:: aims
The "Magdalena Consort" has been created to bring together singers and instrumentalists of talent and personality to explore a highly-committed approach to music-making. These will be historically-informed performances, using appropriate vocal and instrumental forces, responding creatively to stylistic constraints with special emphasis on text, narrative, drama and engagement from all. At the heart of the group's activities will be the vocal music of J.S. Bach, but we shall be performing a wide range of music, with a focus also on English and French music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
As a singer, I am fascinated with the way performance draws on our experiences, whilst at the same time becoming a means of expression for them: we become catalysts for the music. I believe that there is room for an approach which is more text-led than is often the case, which I hope will bring fresh responses to familiar and unfamiliar repertoire alike.
As a linguist, I have become aware of how some aspects of what we call "musical style" behave like language, and how reinforcing this musical syntax is one of the keys to developing the composer's ideas, and crucially, creating meaning from sound.
As a musical director, my aim is to encourage my fellow-performers to bring their individuality to this search for vividness and character, and to allow warmth of personality to be reflected in the sound itself. Central to all music-making - emphatically including instrumental music - should be the search for that miracle where our own thoughts spontaneously find the perfect outlet in the music we are performing. In that instant, in addition to creating bold performances full of physical energy and drama, we have the chance to add other subtle and sometimes elusive qualities - the musical equivalents of body-language.
For me, this search for what lies behind the printed notes has always seemed the most important reason for stepping onto the stage.
Peter Harvey
