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RECERCARE XXXIII/1-2 2021 Journal for the study and practice of early music

directed by Arnaldo Morelli
LIM Editrice [2021]
201 pp, €30
ISSN 1120-5741 recercare@libero.it www.lim.it

The 2021 RECERCARE contains four studies (two in Italian, one in French, and one in English), followed by, before the Summaries in Italian and English, a 21-page double Communication in Italian with 11 glossy colour plates concerning the 1590 portrait on the cover of this issue. In  ‘La “gentildama” e liutista bolognese Lucia Garzoni in un ritratto di Lavinia Fontana’ Marco Tanzi correctly identifies the noblewoman of the portrait and gives convincing reasons for attributing it to Fontana. Dinko Fabris discusses the ‘Elementi musicali …’ it contains.

Lucia Bonasoni Garzoni (b. 1561-?) was an aristocratic Bolognese lute player praised in a sonnet and two madrigals for her beauty, talent and character. Four other portraits of aristocratic women known to be by Fontana (including another one of Lucia) and two paintings with groups of women are also shown and discussed, including a concert on Parnasso with Apollo playing the lira da braccio while Pegasus romps in the background, Lucia playing the recorder, and the other eight ‘muses’ on various instruments (including a lute like Lucia’s). Their instruments and the fashionable hairdo they share are slightly hard to make out on a small page, but a magnifying glass helps. Details in the five single portraits, on the other hand, are impressive. Fabris describes Lucia’s not quite contemporary 6-choir lute and the music underneath it: a thick, open manuscript book shows a third of a page with about 5 bars of a solo voice part in contemporary notation (four crotchets or two minims per bar) on pentagrams, aligned over the lute accompaniment in tablature on 6 lines. This combination, and the horizontal format, are said by Fabris to be rare, but it isn’t clear how else lute players could have accompanied, especially if they were also singing. There is no conjecture about an actual piece. Only four syllables are clear, which is unfortunate, and perhaps why guessing the two words involves fortuity or lack thereof: [pr-]ovida, [impr-]ovida, [a-]vida or [ar?-]ida +  for[-tuna] or sor[-te]. A singer might recognize the fragment!   

In ‘Polso e musica negli scritti di teoria musicale tra la fine del Quattrocento e la metà del Seicento’ Martino Zaltron presents some cross-disciplinary theories of the past about pulse and music theory, showing how ancient science and mathematics (in this case medicine and music) filtered down into Renaissance theory and on into the mid-17th century. He cites Tintoris, Gaffurio, Lanfranco, Aaron, Zarlino, Zacconi, Pisa, and Mersenne. Whatever familiarity readers may have with tactus and mensural proportions, and a personal sense of the relation between one’s pulse (and breath) to a piece of music, what is unexpected is the inversion of emphasis to the medical side of the relationship. Doctors Joseph Strus (1510-1569), Franz Joël (1508-1579), Samuel Hafenreffer (1587-1660) and polymath Athanasius Kircher ‘notated’ patterns of heartbeats, sometimes associated with age or voice registers (suggesting pitch and dynamics), by note-values, using mixed values to record them for diagnoses. Hafenreffer even used a 4-line staff to place the values (from crotchets to longs) in ascending, descending or undulating rows. They curiously resemble cardiograms, and hospital oscilloscope monitors showing the frequencies and intensities of heart and lung activity.

At a deeper level, this article will stimulate readers to think of music’s capacity to reflect transient physiological humours, feelings and states of mind and how what began as a rather primitive musical physical-medical relationship was refined by musical theorists and professors of medicine. Zaltron has centered his research on musical-historical-medical writings in the Middle Ages and Renaissance at the Conservatory of Vicenza, and the University of Padua, historically, after Bologna, the second in Italy at which medicine was taught, from the 13th century.

Adriano Giardina, in ‘Un catalogue pour improviser: les Ricercari d’intavolatura d’organo de Claudio Merulo’, concludes that the eight simple but long sectional ricercars of 1567 by Merulo (1533-1604), his first publication for organ, printed by Merulo in Italian keyboard tablature, were not primarily composed for performance, but rather for teaching aspiring organists how to extemporise contrapuntal ricercars, i.e. how to do so a mente and di fantasia – a skill required in church functions. Showing examples of the contrapuntal procedures used, accompanied by simple or parallel contrapuntal voices, he reasons that their purpose was didactic. Giardina also claims support for his thesis from Merulo’s younger contemporary Girolamo Diruta (1546-1624/25), who became his student (and A. Gabrieli’s) in 1574 at the age of at least 28, and transmitted their teachings and his own in a comprehensive treatise, Il Transilvano (1593 and Seconda Parte 1609), planned and completed over several decades, thanks to a long collaboration with Merulo, who endorsed the first part in 1592. Absent a preface to the 1567 Ricercari the thesis is possible but not provable, and implicit confirmation from Il Transilvano lacking.

So I have some reservations about what Giardina reads into Diruta. Ricercars and keyboard tablature do occupy significant portions of Il Transilvano, especially in the Seconda Parte, where Diruta covers modes and strict versus free counterpoint, in some ground-breaking detail, and advocates strongly for the use of Italian keyboard tablature (closed score notation) to facilitate the approximately correct and playable reduced arrangements of vocal and instrumental polyphonic music on keyboards. Tablature ensures the beginnings if not always the durations of essential notes, omits or transposes unreachable ones, notates very few rests because each hand usually has something to do, and respects the imitative counterpoint heard even where not clearly apparent on the page. It is far from ideal for illustrating how a ricercar is composed.

