Paul Hillier really is extraordinary. Recent releases include ‘Chansons de Trouveres’ (Harmonia Mundi, 4/97), and John Cage (Harmonia Mundi, 8/98) and now he mixes folk techniques with the near-minimalist miniatures of Howard Skempton. A closer look shows that there are connections between these apparently disparate interests. Hillier wanted to sing poetry to a type of music that allowed the words to be clearly heard as with the troubadours. He’s spent some ten years assembling this personal collection of poems ranging from medieval writers to twentieth-century figures like Yeats, Brecht, Gertrude Stein, Robert Lowell and Basil Bunting. Hillier’s approach was to select an existing melody to fit the poem and when this wasn’t possible he produced a tune himself. He appropriately matches Stein’s It was Summer Now to something very close to Cage’s Wonderful Widow and this modal simplicity is the model for Hillier’s other melodies.
Everything is beautifully sung and the use of the simplest material does allow the words to be delivered with complete comprehensibility, as Hillier intended. The pretty Skempton items are successfully adapted from unpretentious piano works and mostly played on the harp, although one is adapted to a song, one of two in this earthy collection where the girl murders her newborn baby – bitter ballads indeed. The whole project is a crossover inspiration that doesn’t quite work in the sense of sustaining interest throughout. The more ambitious things such as the setting of Yeats and the arrangement of Brigg Fair are the least convincing. But there is much to admire in the elegant delivery from both performers, and the recording and documentation are first-rate.PD