Something else a bit different

We hear renaissance and baroque  music from the Ripieno Choir (see reference 1) and we hear art songs (as they call them in the US) at the Wigmore Hall, but this concert was rather different from both, with a team of perhaps ten - mainly men but including one soprano and one lute - singing music from the time of the Tudor Queen Mary's phantom pregnancy. See reference 2.

Started off by being irritated by a station announcement along the lines of 'see it, say it, sorted' in connection with suspicious items on platform or train. Always a pain when officials, clergy and other bureaucrats try to ape what they think is the lingo of the young.

Continued with a discussion of the right of bad people to send messages so well encrypted that the guardians of the peace could not read them. With the upshot being that we agreed that they had no such right and that our legitimate concerns would be entirely and adequately addressed by the sort of regime which applies in television dramas to search warrants. Furthermore, we found it hard to see why anyone who was not doing anything bad would care if some computer in the depths of Gloucestershire was reading their emails. Certainly anyone who did not live in Gloucestershire.

Arrived at Oxford Circus to find a Fire and Rescue Service Command Vehicle - a large red, single storey lorry - trying to blue light it through the heavy traffic. It would have managed much better had someone got down out of the cab and did a bit of work with his or her arms but no-one appeared and I resisted the temptation to do anything of the sort myself. Eventually it worked its way into the southern leg of Regent Street.

All Bar One open, with hot water and not too crowded so we popped in there for elevenses. Coffee and smarties for one, not my grandma's riesling for the other. Quite impressed at the range of wine they had available by the glass.

Gallicantus were very good indeed, with their team including two countertenors, a high voice I had not come across before, at least not recently, which was both effective and interesting, and with the whole being powerful and moving, perhaps the more so because it was not showy - although it may well have been difficult to do well. Altogether much more my sort of thing than opera. I puzzled a bit as to why the Puritans (like some Muslims now) were so keen to get rid of sacred music of this sort; not clear to me at all why it should be judged to be sinful.

Out to a fine lunch at the nearly next door 2 Veneti, first tried in 2013 (see reference 4) and used once or twice since. Excellent lunch (although not quite what I was expecting) with a fine white wine, new to us and called 'Conte della Vipera' from the Castello della Sala. Literally 'the count of viper', whatever one of those might be - with conte not being story, as I had expected. Seemingly from a Florentine rather than a Venetian outfit. But they certainly did not do Greco di tufo, from the badlands to the south. Which sparked a discussion about tufo, with my claiming a variety of limestone, BH claiming something volcanic. I was right about the tufo but wrong about the wine, it turning out that is was grown in areas with clay mixed up with volcanic ash. With the soft stone made from this last being tuff, neither tufa nor tufo.

Further discussion on the way home about the height of the rebuilt chimneys of Battersea Power Station, with BH claiming that they had got shorter, while I argued that the slightly different finish made them look shorter. I was completely right on this one, with the elaborate web site being very firm that the replacement chimneys were replicas. The heritage gang had insisted. While I still think it would have been a much better use of resources just to have knocked the whole thing down. Rebuilding chimneys almost as crackpot as rebuilding Clandon.

Home to investigate the different voices for men and women to find it was all terribly complicated, with much more involved than just the range of pitch available. But it does seem that Tudor choirs singing sacred music had to be all men, thus giving rise to demand for countertenors and castrati.

PS: not too keen on the program's title - Queen Mary's Big Belly - although that may have been the phrase of her time. We would have preferred something a little gentler to the modern ear.

Reference 1: http://ripienochoir.org.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.gallicantus.com/.

Reference 3: http://www.2veneti.com/.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/gavrylyuk.html.

Reference 5: http://www.antinori.it/en/.