A Rose is a Rose is a Rose

Fuma Sacra brings Medieval and Renaissance music to Bristol Chapel in Princeton

By:Susan Van Dongen
   During the Middle Ages, the rose was seen as the queen of flowers and a symbol of the Virgin Mary, representing romance, spirituality and healing.
   For a rose to bloom in winter was said to be a miracle, or a promise of new life during a dark, dormant season.
   Composers from the Medieval and Renaissance periods in music paid tribute to this Marian imagery, for example in the traditional English hymn written around 1420, "There is No Rose of Such Virtue."
   "There’s a lot during this era related to images of roses," says Andrew Megill, artistic director of Fuma Sacra, the early music vocal ensemble based at Westminster Choir College of Rider University. "It’s an image that’s often used for Mary and the Christ child. The rose is a burst of spring in the middle of winter."
   To celebrate this season of miracles, Mr. Megill has prepared A Rose in Winter, a program of early and contemporary music to be performed by the vocal chamber ensemble Fuma Sacra Dec. 19.
   "There’s a lot of new music in this concert — in fact, we’ll be doing the American premiere of ‘Il nome del bel fior’ by Joanne Metcalf," he says. "It’s a modern composition but she evokes an ancient sound. The Hilliard Ensemble — one of the greatest vocal chamber groups in early music — commissioned this work. And the piece is rose-related since it borrows from a text by Dante from the ‘Divine Comedy,’ which is related to the Virgin Mary."
   Also on the program are works by Giovanni Palestrina, Guillaume Dufay and Josquin Desprez. In addition, Mr. Megill, who champions new work by modern composers, has programmed a contemporary setting of "There is No Rose of Such Virtue" by Richard Rodney Bennett and "The House of Winter" by Peter Maxwell Davies.
   "(Davies) was a wild modernist in the 1960s," Mr. Megill says. "He wrote this one piece titled ‘Eight Songs for a Mad King’ where the baritone sings from inside a cage. But then he began to work more with children and his style really changed. He discovered Medieval music and began to write a lot based on those (tonalities).
   "The text was written by George Mackay Brown, who is Davies’ neighbor on one of the Orkney Islands (in northern Scotland), which amazes me — two geniuses on this remote island," he continues. "It’s a difficult piece with virtuosic singing and the poem is spectacular — very mystical. Again, it uses imagery of the white rose blooming in the dead of winter, the idea of life after the thaw. Davies sets this tone of a cold and barren landscape, very much inspired by the Orkneys. It’s a beautiful piece but austere — the austerity reflects the composer’s love for Medieval music."
   Since 1989, Mr. Megill has served as artistic director of Fuma Sacra. He’s led the group in the American premieres of many forgotten masterworks of the choral repertory, including cantatas by Johann Pachelbel and Georg Philipp Telemann.
   Mr. Megill has conducted all the major Bach choral works and more than 50 of the cantatas with Fuma Sacra and the Westminster and Dublin Bach Festivals. In addition, Fuma Sacra has collaborated with many of the regions’ finest period instrument ensembles, including Piffaro, Tempesta di Mare and Brandywine Baroque.
   For more than a decade, Mr. Megill has served as chorus master for the operas of the Spoleto Festival USA. An associate professor at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Mr. Megill also conducts the chamber choir Westminster Kantorei.
   Fuma Sacra was founded by a group of Westminster graduate students and is currently comprised of a mixture of choir alumni and professional singers from the Princeton area. The ensemble’s name is Latin for "holy smoke," by the way.
   The fact that there’s a theme to the concert is a bit of a departure from the group’s usual holiday performance. Mr. Megill says as he was putting the program together, he became intrigued with the idea of the rose in winter, of reawakening. Indeed, there’s a sense of rebirth in the contemporary arrangements of ancient melodies.
   "It’s a paradox — the same kind of thing I hear in our blend of old and new music," he says. "It’s an interesting parallel — the timelessness of the music, the way it feels fresh and modern."
A Rose in Winter, directed by Andrew Megill, will be performed by Fuma Sacra at Bristol Chapel, Westminster Choir College of Rider University, 101 Walnut Lane, Princeton, Dec. 19, 8 p.m. Tickets cost $20, $15 students/seniors. For information, call (609) 921-2663. On the Web: http://www.rider.edu/284.htm