In fact, the 12 ricercars included in Book 2 of the Seconda Parte (pairs by Luzzaschi, Picchi, Banchieri, Fattorini and four by Diruta himself) are all in open score. They are there to be played and are thereby didactic for players who are learning to compose. Whereas with mosaic type in tablature Merulo can stack but not stagger three simultaneous notes on a staff, with only two possible stem directions. Space dictates which way very short or missing stems on inner voice notes point – perhaps why Merulo avoids voice crossings in these ricercars. The voices can be discerned in this tablature, after some scrutiny if not quite at first sight:

Being his own publisher, Merulo must have aimed to sell his music for organ both to professionals seeking handy modal material in excerptible sections, and to learners not yet up to composing ricercars, let alone improvising them. By playing them eventually by heart, their hands and ears might also acquire familiarity with the contrapuntal techniques. To that extent every composition played is somewhat propaedeutic to extemporization. Tablature slightly confounds this from occurring as less experienced players would have had to do the analysis that Giardina did in order to catalogue the techniques Merulo used.

While Diruta gives clear rules for strict and common counterpoint, and on how to compose and transpose within the modes, he never tells his Transylvanian pupil to improvise. Learning to play a mente or di fantasia does not exclude doing so next to pen and paper or an erasable slate, and those ambiguous terms are found only a couple of times in Il Transilvano. Their primary meanings are to play a mente, by heart; and to play or compose di fantasia, inventing rather than adopting a known composition as the basis for a new one. Memorization and invention are prerequisite skills for successful improvisation, but first of all for learning to compose, which comes first.

In fact, Giardina also mentions Diruta’s inclusion of 46 of Gabriele Fattorini’s 320 examples of elaborate ‘cadences’ in 4-part open score. He tells the Transylvanian to memorize them and to play them in transposition – and they are not mere chord progressions, but contrapuntal phrases up to 14 semibreves in length, with mixed note-values from semibreves down to quavers. A repertory of these ‘cadences’ in the hands and mind might well pass for improvisations. Tablature was still controversial and rejected by musicians in 1593 and 1609. If Merulo’s purpose was didactic, why didn’t he publish them in open score so that players in 1567 would have understood them? Why didn’t Diruta even allude to improvisation in his treatise, compared to how strenuously he advocated for making keyboard notation easier to play from in tablature?

Yet, at the end of the first part of  Diruta’s Dialogo with the young Transylvanian, there is his personal account of arriving in Venice on Easter of 1574 and hearing a public ‘duello’ between Merulo and A. Gabrieli on the two organs of St Mark’s: they ‘dueled throughout the 18 years they were St Mark’s 1st and 2nd organists, though we don’t know exactly how. Were they improvising imitative rebuttals to each other’s improvised subjects, or did these eminent composers practice for their duels together? Diruta, already a keyboard player in 1566 when 20 years old and at 28 needing to perfect his technique in order to compete for posts, was swept away by their virtuosity – whether technical, creative, or improvisatory – and immediately arranged to study with both of them.

Extemporisation was indeed required of organists. To learn from Merulo’s ricercars, one would have had to sort out the voices in each, as Giardina has done, to note its devices. Applying the same techniques di fantasia, i.e. to an original subject, might then be within reach, especially when done al tavolino (at a table, i.e. in writing) rather than ex tempore. There is, in fact, a specific contemporary term for improvising counterpoint – contrappunto alla mente – and at least one organist, singer, composer and theorist, who dearly wanted to acquire that skill, gave personal testimony:

In the same year that Parte Seconda del Transilvano (1609) was reprinted (1622), Diruta’s contemporary, Ludovico Zacconi (1555-1627), in his Prattica di musica – Seconda Parte p. 84, writes: ‘… for however much, over time, I’ve frequented and conversed with masterful, mature and good musicians and seen how they teach their students counterpoint, I’ve never seen that [any] had a praise-worthy and easy way to teach their students contrappunto alla mente.’  Zacconi came to Venice to study counterpoint under A. Gabrieli, remaining active there from 1577 to 1585. He composed four books of canons and also some ricercars for organ. If as late as 1622 he claims that ‘no one’ can teach contrapuntal improvisation, which he sought to learn to no avail, hadn’t  Gabrieli, Diruta, or Merulo himself recommended that he study the 1567 Ricercari, which he probably already knew? If so, sadly, they didn’t really help.

In ‘Dafne in alloro di Benedetto Ferrari: drammaturgia ‘alla veneziana’ per Ferdinando  III (Vienna, 1652)’ Nicola Usula does three things: he compares the Modena and Viennese manuscript versions of Dafne, Ferrari’s first dramatic work (a vocal introduction in seven scenes to a pastoral ballet); he includes his complete critical edition of its text in the Appendix; and in the framework of Ferrari’s biography he shows how Ferrari used its Viennese production as clever marketing to secure his return to Italy. It might surprise us to think of Ferrari (1603/4 – 1681) not exclusively as a composer and lutenist, and perhaps also as a singer, but equally creatively as a poet.

He frames his study in a biographical account of Ferrari’s career, starting with his libretto for Manelli’s 1637 Andromeda, his collaboration with Monteverdi’s 1640 Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and the music from his 1640 Pastor regio that became the end of Monteverdi’s 1643 Incoronazione di Poppea with Busenello’s text as ‘Pur ti miro’. As early as 1641 he dedicated his 3rd book of Musiche varie a voce sola to the Holy Royal Emperor Ferdinand III, and while active in Modena at the court of Francesco I d’Este (1644-51), and at the peak of his popularity, was hired as a theorboist to work in Vienna from November 1651. His Dafne was performed February 12, 1652 and he probably played in other Venetian-style musical dramas until March 1653.

Besides the Viennese manuscript (in the National Library), a manuscript copy is held in Modena in the Biblioteca Estense together with four other librettos. It is this later poetic version which Usula draws some interesting conclusions about. His critical edition inserts in boxes the previous readings where amended, and the quality of Ferrari’s revisions and how they affect the ballet are much to his artistic credit.

