Recorder31 Day 17 | Laura Cannell: The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined

Today we're very pleased to have another Recorder31 guest blog. Laura Cannell is a recorder player and multi-instrumentalist whose solo albums present striking reconstructions of early music. Her new album, 'The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined' was released yesterday and is available from The Early Music Shop now. In her blog, she writes about the creation of the album and her 'Recorder Origin Story'.

Read on to the bottom to find out how you can win one of two SIGNED copies of 'The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined' by sharing your own recorder origin story!

Dear Fellow Recorder Lovers,

I’m really pleased to have been invited to contribute to Recorder31! This month is the release of my 10th solo album, ‘The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined’ (out on 16th August 2024). The album is almost entirely composed for and performed on bass recorder, with some minimalist pedals for delay and layering plus a couple of tracks which feature a small knee harp. But before I head into origins of the album I wanted to give a bit of background, in fact, the very first and pivotal moment in my musical life…

I was eight or nine when I saw my first professional recorder player performing. It was in that moment, on a school trip from Loddon Middle School to Blicking Hall National Trust in Norfolk that I realised ‘You can do this for a job!’ When the musicians in period costume asked the class ‘Does anyone here play the recorder?’ my hand shot up into the air! I don’t think that I was overly confident as a child, but I already knew that I loved the recorder, and the old music with it’s old stories and imagined characters were from another time, a time for space and imagination Evocative melodies accompanying imaginary scenes that played out in real time in my head - in that moment everything and everyone dropped away and I was in my element. I was allowed to play the musician’s wooden recorder, and the first thing which popped into my mind was the short hornpipe by Henry VIII, obviously I didn’t realise how appropriate that was at the time, it being believed to be the birthplace of Anne Boleyn, his second wife.

It only occurs to me now… how weird to be in that spot hundreds of years later with a recorder tune from a dead king memorised and ready to play while on a school trip…

It’s amazing to be able to remember such a moment, we were outside in the grand gardens of immaculately trimmed box hedge mazes, all dark greens and blue skies. From then on, all I knew was that I wanted to play the recorder and that it would be my job, and that was that, I only wavered into other things when it seemed impossible with paying rent and living, even then there was never a question of giving up.

Let’s fast forward ‘several’ years, and I am pleased to say that I haven’t lost that ambition or vision. Becoming a musician is not the easiest route to take, there is so much learning, studying, practicing, commitment and of course The Great Unlearning that needs to go on especially if you play an often maligned instrument. You can’t listen to what anyone thinks, (luckily I didn’t) it can be hard to carve your own path but it is one hundred percent worth it. “I’ll be a recorder player” is not really a lucrative plan for the first ten years! But that is the same for most musicians, it’s not recorder specific. But it is the pure love of music, of sound, of communicating all of the unsayable, uncatchable feelings and moments.

I had no plan other than to play music, I didn’t come from a school which ever mentioned that music college existed, I just didn’t know anything, but I knew it’s all I could imagine in an abstract way. Skipping forward again, I discovered that I love composing and performing and recording, and following years of recording with others in studios or bringing an engineer on location I realised that I could learn to do it myself. I tend to be my own recording engineer, editor and producer. I love the process of making an album from creating the music, to the recording, the decisions are based more on feeling and instinct than on perfection. I want to create music which speaks, which is not restricted by one particular time or place or genre.

Onto the good stuff… I think we can mostly agree that recorders sound amazing in church acoustics, they are, after-all the original loud speakers. I don’t need to plug my mic into an amp to be heard, I simply pop into a rural church and play my heart out and the cavenous spaces sing back. I am telling you this because it’s my main method of composing and recording. I am based in East Anglia and after some fun research trips around the Norfolk and Suffolk borders I have found some of my favourite medieval churches for recorder acoustics. I have also found some ‘definitely haunted’ and ‘definitely will never return to freaky unsettling churches’. Luckily the darkly haunted ones don’t sound as good as the friendly haunted churches.

The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined is an offering of contemporary minimalism to a 12th century composer, a thank you to a lost uncle and a way to process an anxiety disorder. The ancient music feels alive and I dismantle and reconstruct selected works by the 12th Century Polymath Hildegard von Bingen alongside my own compositions. Dismantling and reconstructing is my favourite way of working. Sometimes the melodies are playing in my head, and I am playing the response, playing what is not there.     

