by Fretwork, intriguingly juxtaposed and sometimes integrated Elizabethan songs with his own contemporary classical music. Gough’s segments describe the winds, waves, and storms, and imagine some of Drake and his mariners’ fascinating encounters in places like Africa, South America, and Indonesia, during their perilous three-year voyage. Playing two treble, two tenor, and two bass viols, the musicians of Fretwork created a rich and varied sonic canvas, shifting with astonishing agility from simple melodic lines to powerful and at times discordant, Bartók-like passages.

Though Gough’s music perhaps relies too heavily on ostinato and pizzicato techniques, especially for the seascapes, they help give the work its remarkably organic feel. The six violists functioned brilliantly as an ensemble, leaning intently toward one another as they performed a work that premiered this summer and is still evolving.

The opening section, “Leaving Plymouth”, incorporates elements of English folk melody, and segues smoothly to the gorgeous Elizabethan polyphony of 16th-century composer Robert Parsons’s “The Song Called Trumpets”, followed by the hymn “Preserve Us O Lord”.

In the most interesting segments, the composer conjectures chants and music that the original four violists may have heard and reinterpreted at the expedition’s landfalls. “Maio Santiago Fogo” had a lilting rhythm, suggesting the Cape Verde islands off the west coast of Africa; the hypnotic “Java” section represented the gamelan-style music the Englishmen would likely have experienced at the king of Java’s court, conveyed through plucked strings, droning sounds, and gonglike bass notes.

The World Encompassed was a rare blend of early music, folk, and 21st-century classical music, performed by Fretwork with aplomb and an appropriate sense of adventure.

By Tony Montague, November 1, 2010 An Early Music Vancouver presentation. At the Norman Rothstein Theatre on Saturday, October 30