‘A newly discovered recorder sonata attributed to Vivaldi: considerations on authorship’ of Sonata per flauto, I-Vc Correr 127.46 in the Biblioteca del Museo Correr in Venice will interest recorder players, players of other instruments, and listeners, and not only for the discovery of this particular work. A Summary is not given for this meticulous study by Inês de Avena Braga and Claudio Ribeiro – perhaps because its first paragraph is in effect an introductory abstract, or because its thorough presentation of comparative musical details and the arguments against alternative uncertain attributions cannot be summarized. The gist is contained in its title, and the attribution is by the two authors. They point out the salient traits of Vivaldi’s compositional style over time, selecting from hundreds of direct self-quotes found between this sonata and specific Vivaldi works (39 sonatas, concertos, sacred works, operas from RV 1 to RV 820 being listed), with 25 musical examples filling 13 pages. They conscientiously consider how often other composers knowingly or probably not, also did so.

 Therefore sifting through many sonatas by other composers showing similar traits might in the end be futile, with no end of passages ‘by’ Vivaldi and ‘also by’ others. They concluded their positive attribution after exercising profound insight into the creative logic typical only of Vivaldi but not of his copiers, in matters of style and structure, and after applying every other musicological and historical tool as well. Everyone will be enriched by their discussion because the musical traits are not only shown but explained in functional terms: how sequences, phrases, a harmonic juxtaposition, particular melodic moves or chords were used. The authors’ ‘contextualization’ strikes right to the matter of the authenticity of a work by Vivaldi.

The study goes on, in a sort of postscript, to name a few specific composers who warranted consideration as composers of I-Vc Correr 127.46 , as their music was so clearly influenced by Vivaldi’s: Diogenio Bigaglia, Gaetano Meneghetti, Ignazio Sieber, Giovanni Porta. This, too, provides the readers with a fresh discussion of their musical styles with respect to Vivaldi’s, despite superficial borrowings. It is rare that musical analysis is so rewarding to read.

Barbara Sachs

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Book

Andrew Parrott: The Pursuit of Musick: Musical Life in Original Writings and Art c1200-1770

Andrew Parrott The Pursuit of Musick: Musical Life in Original Writings and Art c1200-1770

Published by Taverner
504 pp
ISBN 978-1-915229-53-3 Hardback – £65
ISBN 978-1-915229-54-0 Paperback – £35
ISBN 978-1-915229-86-1 ebook – No detail of availability

I can find no better way of introducing this review than by quoting the opening sentence of the online blurb: ‘The Pursuit of Musick is an encyclopedic and generously illustrated anthology of original written sources, exploring some 600 years of musical activity in Europe, from the first troubadours to the emergence of the pianoforte’. For once lacking hyperbole, this is a succinct and factual description of what is a remarkable and beautifully produced book. Printed on heavy gloss paper -the paperback I have to hand weighs in at 2.3kg – that enables the lavish and profuse artwork to be reproduced to the highest quality, it will be concluded that this is no bedside table book!

Those that have kept in touch with Andrew Parrott’s activities, which sadly have involved little in the concert hall or opera house more recently, will know that he has been thinking about this book for some years.  Parrott’s eventual objective, which he only arrived at after several transitional ideas, was to allow the musicians (and the artists that involved themselves in their works) to speak for themselves with only brief introductions heading sections. The Book is divided into three parts: ‘Music & Society’, Music & Ideas’ and ‘Music & Performance’, which themselves are sub-divided into numerous sub-headings.  Part 1, for example, includes sections devoted to music in everyday life, the church, music at court and so forth. Not the least of the book’s attractions is its meticulous indexing of the source material, in the book itself for paintings, online at taverner.org for literary material.

There are two groups of people to whom this book is surely going to be an obligatory part of any music library: musicians involved with early music and writers and critics who also have any depth of involvement with the subject. Doubtless there are also many others that will take not only didactic interest but also an aesthetic one; it would be possible to pass many a rewarding and pleasurable hour just browsing the hundreds of illustrations. It will be obvious from the foregoing that this is indeed not a book for reading but one to use for research or simply the sheer enjoyment of dipping into it at random. I would imagine that on first acquaintance most readers will make for topics in which they have a particular interest. That was certainly my course in the limited amount of time I’ve had to so far examine the book. Thus my first ports of call included the sections on performance practice, vocal music and opera. In the case of the first named I was delighted to find solid support for one of the most frequent moans in my reviews – the over-fervent activities of theorbo players, particularly when they interfere with the vocal line. Here’s St Lambert in 1707: ‘the [continuo] accompaniment is made to support the voice, not to stifle or disfigure it with an unpleasant jangle…’  Or Bacilly in 1688: ‘If the theorbo is not played with restraint and there is too much complexity […] then it is theorbo accompanied by voice, not voice by theorbo’. It is fascinating too to find most of the ire directed at Italian players, for in my experience they are the worst culprits. But all theorbists should read, mark and learn.

When we turn to singing there are as many extracts concerning technique as might have been expected. One constant motif is the need for singers to maintain an ease of production, the sentiments behind these words of the German composer Hermann Finck (1527-1588) serving to illustrate universally acknowledged views that held good until the end of the period covered by the book: ‘Singing is not made more beautiful by bellowing and shouting: rather you should embrace all notes with spirit and understanding. The more a voice moves upwards, the quieter and sweeter the sound should be; the lower it goes the fuller it should be […]. Amen indeed to that. In an ideal world they are words that would be emblazoned on the portals of every singing conservatoire.  

The section on Music Drama leads from the earliest sacred representations through court intermedi to opera itself. The extracts devoted to opera are notable for illustrating how much more writing there is on the topic by French writers than Italian, probably an accurate reflection, though it would have been possible to have struck more of a balance. These extracts are dominated by the unending war between proponents of Italian opera and those favouring the French rival, summed up in an anonymous publication in Florence in 1756 (possibly by Gluck’s reformist librettist Calzabigi) forecasting the desirability of the combination of the best elements of both: ‘The opera in Paris offers [the audience] only painted scenery, ballets, machines, a sparkling assembly & a deep hush. In Naples it presents them only with ravishing music, beauties that are unseen & an appalling hubbub. Everyone understands that out of these two kinds one good one could be made, but no one has as yet thought to suggest it’. Prescient words.

