The presenter’s rich contralto filled the kitchen. “Today we’re delighted to have the American group, High Plainsong, in the studio with us.”
I felt myself grinning in surprise. “You knew! How did you know?” “Jake called Max when he knew they were going to do it and asked us to surprise you.” Lotty smiled at me.
The presenter introduced the members of the group. They discussed their instruments—Jake played a bass viol for High Plainsong—and the special repertoire they’d prepared for the trip. Trish Walsh, the Renaissance Raven, sang and played an ancient lute, one that didn’t have a power cord stuck into it. It was odd to hear her speaking in her “highculture” voice after listening to her heavy metal performance at the Golden Glow on Sunday.
“We’re going to start with works by some of the trobairitz, the women troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,” Trish said. “There were several dozen of them, but very little of their work survives, and out of that whole group we have music for only one poem. However, we’ve taken some of the surviving poems and set them to the music of the period.”
“I chose the first song Trish is going to sing,” Jake said. “The words are by Maria de Ventadorn. I’ve always loved the poem itself—a dialogue Maria wrote with a poet named Guy d’Ussel. She tells him that a lover should respond to a lady ‘as toward a friend’ and ‘she should honor him the way she would a friend, but never as a lord.’
“I put together the music as a salute to a lady of my acquaintance. Like the trobairitz, she’s a woman of high courage. She just saved a girl and rescued a soldier, and did so with all her usual spirit and guile. V. I. Warshawski, I hope you’re listening.”