New Trails
We talk to Łukasz Serwiński about opportunities for change and Josquin des Prez.
Barbara Skowrońska: What is the social festival Musica Divina?
Łukasz Serwiński: Musica Divina is an event dedicated to sacral music with a focus on early music. We explore it together with artists; we aim to ensure that the programme features numerous premieres and that invited artists take a fresh look at early music, and we also reach for works by contemporary composers for whom early music serves as a counterpoint.
The social aspect of the festival is our new formula developed to fit the current situation. The uncertainty that accompanies obtaining governmental grants and the difficulties faced by culture in Poland during the pandemic mean that apart from private donors Musica Divina has no sound and stable financial support; this is especially important since all events are free and the festival doesn’t generate a profit. Following European models, in particular those developed in the UK, we are paving the way in Poland: we decided to crowdfund the event. Since we made the announcement, we have already attracted over 60 patrons [as at 4 June – ed.]. It’s a healthy number, especially given that we started so recently. We are seeing this change as an opportunity to build a community around the festival and to develop a formula which in future will give us artistic freedom and a broader perspective in planning programmes and selecting artists and themes.
Does this mean that the public will be able to decide what happens at or around the festival?
It won’t happen this year, since we’re only just starting out with the idea of a social festival. But our goal is to have the public participate in preparing the programme. This could happen when crowdfunding reaches a certain level – the current threshold we have assumed is 10,000 zlotys per month. This amount would mean that we could prepare at least two of the six concerts together with the audience: they would select the next ensembles to invite to the festival.
But we are very keen to start these interactions right away and to get the public involved with creating all aspects of Musica Divina. This is why we are asking people to tell us what kinds of materials they would like to see accompanying the festival, which media we should use to promote ourselves and what accompanying events we should host. We realise that this process will take a while, since as audiences we aren’t yet used to getting involved in preparing events – I think we are paving the way here as well. But first trials are showing that our listeners are enthusiastic about our ideas.
What can we expect along the new trail of Musica Divina?
This year we want to host five concerts centred around Josquin des Prez to mark 500 years since the composer’s passing. Since Musica Divina takes place in Kraków – an important centre of early music – we want to present Josquin’s work in the context of Poland and the city. We have reached for collections held at the archive of Wawel Cathedral: works by Cracovian and Polish contemporaries of Josquin. We are exploring the cycle Musica in Ecclesia Cathedrali Cracoviensi Audita published by Musica Iagellonica, featuring music by little-known Polish composers including Tomasz Szadek, Marcin Paligon, Krzysztof Borek and Walenty Gawara.
An important element of this year’s Musica Divina programme is the performance of Krzysztof Borek’s Missa Mater Matris from the Wawel collection. It fits perfectly with the festival’s main motif, since it is an adaptation of Josquin des Prez’s mass bearing a sister title Missa Mater Patris. It reveals how Josquin’s music permeated Cracovian circles and how music circulated in Renaissance Europe.
Missa Mater Matris has not been performed for a long time, and this edition of the composition is fresh. We hope to hear it in whole – or at least some excerpts from it – performed by the British ensemble The Gesualdo Six, who were due to appear in Kraków last year. The event was cancelled due to the pandemic, so we are hoping this year is more successful.
The Gesualdo Six, fot. Patrick Allen
Is Missa Mater Matris something of a plagiarism?
No, I don’t think authorship was seen that way during the Renaissance. Copyright didn’t exist [laughs], and such compositions were most likely accepted and honoured. I’d say that it’s more of an adaptation. The sounds are almost the same – Borek’s intervention in the music is minimal. However, he had to adapt Josquin’s composition to the performers and instruments at his disposal. He transposed the key and swapped women’s vocals for a male ensemble because that’s who was singing at Wawel at the time. This means the score looks very similar, but it simply isn’t the same work signed by a different person.
Who else will we hear this year?
