of music. Fortunately, not all were burned, used as cover pages or to consolidate new music books. Thanks to these discoveries, heirlooms from three major polyphonic anthologies could be reconstructed. The whole was called 'Lady Mass', a votive mass dedicated to the Virgin Mary, who enjoyed a massive cult in mainalnd Britain.

Despite the fact that women tended to sing in unison, the existence of complex polyphonic songs for women is known for certain, a.o. in Las Huelgas, Spain. These and other factros led to the Lady Mas, the Mass for Our Lady, put together as it is now. The English composer Gavin Bryars was called upon and in 2008, he completed the missing parts.

The Trio Mediaeval consists of the sopranos Anna Maria Friman, Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Torun Østrem Ossum. Since its inception in 1997 the trio became world famous and it duly honored its fame with the concert it performed on Wednesday 25. May in the historically interesting Chapel Church (Kapellekerk) of Brussels. The church had retained a portion of its Romanesque structure so that, whit this building, you right away have an architectural atmosphere whitch matches the music from the 13th century.

I happened to arrive in very good time and had the opportunity of admiring the church in all its magnificent beauty. The remains of the medieval frescoes put me in the right atmosphere. You could almost smell the burning candles, imagining yourself as a medieval dweller from the old magnificent city of Brussels, whitch had not fallen to the present destruction rage. And ther I was, listeniing to the three ladies singing.The impressions the church produced on me, I fixed on my retina and then I closed my eyes, listening.

Pure harmony
The music worked as a time machine taking me to Worchester in the twelve hundreds. The polyphonic harmonies - genial compositions as mysterious as everything in that era - filled the room, ascended, resounded in all corners with intertwining echoes that are part of the composition, bringing me into another dimension. The wonders of these sounds fused with the stille robus but already clear embellishment of early Gothic. The lyrics and the music tied to the ritual gave me a religous feeling that seemed eternal. Something one hardly understands today.

Eacht singster singing, them singing in chorus, the unit structure, professionalism, the lingering and extinction of the senses in order for ferpect harmonu tot comme to the fore in, to the smallest nuances it produces, the balance the ladies find between the sound and the space they inhabit with their music... It is a truly exceptional musical experience.

Gavin Bryars wrote the missing pieces in en comtemporary language, but with strong grafting onto the ancient music.
The ladies accompanied themselves with something like chimes, each holding two organ pipe-like tubes having a kind of soft valve they resonated. Very subtle and beautifull. Bryars' work can possibly be deemed a little less successful in that he wanted to go too far. One can hear it. The singsters are on the verge of having to force their voices on and off. You can also hear that the composer had not quite understood that the play of echoes is part of polyphony. Nevertheless, he wrote very enjoyable pieces to complete these hymns to the Virgin Mary.

There were few people at the Chapel Church, a sign of lack of knowledge among the public. Well, there is barely any training in this regard, or any responsible form of media attention, and for the artists, it is almost like fighting a losing battle. Fortunately, there were a 100 or os listeners and I was there to review this performance and to draw a welldeserved attention to this music and to the Trio Mediaeval.

You can relive this experience, not in the way I was lucky to hear it but not less qualitatively similar on CD? Visit www.triomediaeval.no <http://www.triomediaeval.no> and immers yourself in medieval beauty.

Gouden Label (Golden Label Award)

Al the best,

Ludwig

Ludwig Van Mechelen

earliest musical epiphanies came from her love of American folk music. As a young woman she studied and played the mountain dulcimer-a key component of the Appalachian musical tradition.

“Culling from both the music and oral traditions of the region,” Wolfe continues, “the piece focuses on the legend of John Henry, immortalized for his race against ”the machine.“ Wielding a steel hammer, he faces the onslaught of the industrial age as his super-human strength is challenged in a contest to out dig an engine. With its over 200 versions and myriad of differing details, the tale has been embraced by a wide variety of American communities in the cause and glorification of the worker.”