It would be easy to continue citing such jewels, but it is time to leave the interested reader to obtain the book. But before doing so it is perhaps worth noting that the illustrations themselves provide a fount of information; staying with opera one might cite the marvellous illustration on p. 223 by P D Oliviero showing the re-opening of the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1740. Here one notes the wonderful set with its colonnaded perspective (not dissimilar to what can be seen in Turin today), stage filled with far more figures (12) than we normally experience in Baroque opera production today and the disposition and number of the orchestral musicians. No fewer than 29 musicians are involved, seated in two rows with harpsichords and continuo at either end of the pit. Two people are serving refreshments, while several in the front row are turning round to look at the audience rather than pay attention to what is happening on stage, a clear reminder that 18th-century audiences rarely paid undivided attention to the performance.

This magnificent publication can be obtained only online from: https://www.taverner.org/store. At the time of writing (mid-December 2022) it was available in both formats at a reduced price.

Brian Robins

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Book

RECERCARE XXXII/1-2  2020

Cover of Recercare 2020 1-2

Journal for the study and practice of early music
directed by Arnaldo Morelli
LIM Editrice [2020]. 242 pp, €30
ISSN 1120-5741 recercare@libero.it; www.lim.it

The 2020 RECERCARE contains seven studies, four in English and three in Italian, all the fruit of investigative perseverance, on specific works, prints, sources, situations or occasions. The relevance of uncovered historical details intrinsic to the creation of the music itself makes each article such a rewarding read. The full documentation, often provided in appendices, has more than a supportive role: aside from the specific cases discussed, it may greatly serve other researchers. Recercare is therefore an exponential boon to musical research.

Elena Abramov-van Rijk  asks‘ To whom did Francesco Landini address his madrigal Deh, dimmi tu’ [‘Say, tell me you … Who do you think you are!?’] While she describes the unusual musical and poetic structure of this ballata, which we have from various sources, it is its popularity and confrontational, accusatory tone that begs for a motive. The anonymous text could well be by Landini himself (Florence, 1325-1397), and the invective directed at a contemporary he knew or who was widely known, who accumulated valuable, portable riches in ‘easy’ ways. The author finds two potential candidates, both acclaimed court entertainers, whom she refers to (unfortunately, I think) as ‘buffoons’. In fact, both probably merited their riches, gained not-so-easily at all. The ballata itself does not refer to a performer, but every word seems applicable, and the careers of both are impressive: Dolcibene de’ Tori, crowned regem ystrionum in 1355 by the Roman Emperor Charles IV and invited to perform in many other courts, was an actor and ioculator (juggler), a poet (his poems ranging from the sacred to his problems with arthritis and impotence, sometimes with scurrilous vocabulary), a composer of canzonette, a singer, an organist and lutenist, and the protagonist of nine of Franco Sacchetti’s 300 anecdotal stories. Bindo di Cione, of Siena, the other, also served Charles IV and in other courts. It is the interpretation of Landini’s famous madrigal (of ca. 1355) that suggests so vividly how these talented entertainers thrived. The complete musical transcription follows.

Patrizio Barbieri ’s ‘Music printing and selling in Rome: new findings on Palestrina, Kerle and Guidotti, 1554–1574’ discusses four newly found disparate documents, presented as four pieces of an incomplete ‘mosaic’, and lastly, the inventory of a Roman bookseller and of a musician from Cambrai which included instruments, printed or handwritten vocal works, an iron music stand used while playing the harpsichords, and an erasable slate with staves for drafting music on. The description and purpose of the editions documented, and the contracts to publish and market them, show who covered the initial expenses, and whether any assistance was offered to authors or others. The publications discussed in detail are Palestrina’s Missarum liber primus (1554) and Kerle’s hymni totius anni et Magnificat (1558-60). The musical inventory of a general Roman bookseller, Antonio Maria Guidotti, includes a great number of almost exclusively Venetian prints of vocal music, mostly madrigals, plus treatises: B. Rossetti’s 1529 Libellus De Rudimentis Musices, G. M. Lanfranco’s 1533 Scintille di musica, and G. Zarlino’s 1558-2 Le Istitutioni harmoniche. The original documents in the Appendix may be useful to others for reflections and comparisons.

Franco Pavan’s ‘La musica per chitarrone di Giacomo Antonio Pfender. Nuove acquisizioni’ identifies Pfender, detto il Tedeschino, as the composer of some pieces for archlute in a manuscript in the Archivio Estense in Modena (and in a facsimile)1 previously attributed to an older composer, Alessandro Piccinini (1566-1638).

Pfender is known for having collected and published two states of Kapsberger’s Libro primo d’intavolatura di chitarrone in 1604 in Venice. They were close friends in their student days in Augsburg, and based on Kapsberger’s dates (1580-1651) they were in their early 20s in 1604. Pfender’s name reappears on designs for the frontispiece of another chitarrone collection, found in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de san Fernando in Madrid, where he is named as one of the composers. What the two collections share is a monogram resembling a stick figure with outstretched arms, turned-out feet, and a dot for the ‘head’. It actually consists of four superimposed letters, only two of which were previously noticed: an A and a swirl from its point to the middle of its right side form a P, thus suggesting Alessandro Piccinini. There are also short lines under the A’s two ‘feet’, a wide line balanced on its point, and a central dot above that line.

Pavan brilliantly deciphered the other two letters this monogram. The left side of A and the dot form a dotted capital I preceding AP, and the wide top line uses the right side of A to make a T. İAPT stands for Giacomo (Iacomo or Ioannes) Antonio Pfender, and T for Tedesco (German).

Many more useful considerations accompany this discovery: relations between Roman musical circles and Modena, the handwriting and probable date of the tablature, and a list of its 28 pieces: of which 7, not known from other sources, are attributed to ‘HK’ (Kapsberger), 9 to ‘AP’(?), 5 to ‘İAPT’ and several unattributed. Pavan modestly considers not quite resolved whether those identified as by ‘AP’ are attributable to Piccinini or to Pfender, but after keeping readers in legitimate doubt he adds that the abbreviations HK and AP appear to be in a different hand and ink! The facsimile of the Modena manuscript names only Kapsberger, Piccinini, and G. Viviani, and its editor, Francesca Torelli, was therefore forced to remark that the styles of HK and the older AP were surprisingly similar, so perhaps they were quoting each other! It is too bad that SPES (Archivum Musicum) no longer exists, because continuing this research and revising that introduction would be quite useful.

