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Polish Lute Music of the Renaissance

Joachim Held lute
59:00
hänssler classic CD HC19034

For this excellent CD of Polish renaissance lute music Joachim Held plays seven pieces by Albert Dlugoraj (1558-after 1618), eight by Diomedes Cato (1565-1628), nine by Jakub Polak (c.1545-1605), and seven anonymous pieces. The first track for each of the three named composers is a prelude, setting the mood for the dances and fantasias which follow. The dance pieces are quite short, ranging from a mere 31 seconds to 1’41”, but the fantasias are more substantial. Track 12 is a Fantasia by Diomedes from Besard’s Thesaurus Harmonicus (1603). It is a fine piece, and well sustained by Held, albeit skipping a low G (a6) just towards the end. Track 15 is an extraordinary fantasia, five minutes long, with interesting chromatic turns and a couple of bars towards the end which are reminiscent of Dowland’s Semper Dowland Semper Dolens. The piece was the first to be included in Robert Dowland’s anthology, Varietie of Lute Lessons (London, 1610). From the same source Held plays a fantasia by Polak (Track 31). Something seems to have gone wrong with the recording at bar 15, because some notes are missing.
 
All the anonymous pieces are from D-B Danzig 4022. The first, and at 6’08” the longest, is an interesting set of variations on Monycha [=Monica] aka Une Jeune Fillette, which Held takes at an appropriately unhurried speed. I am less happy with his leisurely speed and use of rolled chords for Track 20, the well-known dance from folio 20v of Danzig 4022, which I feel needs a more sprightly, foot-tapping interpretation.
 
Track 24 is a lively Volte by Polak, which has a clear 2-part texture (occasionally filled out to 3-part), with nice interplay between treble and bass. Held’s brisk tempo is ideal, and he has contrasting loud and soft for the first section. Surprisingly he omits the first note of bar 9, but he does include three chords missing from the source (Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s MS), which were inserted as bar 21 in Piotr Pozniak’s edition.
 
Most useful is a list of sources provided in the liner notes, so if you want to follow the score, or play the pieces yourself, you know where to look. I cannot find any information about the sort of lute Held plays for the present CD. There is an uncaptioned photo of an eight-course lute on page eight of the liner notes, but no information about it or its maker.
 
I have always liked Held’s playing. Unlike so many of today’s lutenists, he eschews excessive rubato, and actually plays in time. He must have heeded the advice from the Johannes Nauclerus lute book, which he quotes in his liner notes: “And you must observe the beat, if you will court fair Maidens.” I wish him luck with amorous activity.
 
Stewart McCoy

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Recording

Josquin: Missa Mater Patris | Bauldeweyn: Missa Da pacem

The Tallis Scholars, directed by Peter Phillips
72:30
Gimell CDGIM 052
+Brumel Mater Patris, Plainchant Da pacem

There is so much that is fine about this recording, i.e. everything, that it is difficult to know where to begin. Best perhaps with the pieces themselves. The Missa Mater Patris by Josquin Des Pres – if indeed it be by him – is an astounding creation. Written in four parts, with a fifth added for the third Agnus Dei, it is unique among his masses in referring to a work by another composer, Antoine Brumel, who was seemingly only a decade younger than Josquin. Because it is unique among Josquin’s masses, both in provenance and in musical style, it is inevitable that the revisionist police come sniffing round, eager to remove it from Josquin’s canon. Scarcely less impressive, the Missa Da pacem survives with attributions to Mouton, Josquin and Bauldeweyn in early sources, and throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries it was hailed as one of Josquin’s greatest compositions. Then in 1972, according to Peter Phillips’s cogent notes, Edgar Sparks established that it was the work of Noel Bauldeweyn, who flourished during Josquin’s lifetime. There is a commercial recording of four of his masses by the excruciatingly named but capable Beauty Farm, an ensemble based in Austria, on Fra Bernardo FB1709761, a double album.

What of the music itself? Mater Patris, the euphonious three-part motet by Brumel on which the Missa Mater Patris is based, is constructed largely of duets followed by short passages in all three parts. Josquin’s fuller punctuations tend to be homophonic, with harmonies and textures that glow gloriously, a quality that sets it apart from his earlier more polyphonic masses. Particularly memorable – one wants to say catchy but the context might be too serious – is his response to the word Hosanna and, while Brumel’s setting of the word “exaudi” lurks throughout the mass, here Josquin gives it full rein. Peter Phillips’s notes are excellent and, although I would take with a pinch of salt his suggestion that Josquin’s setting of Hosanna exhibits playfulness, it certainly shows a human side to this most technically assured of composers. While still showing maximum homage to Brumel, Josquin flexes his polyphonic muscles towards the end of the third Agnus in five parts, resulting in music emulated at the same point only by Palestrina and, particularly, Byrd. One corker of a dissonance at 4’05 left this listener breathless.

