Author: EMR2015

The lute music of il Divino Francesco Canova da Milano (1497-1543), Vol. 2
72:02
BGS128 (7 60537 09045 4)

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]rancesco Canova da Milano’s ricercars and fantasias are freely composed polyphonic pieces, and consist largely of short sequences of musical ideas, each developed and explored. The present CD comprises 29 of them, which Nigel North arranges into sets according to key. The first set (Ness 6, 61, 67 65, 23) are all in F major. A distinctive feature of Francesco’s style is his constantly shifting harmonic vocabulary, heard to good effect in Ricercar 6. B naturals replace B flats to take us sharp side of the spectrum, and E flats replace E naturals to take us flat side. However, these shifts are too temporary to count as modulation to a different key, but rather they are chromatic touches to an enriched palette of chords in F major. An interesting example is Fantasia 61, which effectively ends with a perfect cadence (C – F) in bar 34, rounded off with a plagal cadence (B flat – F) in bar 36. However, to reach the B flat chord Francesco inserts a quick chord of E flat – a secondary subdominant – which exaggerates the move flat side for the plagal cadence. Many of Francesco’s pieces are similar in character, indeed some passages occur in more than one piece: the passage in bars 22-4 of Fantasia 61 is the same as bars 52-4 of Fantasia 67. For variety North adopts different speeds: Ricercar 6 is slow and rhapsodic. His rhythmic freedom is effective in clarifying phrasing and drawing attention to special chords, although sometimes it creates an unsettling jerkiness especially in descending scalic passages. Excitement is lost in bar 25, where four quavers are slowed down almost to the speed of crotchets elsewhere in the piece. In contrast, Fantasia 61 has no quavers, and North takes it at a fast and sprightly tempo. He corrects a dittographical error in Fantasia 65 by omitting bars 110-2: Arthur Ness in his collected Milano edition and Martin Shepherd in the Lute Society Milano series, both reproduce these bars, which I accept were wrongly duplicated in the original.

The G minor set (Ness 70, 71, 88, 55) begins with two beautiful miniature ricercars (70, 71) taken from Vincenzo Galilei’s Intavolatura de Lauto (Rome, 1563), published 20 years after Francesco’s death. Ricercar 70 begins with five rolled chords, and grows into imitative polyphony, with the theme heard at three different octaves. North strings his lute as Francesco did, that is with the 4th, 5th and 6th courses strung in octaves. When one of these courses is plucked, both notes will normally be heard, but it is possible to emphasise the lower octave by plucking with one’s right-hand thumb, or the upper octave by plucking with one’s index finger. In bar 31 of Ricercar 71, a low f# on the 4th course is marked with a dot for the note to be played with the index finger, but North appears to use his thumb, bringing out the lower octave instead. Fortunately this tiny detail does not detract from North’s thoughtful and expressive performance. In Ricercar 88 he changes c6 to a5, I think correctly, which coincidentally matches a similar passage in bars 55-7 of Ricercar 6; there are some beautifully placed chords in bar 27, but his rallentando at bar 51 loses the excitement of four fast cadential quavers.

The third set (Ness 78, 29, 91, 5) is in F major, and is played on a viola da mano tuned a tone higher than the lute. Both instruments were built by Malcolm Prior, and have a bright, clear tone, ideal for this repertoire. The earliest printed source of Francesco’s music is Intavolatura de Viola o vero Lauto  (1536), which mentions both instruments; it is likely that the music in Italian lute tablature was intended for the lute, and that the music in Neapolitan tablature was intended for the viola da mano, but both instruments have the same tuning, and they could be used interchangeably for any of Francesco’s music. North also uses the viola da mano for the last two sets (Ness 52, 21, 63, 20, 18, 19).