The Appendix gives Pfender’s letter of dedication of Kapsberger’s Libro primo d’intavolatura di chitarrone. He respectfully addressed Kapsberger as his fratello osservandissimo, and signed fratello amorevolissimo, ‘very loving brother’. It is a curious dedication, since Kapsberger had apparently not requested or given permission for publication. Pfender clears his conscience by saying that he published them in order to make Kapsberger a gift of what he stole, since up to then the pieces were so universally desired that they had become donnicciuole [derogatory term for little old women], whereas now he can peacefully recognize them and accept them back!

1 G. Kapsberger – A. Piccinini – G. Vivianai, Intavolatura di chitarrone. Mss. Modena, ed. facs., introduzione di Francesca Torelli, Firenze, SPES, 1999.

In March 2019 Maddalena Bonechi’s edition of G. B. da Gagliano’s Varie musiche, libro primo, 1623 was reviewed here. Her edition includes as much biographical information on Marco da Gagliano’s less famous brother Giovanni Battista (1594-1651) as there was to discuss. It also gave analyses of the works and their texts. Her present article, ‘Parole, immagini e musica nelle pratiche devozionali della compagnia di San Benedetto Bianco a Firenze – alcuni possibili contributi di da Gagliano’ focuses on the texts, imagery and music as essential to the devotional practices of the Florentine religious confraternity to which Giovanni Battista (and possibly Marco) belonged, and relates how paintings, poetry and music were fused in their spiritual activities. Whether or not the religious compositions in Gagliano’s publication were designed for the San Benedetto Bianco congregation, at least one was performed there: Ecco ch’io verso il sangue, presumably for a theatrical enactment of the passion and death of Jesus, along with the laments of Mary, traditionally for Good Friday. Depictions of the Passion and themes exalting God in comparison with one’s own nothingness and of penitence, enhanced the ritual flagellation practices of the members, who strived to gain insight from such first-hand experience. The beauty of the music and art may indeed have attenuated the rough physical sensory input incurred to stimulate and attain this understanding.

Lucas G. Harris – Robert L. Kendrick gave a curious title, ‘Of nuns fictitious and real: revisiting Philomela angelica (1688)’ to their fortuitous discovery and comparative analysis. A Benedictine nun, Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602 – ca.1677), had her 12 solo motets, Scherzi di sacra melodia, printed in score with a separate vocal part book in 1648 by Alessandro Vincenti. Only the vocal parts of this Venetian print survive. Forty years later Daniel Speer published a collection of Italian sacred works, his Philomela angelica, anagrammatically tagged “Res Plena Dei” [Daniel Speer], and attributed to ‘a Roman nun’. Speer’s print contains 24 motets, of which 6, with their continuo lines, are by Cozzolani, 3 by Cazzati, 1 duet attributed to the Ursuline nun Leonarda, and 14 not yet identifiable. What is fortunate is that in his search for Italian sacred pieces that would appeal to Lutherans in southwest Germany, Speer did have the continuo line.

By comparison of sources or by conjecture, Speer simplified the vocal writing, heavy ornamentation being out of fashion, deleted some Italian tempo or ‘mood’ indications, added string parts or sections, and slightly adapted the continuo figures to more Germanic usage. Harris and Kendrick are attempting to reconstruct Cozzolani’s originals, if they can distinguish her harmony and rhetoric from Speer’s arrangements. They have more to go by in the Cazzati and Leonarda pieces, which survive with their continuo parts.

Valerio Morucci  examines part of the private correspondence of Christine of Sweden relating to her musical patronage and employment of singers, in ‘L’orbita musicale di Cristina di Svezia e la circolazione di cantanti nella seconda metà del Seicento’. Administrative documents, such as registers and accounts, have generally gone missing, but communications with singers and with other patrons, courts, cappellas, theaters, and cities (Rome, Venice, Mantua, Modena), await researchers who follow her lead. The degree of cooperation between other courts and hers, her granting of freedom to modify agreements in order for singers to accept additional work, and to establish goodwill between competing patrons, is surprising and admirable. Even this first exploration (the Appendix presents citations from 16 documents) regarding a small number of female singers and castratos will be of interest. They include: Nicola and Antonia Coresi, Barbara Riccioni, Giuseppe Maria Donati detto il Baviera, Giuseppe Fede, Alessandro Bifolchi, Giovanni Paolo Bonelli; other castratos such as Alessandro Cecconi, Giuseppe Bianchi, Antonio Rivani, and Domenico Cecchi detto il Cortona. Some were retained with salaries while many remained absolutely independent, such as Giovanni Francesco Grossi ‘detto Siface’ and Giuseppe Maria Segni ‘detto il Finalino’.

‘Writing a tenor’s voice: Cesare Grandi and the Siena production of Il Farnaspe (1750)’ by Colleen Reardon is a vividly engaging story. The details, gleaned from 119 letters to the inexperienced sponsoring impresario, Francesco Sansedoni, regard the ultimate success of a single opera, beset by numerous potential crises as originally planned, but methodically high-jacked by the ingenious, competent, hard-working, third tenor – and not only to further the careers of his second soprano wife and himself. Cesare Grandi offered and sufficiently motivated his unsolicited advice, eventually accepted by Sansedoni, reversing or manipulating almost every artistic and practical decision – major and minor changes affecting the music itself, the casting, the staging, the order of arias and their keys, the costumes, to suit the musical taste of the patron, and the local politics, or for practical reasons like not having the orchestral parts in the right keys after an aria was shifted from its original place in the libretto or even to be sung by a different singer. Famous as Siena was and is for its two summer Palios, tied to religious holidays, Grandi even obtained a change of its July date!

