The False Isle Broken Consort

To all gentles in the Known World doth Lord Thormot mac Otter, Shire Bard of False Isle, send warm and tuneful greetings.

What, you may ask, is a Broken Consort? and what or where is False Isle? A broken consort is an instrumental group containing more than one kind of instrument - as opposed to a recorder consort or a consort of viols, for example. False Isle is a shire in the Principality of Tir Righ, Kingdom of An Tir, in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism). Mundanely, it's Powell River, BC, on the beautiful West Coast of Canada.

I present to you here our members:

Lord Thormot mac Otter (leader, violin, occasional recorder, percussion, music librarian and arranger)
Master Stephen of Hunmanby (music historian; soprano, alto and tenor recorders; lute, guitar)
Isabella (soprano, alto, tenor and bass recorders)
Lady Ambrosine (cello; viola da gamba; soprano, alto, tenor and bass recorders; harp, lute)
Alfred (pipes, trombone, and percussion)
Lady Cassandra the Red (soprano and tenor recorders)

The short and easy answer is: for fun. If you've ever played music in a group, like a school band, you know it's more fun than playing on your own. A small group is even more fun, in many ways, than a large one.

We can chat and joke between pieces, up to a point, without getting the evil eye from the bandmaster and without cutting into the playing time too much. (It's part of my leader job to keep the balance between social chat and playing well over towards the playing side, though).

If someone makes a big mess of their part from time to time, it's more funny than anything else, because we've all done it, even our most experienced members.

We bring beginners into the group and get them started on simple parts in our easier pieces, and help them learn to play more difficult parts as we go along. That does require some work on the part of the new player, of course: if they don't practice in between group rehearsals, they'll be starting from scratch again each time, and that doesn't work. We also lend some instruments for new players to try out.

Mostly, we play for ourselves - for the joy of making music, and making music with our friends. It also helps that we get lots of appreciative feedback from our listeners: we don't pretend to be anywhere near professional standard, but we do reach a good enough level that we're enjoyable to listen to (most of the time) and we get invited back.

Click the links below to hear us play:
Jouyssance vous donneray
"I shall give you joy" A basse-dance tune from Arbeau's 1589 dance manual. A basse dance was a stately dance.

Come follow me (audience participation version - we got the whole audience singing)
A three-part round written by John Hilton in 1652.
"Come follow, follow, follow,
follow, follow, follow me
Whither shall I follow, follow, follow?
Whither shall I follow, follow thee?
To the greenwood, to the greenwood,
to the greenwood, greenwood tree."

You can listen to more MP3 recordings on our blog at http://fibrokenconsort.blogspot.com/2008/05/broken-consort-concert-at-unitarian.html