FluxEuropa - dark music and more

FluxEuropa has suspended active publication and no longer requires items for review. The site is, however, being maintained as an archive and you can still order Amazon products which helps to subsidise its continuation.

home > music >

THE DUFAY COLLECTIVE

THE DUFAY COLLECTIVE specialises in lively mediaeval dance and other instrumental music and has issued two excellent CDs, A L'Estampida (Continuum CCD 1042) and A Dance in The Garden of Mirth (Chandos CHAN 9320).

The intoxicatingly frenetic quality of their music, particularly on the first album, is in part due to the group's concern with reinterpreting European mediaeval music to show Near Eastern influences. Given that many mediaeval instruments (such as the lute, rebec and shawm) originated in the Moslem world and were brought into Europe during the Crusades, this line of reasoning seems plausible.

The Early Music fraternity is, however, divided on the question of these exotic influences, as well as on the subject of 'fine art' versus more 'folkic' treatments. While many Early Music practitioners maintain a rigidly conventional approach to concert performance, the Dufay Collective's style is both more relaxed and more dramatic.

Some time ago I saw them play in a church in Greenwich (south-east London). All dressed in black, they made their entrance at the back of the church, 'mob-handed', and swept up the aisle in an ear-piercing cacophony of shrill piping and strident drumming!

While the more conservative would dismiss this sort of thing as gimmickry and showmanship, I find it exciting. I also think it captures something of the mediaeval spirit in which cultural richness and barbarity were such close bed companions.

Rik - 26 May 1996

THE DUFAY COLLECTIVE WEB SITE