Music Review: The Curious Bards – ‘Sublimation: Songs and Dances from 18th-century Scandinavia’

Well, this is a hoot! Get your cobbler to stitch together some dancing shoes, and then travel back in time with the Curious Bards to 18th-century Sweden and Norway. For their new album, Sublimation: Songs and Dances from 18th-century Scandinavia, these busy musical archeologists didn’t just break out the baroque violins and cittern and the viola da gamba. They also commissioned luthiers to create replicas of authentic archaic Norse instruments for these energetic recordings of dances and lays, some of which also feature vocals from mezzo-soprano and early-music specialist Ilektra Platiopoulou.

Up North with the Curious Bards

The music illustrates the cross-cultural world of the 1700s. Many of the tracks call to mind Celtic (and by extension Appalachian) folk music. Some, like the first track, one of several Polish-style dances (which were very popular up Norse in baroque times), actually sound like they could be French, perhaps from the circle of Lully. Another “Polonesse” (Track 4) could almost be a transcription of a sweet-sad lute melody from Olde England. And “Madame Trifes Liri e Dans” is nothing if not a Scottish reel, and not the only one here.

These similarities are no accident. Europe musical styles traveled widely over the continent (and beyond). As the liner notes point out, one of the manuscript sources for the material “is a fine example of the cultural diversity evidenced in eighteenth-century Scandinavia: Scottish reels, English dances, minuets, polskas, and waltzes appear side by side.” The same could describe Sublimation.

Exotic Instruments, Familiar Strains

The great appeal of this collection is that while the notes, chord structures and rhythms sounds more-or-less familiar, the instrumentation is different from most traditional folk music you hear today. The string menagerie includes copies of two instruments housed in museums, a hardingfele, Norways’s iconic instrument (Track 9 is a solo for it) and a Swedish kontrabasharpa, a keyed string instrument and the ancestor of the nyckelharpa (you’re familiar with that one, of course. No? OK, neither was I). Both sport sympathetic strings. (The liner notes have handy pictures and descriptions.) Track 9 is a solo for the former and a good example of the virtuosity that the Curious Bards bring to their revelatory curiosity.

Try and resist the sultry melody, as sung by Platiopoulou, of the Huldra, of Scandinavian folklore, a “seductive forest nymph with a woman’s body and the tail of a fox or a cow.” Close your eyes and let Platiopoulou’s captivating, bronzed vocals help you imagine the Necken (merman), a mythical water-being said to be especially inspirational to musicians. And listen to her a cappella lament of the sinking of a ship in “Signe Lita.”

Throughout, with or without vocals, the tracks sustain a peripatetic emotional journey through the ins and outs of the music that folks were playing up north for fun and sometimes profit. Most of all, it’s a fun and rewarding listen. Discovering new sounds is always worthwhile, and sometimes it’s also a blast. This one’s going in both my “Folk” and “Early Music” playlists. How fun is that?

Sublimation from the Curious Bards is out January 24 on Harmonia Mundi.