Medieval music has a directness, a meaty spiritualism about it that no other music has, with the gallant exception of some forefront electroacoustic or acousmatic music from the realm of GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) in Paris, like Jean Schwarz or Bernard Parmegiani, as well as some electroacousticians from GMVL (Groupe Musique Vivantes de Lyon) like Xavier Garcia and Marc Favre. Renaissance music can show some of these holistic properties too, as, for example demonstrated by the group Flos Filius from Nyköping, Sweden, with their shawms and pipes.

There is an air of recklessness and muddy, erotic excess in this music, peculiarly paired with a lofty, angelic ingredient; apparent opposites working together towards the core ecstasy of life as is, so to say. Read Rabelais to get a literary equivalent. Death and Love march side by side down the muddy lanes of medieval villages!

Many groups that indulge in early music (as the term goes) are careful to try and play in a way that they think is original. They’re mostly purists, in other words. These are guys that can’t accept the genius of Glenn Gould or Tatiana Nikolayeva, simply because they play Bach on piano and not – like Wanda Landowska or Gustav Leonhardt – on harpsichord.

So what is Ars Ultima about then? Well, Anna Sandberg and Mr. Tängman show a liberating independence when it comes to the purist factor. They play because it’s fun, and not as if they were museum artifacts. They don’t sound all that different from the purists, but you can tell they feel free and at ease in their musical roles, letting the songs and the melodies and the rhythms pour freely out of their hearts. This music for sure and certain is viable enough on its own account to stand up against the passing of centuries, without loosing its characteristic content, sprung out of certain realizations and insights that rose out of medieval times, and that are still applicable today, simply because the truest and deepest findings of each age, of each period, have their fundamental bearing on the human spirit; a spirit which is shaped and developed by assimilating the atmospheres of all these findings from all times. The false and the cheap just peals off, flakes off like soot and disappears, but the core of humanity’s fundamental experiences through time stays fresh always, and that is why a duo like Ars Ultima can deliver music in medieval style today, with contemporary hearts and souls. This is the magic, this is the joy, this is the adventure! When you see a rune stone from Viking times and a flock of Anemone Hepaticas in the grass below it, you might feel the age of the runes and the freshness of the flowers – but the flowers, fresh as they may be in the sun and wind of April, are much, much older than the rune inscriptions.

The Ars Ultima duo was formed within the percussion, dance and performance project Ginnungagap in 1993, and the duo went into early music in 1995. They’re in their 10th year of performing in diverse settings, on concert stages, in churches, at market places, at Christenings, weddings and funerals, in Sweden and elsewhere.
The music they play originates in the 12th to the 16th centuries, but they focus mainly on the sacral and profane music of the 13th and 14th century.

The initial piece – Skogspipa – has a title that simply indicates the instrument, which translates Wood pipe or Forest pipe – a flute of sorts - but the fluting, floating, meandering melody figures are supported by a distinct drum that rolls along like time through our bodies, like our bodies through the space-time continuum, like thoughts through the thought forms.

Cantiga 168 is derived from Cantigas de Santa Maria in Spain, from the 13th century. It is a lively piece, diligently delivered on hurdy-gurdy, flute and drums, rumbling past, rambling past in an intensity that associates to the output of famous band Radio Tarifa. You dance along here, you sweat!

De två systrarna (the Two Sisters) is a medieval ballad; the content very traditional, and for the first time on this CD we hear the song of Anna Sandberg; a natural, not overly schooled voice that adds youthful femininity to the old theme. I’m not sure about the instruments, but could be baglama in addition to drums. Very effective, anyhow.
The sad and violent story of the two sisters; one killing the other over a man, has been told in countless versions since medieval times, and I especially recall one very beautiful version by Eva Tjörnebo, a relatively young woman living in Lid outside Nyköping, Sweden, who issued it on her first CD Å längtat haver jag, in 1994. However, I’ve also heard impressive, old a cappella versions in traditional style by Lena Larsson (recorded 1957), Ulrika Lindholm (recorded 1958), Hilma Ingberg (recorded 1957) and Ester Sjöberg (recorded 1961), testifying to the enormous impression this long, rambling story of murder in the family and the terrifying vengeance has made on the European ballad tradition.
Ars Ultima’s version is a modern one, more marked rhythmically than the others mentioned, and it’s up to the listener which version seems the most intriguing. Perhaps Ars Ultima’s version seems a little detached – but maybe that is the way these songs should be sung, as a mere recounting of irrepressible events that move down their fateful and dark tracks again and again.

Tre fontante stems from the Italian 14th century.
It’s a flute/drum piece, in a relentlessly flowing motion. You can picture a jolly fairytale prince in green clothes dancing happily down the forest path, playing his whistle as the sun shines down, and there is not a worry in the world.

Väinämöinen 1, of course, is from an old Finnish tradition. Väinämöinen, Old Väinämöinen, is one of the main figures in the old folk tale collection Kalevala. The collection was assembled in the 19th century by Elias Lönnrot (issued in 1849), but the content of the stories that make up the collection are very old.
Here we hear bagpipes in a long introduction, in serpentine gestures over the drone. The melody, I suppose, must be modeled on an old song, since Kalevala is nothing but verse, but verse that has been sung for as long as one can remember and longer, in a special old meter.

The first tune with a named composer on Ars Ultima’s CD is written by Guillaume de Machaut (c:a 1300 – 1377). It’s called Je vivroie liement.
Anna Sandberg returns with a slightly hushed voice that goes fine with the drums in this winding but determined melody, embellished in the French language and its elegant expressions. I must admit her voice gives me an urge for some unrestricted femininity!

The tune Dellastarpe is French too, but 200 years younger, from the 16th century, really modern stuff!
It starts infernally, a bagpipe drone and some sticky sounds I can’t deduce – or perhaps it’s the machinery of the hurdy-gurdy? It would be nice to have each tune equipped with the instrumentation in the booklet. Anyways, this tune fills out with damped drums as it travels in haste and speed and joy through its duration. This is catchy; I can hardly stay at the computer for lust for dancing!

Vallivan is a medieval Swedish ballad. The baglama – perhaps? – or zarb? – beginning sets the atmosphere for the seriously appeal of Anna Sandberg, who stands out of old centuries in her fair maiden guise, her seductive apparition in these latter days… layer after layer of predecessors behind her like shadows into the past.

Cantiga 422 is the second entry from the Cantigas de Santa Maria in the 13th century Spain. With its seven and a half minutes, it is the longest piece. Its elaborate beginning with bells or cow bells or some other kind of percussive instrument have you anticipate a longer work too, confirmed by the way the melody slowly gathers instrumentation, by way of a drone, a hushed flute, a stringed instrument (oud?) and a bass drums that rocks the loudspeakers. Yes, very effective, very beautiful, rich and complete in its glaring sensuality. When Anna Sandberg starts singing, everything is ready for her, hungry and thirsty for her – and she delivers in a maiden’s semi-innocent femininity!

Old Väinämöinen returns in the last entry, simply entitled Väinämöinen 2. It opens right in your face with an instrument that sounds like an Indian shehnai; you know, that almost insulting sharpness of tone that makes you duck for cover. Perhaps it’s a shawm. The music is not from Rajasthan, anyway. It is, like the first Väinämöinen tune, constructed around an old Finnish lay; i.e. an old, traditional poem that used to be chanted.

Ars Ultima, calling their first CD Den Yttersta Konsten, which simply is a Swedish translation of the Latin Ars Ultima, certainly have won my ear through this CD, on which the duo plays freely with the instrumentation and the expressions of an old tradition, which is very much alive.