The recently discovered cache of letters containing Grandi’s psychologically astute suggestions to the younger Sansedoni would probably be bewildering to decipher and interpret without the help of Reardon’s orderly, detailed account. I don’t really have a pressing reason for rereading all 40 pages of this wonderful study (plus 15 pages with 29 appended letters), but it does bear more than one reading for the pure pleasure of pondering what a staggering pastiche an opera in 1750 was: the compromises, the pressures, deadlines met, singers cast, the copying, transposing, rewriting or replacing of arias by unnamed composers – thanks to the initiatives of the third tenor…

Barbara Sachs

Categories
Book

The Baroque Violin and Viola

The Baroque Violin and Viola Walter Reiter

A fifty-lesson course, volumes I & II
Walter Reiter
Oxford University Press, 2020
ISBN 978-0-19-092270-2 (vol. 1) 978-0-19-752512-8 (vol. 2) £29.99 each (paperback; hardback available)

When Walter Reiter and I discussed his plans to write a book on how to play the baroque violin, I had absolutely no idea of the gargantuan scheme he had hatched! 50 lessons over 600 pages, from making sure that you’re holding the instrument comfortably, and understanding how different bow pressures and speeds impact the sound you make, to a detailed analysis of dozens of pieces and hints on how to play them in a style that the composer would have recognised, from Fontana to Bach with every conceivable bass in between thoroughly dealt with. While the first volume predominantly explores all of the technical sides of the beast, the second gives almost bar-by-bar advice on how to play it, with excellent explanations of why a particular approach should be taken to certain figures. Throughout, there are 118 exercises that force you to think about these things for yourself. As well as the impressive books themselves, there is a dedicated website from which almost all of the music can be downloaded, along with video demonstrations from Walter, all of which enhances an already impressive package.

This project has clearly been a labour of love and I congratulate Walter on a fantastic achievement. If I was starting out again and felt I perhaps should have kept up my violin playing, this would absolutely be my constant companion. I recommend it without the slightest hesitation to anyone embarking on a musical career!

Brian Clark

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Book

Georg Philipp Telemann: Vita e Opera del piu prolifico compositore del baroco tedesco

Cover of Gabriele Formenti Book on Telemann in Italian

Gabriele Formenti
XII+340pp. €37
ISBN 978-88-6540-267-2

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One is always rather delighted to see the spotlight turned on the composer who is (for good or bad) in the Guinness Book of Records under the heading “Most Prolific Composer”! Thus it follows, only the brave and bold dip into this monumental oeuvre and come out with a half-decent grasp of the scope and spectrum of these numerous works all neatly classified with their TVWV and TWV numbers; some are simply bedazzled by the scale of things and throw in the towel! So we salute Gabriele Formenti for even attempting this formidable and daunting task!

Perhaps moving in the inspired, insightful and studious footsteps of Steven Zohn’s most excellent 2008 “Music for a Mixed Taste”, Gabriele Formenti, (also a baroque flautist) has assembled a veritable feast of useful quotes and notable musical examples.

The Telemann autobiographic chapters are well selected and cover the salient events, with the images being well chosen to aid the reader; rather like the 1980s hardback pocket pictorial biography by Walter Siegmund-Schultze. Visually, this study is well supplied, and it must be said the extremely diligent work cross-referencing, branching out into some fascinating musical associations and cleverly made observations do yield some musicological fruits to gaze at! Especially the Bach-Telemann links, some I was not aware of. Bravo!

The exploration of Telemann’s instrumental works is overall very neatly done with some very good observations, through the various phases and blendings of the “mixed taste” and the section on Corelli’s Op. 5 is particularly fine! The highly original graph regarding the distribution of instruments found in the Getreue Music-Meister (p 169) is a very clever presentation of the information! Nice, too, to see a “real“ image of a Calchedon from a Polish museum. It is mentioned in some Telemann cantatas, and elsewhere along with mandora, pandora-type  instruments. Formenti ought to have noticed, though, that the wind quintets are now classified in TWV44, thus what used to be “La Chasse” TWV55: F9 is now TWV44:10.

Next Formenti tackles the multifarious choral works, both scared and secular, each with their own specific genres. Thanks to a variety of recording projects, the cantata cycles are slowly revealing their treasures (for example, a complete “French cycle” is underway on the cpo label). 

Considerable use might have been made of Siegbert Rampe’s 2007 book Georg Philipp Telemann und seine Zeit and even the splendid earlier book by Eckart Klessmann, which has some amazing chapters especially towards the end.

The operas are dealt with quite well, although the author seems unaware that the secular arias “of unknown origin” are, in fact, from Telemann’s Germanicus. 

Moving onto the Passions, which for Hamburg total 46 individual settings, with 22 extant, plus the Danziger Choral-Passion of 1754 (TVWV5:53) which used the Mathew 1750 for the overall structure of its actual sung insertions. In this section of the study, Formenti relies on Jason B. Grant’s 2005 examination of the narrative style and its changes through the following years, dividing the Passions into three groups (1722-36, 1737-54, and 1755-67). The various settings seem to have been correctly assessed and the two known times that parodies, or borrowings from a previous Passion’s layout were used, have been identified. It is hard not to stress enough the truly incredible diversity here, and the sheer drama and emotively charged pathos evoked in increasingly Enlightenment style. Some of the later Passions display astounding depictions with extremely vivid and often visceral music. Sadly, in the catalogue listings at the end of this study some dreadful errors have crept in, e.g. whilst compiling the list of Passions, and given several times: “Ein Loemmlein geht und traegt die Schuld”. Good to see the Mark 1755 counted here, a fairly recent discovery made in Krakow.

To round off the vocal section, the impressive stream of works from the later years, the truly extraordinary cluster of late passion-oratorios! When Telemann seemed to gain a tremendous second wind of creative energy, and produced some real masterpieces. It is very good to focus on the 1759 setting of Klopsctock’s Der Messias, whose poetry has such an angular, awkward rhythm and flow, that it is quite amazing that Telemann managed to extract such a clever and smooth melodiousness, delivering impactful declamatory moments. Sadly, another work from this same poet in triumphant Easter vein has been lost!

