Category: Sheet music

Edited by Barbara Sachs
Peacock Press / Green Man Press Mv 2
£10.50
ISMN 979-0-708105-91-6

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his volume contains not one but two variant settings by Monteverdi of a text which is divided into two sections; the first (set over a ground bass) makes up around two thirds of the piece while the second (marked Adagio in one source, Largo in the other) begins over a descending fourth. In triple time throughout, the principal differences are pitch (they are a tone apart and a range of an octave and a fourth from the B below middle C and the C sharp above it respectively), and the presence of additional continuo-only bars in one and substantial repeated sections in the other. Sachs intelligently includes ossias of the two most divergent passages, allowing performers to create further versions that suit their taste.

The set includes a full score with a green cover and realized continuo, a second score without the cover but with all of the introductory matter and just voice and bass lines, and a continuo part with loose sheets to allow all three pages to be on the stand at once, thus avoiding the issue of impossible page turns. Similar care is taken over the layout of the score, though I would have tried to get bar 25 of the Neapolitan version on the previous line, and probably taken bars 77-78 on to the next line, but these are purely for aesthetic reasons (although arguably, repeats are more easily found at the beginnings of lines).

My only difficulty was that introduction. Of course, given that there are two divergent sources meant it was always going to be a challenge, but I found it confusing, for instance, that the two sources were referred to as Florentine and Neapolitan in one paragraph and then, in the next, being identified by the RISM sigla of the holding libraries (before the sources had been thoroughly – and I mean thoroughly! – discussed). Sachs also includes a nice translation of the text (including the three lines not set by Monteverdi, for the sake of completeness).

Brian Clark

Edited by Jonathan P. Wainwright
A-R Editions, Recent Researches in the Music of the Baroque Era, B194
xxxiii + 10 facsmilies + 256pp, $250.00
ISBN 978-0-89579-846-6

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his volume presents Porter’s Madrigales and Ayres  of 1632, his Mottets of Two Voyces  of 1657 and four pieces of dubious attribution in an appendix, and is thus the first to contain the complete surviving music by an important but little-known composer. The comprehensive introductory material includes all that is known of Porter’s life, including a table identifying the likely dedicatees of his music, and the full texts in poetic format.

The music itself is impressive. The 1632 set (for two to five voices with continuo, 22 of the 27 pieces also featuring two violins) display an array of genres. Smaller pieces have instrumental introductions followed by the vocal music which is repeat for subsequent verses, while the larger settings are through composed and alternate extended solos very much in the Italian vein (he styled himself a friend of “Monteverde”) with tutti passages (violins double the sopranos) that are predominantly homophonic but often hint at imitation. The Mottets  are similarly short and once again predominantly melody and bass, rather more reserved in style than the virtuosity of Italian duets of the 1650s – the lower voices is always a bass, mostly doubling the continuo line. The appendix has a simple strophic song for soprano and continuo, and three catches (canons) for three basses.

The edition is nicely laid out with differences between the bass viol and continuo parts shown with minimal fuss. Typically of A-R Editions, they are generously spaced but with the wide syllables of English, in this case that is a good thing. All original accidentals are retained (also on consecutive notes) and very few are added. I was struck by the choice to split Orpheus’s wife-to-be’s name as “Eu-rid-i-ce”, and I cannot begin to describe the ugliness of the hyphens placed tight to the right of each syllable. My only musicological reservation is – once again – the inconsistency of bar lengths in non-tripla; Wainwright argues that rather than indicating a minim count per bar, the two time signatures are more like tempo markings than metrical, but he does not explain why he has chosen to divide some measures into four minims and some only two.

Brian Clark

edited by Licia Mari, (Gaude Barbara Beata, 2: Music of the Basilica of S. Barbara in Mantua)
LIM, 2016. pp. xxiv + 124 ISBN: 9788870967449 €25

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]urprising and useful, this is a modern edition of 32 motets in score, from a 1618 Venetian print in part books, for the court of Mantua, dedicated to Scipione Gonzaga, son of Ferrante Gonzaga (brother of Mons. Francesco Gonzaga, who was still bishop). The collector was the composer and bass singer Federico Malgarini (among the highest paid in S. Barbara, and Rector of S. Salvatore, a church later demolished for the creation of the Jewish ghetto in 1611), and the other composers represented were also active at the Basilica. In Mantua the doctrines of the Council of Trent were followed, but with some independence in style and liturgy. The motets are generally quite short, and the contents include settings from Psalms (6, 8, 84, 98, 113, 137), Song of Songs (2, 4, 5), Old and New Testaments, and liturgical texts.

