Thy Kiss of a Divine Nature: The Contemporary Perotin (DVD)

Last Thursday for listening lab, we watched various parts of a movie featuring scholars and experts discussing Perotin, intermingled with performances of the Hilliard Ensemble performing some of Perotin's music. 
Let me discuss the music we heard first.  It was all either three or four part polyphony and sounded very complex and difficult to perform.  The result was a beautiful, layered texture, full of rhythmic pulse, and energy.  The performances and rehearsals of the Hilliard Ensemble were filmed inside Lubecks St. Petri Church in Germany.  It's cathedral-like dimensions and vaulted ceilings allowed for wonderful acoustics for all of the Perotin performances.  I don't think the documentary told us the names of the pieces they were performing, but it was very nice just to listen to the sounds and enjoy the music.
The entire film was staged (to my amusement), showing us scenes of different scholars discussing deep musicology questions while driving in the car, shopping at the store, or walking down the hallways of the same church where the Hilliard Ensemble was filmed.  To be honest, most of what they were talking about did not make it to my notebook, since they were speaking in German, my time was spent reading the subtitles instead of taking notes.  However, I do remember a few moments from the video.  At one point one of the men was presenting his ideas to the rest of the group and we watched as a (probably staged) heated discussion broke out between the presenter and one of the listeners over this issue.  If I understood correctly the man presenting made the point that we can't know how the music of Perotin really sounded in Perotin's day, and he cited some famous more recent recording (I think from the 1950's) of a Perotin piece in which there were all sorts of instruments (organs and bells) and a huge choir.  He seemed to be saying that we don't really know if it was more like that (a huge production), or more like what today's scholars believe: a small group of people - maybe even one person per part - a capella.  The man of the dissenting view believes we can know a lot about the performances because we know where they were performed (in churches), in what settings (what mass, what time of year), with what decorations (the extra stuff they use for Christmas or Easter festivals), and knowing all of this can tell us how the performance would sound.  Now the presenter tells how he is not talking about all of that extraneous, it is just the vessel, he is talking about the wine.  But, interupts the dissenter, you can't have wine without the bottle.

Besides that there was talk of how Perotin made a great leap forward in music, by going from 2 part polyphony to four part polyphony and making rhythm more important in music.  There was something about the importance of the invention of the clock during this time, and how that was reflected in Perotin's music.

Overall, I felt more amused by the documentary, than moved by it.  As I said, it was obviously staged, and some of the scenes were just bizzare (like the one in the grocery store).  Also, when the Hilliard Ensemble was performing there were giant projections of swirling images on the pillars that seemed just a little akward to me.  Here I was listening to an ancient piece, in an ancient building, and then a screen saver type randomization of images appears on the pillars on either side of the Hilliard Ensemble.  Am I being cynical again?  I am only trying to express what I really thought about this film.  It wasn't all bad...as I said before, I really enjoyed the music, and there was an inherent difficulty in just trying to keep up with these intellectual debates with english subtitles.  I leave you with picture of the inside of St. Petri Church.  Enjoy!