We have invited the Sollazzo Ensemble based in Basel and bringing together musicians from all corners of Europe, Armonía Concertada from Spain, and vocalist Anna Maria Friman and soprano Helena Ek who will be accompanied by a Polish vocal ensemble created especially for the occasion.
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Anna Maria Friman, Musica Divina 2019, photo by Kacper Montusiewicz
Tell us more about the patron of this year’s festival. Why is the work of this Franco-Flemish composer – known and familiar as far afield as in Poland – so important?
More than anything it’s because of its irrefutable artistic value. Josquin des Prez developed his own individual style which inspired generations of musicians. It is likely that he studied under another great artist, Johannes Ockeghem. He was a true citizen of the world, singing at the court in Milan and working in Rome with the Papal ensemble. He reached great acclaim in his life and his fame was passed down the generations. It’s worth noting that we still interpret his works, and frequently reach for melodies based on their cantus firmi.
We will hear this during Musica Divina: the festival has commissioned Mariusz Kramarz to write compositions based on melodies found in some of Josquin’s best known works. They will resound during the concert by Anna Maria Friman and Helena Ek; the vocalists will perform solo parts accompanied by a choir of Polish artists. Two of these compositions are ready and we are planning to create two more. They will serve as a contemporary counterpoint to the great Josquin des Prez.
The programme of Musica Divina regularly showcases great composers such as Monteverdi, di Lasso, Tallis, Palestrina and now des Prez. We also frequently hear local, traditional accents from Lithuania, Estonia, Corsica and early Russia and Poland, which aren’t exactly in the European mainstream. Why present these musical “peripheries”?
This is an important element of the Musica Divina programme, because it makes us stand out from other early music festivals. We appreciate traditional music, which is frequently not very widely known. We have developed a network of contacts around Musica Divina which means we can discover ever expanding regional traditions, such as Corsican song and Scandinavian folk music which is now reinterpreted and harmonised for choirs.
Are they your ideas or are they suggested by artists?
They are generally initiatives of the artists, since traditional music doesn’t tend to fit into programmes of other early music festivals in which the “Eurocentric” trend, focusing on the Western European music canon, is especially strong. While sometimes the focus is on Baroque in the context of Italy or France, sometimes on the Renaissance led by Palestrina, di Lasso or English composers Tallis and Byrd, the canon always remains the same. Meanwhile the definition of early music is incredibly broad; it would be impossible to impose strict boundaries in geographical or even chronological terms. We rarely look further afield, towards traditional music, even though for example Russian Orthodox church music corresponds directly to the Baroque in terms of the period! Appreciating the myriad styles found throughout Europe in that era is absolutely fascinating and opens up endless possibilities.
All concerts of the Musica Divina festival are held in Cracovian churches. Is this because of your search for authenticity in how you present music?
Yes, very much so. It’s a principle we make no exceptions from for a simple reason: for sacral music the context is entirely natural. We are lucky in that Kraków has so many beautiful churches that we have venues guaranteed for years [laughs].
Authenticity is very important to us, and although it can be difficult to capture and define, and although it requires incredible subtlety, it is the key element of a deep artistic experience – and, for many people, a spiritual one. Authenticity has many roots: the context of the place, the performance style, the selection and structure of the repertoire… Many factors must be in harmony to preserve authenticity and pass it down.
For example, the festival reaches for the part of Western European Baroque repertoire which isn’t all about vocal displays such as operatic arias – although it would be difficult to find any which would fit into the context of sacral music anyway. We select our programmes to really focus on content, emotional as well as musical. The model of such thinking in music is Gregorian chant; although as the Middle Ages shifted into the Renaissance it was gradually replaced by polyphony, the logic of its approach to music survived for many centuries. Our ambition as organisers is to develop programmes which wouldn’t disrupt the sense of authenticity.
Łukasz Serwiński – director of the inCanto Foundation and artistic director of the Musica Divina (Kraków) and Rezonanse (Podkarpacie region) festivals.
The text published in the 2/2021 issue of the “Kraków Culture” quarterly.