Some of Francesco’s pieces are quite short, lasting one minute or less. Ricercar 91 has a mere 29 bars, but North spins it out to 1’36” by playing it through twice. For track 14 he plays Ricercar 14, runs straight into Ricercar 74, and then goes back for a repeat of Ricercar 14, the whole thing lasting just 2’16”. Fantasia 25, on the other hand, is an extended work, made up of many sections, each developing a particular musical idea; most surprising and effective are three semibreve chords at bars 111-3, which temporarily call a halt to the constant hustle and bustle of quavers and semiquavers scurrying across the fingerboard. Fantasia 83 appears twice in Cambridge University Library Dd.2.11: on folio 16r (used by Ness in his edition), and folio 18r (used by Shepherd for the Lute Society Milano series). North plays the version on 18r, but he does not include c4 in the first bar, a note which Shepherd reinstates for the sake of imitation of the opening theme. The CD ends with a long Fantasia from the Castelfranco MS, which does not have a Ness number, because it was discovered after Ness’s edition was published.
This is North’s second CD devoted to the music of Francesco. The first was Dolcissima et Amorosa  (BGS 122). I hope he will be tempted to produce a third.

Stewart McCoy

Música para tañer a dos vihuelas
Ariel Abramovich, Jacob Heringman
53:21
Arcana A 428
Cabezón, Crequillon, Josquin, da Milano, da Modena, Palero, Vasquez, Verdelot, Willaert & Cancionero de Uppsala

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]riel Abramovich and Jacob Heringman have joined forces to produce an interesting and varied anthology of music from the 15th and 16th centuries arranged by them for two vihuelas. Very little music survives for this combination – a mere 17 pieces arranged by Enríquez de Valderrábano for vihuelas tuned at the unison, or a minor third, a fourth, or a fifth apart – but, as John Griffiths argues in his liner notes, vihuelas were almost certainly played together in a variety of social contexts, and the present CD gives an idea of what this lost repertory may have been like. The players use two vihuelas by Martin Haycock, both tuned to g’, and they take it in turns to play a bass vihuela in d’ by Marcus Wesche. The word “Cifras” in the title, literally means “figures”, and refers to the numbers used in tablature, and by association tablature or music notated in tablature.

The first track, Josquin’s Illibata Dei Virgo nutrix, shows how the five voices are distributed between the two vihuelas: Abramovich (vihuela in g’) plays voices I and IV, while Heringman (vihuela in d’) plays voices II, III and V. This is similar to how Valdarrábano distributes voices, and it works well here. (Some other intabulators, for example Phalèse, arranging music for two lutes, have each lute doubling the bass, which creates a fuller texture, but loses clarity of line.) The first six bars are played by Abramovich alone, followed by Heringman alone for the next six. In bars 57-65 there is interplay between pairs of voices: short phrases of four, five and six notes for voices II and V on the bass vihuela, are echoed by similar phrases for voices I and IV on the other instrument. Having two vihuelas enables polyphonic lines to be preserved, for example, in bars 13-14, where voices IV and V cross over each other. If this passage were played on a single instrument, the two melodic lines would be reduced to a meaningless repetition of chords. Other pieces by Josquin are Dulces exuviae, Pater Noster, and Ave Maria, all timeless and sublime. I assume the divisions in these pieces are the players’ own, because they are idiomatic and tasteful, enhance the music, and help maintain forward movement; many 16th-century intabulations have an excess of divisions, which almost become an end in themselves. Although Antonio de Cabezón describes his keyboard music as being “obras de musica para tecla, arpa y vihuela”, it is impossible to play most of it on a single vihuela: the overall range is too wide, and having divisions for both hands on the keyboard creates technical problems for a vihuelist. However, it does fit remarkably well on two vihuelas tuned a fourth apart for Thomas Créquillon’s Un gay bergier, a “Pavana Italiana”, and Claudin de Sermisy’s Dont vient cela. There are two pieces attributed to Juan Vasquez. The first, Dizen a mi que los amores he, is the five-part setting from the Uppsala manuscript. It has quite a few false relations, including a particularly squelchy one at bar 22. The duo have concocted their own ending of fast chords, which I don’t think enhances the overall mood of the piece. The second is the well-known De los álamos vengo, madre, played with invigorating gusto. I enjoyed listening to the CD – they play well together, and capture a variety of moods. The only frustrating thing was trying to navigate my way through the CD on my computer – the track numbers and titles are given in some curious eastern alphabet which is totally incomprehensible to me.

Stewart McCoy