Some years ago mine uncle didst take Teresa and I out to dinner and a concert, in Olde London Towne. I confess I forget what the restaurant or cuisine were, but I vividly recall the venue and music: the concert was at The Idler Academy café and bookshop (sadly no more!), in Notting Hill, and the group was the Society of Strange and Ancient Instruments.
Their programme of musick that night was called The Ministry of Angels, and they had a CD of the same name, which was funded ‘by subscription’, i.e. ye olde fashioned form of crowd-funding. Terry very kindly bought us the CD.
This year he gifted us the group’s most recent recording, The Longest Night. The live concert, all those years ago, was enchanting. One thing I particularly liked was that they celebrated fallen angels as well as the goody-goody ones.
Both albums are excellent. But of the two I definitely prefer the most recent, which, despite an earthier more pagan programme is, musically, quite completely and utterly sublime. The music ranges from ethereal, starting with what sound like harmonics on a violin or similar stringed instrument, to earthily folksy.
Where the first album had an angelic theme, this one has a winter solstice Scandewegian core, several of the songs being sung in (sorry, should know, but don’t!) either Norwegian or Swedish, and the Hardanger fiddle and Nyckelharpa being strange and ancient instruments of those two respective countries.
Whenever I hear a harp playing music of this style/vintage (and that isn’t often enough, alas), I go looking for more similar stuff. I’m always surprised and disappointed how little there appears to be. On Amazon, for example, I could only find three or four such albums, and several of those were out of print vinyl or cassette releases!
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