- Oswald von Wolkenstein
Els Janssens-Vanmunster - voice
Baptiste Romain - vielle, bagpipe
Marc Lewon - voice, lute, vielle
Quintett version of the programme includes:
Miriam Andersén - voice, harp
Tobie Miller - sinfonia, flutes, voice
Oswald von Wolkenstein: statesman, castle-owner, Knight of the Realm, politician, and bon vivant... those were his main professions. Nowadays he is mainly known to us by his hobbies, that he mastered to perfection: he was a poet, composer, and musician and is often called "the last of the minnesingers", because the classic epoch of the minnesingers was long gone by his time. No other poet-composer of the Middle Ages created such a highly varied repertory: churlish drinking songs, rants against his opponents, openly erotic texts, even obscene songs are to be found in his manuscripts, but also deeply religious pieces, tender love-songs, and compositions of virtuosic subtlety.
The same goes for his music: he created melodies that people would whistle in the streets as well as complex polyphonic pieces with curiously entangled voices; almost everything that was popular or could be imagined in his time is to be found in his music.
The concert programme "The World and I" presents Oswald's music in all its aspects and shows how he self-consciously views his relationship to the world around him: he tells of his toils, his travels around all of the known world, of adventures, of fraud, joy, love, kings, vagabonds, and of his very personal feelings.
(This programme is also possible as a solo-performance: Marc Lewon accompanies himself on the typical instruments of Oswald's time, namely the lute, gittern, and fiddle and brings to life this astonishing and transfixing repertory of monophonic and polyphonic music.)
video samples on youtube (2012):
Freu dich, du weltlich creatur
live samples (2012):
sound-samples (live, 2011):
Do frayg amours - Stampanie Portugaler