When I planned this research trip – I mean, really planned it, not just thought about it with trepidation – I made sure that both the hotels I booked had free wi-fi. I saw myself blogging every night, setting up my next day’s research on online catalogues; skyping with the kids and generally carrying on much as I do at home. But no – I arrive in Ferrara, and lo and behold, my computer can see the hotel’s network but only one programme (the one that monitors but does not operate my POP email account) can use it. Go figure.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Ferrara’s city administration has decided to provide free wi-fi in its city centre – a group of piazzas surrounding the castle and cathedral – to anyone who signs up. Excellent! No matter if it’s slower than a slow thing on a slow day (I was about to say “than an Italian archivist’s response,” but that’s not fair as I have been granted the most helpful archivisti imaginable on this trip), it’s still a connection and it’s free. Thus, although I am writing this in the privacy of my hotel room, if it ever makes it to my blog, it will be because I have trolled my computer down into town before dinner. (Ed – and I have, so I’m uploading this from the steps of the cathedral).

But I will have to get my feet out of the bidet first. There seems to be no escaping sore feet, even this early in the trip. When I’m on a research trip I tend to walk everywhere, not just because I like taking in the city but also because it’s the only practical way to get around when you don’t understand the buses/trams and can’t/won’t afford taxis. In some ways, I’d rather be this cat, although I wonder if it is able to retain its relaxed demeanor when the car engine starts.

Nonetheless, the walking is a pleasure, especially when there’s nothing else to do because the archives have closed for the afternoon. Strolling (well, hobbling) down to the convent of Sant’Antonio in Polesine with Sacred Hearts, Secret Music in my ears – yes, I do listen to it, a lot – I started really to understand why nuns’ choirs would be such an asset to the city. I think it has something to do with the impression of altitude, something to lift the soul up and over the morass of dark alleyways and fetid sewers. Boys’ voices haven’t the strength to bear you; women’s have the power and depth to envelop you whole and transport you safely, even if your aching feet are most firmly pounding the cobblestones.

So, I was surfing, as I way too frequently do, for reviews of Sacred Hearts, Secret Music when I found this one. It’s quite complimentary, in its way, if you take it in the spirit in which it seems to be intended.

But our friend here seems to be wishing for what most of his mind-set call a “definitive version” of a work – that is, a recorded performance that cannot be bettered. And that “bettered” is normally pretty loaded with intimations of composer intention – the Holy Grail of a performance, after which the composer would have said, “That’s it!! You’ve understood everything I meant to say in this music, and you’ve communicated it as clearly and as eloquently as if it had been transmitted directly from my own consciousness into the listeners’ ears. No performance, before or since, will be quite as valid as this one.”

After one more drink, I might have said this was b…., um, but I’ve only had two, so it will have to be “claptrap.” Quite apart from the fact that his beef seems to be the fact that the bass line isn’t sung at pitch (ho hum, the harmony isn’t inverted, and the voice, albeit transposed, is still in the polyphony – Palestrina and all his chums wouldn’t have batted an eyelid – THE MUSIC IS NOT TO BE HEARD OR UNDERSTOOD VERTICALLY!!!), I cannot imagine any Renaissance composer, from Arcadelt to Zarlino, who would have any comprehension of such a notion.

In the 1500s, composition – at least, the written working out of musical ideas – was quite a different pursuit to performance. What went down on paper was just one, just one, amongst myriad possibilities for the performance of a work. The idea that you could condense the best qualities of all those versions into one monumental performance would have be preposterous.

I realise that a generous, open-minded and universal reception/acceptance of non-score-bound performances of Renaissance polyphony is kind of like full employment – a nice idea, but I won’t see it in my lifetime. But sometimes, just sometimes, I wish people would just go with the flow, and let their Ramellian prejudices float away on a crest of really beautiful, voice-led polyphony. I spent most of my teens and twenties in a love-affair with bass lines (and, truth be told, bass players). But then I grew older and realised that there is a false security in foundations, at least when it comes to polyphony. The vertical warp is there for organisation, but the beauty of the fabric comes from the weft.

It would have been far more interesting for me, and any passing reader, if I had been blogging throughout the last three months – did a recording, gone through another bereavement, launched the CD and heard us on the radio lots and lots.  But actually, there really was no time.  Really, there wasn’t. But the CD is out now, and available via links on the Musica Secreta website, and if it doesn’t set the cat among the pigeons, I’ll just have to get Chester, the family moggie, on the case.  Well, seeing as how he’s belly up on the floor here, waiting for attention as he always is, I might have to think further afield.

And then there was last weekend’s trip to Triora, the Italian Salem, when Deb, Mel (seasoned Musica Secreta debauchettes) and the lovely rookie Natasha sang for a conference on witches.  What music do witches like, you might ask?  Don’t know, don’t care.  We sang them Josquin, Palestrina, Rore, Agostini, Marenzio and Ingegneri.  And they seemed to enjoy it – though judging by the DVD they gave us, I can see why I’m a boffin-singer, and not a singer-boffin.  I look slightly scared, and you can hardly tell that I was having the time of my life singing all those bass parts on my own!

But it was all good, and now it’s over for a while.  I think.  Sacred Hearts the novel is out, Sacred Hearts Secret Music will sit along side it very soon, and we just have now to watch our babies in the marketplace.  Meanwhile, I have a book to write – a book that has been sitting in my head for seven years now.  So what am I doing today?  My accounts….

See, every musician has to do stuff that isn’t fun once in a while.

I should be in bed – no, I really should, as it is after midnight and I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for well over 48 hours.  Sunday night went straight into Monday morning as I had forgotten that I had not completed all the short scores, so at 4am I was just shutting Sibelius down.  The rehearsal later that day was a wonderful experience – we had the new continuo team (Claire Williams and Kinga Gáborjáni joining Fanny Kelly) together for the first time, and also our other newcomer, mezzo Clare Wilkinson.  Deb and I were overwhelmed by the beauty of the noise.  Then this evening had another wonderful rehearsal with the choir.  So looking forward to Sunday when we rehearse the choir with the continuo – then straight into the recording on Monday.

I’d like to say I have no idea about how this disc will be received, but I’m afraid I know all too well.  Last time we had Know-nothing ClothEars saying in a national daily broadsheet that we performed the music without the bass line, even though there were three thumping great continuo instruments playing all the time.  This time it will be, “How very dare they!”  But you know what, I don’t care.

Palestrina’s music was made to be passionate, not sanitised.  The Lamentations are some of the most agonised, vivid and searing verses in the Old Testament, and virtually every recording I have ever heard sounds as if the choir have been fed bromide for six months.  Deb says Savonarola, and I agreed 100%.  She has also written ornaments for the Mass that are so sexy they ought to be singing in basques, and we will make Palestrina into something that channels the overwhelmingly sensual love of God admitted by the early modern religious, and smacks the Doubting Thomases right between their disbelieving ears.  So there.