Scandinavia’s Trio Mediæval

A sound winds across history, whispering from the north of Europe, echoing through the silences of its ruined churches and cloisters. That sound, seemingly unaltered by time, can be heard in the voices of three young women, Scandinavia’s Trio Mediæval.

The trio, while changing the rarified, academic world of classical music, is also bringing new listeners to sacred medieval music’s canon and to the modern composers who’ve been deeply influenced by its power. Norwegians Linn Andrea Fuglseth and Torunn Østrem Ossum and Sweden’s Anna Maria Friman have stormed the charts and received critical accolades for their two recordings on forward-thinking label ECM, Words of the Angel and this year’s Soir, dit-elle. Trio Mediæval has also garnered rave reviews for its European and Stateside performances of sacred music from the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as new works by contemporary composers like Ivan Moody, Gavin Bryars, Oleh Harkavyy and Andrew Smith.

“Our voices do not change to accommodate the material,” says founder Fuglseth by phone from her home in Norway. “Performing without accompaniment is the challenge; we blend our voices in a natural way, feel the music, and what comes out is what happens. We perform, not as music students or classical musicians, but as singers.” She speaks amiably and enthusiastically, sounding less like a diva than an artist who lives in the everyday world. In fact, both she and Ossum are married and have three children; each are immersed in balancing family and career.

Trio Mediæval’s recordings bear this out. The vocal purity has a distinct richness, and the music possesses a bright, sometimes biting tone that adds immediacy and depth, sounding not antiquated, but warm and full of life. And, the group sounds seamless in its blending of modern and historical works. What we hear is vibrancy, passion and a human regard for spiritual music. Lyrics are in their original languages because, according to the group’s producer, John Potter, they do not want to “channel listeners’ attention to meanings that are no longer there.”

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“We never set out to be an authentic early music group,” laughs Fuglseth. “We wanted to have fun and to sing music we liked. Two of us are classically trained singers, and Torunn was a kindergarten teacher. She and I sang together in two choirs in Oslo and then met Anna. We clicked right away—Anna’s smile was the thing that made it happen for sure.

“Our way is to find music that means something to us, whether it’s medieval or pre-Renaissance music, or modern music written in that style, or old Norwegian folk music, and to approach it without elegance. Most Renaissance music is too flowery and feminine; we want the music to have a strong feel on its own and not to waver. When we perform live we don’t have period costumes, but our own clothes and interesting lighting; we do not try to recreate anything.”

This good-natured pronouncement would amount to heresy in the stodgy universe of classical music if Trio Mediæval’s approach wasn’t so effective. The group’s recordings mirror one another. The first, Words of the Angel, is a mass comprising medieval sources with Ivan Moody’s title piece woven throughout. Soir, dit-elle features predominantly modern sacred works written in the early style with one authentically antiquated piece interspersed.

“This is to show that these things are not separate, but are all living as music,” explains Fuglseth. “When we started in 1997, we were trying to find music that nobody else did, music that was sort of outside the academy. We didn’t want to do a lot of research, and even if we tried, it might have been impossible. There are pieces we do where we have no idea if some of the parts were even written for voices. And they certainly were not written for women’s voices but those of monks. But why should that keep us from performing it? Why should we get caught up in that?”

Amazingly, the classical music establishment generally agrees—despite noting the “inauthenticity” of Trio Mediæval’s approach—and has almost universally lauded the group for its freshness and sincerity of performance. Words of the Angel reached the Billboard Classics Top Ten in 2002.

“A lot of our pieces come from memory—we don’t sight read them,” Fuglseth says. “It’s important not to have them too dry or to sound so old. We do want to appeal to younger audiences who have not encountered this music before and don’t have the same attitude toward it as those who are classical music professionals.”

In addition to those previously mentioned, Trio Mediæval works frequently with other living composers who write specifically for them: The music they compose lacks the atonalities that make some of the current period’s pieces harsh-sounding and confrontational. As the women’s voices encounter one another within the material, natural dissonances occur, but a deeply moving, fluid whole results.

“We do not sing a lot of modern music, except what is written specifically for us. There are many reasons; some of that music is just too rhythmically and harmonically complex for us. We don’t want to work that hard!” Fuglseth laughs.

Trio Mediæval plans to do more contemporary work in the future. They also hope to find additional older pieces that possess certain specific qualities. “We would like to do some contemporary vocal music with really cool and strange sounds, but that stays with our way of working,” says Fuglseth. “We also want to do folk music from Norway because it too has strangeness and beautiful odd sounds. Hardly anyone outside of Norway has heard it, so it would be new!”

Ultimately, the way Trio Mediæval brings such stark and haunting spiritual music out of the stillness of its historical context into the modern one can be something of an unsentimental—but still welcome—balm.

“After September 11, people sought peace,” Fuglseth muses. “They sought a calm way to go about their lives in the middle of a lot of uncertainty and sorrow and violence. They still seek this, because things are not so much better. The music we sing gives this, it was written for this. Our records seem to speak to people who need this in their lives. Who doesn’t need this in their lives?”