Missa Da pacem also in four parts, based on the plainchant “Da pacem, Domine”, is eminently fit to be mentioned in the same sentence as Josquin even though it has been established as a work of Bauldeweyn. Besides those fine passages (especially the fabulous third Agnus in six parts) mentioned in his notes by PP, the first Kyrie, Benedictus and first Agnus in particular present the work of a composer who, at his best, is comparable in stature to Josquin as, say, Alonso Lobo is to Victoria.

Recently I attended a concert by The Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips at the Cadogan Hall in London, at which they performed Palestrina’s neglected but superb Missa Ave Maria a6, plus motets by Byrd (including his disorientatingly discordant six-part setting of O salutaris hostia described amusingly but accurately in the programme notes as “bonkers”), Handl, Morales and Palestrina again, with a neglected Magnificat by him to conclude. Their live singing was as good as I have ever heard it, and the same can be said about their recorded singing on this disc. They present the best possible case for these two masses, supported by outstanding sound engineering in which every part is equally audible and perfectly balanced.

Even after all this exhaustive advocacy I am still not sure that I have done this superlative disc adequate justice. Suffice to say, everything about it is the best.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

The Food of Love

Songs, Dances, and Fancies for Shakespeare
The Baltimore Consort
68:04
Sono Luminis DSL-92234

It is good to see the Baltimore Consort back so many years after their glory days on the now defunct Dorian label. There have been some crucial changes in the line-up, but the group clearly retains its funky borderline trad. approach to early music which made their accounts of this repertoire so exciting. It is disappointing and a little puzzling that there is so little surviving music contemporary with and relating to Shakespeare’s plays, but the Consort do the next best thing here, assembling plausible repertoire with more or less tenuous links to a sequence of Shakespeare plays. If I felt the playing lacked something of the youthful energy and brio of some of the group’s vintage releases, this is an undeniably entertaining programme given the recognisably Baltimore Consort treatment. My only major reservation is one which applied equally to their earlier recordings, the rather uncomfortable ‘home counties’ pronunciation of the singer, in this case Danielle Svonavec, which seems entirely at odds with the gritty instrumental playing – the one exception, the archly ‘mummerset’ grave-digger is equally uncomfortable to listen to.

D. James Ross

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Recording

Lachrimæ Lyræ – Tears of Exile

Sokratis Sinopoulos, Lacheron, François Joubert-Caillet
65:37
Fuga Libera 753

Greek Lyra meets viol consort, Greek Lyra improvises with viol consort, Greek Lyra and viol consort tackle Dowland – and this curious CD is the result. I think the most successful tracks are those on which a viol drone supports improvisations by Sokratis Sinopoulis on his Greek Lyre. For me, the accounts of the Dowland Lachrimæ Pavanes and associated Galliards and Almands with the Greek Lyre forced into the role of a treble viol just sound a bit weird. I found myself speculating that I might have found them more persuasive if Sinopolous had felt free to improvise more freely as in the ‘Greek’ tracks, but this just underlies the complete implausibility of the project. In the programme note, François Joubert-Caillet makes various attempts to tie the Lyra repertoire and his viol consort’s together under the theme of exile, but is ultimately reduced to writing that British and Greek taverns were both places in which music was listened to attentively – wishful thinking at so many levels. The playing is never less than expressive, and for all I know there may be an audience out there which has been waiting for the Greek Lyra to enlist the support of viols to tackle Dowland – I don’t think I am among them.

D. James Ross

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Sheet music

Michele Pesenti: Complete Works

Edited by Anthony M. Cummings, Linda L. Carroll, and Alexander Dean
Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, 171
liii + 218pp, $350
A-R Editions, Inc ISBN 978-1-9872-0139-0

So there are a total of 36 surviving pieces by Michele Pesenti (c. 1470-c1528), of which only three are sacred. The remainder survive as settings in four parts (mostly with only the top part texted) or for voice with lute. This excellent volume not only provides performing versions of them all, but goes to great lengths to explain how the poetry of the time works (and how that has guided the editors to underlay the text in the most appropriate fashion), as well as detailed commentaries on and translations of them all. Two of the secular pieces are Latin odes. The works with lute give both tablature and staff notation versions, making this music accessible to all performers of this neglected repertoire – it would be intriguing to hear the various settings of the same text one after the other (definitely NOT in one of these “mix and match” programmes that is de rigeur at the moment!).

