Ellie Court
IT’S time’s like these I give thanks for living on an island off an island, at the arts end of the earth! Direct from Corsica to Tasmania, via Ten Days and its policy of showcasing only the work of other islanders, came a brotherhood of angelic voices that revealed how isolation can preserve the most astonishing cultural traditions.
An all male foursome, Barbara Furtuna are proud exponents of forms of polyphonic singing practiced by Corsicans since the twelfth century. This music, they say, springs from the depths of their native soil. The group’s performance at Hobart’s St Mary’s Cathedral was, simply put, sublimely beautiful.
How to situate their sound? It’s reminiscent of singing from Georgia, Bulgaria and other mountainous places in Europe. Unusual harmonics, at times sounding oddly dissonant to our ears, figure strongly in Corsican polyphony. It is also highly melismatic, and bears the distinctive resonances of Gregorian chant.
The style is commonly performed by male voices, arranged in three parts. Barbara Furtuna has two basses: the powerful bassu of André Dominici contributes a strikingly rich depth of tone, in counterpoint to that of Jean Phillipe Guissani, the group’s spokesman. As a vibrant secunda it is the voice of Maxime Merlandi (formerly of the ground-breaking ensemble A Filetta) which carries the melody. Jean Pierre Marchetti’s fluid terza, completes harmonic structures with ornamentations over the top.
What distinguishes this group is the seamless tonal blend their voices achieve. Watching them perform is a lesson in communication. The four stand around a single mic’ in intimate formation, with an intensity of aural and visual attention to each other that invites the same in us. Merlandi directs using a system of coded hand gestures, his expressive movements adding verve to the spectacle.
Barbara Furtuna’s program offered a mix sampled from their sacred, folkloric and contemporary repertoires. Fittingly, it opened with Maria Le Sette Spade, a processional lyric sung to the Madonna during Holy Week. Exquisite settings of texts from the liturgies, Lux Aeterna, Agnus Dei and Tota Pulchra es Maria were delivered in Latin with the reverence of true belief. The haunting harmonies in these ancient chants induced chills and hair-raising gooseflesh.
The four also treated us to lighter lyrics sung in their native Corsican. These spoke of romantic love in Violetta, of melancholy for the brevity of a lifetime in S’hè Discitatu, of the exile’s hopeful return to his native village and the arms of his lover, Anghjulina. Not all arrangements were a capella, with singers picking up guitar or pan flute to accompany the jauntier songs in their program.
Barbara Furtuna means ‘cruel fate’ to you and I. But there was nothing cruel about my experience of these angelic voices. Had an EEG machine been wired to my brain, it would surely have lit up like a pinball machine, my bliss receptors fizzing and popping to the max. Judging from acclaim shown by the rapt audience who packed the cathedral to beyond capacity, I was not alone.
I’ve had the fortune of hearing some of the world’s finest tonsils in action in what must, by now, amount to hundreds of programs by vocal ensembles; I’ve even sung in some myself. This was, however, no mere concert but communion through music. For me, it will rate as one of life’s peak musical experiences – joyous, intense and soaringly transcendent.
