Event programme

Panta Rhei
Renaissance music of flow and change

From the planets and stars whirling about the heavens to the lowliest of creatures on earth, motion and change are in us and all about us: a flowing stream or wine from a bottle, flickering flames of a fire, day turning to night, weeks becoming months becoming years, youth and old age. Everything flows: “panta rhei”! Following this ancient expression that has withstood the tests of time, our programme traverses themes of all that flows and changes, both within us and in the world around us. It tiptoes through moralizing odes about inconstance by Claude le Jeune, flows through Isaac’s “Die Brünnlein die da fließen” and the popular drinking tune “Quant je bois du vin claret tout tourne,” and gets lost in wistful songs about the passage of time by Dowland and Arcadelt. The texts spin verses about water and wine, sobriety and drunkenness, happiness and melancholy, and life and death, all to the flowing pulse and rhythm, melody and harmony of music—a sounding embodiment of “panta rhei”.

The idea for this programme emerged after our first collaboration with tenor Charles Barbier. His positive spirit, deep knowledge, and natural charisma for Renaissance repertoire immediately caught our attention, and we knew we wanted to work with him again. Being French, it seemed fitting to create a programme around his mother tongue, and so the idea for Panta rhei was born: a collection of mainly Francophone music about water, bathing, tears, and wine – all of which flowed abundantly in the Renaissance.

We began with songs about water in nature – rivers and fountains – both secular (À la fontaine, En l’ombre d’ung buissonet tout au long d’une rivière, Susanne ung jour, Die Brünnlein die da fliessen) and sacred (Super flumina Babylonis / An Wasserflüssen Babylon). To these we added songs about tears (Les Larmes, Tulerunt Dominum, Perch’io piangh’ad ogn’hor donna gentile) and about wine and drinking (Quand j’ay beu du vin claret tout tourne, O vin en vigne / Gentil joly vin en vigne, Entre vous qui aymés bon vin et bon poisson, Amoureulx suis quand je boy du vin, Bien que Bacchus soit le Prince des vins, Nous boirons du vin clairet par aventure), which gave us a wealth of repertoire.

As we prepared for an initial reading and recording session (scheduled for October), we drafted a programme description for approaching concert series and festivals. It was then, in researching the meaning and history of the phrase panta rhei, that we realised our scope had been far too narrow: we had only included things that literally flowed. In fact, the expression refers to the broader idea that all things are in flux, all is mutable – and, in its original context, it referred not to water, but to fire! This prompted us to expand our range of subjects to include all that is inconstant: time (minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, seasons, years), age, and the emotions. We discovered Claude le Jeune’s Octonaires de la vanité et inconstance du monde (1606; Octonaries of Vanity and of the Fickleness of the World), which addressed our theme with uncanny precision. Excerpts from this collection became the scaffolding for the rest of the programme: the first set, in three movements, speaks of the ceaseless motion of the planets and the unstoppable passage of time; the second deals with the shifting balance of the four elements; the third focuses especially on the variability of air and water. From there, the texts on the universe and the elements led us towards related ideas from Medieval and early modern thought.

In Medieval and Renaissance philosophy, the universe – with its planets and stars moving in perfect, unwavering orbits – was the model of perfection. The marvellous workings of the human microcosm mirrored the hypnotic, perpetual motion of the celestial macrocosm. The four elements, thought to compose all things in the universe, corresponded to the four humours in the human body. When the humours were in balance, body and mind were healthy; imbalance brought disease and emotional disturbance, such as melancholy. The harmony of the spheres, also believed to exist within the human body, could be witnessed in the natural world: the flowing of a stream, the flicker of a flame, the turning of day to night, the passing of seasons and ages. Whether cyclic or simply in flux, change is everywhere – and music is no exception.

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, music was seen as a sonic reflection of the harmonious movement of the cosmos. It was one of the four mathematical arts (the quadrivium): numbers in proportion. The same numerical ratios that defined perfect musical intervals (e.g. 1/1 = unison, 2/1 = octave, 3/2 = fifth, 4/3 = fourth, 9/8 = tone) were thought to define the distances between the planets. Thus, the harmony of the spheres (musica mundana) found a parallel in the harmony of the human body (musica humana), both of which related directly to earthly music-making (musica organica or instrumentalis). The music we perform – and love – is, in the most metatextual sense, an ideal medium for conveying panta rhei: its pulse is a cyclic flow of time over which rhythms, melodies, and harmonies dance without end.

With these added philosophical dimensions, our programme took shape in four sections. The first, Panta rhei, sets the tone with the opening triptych from Le Jeune’s Octonaires. The second comprises two sets of French chansons, Italian madrigals, and English songs on time, the passions (shaped by the humours), life, and death. The third opens with the second set from the Octonaires, on the elements, then turns to sacred and secular music about the cleansing power of water and its relation to the soul. The final section, in two sets, takes a lighter turn: beginning with the fluid nature of water, it drifts towards wine and the songs of drinking and drunkenness – a state many of us have known to be quite different from sobriety.

What began as a simple programme about water and wine grew into an exploration of physical and metaphysical change – and the shifting states in between – carried on the flowing pulse, rhythms, melodies, and harmonies of music: the sounding embodiment of panta rhei.