The 12 track album is performed on bass and tenor recorders, a 12-string knee harp with a sprinkling of a guitar delay pedal and sparse layering, conjuring multiple voices that echo. The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined was improvised and recorded in single takes.

The raw sounds I make in here are calling to connect across the centuries, and while I breathe into the melodies I watch the daylight flicker through cleared paned glass windows across the vaulted ceilings and battered oak pews, I imagine Hildegard's sacred music duetting in my head as I make my secular offering.

The instruments I’m playing on the album just so happen to be from our favourite shop… The Early Music Shop! The bass is courtesy of an Arts Council England grant in 2012 when I had a residency at Britten Pears Arts at Snape Maltings and where (handily for me) there is now an Early Music Shop. I was able to buy a beautiful Yamaha Bass Recorder in stained maple. I love this instrument so much, it just feels so good to play, and the multi-phonics and pure tones that it delivers are magical. As a solo performer I am always looking to push my instruments and my playing as much as possible. What can I create, what can this instrument do, what is it’s unique characteristic. Many wooden/handmade recorders have unique temperaments. I often practice on the Triebert bass recorder (plastic resin), it needs more air to sustain it, and it has surprising little quirks with alternative fingerings and multiphonics and chords. I have never been a recorder snob, you have to find the one which speaks to you and which resonates with you in the same way a violin does, and it’s not always (but sometimes is) the most expensive!

I recorded the entire album on a Zoom H4 Recorder, my favourite piece of kit for taking around to churches, lighthouses, power stations and other wonderful and unexpected spaces. It has a stereo microphone in it which is perfect for capturing the live sounds of the recorder in the space. It is also battery powered so going to remote places and saving on electricity is easy to do. 

I wanted to give a glimpse of where this album came from and how it was made. I learned and listened to many interpretations of Hildegard’s music over the years, but I didn’t learn the melodies to reproduce, some of them stayed in my mind, performing themselves over and over until I had to do something with them. I think I always knew that she would appear as a main character in my music, the melodies have always felt more like a traditional music to me, sometimes more than traditional folk music does. I think that’s to do with what you listen to, and again what speaks to you. Early Music has been in my ears and under my fingers since I first picked up a recorder. Hildegard's music speaks to me, perhaps also because the range it is written in is for female voices. There is so much music early music that exists written by male composers and in traditional folk music it is again based heavily around male voice or point of view that it is really special to work on music whose origins are for the female range or pitch. It resonates strongly in my bones and breath.

I could write a lot about this, but really I wanted to tell you about why the recorder is still my favourite instrument and that yes, it is indeed possible to be a professional recorder player, and also yes you are allowed to be a performer AND a composer. And that everything I am begins with my experience of Early Music and the recorder.

If you want to make music you can play it on anything, and the amazing thing about the recorder is that plastic instruments can help you to make inspiring music just as much as wooden ones, it’s all about finding your voice. The recorder is such an amazingly expressive instrument.

I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to say when I began writing this piece for Recorder31, it appears to have drifted slightly into a love letter to the recorder!

I have named a track after one of Hildegard von Bingen’s most famous quotes - which of course I have slightly dismantled, but it is essentially this ‘Remain Brave in a World that is Being Shipwrecked’ - I think that it’s interesting that all those centuries ago, she felt the need to say this. I believe that in this complicated world if we have recorders and music then we are surely going to be okay.

– Laura Cannell, August 2024

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WIN A SIGNED CD!

To celebrate the release of Laura's new album, she has kindly offered to donate two signed copies to readers of Recorder31! She has described her 'Recorder Origin Story' in her blog post today – but now it's your turn! Simply comment on this blog page, or on our social media, with the story of how your recorder journey began, and Laura will choose two of her favourites to receive a signed CD!

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The Sound of Recorder Music!

One of the recorders used on Laura's album is the Triebert bass recorder in resin. This affordable, yet high-quality, bass recorder comes in a matt black finish and produces a mellow, breathy tone. Listen to the clips below or follow this link to find out more about this instrument.

Van Eyck Doen Daphne:

Playford King of Poland:

Scale: