Edited by Davide Rebuffa
Ut Orpheus, 2016.
X + 38pp, €16.95
Sauli was a theorbist in the first decade of the 18th century at the Hapsburg court in Vienna. The six MS partitas were written in French tablature, but the edition is on a single treble clef in two voices. The length varies from three to five dances. It is likely that bass lines were available: no. 5 is printed thus as an appendix.
Clifford Bartlett
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen the late Peter Maxwell Davies founded the St Magnus Festival in Orkney forty years ago, its main raison d’etre was to showcase contemporary music, and the original 1976 Festival, which I attended as a student, was built around a solid spine of Max’s own compositions. The Festival has grown in ways, which its founder could hardly have anticipated, but one very welcome development is the inclusion of a selection of early music.
Organ, Choir and Pipes, St Magnus Cathedral
Orkney’s magnificent Romanesque/Gothic Cathedral plays host to many of the Festival’s events, and Monday 20th June saw us streaming through its red sandstone portal for a concert melding contemporary, early and traditional music. This anniversary year the organisers have ‘updated’ a number of memorable events from 1976, and this concert was an adaptation of a concert for organ, fiddle and pipes. The choir were the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Voices directed by Tim Dean and it was they who gave us the bulk of the programme’s early content. After a pipe tune and an organ Chaconne based upon it, the voices came as a gentle balm, performing a group of English Renaissance polyphonic motets. Singing from the west end of the Cathedral behind the audience, they opened with a declamatory performance of Tallis’ Sancte Deus, followed by Byrd’s busy Laudibus in sanctis and Sheppard’s ethereal Libera nos. There were lovely passages in all three works, but the positioning of the choir led to some muddiness in the Byrd and after a shaky start, the tuning never fully settled in the Sheppard. Organist Michael Bowtree contributed an impressive performance of Bach’s G-major Prelude and Fugue BWV541, demonstrating just what a fine instrument the Cathedral organ is, and also in my opinion undermining the various other contemporary works he played, making them sound by comparison like rather random ramblings. This was also the case to a certain extent with Max’s O magnum Mysterium, which sounds to me very hard to bring off and not entirely effective, the exact opposite of Victoria’s setting, which we heard later in the programme. A simply stunning anthem by Judith Weir, Ascending into Heaven, saved the honour of contemporary composers, using a range of radical techniques such as tonal clusters and glissandi to remarkable musical effect. A set of pipe tunes, delivered with great virtuosity and overwhelming volume by Pipe Major Laurence Tait softened us up for two motets by Victoria, O magnum mysterium and Alma Redemptoris mater before more contemporary organ music rounded off the event. RCS Voices produce a very pleasant sound, a little too fruity for my taste in the early repertoire with some intrusive vibrato in the tenor and soprano voices, but these young singers are an encouraging indication of the growing importance of early music at the Conservatoire. The northerly latitude f this Festival was brought home to us as we filed out of this late-night event into relative daylight, driving home in the legendary ‘simmer dim’ of the shortest night of the year.
Dido and Aeneas
On Tuesday 21st the Cathedral was again the venue for a triumphant collaboration between the vocal ensemble Voces8 and Florilegium under the direction of Ashley Solomon. Heading the cast as the tragic heroine Dido was operatic soprano Anna Dennis, whose portrayal of the Trojan queen was dramatically mesmerizing and musically stunning. She projected Tate’s subtle dramatic creation with enormous intensity, while enriching Purcell’s vocal lines with subtle ornamentation. In her iconic Lament, her enigmatic expression seemed to demand the audience’s remembrance rather than pleading for it. In costume and ‘off the book’, she was ably supported by the eight versatile singers of Voces8, who with strategic doubling occupied all the other roles. The fact that they were all in ‘civvies’ and reading from scores was not really too off-putting, except perhaps in Dido and Aeneas’ final fiery exchange, when Sam Dressel’s vocal score seriously got in the way. Dressel otherwise gave us a passionate and believable Aeneas, while Barnaby Smith’s venomous Sorceress and Oliver Vincent’s spirited Sailor also deserve special mention. Also worthy of mention was the superb playing of Florilegium, one to a part and superbly dramatic, supportive and pathetic by turns. I was personally delighted to hear lutanist David Miller provide two beautiful guitar grounds where Purcell indicates them, but for which no music survives – in addition to restoring these, Ashley Solomon’s realisation of the score also includes strategic repeats, all of which enhanced the normal printed version. Sometimes performances of music with which one is very familiar can be a disappointment – I prepared my own score for and conducted Dido and Aeneas with the Musick Fyne Chorus and Soloists and The Marvel Baroque Orchestra earlier this year (as well as singing Sorceress!) – but I found this performance consummately excellent and a sheer delight.
Voces8 : Eventide
Fresh from their triumphant Dido and Aeneas, Voces8 next appeared in the Wednesday late-night 10pm slot in St Magnus Cathedral with a programme entitled Eventide. This turned out to be a wide-ranging affair incorporating plainchant and Renaissance choral repertoire, through Romantic and modern music to close harmony. As with Monday evening’s concert, the dual themes of juxtaposition and exploitation of the Cathedral’s architecture were paramount, and the singers started in the apse giving a disembodied account of Orlando Gibbons’ Drop, drop slow tears and Tallis’ O nata Lux, using the O nata lux plainchant to advance into the choirstalls, whence they sang Britten’s youthful Hymn to the Virgin. It soon emerged that the concert would fall into similar units of contrasting music, the next of which framed a very English account of Bogoroditse Devo from Rachmaninov’s All-night Vigil with the two settings by Tallis of Te lucis ante terminum. In honour of the late founder of the Festival, they sang Max’s gentle Lullaby for Lucy, following it with three other secular works, two spirituals and a folksong all in close harmony. The concluding unit presented an arrangement of Fauré’s Pie Jesu and the ubiquitous Allegri Miserere framed in items of chant from the Requiem service, perversely sung in canon, and allowing the singers to again range from the West end to the apse for the Allegri. I find it rather curious that the group chose to construct pseudo-liturgical contexts for works, which of course would never have been heard together, and I have to say I found this and the sheer random eclecticism of the programme disconcerting. However the singing was flawlessly polished and expressive, and the group’s encore, Ola Gjeilo’s Ubi caritas, provided a suitably elegiac ending to the event. I did notice more than one audience member suppress a yawn during the ‘makey-uppy’ Allegri and I wondered idly if its days might be numbered? And my surprise that the singers hadn’t used the performance space to set up the usual contrasting solo and tutti ensembles passed when I realised that, being only eight in number, at least one singer had to sing in both choirs!
Florilegium
Thursday (referendum day) dawned in warmth and sunshine, and it was a wrench to abandon the beach for the dark cave of St Magnus Cathedral for a lunchtime concert by Florilegium – and to judge by a few empty seats, a wrench which some had succumbed to. Hardly had we heard the courtly opening of Telemann’s flute concerto in D and any reservations were forgotten. Ashley Solomon’s delicious flute tone floated above an accompaniment of exquisite delicacy, each note placed to perfection. This is a group which listens and watches constantly, and the result is a heady blend of unanimity and musicianship which is hard to beat. Purcell’s G minor Chacony recalled the group’s superlative playing for Dido and Aeneas two days previously, while the strings burst into a frenzy in an explosive performance of Vivaldi’s Trio Sonata La Folia, which rose to eye-watering peaks of virtuosity. Finally the strings were rejoined by Ashley Solomon for a beautiful rendition of Bach’s 5th Brandenburg Concerto. This work has in effect three soloists, flute, violin and harpsichord, and there is nothing like a live performance to remind one just how radical this solo role for the keyboard is. As Terence Charlston stepped out of the customary continuo shadows with cascades of solistic bravura, we had a glimpse of the sort of swirling improvisation for which Bach was renowned in his lifetime. This was a beautifully poised Brandenburg 5, benefiting from the thorough understanding the group had developed in recently recording the work.
The Hebrides Ensemble & Max
My final concert at the Festival was on a magically still and sunny Thursday evening, when Scotland’s foremost contemporary music ensemble The Hebrides Ensemble reconstructed with one or two variants a concert given forty years previously by The Fires of London. Consisting of modern music, much of it by Max, it only belongs tangentially in this review, but as I attended the original concert in 1976 when it had a major influence on my subsequent career in early music, I thought I would include it. The key works are ‘realisations’ by Max of Scottish Renaissance repertoire at that time recently rediscovered by Dr Kenneth Elliott: Kinloche his Fantasie and the Renaissance Scottish Dances which topped and tailed the concert. Deeply influenced by chant and early music in his own compositions, Max was quick to spot the potential of this charming repertoire. From a keyboard original, he transforms the Fantasie by William Kinloche into a glittering flight of fancy for modern chamber ensemble comprising harpsichord, violin, cello, flute, clarinet and percussion. The same mix of instruments also played the 7 Renaissance Scottish Dances, drawn from Dr Elliott’s 1957 Musica Britannica volume and a collection of early Scottish Keyboard Music he published shortly afterwards. These beguiling miniatures are processed through Max’s fertile imagination into an engaging set of lively and slow contemplative movements, one of them melding two slow airs in a way only Max could have conceived of. Although it was the rest of the modernist programme, bristling with pungent harmonies and virtuosity, which tested the players most, it is the early Scottish realisations which I remembered most vividly from forty years ago, and which brought my festival to a nostalgic conclusion.
D James Ross
Ensemble “Les Nations”, Maria Luisa Baldassari
88:48 (2 CDs in a jewel case)
Tactus TC 640290
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]assani’s Oratorio – composed for Lent in Ferrara when operas were forbidden – is a far cry from the both the oratorios of Carissimi and the operas of Cavalli, and closer in feel to Vivaldi or even early Handel. Da capo arias interspersed with recitatives slow what pace there might have been to what in the Parte Prima is a slow-moving, moralising opera substitute rather than a moving, dramatic, Biblically based narrative. A small organ and harpsichord play continuo, with a constant 8’ ‘cello line, and the violone player also plays the lirone (an instrument that reached its heyday in the early years of the seventeenth century – is there evidence for its use in music this late?), though I could not distinguish it. The upper strings in the five-part ensemble of single strings play in a modern style, with minimal regard for any historically informed practice. Their tuning – which may just be a failure to absorb the temperament of the keyboard instruments – feels at considerable variance with what we might expect. The ‘cello player is better: his free-ranging, melodic part in Non si fide di brieve sereno was a delight.
The singers – the male voices are the best – have some good moments, especially the Testo. But the female voices – there is a duet, and fine echo effects – who have the ungracious roles of Hope and Obedience – are less assured, and too wobbly for me. The narrative hots up in the Parte Seconda, where the storm descends and the helmsman (Atrebate) describes the ship about to founder, when Jonah wakes, rubbing sleep from his eyes. But curiously the whole effect seems bloodless and dull. Partly this is because the music isn’t up to much – there is too much Vivaldian tonic/dominant in endless D major: oh for Handel’s melodic inventiveness! – but partly because there is no real drive, no real dramatic climax – Jonah is just commended for his patience and obedience – and the singers don’t seem able to bring the characters they represent to life.
The recording and production doesn’t help either: there is no libretto with the liner notes: you have to go on line for that; but I couldn’t get through, and the Facebook page has comments from those who had the same experience. In the end, Tactus made contact with me, and provided the text (Italian only, for those who need a translation) and the liner notes. But there was nothing about the performance or style, and no information on the scoring or pitch or continuo decisions, so it is short on information that might help you evaluate the serious quality of this performance.
I don’t imagine there is another recording of this oratorio, but I doubt if this production will commend it to you, unless you are an enthusiast for this particular period and style: but I cannot recommend it as a performance.
David Stancliffe
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Stephen Farr (Metzler organ of Trinity College, Cambridge)
105:20 (2 CDs in jewel case)
Resonus RES10120
James Johnstone (Wagner organ 1739, Trondheim)
107:26 (2 CDs in a card folder)
Metronome MET CD 1094
[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ike No 11 busses, no new Clavier-Übung III comes for ages, and now two arrive at once! Both are from English players, and both use good instruments: Stephen Farr plays on the 42 stop 1975 Metzler in Trinity Cambridge and James Johnstone uses the 30 stop 1741 Wagner organ in Trondheim Cathedral, carefully reconstituted by highly experienced Jürgen Ahrend in the 1990s.
In his Liner notes, Farr ponders – as does Johnstone – whether the ‘arcane, unfamiliar and wilfully awkward musical procedures’ in this volume were intended by Bach as a musical riposte to his former pupil, now critic, Scheibe, who in 1737 had accused him of writing in an antiquated mode, rather than in the more tuneful and lyrical gallant style now popular. So what kind of performance does this collection require?
Farr opts for a varied set of performances, using some ingenious registrations. In Jesus Christus unser Heiland (BWV 688) for example, Farr uses the Rückpositiv 8’ & 4’flutes, and then the Hauptwerk Vox Humana in the left hand to great effect, but it is drawn with both the 8’ Octave and Hohlflöte as well as the 4’ Spitzflöte; in the pedal are also the two 8’ flues coupled to the Swell 4’ Principal and 8’ Trompete. Farr’s articulation is excellent, but I wonder about the thickening effect of his constant use of multiple 8’ ranks. By contrast, the manualiter preludes BWV 685 & 803 are delightfully played, each on just a 4’ flute, and 804 follows on the recovered Smith 8’ Principal on the Rückpositiv: the clarity of these registrations and the elegance of Farr’s fingerwork is a delight. But somehow the organ doesn’t really sparkle: the pedal in particular is often a bit indistinct, and although performances are excellently played, it sounds a bit dull to me – are they recorded from too far away? As well as details of the Metzler organ, Farr gives the precise registration for each piece – a bit of good practice that most recordings on historic instruments in Holland and North Germany seem to provide these days.
Johnstone is a bit more of an early music specialist, and this CD – one of what will be a (yet another!) complete Bach organ works – is presented on an instrument that is almost exactly contemporaneous with the Clavier-Übung III’s date of 1739. The Trondheim organ is Wagner’s only instrument outside Prussia, and took two years to arrive and be assembled. Dismantled in the 1930s in favour of a large Steinmayer organ hidden behind the historic case, some two thirds of the original pipework was discovered stored in the cathedral’s vault and has been carefully restored in the original case by Ahrend. Its registers have rather more individual character than the Metzler: Wagner studied with Christoph Treutmann, a pupil of Arp Schnitger, and was apprenticed to Gottfried Silbermann for several years. Johnstone promises to find and record on equally suitable historic instruments for the rest of his Bach, and having just returned myself from an organ crawl through North Germany and Holland, I look forward to seeing which instruments he chooses for what. But although the details of the Wagner organ, its pitch and temperament are given, we are left to work out his registration as best we may. I hope Johnstone will consider providing this in the future.
Though the instrument is smaller, I find Johnstone’s registration more characterful than Farr’s, and his liner notes have an interesting and provocative reflection on the possible liturgical and theological rationale behind the selection of works in the Clavier-Übung III. Try and listen to both, and the more suave performance of Farr may win you over; but I gained more from Johnstone’s vivid and sparkling performance on an excellently recorded, crystal-clear organ that was new to me. The choice of instrument, how susceptible it is to being recorded with clarity, how well the performer understands the conventions of registration on a historic instrument – all these are vital for successful interpretation, however fine the player.
David Stancliffe
NOTE: At the time of publishing this post, it was impossible to find internet links for James Johnstone’s CDs… we will attempt to rectify this at a later date.
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Carolyn Sampson, Elizabeth Kenny, Jonathan Manson, Laurence Cummings
77:40
Wigmore Hall Live WHLive0083
Music by Corbetta, Draghi, Purcell, Simpson & anon
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the problems of live recital CDs is their potential ability to inspire feelings of envy of the audience that was present when you were not. By the time an ecstatic audience comes to show its appreciation of this superb recital, given at the Wigmore Hall in March 2105, I was way into such feelings and longing to join in to express my appreciation. Instead I consoled myself with memories of an unforgettable late night recital Carolyn Sampson gave with countertenor Robin Blaze at the first Göttingen Handel Festival I attended back in 2006.
One of the most compelling features of that event was the ability of the artists to communicate strongly with their audience (and each other) to a rarely attained level. It is that same quality that one senses with the present concert, where it is evident that Sampson and her colleagues very obviously had the audience eating out of their hands. And of course this is hugely important in the vocal items presented here, mostly songs taken from Purcell’s stage works, The Fairy Queen being particularly favoured. Sampson never lets us for one moment forget that the singers in such pieces were more often than not actor-singers, giving each song its own distinctive character and finding in them a gamut of passions ranging from the plaints of unrequited lovers to dramatic outbursts and wit. ‘Let the dreadful Engines of Eternal Will’, one of the two ‘mad scenes’ from Don Quichotte included, is a tour de force in this respect, including aspects of all three. The pastoral evocation in the passage commencing ‘Ah where are now those flow’ry Groves’ leaves unforgettable beguilement in its wake, before the final cynical philosophy carries the scene to its end with deliciously pointed humour, leaving the audience in laughter.
Yet for me one of the most admirable features of Sampson’s singing is that all this emanates from superb vocal acting rather that the exaggerated gestures we sometimes hear in this repertoire. It involves the employment of first-class diction, but equally as importantly a wide range of vocal colour. Just listen, as a single example from many, to the subtle colouring and inflexions on the words ‘kind’ (the line from ‘I see she flies me’, Z573 reads ‘Were she but kind, kind whom I adore’. And just in case you’ve not already succumbed (impossible, I would have thought), one of Sampson’s encores is perhaps the most tear-jerking performance of ‘Fairest isle’ (King Arthur) I’ve ever heard. In short, Carolyn Sampson has here provided a master class that makes the CD obligatory listening by all singers aspiring to sing this repertoire.
The accompaniments are admirably played, with each of Sampson’s distinguished companions also allowed their own spot in the limelight, Laurence Cummings providing a lovely, mellow performance of the Harpsichord Suite No. 5 in C. Jonathan Manson’s bass viol tone is richly lyrical in Draghi’s ‘An Italian Ground’ and Christopher Simpson’s ‘Divisions on a ground, while Elizabeth Kenny plays three pieces from ‘Princess Anne’s lute book’ and a fine Passacaille by Corbetta, all this music appropriate in the context and helping to complete an intelligently designed programme. A predictably exemplary note by Purcell scholar Andrew Pinnock, full documentation and printed texts complete an issue that is in every way deserving of the highest praise.
Brian Robins
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Timothy Roberts (St Botolph’s without Aldgate)
65:26
Toccata Classics TOCC 0332
[dropcap]M[/dropcap]y first introduction to this interesting composer was (rather indirectly) from an organ improvisation in his style on a recent disc of music from Vauxhall Gardens by David Moult and London Early Opera. Now here he is himself, played on the beautifully restored contemporary Renatus Harris organ of St Botolph without Aldgate, an instrumant well known to him and his family.
John Worgan was probably first taught by his elder brother James, but later also had lessons from Thomas Roseingrave and Francisco Geminiani, and the influence of both of the latter, as well as that of Handel (whose organ concerti he is known to have played at Vauxhall Gardens) is to be heard in his music.
The pieces recorded here are (according to Timothy Roberts’ fine sleevenote) a ‘mixed bag’ and he has done an excellent job in linking them into satisfying musical groups. The three opening Pieces, for example, begin in French Ouverture-like dotted rhythm, and move, via a charming fugato with almost Mozartean episodes (echoes of the last movement of one of the Piano Concerto finales!) to a stately triple time with bassoon-like drones. The final three tracks also link well – another grand triple time melody is followed by an allegro with much harmonic and rhythmic quirkiness, and the set (and disc) concludes with a virtuoso allegro with more rustic drones in the middle section.
Timothy Roberts plays with style and taste; he is fortunate in having chosen such a fine and appropriate instrument, which helps bring these works to colourful life.
Alastair Harper
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Musiche della cappella di Santa Barbara in Mantova
Ed. Ottavio Beretta (Vol. IV: Messe di Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina)
LIM, 2016, pp. clviii + 470.
ISBN 9788870968163 €100
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese 12 polyphonic alternatim masses (alternating monodic with polyphonic choruses, the monodic plainchant by solo, organ, or unison chorus or soloists), commissioned by the court of Mantua between 1568 and 1579, are the only ones written for a liturgy different from Rome’s by Palestrina and his only masses composed between 1575 and 1581. They are of remarkable quality and well documented, yet ‘lost’ and unknown until 1950. For centuries the vocal parts were unidentified, hastily catalogued, ignored and forgotten, until 10 were authenticated by Knud Jeppesen and published in 1954. Analyzed by him and others, all 12 finally appear in Volume IV of what will be Ottavio Beretta’s modern 6-volume edition of all the masses from the archive of the Basilica Palatina di S. Barbara in Mantua ordered by Guglielmo Gonzaga (including several by the duke himself) and housed, since 1851, in the library of the Conservatory of Milan. Three volumes were published in 1997, 2000 and 2007 under the auspices of the American Institute of Musicology as part of the Corpus Mensurabilis Musicae 108/I, III and II. The LIM has agreed to complete the series. The present volume contains all of those by Palestrina, and it is hard to imagine a more thoroughly discussed, enlightening, helpful, beautiful, critical edition.
This is not my field, even though I do accompany a choir that sings alternatim masses; unexpectedly I found the 158-page introduction fascinating, even if not easy. Non-Italian readers can access the tables with the masses’ modes, structural dimensions, vocal ranges, and a list of sections reduced to four voices (and to which four), on pages cxxii-iii, and consult the up to date Bibliography on cxxxix-clvii. The complete original Mantuan plainchants in mensural notation (Kyriale ad usum Ecclesie Sancte Barbare) for the 10 Ordinary masses are given with critical annotations xcvii-cxiv. Adding a translation to a volume already weighing 6 or 7 lbs. was not feasible, but a volume with ‘only’ 463 pages of music separate from another of clvii pages could have provided also in English translation the sections about Guglielmo, Palestrina and the compositional style of the masses!
Beretta opted to include the entire correspondence between Palestrina and Guglielmo in a 30-page appendix, after which he discusses what the instructions and intentions of Guglielmo were. Both respected the orders of the Council of Trent and thereby produced a type of mass that the Vatican also desired to have for occasions of the highest solemnity, where a second choir replaced the organ. Palestrina therefore asked Guglielmo for permission (willingly granted) to use the Mantuan plainchant repertory in Rome. In its variants and rewritings it respected the unity of mode in each piece, with the finalis and repercussion at the beginning and end of every verse, filled in wide skips with melismas and removed others, for a homogeneous result.
The story of these special Mantuan Masses is not recounted chronologically. The dates presented to the reader bounce from 1881 back to 1828, to 1851-1854, 1951, then 1933, 1954, and back to 1850, with citations or documents from 1963, 1900, 1947, 1950 in that order. It might have been better to start with Guglielmo Gonzaga’s correspondence with Palestrina! In the minds of musical philologists, however, the obstacle-ridden research history was necessarily uppermost, and to the extent that future researches will join this adventure, this, too, makes sense – and creates the suspense that kept me reading.
Guglielmo (1538-1587), a composer and musical theorist himself, as well as a collector of art and a patron of theatrical and literary arts, second son of Federico II, husband of Eleonora of Austria, was crowned Duke of Mantua and Montferrato in 1573 having governed from 1556. Italy was divided into kingdoms, papal states and dukedoms – the latter powerful enough to resist interference, even in rituals, from Rome. The Basilica Palatina di Santa Barbara was designed in part by Guglielmo, built by 1565 in the ducal palace, enlarged between 1568 and 1572, and planned for sumptuous religious ceremonies with elaborate sacred music. Its Antegnati organ was ordered by G. Cavazzoni; its plainchant and its liturgy were exclusive to Mantua.
Musicians in residence included Wert, Pallavicino, Gastoldi; works by Palestrina, Marenzio and others were commissioned; prints of music by them and others (among whom Gabrieli, di Lasso, da Victoria, Asola, Agazzari) as well as manuscripts were bought for the private use of the court. Guglielmo’s tastes were conservative, and older figures (G. Bruschi, G. Contino, A. Bonavicino) were active before the arrival of G. de Wert. The repertory of S. Barbara was approved by Gregory XIII, and it constituted a monument to the Reformation, perhaps the only complete one manifesting all the required characteristics (declamatory clarity, pure and unified modality, simple melodies not exceeding an octave, proper accentuation of words).
The masses by Palestrina were commissioned, composed for the Basilica, and delivered, and the part books were stored in its archive along with a mass by Guglielmo and many by other composers. Guglielmo died in 1587 after which no further works were ordered. Mantua planned to sell the contents of the archive to the Conservatory of Milan in 1850, but after the Mantuans received 500 lire and sent them, Austrian authorities blocked the purchase and had them returned to Mantua, ordering to have this illegible music inventoried (‘…old note forms… impossibility of understanding the sense…’). In less than two weeks the parts, obviously not even opened, were deemed to be ‘of no interest, neither for age nor for merit’, not even for the history of sacred music, ‘imperfect works [incomplete?]’ and ‘unusable pages’ by ‘various authors’. The conservatory, however, realized the importance of the cache on the basis of this inventory! Instead of estimating its value, they disarmingly wrote that the Austrians ‘did well’ to block the sale, thereby keeping this ‘monument of music’ for themselves, recommending that it be conserved and made usable, and asking to be reimbursed for the previous purchase, which they were. So the Austrians ordered the entire archive to be deposited again in the Conservatory of Milan and to be sent at the expense of Mantua. It arrived in 1851, eventually becoming the Conservatory’s property, after a settlement for 600 lire was paid; it was declared to be in excellent condition, legible even where smudged, and only needing to be rebound. It was then ignored for the next 100 years. The correspondence between Guglielmo and Palestrina was discovered in 1881, so this continued neglect is still a telling chapter in the history of musicology. The entire contents of the Conservatory library were evacuated during WWII and were still inaccessible in 1949; the archive of S. Barbara was finally accessed by Knud Jeppesen in 1950.
Nine of the masses were attributed to Palestrina, a 10th is now agreed to be by him, and a unique one à 4 for a male choir, previously thought to be lost, may be the very first mass sent to Guglielmo, in 1568, before the commission to set all of them. During the centuries in which they were lost there was no evidence of Palestrina’s use of alternatim, so the attributions in the inventories were in doubt. In 1947 Strunk surmised as much, but only one mass had found its way into Haberl’s edition of 94 Palestrina masses (Breitkopf & Härtel, 1907).
The correspondence is a valuable appendix. Palestrina did many other things for Guglielmo: he advised him on hiring musicians for his court, he corrected the duke’s compositions (rewriting them in score and diplomatically pointing out improvements), he wrote motets and other pieces. He almost got hired for a permanent position. Negotiations for a high salary were interrupted when Palestrina, who had taken religious orders, perhaps in the hope of returning to the Papal Chapel, suddenly married a wealthy widow in 1581. After Guglielmo’s death in 1587 Palestrina had no further contacts with his successor, Vincenzo Gonzaga.
The letters contain references to compositional style, which Beretta interprets. In 1568 Palestrina, already in demand and looking for prestigious opportunities, sent Guglielmo the first mass and offered to write another: ‘long or short or so that the words are heard’, i.e. a missa solemnis for holidays or a missa brevis for weekdays. He promised to send unwritten ‘falsobordoni antichi’ that were sung in the Papal Chapel, i.e. the improvisations sung on Gregorian chant. After putting a motet and a madrigal by Guglielmo into score, he wrote that listeners should enjoy the texts just as they do in ‘musica commune [sic]’, i.e. canzonette and laude. When beginning to compose after his illness, Palestrina started a Kyrie and Gloria ‘studying them on the lute’, i.e. working out the vertical harmonies, as if by realizing their basso continuo. Although another reference to ‘putting [compositions] on the lute’ strikes me as meaning, possibly, writing them down in some form of tablature. Guglielmo wanted the masses to be ‘fugate continovamente et sopra soggetto’ literally, continually fugued, i.e., different from those performed in Rome, in that even short motives were to be imitated autonomously and taken from the cantus firmus of the Mantuan Kyriale.
It would be wonderful to hear these masses. What distinguishes these is said here to be their fantasy and severity, for which they can be considered Palestrina’s ‘arte della fuga’.
Barbara Sachs
Allan Clayton, Classical Opera, Ian Page
68:59
Signum Records SIGCD457
Music by Arne, Boyce, Handel & J. C. Smith
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]n interesting recital disc – as far as I am aware the first one devoted to music sung by one of Handel’s most favoured English performers, rather than one of his Italian stars.