This is a great example of scholars working together – thank goodness not all musicologists are as territorial as some I have encountered!

Brian Clark

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Sheet music

Jheronimus Vinders: Collected Works

Part 2 – Masses
Recent Researches in the Music of the Renaissance, 167
Edited by Eric Jas
xii, 438pp. $350.00
A-R Editions 2019 ISBN 978-0-89579-881-7

Don’t beat yourself up if you are unfamiliar with this composer – pretty much the only concrete evidence of his existence (besides the music, of course) are accounts of money paid to him for around six months’ service as singing master at a church in Ghent (1525-26).

Vas’s excellent edition consists of two five-voice masses, two more that add a sixth voice for the final Agnus Dei and one for four voices of slightly dubious attribution. After ten dense pages of critical notes, there is an appendix containing the models for Vinders’s “parodies,” including works by Appenzeller, Pipelare and Josquin (with translations and separate critical notes).

All five masses are printed at the pitch of the sources; the dubious Missa La plus gorgiase and the 5/6-part Missa Stabat mater use F3 clefs so might required downward transposition in performance.

Obscurity notwithstanding, Vinders reveals himself as a fluent composer whose works merit re-discovery. Vas has essentially done the groundwork for two revelatory CDs of some very fine music.

Brian Clark

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Lucretia Borgia

A blend of history, myth and legend
Capella de Ministrers, Carles Magraner
66:39
CdM1946

Capella de Ministrers (“Minstrels”) is a Spanish ensemble consisting of singers and instrumentalists. It was founded in 1987 by Carles Magraner, the musicologist from Valencia who is still its director. While its focus is on mediaeval Spanish music, on this disc they throw their net wider, towards Italy of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. The repertory reflects what one must reluctantly succumb to describe as the life and loves of Lucretia Borgia (1480-1519). She was the daughter of Rodrigo de Borja, subsequently Borgia, a Spaniard who was already a cardinal, and who, in 1492, was elected Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503). Accounts of the lives of both him and his daughter – sordid or spicy according to one’s outlook – are easily accessible, and the contents of this disc, and the accompanying booklet, rightly concentrate upon the musical background to Lucretia’s tumultuous life. Seemingly she was enthusiastic about dancing, and therefore many of the 21 tracks reflect this. Composers represented range from the most famous, such as Josquin, Arcadelt and Isaac, and the significant, such as Tromboncino, Festa and Agricola, to the shadowy Niccolo (composer of Senza te alta regina, the most haunting item on this disc, well chosen to conclude it; an identification of the composer is put forward in the booklet) and the ubiquitous “Anonimo”. The ensemble consists of four singers, of whom the soprano Elia Casanova takes the majority of the solo work; her animated mien in the booklet’s photographs is reflected in her fine performances, with a voice and delivery which are a joy throughout the programme. The five instrumentalists play percussion, harp, flutes, vihuelas and Renaissance guitar. As a vocal ensemble, the singers create a grainy but well-blended sound. The instrumentalists improvise some of their material, and while this might not be to the taste or preference of every listener, their performances are stylish and musicianly, whether accompanying one or more singers, or playing purely instrumental pieces. A few tracks wander into the realm of the mediaeval equivalent of lift music, but the performances, some pensive, others energetic, are never less than engaging and committed. To adapt a modern expression, and not in any derogatory sense, people who like this sort of thing will like this sort of thing.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

H. Praetorius: Motets in 8, 10, 12, 16 & 20 parts

ALAMIRE, His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts, Stephen Farr organ, David Skinner
100:25 (2 CDs in a single case)
Inventa Records (Resonus Limited) INV001