In my opinion, it was an oversight not to include anything from the deeply impressive and moving Der Tod Jeu of 1755, which – although overshadowed later by Graun’s setting – clearly shows the enlightened evolution of this genre.

Alas, I do feel duty-bound to point out some printing errors (particularly in the titles of German works – was a native speaker ever asked to proofread the volume?) but also in Italian, e. g., “Il Gardellino”. As far as that extensive catalogue goes, there are numerous oversights: cantatas published by primalamusica.com for which I supplied translations go unnoted, as do Dr Ian Payne’s excellent Severinus Press editions of literally dozens of ouverture suites and concertos. Similarly, there is no indication that some of the large-scale church cantatas are based on the second series of the Harmonischer Gottesdienst, a perfect example of Telemann making the best use of his own material (where others clearly felt able to help themselves!)

In summation, this is a most admirable, valiant attempt to encompass the vast volumes of music produced by one of the most fluent and versatile masters of the age, a protean polymath, who embraced every aspect with all his artistic abilities leaving us a prolific legacy to examine, enjoy and contemplate. Formenti is perhaps more at home in the instrumental details, and this section is filled with many interesting observations. 

All in all, despite the odd errata, this is a commendable monograph (in Italian), which may prove to be a stepping-stone for some, stimulating them to pick up an edition or recording and explore Telemann’s vast oeuvre further. 

David Bellinger

This review was rather savagely edited in the interests of space. You can read the original version HERE.

Categories
Book

Bettina Hoffmann, I bassi d’arco di Antonio Vivaldi – violoncello, contrabbasso e viola da gamba al suo tempo e nelle sue opere

Cover of Bettina Hoffmann,  I bassi d'arco di Antonio Vivaldi - violoncello, contrabbasso e viola da gamba al suo tempo e nelle sue opere

xvi + 594pp
Studi di Musica Veneta, Quaderni Vivaldiani, 19
Leo S. Olschki Editore: Florence, 2020

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The astonishing presentation of so much research by Bettina Hoffmann, who is well-known as a viol and Baroque cello player, teacher and scholar, makes this tome a gripping read. The subject – the cello, the double bass and the viol around the time of Vivaldi and in his works – has more widespread relevance than one might expect, such as: the evolution of those instruments in Vivaldi’s time, his mode of teaching, different tunings, fingerings and bowings exploited in or required by his compositions, other precious, explicit and surprising instructions in his scores to add to our notions of 18th-century performance practices, and comparisons between sources in manuscripts or prints destined for other countries and cities other than Venice.

Each section, in fact, is a compilation of such studies. Hoffmann, like a detective, gleaned historical evidence creatively by investigation and speculation. It appears that she has dated, placed, and told us about all the cases in which a cello, a bass or a viol have solo functions in Vivaldi’s works. As only an insightful player could do, she points out unusual characteristics of various sources, for their own sake or for the specific occasions, courts or players they were composed; or why some movements appear in more than one composition and with different instrumentation. I imagine that this amount of reasoning, applied to possible circumstances, was actually very selective. I say this because it was not overwhelming: her speculations and conclusions are always intrinsically important.

The complexity of this book reflects its multiple topics. Since Vivaldi’s music is certainly ‘main stream’ its information is useful to players and listeners: bass instrument players can find sections on their specific repertory and their instrument’s historical techniques; the general reader interested in baroque music or in Vivaldi will be captured from the very first pages, after which they may or may not be able to put it down! Not being a string player myself, I found many surprising conclusions drawn from technical details. But because this tome of more than 600 pages will have something different to impart to every reader, I will try to describe its contents. At the web page for I bassi d’arco di Antonio Vivaldi, Olschki would do well to add a link to view its complete Table of Contents – in Italian called the Indice (index).

It is an outline with page numbers which almost functions as an index of subject matter. It presents the work’s four main Parts, with up to four chapters per part, up to eight sections per chapter, and numbered subsections. It is the quickest way to relocate information that is referred to later.

Part One (285 pages) includes the history, organology, techniques (body positions, fingering and tuning) and musical considerations necessary for appreciating the documentation in Part Two (180 pages) on Vivaldi’s contributions to the roles of bass string instruments in his compositions and in Baroque music generally. Part Three (circa 80 pages) discusses Vivaldi’s use of bass string instruments based on his specific indications, with Hoffmann’s deductions about performance practice from that evidence. Parts Three and Four (circa 45 pages) contain tables with information on Vivaldi’s works. The first table gives his specific, basso continuo instrumentation, such as when the bow strokes in recitatives are to be long, when the accompaniment is by bassoon, or without harpsichord, or pizzicato or piano or arpeggiato, or for organ or solo cello; and combinations of these variables. The next table shows what the ensemble formations were, by cities, institutions (churches, schools, etc.) and occasions. The Bibliography is a goldmine, in an amazingly helpful format: author’s name and one key word from the title are distinctly visible in the left margin; the full title and details are in blocks of lines on the right. An index of names only follows, which suffices thanks to the Indice of contents.

Illustrations, musical examples or specific events or persons are all apt to be referred to by a figure number or sub-section sooner or later. Once the prior mention was located I would write the page number in the margin to be revisited faster in the future. Every treasure hunt called for in the text was rewarding, because engravings, anecdotes, and examples tell different things in different contexts.