These composers wrote or sang secular music, too, and their motets are light, often florid, rhythmically interesting and delightful. They were either singers (Cardi, Sacchi, Grandi, Sanci and Rasi) or players, organists or musicians who worked in theatres and for the imperial court in Vienna. The contents are as follows [title, composer, voices]:

For one voice:
1. Apparuerunt Apostolis, Francesco Dognazzi [S]
2. O Domine Iesu Christe, Giovanni Battista Sacchi [S]
3. Audite caeli, Giulio Cardi [S]
4. Amo Christum, Lorenzo Sances (Sanci) [A]
5. Domine secundum actum meum, Alessandro Ghivizzani [T]
6. Cantate Domino, Federico Malgarini [B]
7. Quam pulchra es, Federico Malgarini [B]

For two voices:
8. Tota pulchra, Giulio Cardi [SS]
9. Nigra sum, Francesco Dognazzi [CT]
10. Sancta et immaculata virginitas, Lorenzo Sances [AT]
11. Benedictus Deus, Simpliciano Mazzucchi [SS]
12. Quasi cedrus exaltata sum, Ottavio Bargnani [ST]
13. O Maria, Giulio Cardi [SB]
14. O Crux benedicta, Giovanni Battista Rubini [SS]
15. Laudate pueri, Federico Malgarini [SB]
16. Beata es, Virgo Maria, Giovanni Battista Sacchi [SB]
17. Vulnerasti cor meum, Francesco Rasi [SS]
18. Audi Domina, Alessandro Ghivizzani [SB]
19. Adoramus te, Christe, Pandolfo Grandi [SS]

For three voices:
20. Domine, ne in furore tuo, Ottavio Bargnani [SAT]
21. Aperi oculos tuos, Anselmo Rossi [SAB]
22. Laetentur caeli, Alessandro Ghivizzani [SAB]
23. Confitebor tibi, Domine, Simpliciano Mazzucchi [SST]
24. O sacrum convivium, Pandolfo Grandi [SSB]
25. Anima mea liquefacta est, Giulio Cardi [SSB]
26. Cernite mortales, Orazio Rubini [SAB]
27. Beatus vir, Francesco Dognazzi [SST]
28. Ego dormio, Simpliciano Mazzucchi [SSB]

For four voices (all SATB):
29. Domine, Dominus noster, Ottavio Bargnani
30. Puer qui natus est, Francesco Dognazzi
31. Audi Domine, Amante Franzoni
32. Quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Simpliciano Mazzucchi

It is unfortunate that the Introduction is only in Italian, and that no full pages from the part books are included for comparison with the transcription, which I have to assume is faithful. In the Critical Apparatus there are 15 problematic details shown in facsimile, which are enough to suggest that there may be other solutions for the number of notes or rhythm of some ornamental passages (such as groups of three or five notes, or ties that weren’t respected by the editor as essential for the rhythm or underlay).

Malgorini’s collection is remarkable for the number of continuo figures it gives, many of which challenge interpretation. I wonder whether they were decided by Malgorini or perhaps written in by various organists in the manuscripts he used. Maria Licis adds a few more in parentheses, but she doesn’t offer help in the difficult cases, and confirms some pretty obvious ones. In one case a superfluous editorial (a natural) under a bass note e, meant to refer to a g natural 3rd above that note (and who would play a g sharp in the vicinity of five e flats?), will be mistaken for an editorial alteration of that bass note to e natural. Licis does not remove the ambiguity by repeating the flat sign. Upon reflection (i.e., is there any reason to change a brief e flat to e natural, or, indeed, to change the even shorter one in the voice as she suggests?) I decided she was referring to the 3rd above e flat. So I must remind performers to question all editorial interventions as well as one’s own.

More information or more facsimile examples in the Critical Apparatus would have been useful, too. Another problem may be the existence of wrong notes or missing accidentals in the print itself, unsuspected by the editor. Prints in movable type contain a high number of errors. There are two notes in Tota pulchra es  which I do not think are correct, because e, instead of the continuo’s f in bar 4 and also instead of its first c in bar 5, would not only produce good 6th chords, making sense harmonically and contrapuntally, but even appropriately for the text (et macula non est in te  – ‘There is no blemish in you’). Indeed the third and fourth repeats of “macula non” immediately following in bars 5 and 6 are set over four figured 6s in a row.

Since this music is so good, let me make a few suggestions for continuo players using it: 1) A string of numbers may not refer to chords, as we are apt to think. These single intervals may be a guide to a melodic line for the organ. The bass lines contain passages typical of keyboard toccatas, over which the right hand might only play a sequence of short motives; 2) A strange figure, such as a 2, between two chords on the same bass note may also be melodic, a way to pass from a major 3rd over the first to a minor 3rd over the second, by inserting a neighbouring note in between; 3) On almost every perfect cadence we find the conventional # 4 # , which stands for #3-4 4-3#, or simply figured # 4 – #. This edition never aligns the final sharp correctly, over the last quarter of the long dominant bass note, unless the vocal notes above clearly show the syncopation, which is usually demanded in the accompaniment anyway. Other misleading original figures could have been clarified, but every editor has to draw a line somewhere, and I’d agree here that we are lucky to have so many figures to consider, even where they are inconsistent. Players have to vet both those of Malgorini and of Licis, using a fair amount of creative musicianship as well.

Singers will enjoy these motets, technically easy, with plenty to do in not many bars (averaging about 36 bars per motet). Basses, however, be prepared for Malgorini’s two octave range, from D to e flat’! Everyone will enjoy encountering the other lesser known composers.

Barbara Sachs