Review: ‘Secret Knowledge of the Stars’: The Bruegel Consort: Sidney Sussex College Chapel

The Bruegel Consort which appeared at Sidney Sussex College Chapel on Thursday (20 March) is a five-part early music ensemble specialising in fifteenth and sixteenth century sacred music polyphony and especially in little-known works.

The Consort is the current recipient of the Stile Antico Ensemble Development Bursary 2024-26.

Their programme on Thursday evening was titled Secret Knowledge of the Stars and focused on music of the late medieval period, namely music from the reign of King Henry VII, featuring that of John Lloyd (1475-1523) and Robert Fayrfax (1464-1521).

The title of the programme refers to the epitaph of John Dunstaple (1390-1453), an influential English composer, astronomer and mathematician, stating that he had “secret knowledge of the stars”.

What knowledge of such things did people have in those times?

Human beings have always inevitably speculated on their position in the universe and their relationship with God or gods.

Historically, under the old geocentric scheme of things (Earth as the centre of the universe) everything beyond the moon (the ‘Trans-lunar world’) was orderly, changeless.

The stars were the ‘fixed stars’, while everything beneath the moon (the ‘Sub-lunar world’) was subject to change.

“Oh swear not by the moon,” Juliet pleads with Romeo, “the inconstant moon”, otherwise there may be a terrible mishap, a catastrophe, or dis-aster.

The latter, as the word itself suggests, is where a shooting star is a heavenly proclamation of no good end, or the

appearance of a comet foretells tragedy on a large scale:

“When beggars die there are no comets seen / The Heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”

Celestial manifestations of such a kind indicate that order and fixity have been disrupted. Things are not where they’re supposed to be.

This was a pattern which applied from the top down, and was given the name, ‘primacies’. In other words, the sun was the foremost of planets, kings were the foremost of men, eagles of birds and so on.

Comets don’t bother to show up for the death of a beggar, but only for the deaths of princes who are much more important.

The moon, sun, planets and stars in their various configurations were believed to have an effect on every aspect of a person’s life.

This included, significantly, health. Poor health meant that a malefic (bad) planet was having an influence (‘influenza’) and not in a good way.

On the other hand, proper order within the system reflected a benefic (good) state of things where all was as it should be.

Three hundred or so years later, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) now living in a heliocentric system (the sun at the centre) had an anthropocentric view of the natural world, marvelling at “How exquisitely the individual Mind… to the external World / Is fitted – and how exquisitely, too – the external World is fitted to the Mind.”

He believed that Paradise could be achieved in the here and now by a kind of marriage between the mind and the natural world, ourselves responsible for restoring our own lost paradise and leaving God out of it, so to speak.

In their recital, the talented Bruegel Consort aimed to demonstrate what they called the medieval ‘microcosmic’ approach to the creation of sacred choral music.

It, too, describes a ‘fittedness’ but of a different kind to the one Wordsworth talks about, a mathematical reciprocity between an inaudible music of the spheres on the one hand and man’s own musical compositions on the other.

The composers of the age believed they were reflecting in the construction of their music the mathematical principles within the mind of God himself.

Coleridge would later speak of the artist’s creations as “a reflection in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM”.

In other words, when poets write a poem, or composers a piece of music, they are creating something out of nothing, in the same way that God creates when he says … ”let there be” and there ‘is’.

The ‘creation’ with which the Bruegel Consort was concerned came from mathematical principles which lay behind all the music being performed on Thursday evening.

As their programme notes said, the late-medieval composers “pre-planned their compositions based on webs of numerical proportions and balances and thus reflected God’s heavenly arithmetic in their own creations”.

This of course was a rational way of demonstrating devotion to the Almighty and we heard several elegantly performed reverential pieces from the Bruegel Consort: an antiphon Ave Regina Celorum, and two movements from John Lloyd’s Mass O quam suavis, as well as plain chant Propers (texts that vary for each Mass to bring out the significance of a Feast or Season - in this case ‘Corpus Christi’).

In addition, there was a ‘pleasingly symmetrical’ miniature Sancta Maria by Dunstaple, and as was explained by the Consort, the mathematics may not have been obvious in the creation of such pieces but it was very much there beneath the expressiveness of them.

The recital concluded with an antiphon in praise of the Blessed Virgin, Ave Dei Patri filia (‘Hail daughter of God’) by Robert Fayrfax, and sung by the Consort with evocative and mesmerising intensity.

This recital was a triumph, the voices and harmonies peculiarly haunting, and the Consort’s mission a godsend to those concerned with the preservation of such glorious music.

Were it not for the painstaking research that results in performances such as this one, it is precious devotional music that otherwise could be overlooked, forgotten and in danger of being tragically lost forever to successive generations.