Medieval vocal group goes Americana
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York City is a very small town if you have a special interest, said Marsha Genensky.
Her special interest was music of the Medieval period, and it didn’t take long after she arrived in New York in 1986 with a degree in folklore and folklife to find collaborators.
“There were people in church choirs and other groups focused on early Renaissance music,” she said, “but there we did not have much opportunity to sing Medieval music together because there was a mistaken impression that women did not sing Medieval music.”
It was true, she said, that women could not sing in public cathedrals during the Medieval period, but there was ample evidence that in convents, for instance, they could and did, so she and her fellow singers banded to see what it was like to hear the music from that era sung by women, and the group Anonymous 4 was born to a mixed reception - but positive where it counted.
“For our first record, we had to get a note from a musicologist giving us permission to sing this music,” she said. “But every scholar we’ve known has been really thrilled to work with us and thrilled with the result.”
Anonymous 4 strictly pursued Medieval music for many years and never ran out of material. “The Middle Ages lasted a really long time,” Genensky said. “We did at least a dozen records of Medieval music before we started recording new music.”
In recent years, Genensky has been guiding Anonymous 4 into the realm of Americana and folk music, more in keeping with her academic background, resulting in a pair of albums, “American Angels” and “Gloryland,” and a concert tour titled “Long Time Traveling” in which the normally a capella group performs with fiddler Darol Anger and guitarist Scott Nygaard, the core members of the band Republic of Strings in a program focused on early gospel and shape-note singing.
“Many people will recognize a lot of the songs,” Genensky said. “But we also look for some interesting gems.”