John Beard was probably born around 1715, and David Vicker’s exemplary notes suggest that he may have sung as a treble in the famous Coronation service of 1727, when Handel’s great set of Anthems were first heard. His adult career began with the part of Silvio in the 1734 revival of Il Pastor Fido; he was to be Handel’s principal tenor for the rest of the latter’s life, creating the eponymous roles of Samson, Judas Maccabaeus and Jephtha, as well as a host of others. He was clearly a singer of much distinction and dramatic ability, as Allan Clayton ably demonstrates here, equally at home in the smooth bel canto of ‘Tune Your Harps’ from Esther and the Italianate coloratura of ‘Vedi l’ape’ from Berenice, as well as the deeply moving ‘Thus when the sun’ from Samson or Jephtha’s bleakly tragic ‘Hide thou thy hated beams’ and sublime ‘Waft her angels’.
He is joined by the mellifluous Mary Bevan in the lovely ‘As steals the morn’ from L’Allegro, and by the fine Choir of Classical Opera in ‘Happy pair’ from Alexander’s Feast.
As well as singing for Handel, Beard was employed by many of his musical contemporaries – we are treated to some lovely Boyce (his exquisite bassoon-tinted ‘Softly rise, O Southern breeze’ from Solomon), rousing J.C. Smith (‘Hark how the hounds and horn’ from The Fairies) and galant Arne (‘Thou, like the glorious sun’ from Artaxerxes)
The Orchestra of Classical Opera, under the able baton of Ian Page, provide lively and colourful accompaniments; they shine especially in the magically-hushed ‘moonrise’ sinfonia from Act 2 of Ariodante.
No reason to hesitate, really!
Alastair Harper
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The Sixteen, Eamonn Dougan
67:32
CORO COR16141
Music by Bertolusi, Marenzio & Pacelli
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he big name here is Luca Marenzio, whose recently reassembled Missa super Iniquos odio habui provides a spine through this interesting programme. The Sixteen’s associate conductor Eamonn Dougan opens with music by less familiar composers, and specifically a powerful three-choir setting of Gaudent in Caelis by Asprilio Pacelli, underlining the fact that here is an unfamiliar repertoire well worth exploring.
The same composer’s polychoral Beati estis is also extremely fine. Marenzio’s two-choir Mass based on his own dramatic eight-part madrigal of the same name is also no slouch. Previously known only from the Kyrie and Gloria, the recent rediscovery of the rest of the Mass is genuine cause for celebration. Clearly the court of the Kings of Poland was a true magnet for the best of European musical talent, and although Marenzio’s visit to Poland was brief, he was clearly dropping in on a very lively and rich musical scene. It is always interesting to listen for changes in the sound produced by an established ensemble, and in the past I have had my doubts about some of the developments in the vocal production of the Sixteen. Under the direction of Dougan, and this is the fourth in a series of recordings he has directed, the vocal sound seems to have refocused and acquired a pleasing edge, which suits perfectly this busy polychoral repertoire.
D. James Ross
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Silvia Frigato soprano, Sara Mingardo alto, Accademia degli Astrusi, Federico Ferri
63:53
Concerto Classics The Magic Of Live 05
+ Vivaldi: Nisi Dominus RV608, Concerto RV169
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese live concert recordings of two great vocal works by Pergolesi and Vivaldi separated by the latter’s brief Sinfonia ‘Al Santo Sepulcro’ are showcases for the two eminent Italian vocalists Silvia Frigato and Sara Mingardo, whose powerful performances carry the day. They are ably supported by one of the increasing number of excellent Italian period instrument ensembles, the Accademia degli Astrusi, whose neat and sympathetic playing avoids the voices being swamped in the cavernous acoustic of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna. The CD opens with a generous burst of applause which usefully intimates that this is a concert, and indeed there are various rustlings, coughings and shufflings throughout, which however didn’t distract me too much from these fine performances. The tortured faces of statues from the concert venue which adron the packaging are in perfect concord with the visceral music of the programme, and there is a helpful programme note by Francesco Lora, which only suffers a little from the latest fashion of skimping on professional translation fees. To my mind these recordings capture how these works might very well have sounded in their composers’ lifetimes, full of the drama of live performance and playing out to large and less than reverentially silent public gatherings.
D. James Ross
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