VIOLS
Tutors: Hugh Cherry & Ibi Aziz
Location: Fort Belan on the Menai Straits
Reviewer: Clive Tolley
On 6–9 May we held the second Fort Belan Viol Weekend at the picturesque eighteenth-century Fort Belan, in a fairly remote location opposite the western end of Anglesey. The number of participants was slightly smaller than last year, but we had enough to divide into either two or three groups throughout the weekend. We were glad again to have Ibi Aziz to tutor us, and on Saturday he was joined by Hugh Cherry. We had built an optional afternoon off into the timetable, but in fact only one person took advantage (for health reasons) – most participants wanted to spend as much time as possible actually playing.
The theme of the weekend was ‘All in a garden green . . .’, with a focus on viol music based on songs. We spent some time figuring out what the actual song was in some pieces, but in practice we played quite a variety of music depending on the particular make-up of each consort. Unlike last year, we did not set a specific repertoire, but played pieces according to what the tutors and participants brought with them. This worked well, and although the skill-levels of participants varied, no one struggled impossibly, and everyone seemed to be getting a lot out of playing the music together. The groups I was in played various In nomines, settings of Susanne un jour, Byrd, and (new to me) some extraordinary pieces by Cranford, among others.
While most of the time was spent in various-sized consorts, we occasionally had a tutti session where we doubled up – a sort of viol chamber orchestra. These sessions worked surprisingly well, though obviously they were intended just as an occasional variant.
The tutors offered a good deal of practical advice for realising the musical potential of pieces better; at least this provided something to aspire to – though at one session (the purely voluntary Jenkins session starting at 10pm on the last night, after a full dinner where the wine had been flowing!) when Ibi suggested the trebles should aim to just float away gently onto the top B flat (above the frets), one participant said ‘Ibi, you live in a parallel universe to the rest of us!’
The musical side of the weekend was naturally the focus, but the site is in an area of outstanding beauty, with the Menai Strait lapping the fort itself, and Snowdonia stretching across the horizon. Many people took advantage of the setting, and indeed some non-playing spouses spent all the time doing so: there is plenty of scope for accompanying persons, though really a car is necessary to get any distance given the fort’s remoteness.
The weekend also proved, like last year, to be quite a culinary experience. This time Ron Kelley (one of the organisers) assisted his mother in preparing the meals, and everyone agreed what a huge success this was – though the amount of work involved was considerable. Ron’s chocolate cake was absolutely divine! On the Saturday nearly everyone went out for a dinner in the Meifod Country House hotel a few miles away, where again we had an excellent meal, accompanied by some distinctive (but non-viol-related) conversations, such as when Ron mentioned various strange and remote places he had visited on business trips, to every one of which John S. – who indeed went to Hel and back in 1967 – piped in with ‘Yes, I’ve been there!’ – including the tiny settlement of Chicken in America.
There were a few areas where we failed to achieve what we were aiming for, though these did not affect the overall success of the weekend. One was that other than the organisers (Clive Tolley and Ron Kelley), no NWEMF members attended, though we realised that this was partly due to the lateness of the weekend, at a time when people tend to have other commitments. On the other hand, we were pleased again that we had a good mixture of people from London and Dublin, and some in between. The second thing was that we hoped one or two singers capable of holding a part on their own might attend to sing the actual words of the songs we were playing. The third thing was that we opened the Saturday for attendance just for the day, but had no response; there were some problems here, in that the numbers signing up for the weekend were low and the overall viability of the weekend was not clear until rather late on, so we could not send out any booking forms. Nonetheless, it would have been good to have had a little more participation along these lines.
Clive Tolley
First published in June 2011 Newsletter