The music on this disc unfolded exactly as I had anticipated it would: mainly homophonic, predominantly Gabrielian, with some cute quirks of harmony. For this reviewer, one of the few miscalculations that Stile Antico have made in the course of their recordings is on A Wondrous Mystery: Renaissance Choral Music for Christmas (Harmonia Mundi HMU 807575) where they intersperse the movements of Jacob Clement’s Missa Pastores quidnam vidistis with later German music: the teutonic matter of the latter is entirely the wrong flavour to mingle courses with the refined and piquant Franco-Flemish helpings of Clement (note: please can we dispense with the cumbersome and no longer hilarious moniker Jacobus Clemens non Papa?). The current recording provides a banquet of such Teutonic matter with 16 pieces, including ten motets for from eight to 20 parts, by the Hamburg composer Hieronymus Praetorius (1560-1629), many of them seasoned with historic brass. For variety, there is his complete Missa summum for (mainly) organ with chanted plainsong, two sequentiae similarly for organ and voices, and a couple of motets played by brass alone. For all their differing vocal resources, the motets began to sound much of a muchness, and in fairness to David Skinner, he shuffles the pack to some extent, with usually no more than two similar works adjacent. Nevertheless, not everyone who relishes barnstorming motets full of voices and brass might be enthusiastic about the interspersed movements of the Missa summum with its long passages played on the historic organ at Roskilde. This is performed sensitively by Stephen Farr, but even he cannot make a case for Praetorius’s uninteresting writing for the organ here in the Mass and in the sequentiae. I take respectful issue with David Skinner’s description of this Praetorius (no relation of his contemporary Michael) as a master polyphonist. This reviewer was left desperate for some counterpoint amidst the onslaught of homophony, apart from some passages in the two motets a8 entrusted to the historic brass. One of Praetorius’s motets – perhaps the opening Dixit Dominus a12 – would stand up well on a disc of music varied by genre, period or locality. Together they become monotonous, and the music chosen to provide some variety within this disc is itself undistinguished. The performances are of course excellent, although perhaps inevitably, given the material, there is a residual impression of some shoutiness in the wake of the polychoral motets. Exultate iusti a16 brings the proceedings to a sonorous conclusion, but perhaps the finest work on this pair of discs is the dramatic Levavi oculos meas a10. It has a structural momentum not apparent in the other motets, which feel more sectional, and this momentum builds to an electrifying climax, with harmonic sparks flying.

Richard Turbet

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Alonso Lobo: Sacred Vocal Music

Coro Victoria, Ana Fernández-Vega
58:27
Brilliant Classics 95789

Any recording devoted to the music of the Spanish master, Alonso Lobo is very welcome. A pupil of Guerrero and a colleague of Victoria, Alonso Lobo de Borja managed to plough a distinctly individual furrow through the occasionally slightly featureless world of Spanish Renaissance polyphony. I was reminded of this during a recent recital by the Dunedin Consort, where the music of Lobo stood out as amongst the most impressive polyphony of the evening. The Coro Victoria perform a number of Lobo’s motets as well as movements from three different settings of the Mass: O Rex Gloriae, Petre, ego pro te rogavi and Simile est regnum caelorum. Some of the material – the eight-part Ave Maria, the lovely Ego flos campi and the concluding O quam suavis are already familiar, but much of the material, including the Mass settings, were new to me all thoroughly endorsing the high opinion I already have of the composer. The performances by the Coro Victoria directed by Ana Fernández-Vega are almost very good – much could have been improved by simply exploiting more effectively the acoustic of the Basilica Pontificia of San Miguel in Madrid. The recording is a little too close and a little unforgiving – judging by the after-bloom, this is a building with a pleasant ambience which could have been used to make the recording sound a little more comfortable. Having said that, this budget CD has a very engaging cross-section of Lobo’s music and the singing is perfectly adequate and never less than passionate and expressive.

D. James Ross

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Leonardo Da Vinci: La musique secrète

Doulce Mémoire, Denis Raisin Dadre
78:05 (CD in a larger hard-backed book)
Alpha Classics ALPHA456

This lavish production, released to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, highlights Leonardo’s skills as an improvisatory musician using voice and lira da braccio. It is perhaps frustrating if not entirely surprising that in all his many notes, sketches and marginalia the master did not record any of his own music. Instead, the present recording matches music by the artist’s contemporaries to a selection of his paintings allowing them to comment on one another. There is one instance, in Leonardo’s “Portrait of a Musician”, where the painter depicts a page of written music, although again perhaps frustratingly no-one has been able to identify the music, or even the young subject of the painting. Elsewhere Leonardo depicts musical instruments, including his own beloved lira da braccio, and the instrument features prominently in the programme. Side-by-side with music by Josquin, L’Heritier, Isaac, Obrecht, van Ghizeghem, Tromboncino, Caron and de la Fage, we are given music by their much less celebrated contemporaries all in lovely and imaginative performances by Doulce Mémoire. Touchingly, and appropriately we get nearest to an improvisation by the master for voice and lira da braccio in the music chosen to accompany his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa. Using a formulaic accompaniment from a book of frottole published by Petrucci to perform a sonnet by Petrarch, the group’s excellent soprano Clara Coutouly and Baptiste Romain on the lira da braccio create genuine musical magic, spanning the centuries and evoking the sort of experience Leonardo’s audiences might have enjoyed. This is a lovely CD, and its lavishly illustrated accompanying volume makes this a fascinating and satisfying package – a worthy celebration of the great and versatile Leonardo.

D. James Ross

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