The beginning of the book will intrigue all readers: the historical nomenclature for cellos, double basses and gambas couldn’t be more confusing. English readers speak of ‘the violin family’, not thinking that the ‘baby’, the older siblings and their mother were actually of ‘the viola family’, the violino being the ‘little viola’. So what is a violetta? It turns out to be a viola, because viola also referred to many of the larger instruments. A violone is a ‘large viola’, very often a cello, but sometimes a double-bass or a viol. To avoid that confusion the cello was sometimes called a violoncello or a violoncino – literally a ‘little big-viola’. If viola da braccio recalls the early distinction between the lira da gamba (lyra held between the legs) and the lira da braccio (lyra held by a raised arm) it was not exclusively yet another name for such a viola! Along with the viola da collo (‘neck’ viola) and the viola da spalla (‘shoulder’ viola), viola da braccio also meant a cello held across the player’s lap like a guitar, possibly with a cord behind the player’s neck: there is iconographic evidence, music, left-hand fingerings and tunings conducive to such a position! And so we come to the big violas, when a violone is not a cello, but a string bass, and therefore also called a violone grosso or violone grande, and finally a contrabbasso, Italian for the double-bass.

This first chapter on terminology is also full of examples of music, players, occasions, and iconography. It takes us north and south to various cities (Venice, Bologna, Modena, Florence, Rome and Naples), it tells us to wait to read about the violoncello all’inglese – a term used only once by Vivaldi; and it becomes obvious, when we get to it, that the viola da gamba will often be called a viola or a violone and that related instruments, strung in various ways may be identified by names such as viola bastarda, baryton, viola d’amore, viola all’inglese (a viola da gamba, called for by Vivaldi four times) or viola d’amore inglese. For practical reasons the rest of the book steers clear of all this confusion! Yet, since instrumental music flourished in so many places, musicians will encounter all of this terminology in the titles, incipits or instrumental parts of works, and this knowledge may be essential for finding music of this period. ‘Around’ Vivaldi’s time, in Hoffmann’s title, exceeds his lifetime, and means from before 1678 to well after 1740, considering that contemporaries overlap each other, and musicians who worked in Venice often came from many other important Italian and European cities.

The second chapter is exciting for musicians and teachers, because it concerns the cello, its role as a solo instrument, its tuning, experiments in its construction and the development of its fingering and phrasing techniques. Hoffmann takes us from Naples through central and northern Italy, and beyond to Vienna, Prague and into Germany.

In Venice Vivaldi’s career was happily tethered to the Ospedale della Pietà, one of four Church-run orphanages for girls born out of wedlock, who were rarely marriageable themselves. Those who were admitted to be in the Coro (choir) had the opportunity and obligation to study violin, viola, cello and bass under Vivaldi! The best ones played in his orchestra and lived their entire lives there as his musicians, assistants, and perhaps becoming maestre, teachers themselves, in their forties. The girls had daily group lessons of several hours with Vivaldi, in the presence of the assistants who watched and corrected them in real time, and then oversaw their practice in the hours after the lessons! The assistants were responsible for the girls’ punctuality, conduct and, if necessary, dispensed disciplinary measures. Fourteen of these assistants were the essential players in Vivaldi’s concerts. Hoffmann gives thumbnail biographies of those who specialized in playing bass string instruments. They usually started as singers and players of smaller instruments. Vivaldi (1678-1740) was present at the Pietà from 1703 to 1721, 1723 to 1729 and 1735 to 1738. One can imagine the accomplishments of those who qualified for such exemplary guidance, not to mention Vivaldi’s technical competence on so many instruments. The Pietà also had an extraordinary collection of rare types of instruments, which explains why so many compositions called for highly unusual instrumentation.

The sections on various cello tunings, structural characteristics and techniques (left-hand positions and fingerings, and right-hand positions and bowings) is fascinating, even for non-string players. It explains the consequences of the cello’s evolution. What is seen on the page cannot be separated from these objective transformations.

The third and fourth chapters, on the double-bass and the viola da gamba, follow the same lines of investigation – where they were played, how many strings they had, what tunings were expected, what fingerings. The viol was nearly obsolete in Italy, but nevertheless its use is documented at the Ospedale della Pietà by choir-masters Francesco Gasparini (in L’oracolo del fato of 1709 and 1719) for the Empress Elisabeth Christine and again for the Emperor Charles VI, and by Giovanni Porta (in Il ritratto dell’eroe of 1726), to welcome the return to Venice of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, and notably by Vivaldi’s use of five gambas in his oratorio Juditha Triumphans (1716). This is discussed later at length along with RV 719, his opera L’Incoronazione di Dario (1717), RV 579, his Concerto funebre (perhaps for the funeral of another choir-master at the Pietà, Pietragrua, who died in 1726) and RV 555, his Concerto con molti istromenti (perhaps also for Ottoboni’s return in 1726).

Analyses of Vivaldi’s music for the bass string instruments occupies the Second Part of this volume, pages 287 to 467: Sonatas for cello and bass, Trio sonatas, Chamber concertos and sonatas with more instruments, Concertos for one or two cellos and orchestra, Concertos for various instruments and orchestra, in all of which a cello or cellos are soloists; sacred and operatic vocal music in which the cello has obbligato parts; the technical aspects of these works; and detailed descriptions of the works for the viola da gamba mentioned before. Players can find the entire repertory covered, sources compared with respect to their authenticity, datability, reliability, quality or lack thereof, and the purposes apparently considered by the various scribes. Hoffmann’s insight is particularly evident.

For the nine Vivaldi cello sonatas, Hoffmann points out the sloppy bowings in the Paris and Neapolitan manuscripts compared to the consistency of those from Wiesentheid, but warns that the latter may testify to the scribe’s own, or his patron’s, preferences! Just when we hope that the beautifully engraved first edition by Le Clerc (ca. 1740) will be decisive, Hoffmann again warns that the markings are incoherent, that every page is maddening, and often simplified to make the works commercially more appealing. This section, by forewarning cello players, should inspire them to follow a musicological approach in studying any work. (We are lucky that the internet may facilitate some of the necessary comparative source reading.)

Hoffmann presents questions, answers, interpretations and tentative conclusions. No one can infallibly discern Vivaldi’s originality with so many variables, but it is the work of every musician to seek tentative certainty. I keep in mind a tenet from the philosophy of aesthetics: when judging between opposing interpretations, the ‘right’ one is that which is more meaningful, or beautiful, or profound.

Olschki’s beautiful soft cover and flaps do not show Bettina Hoffmann, but to Italian followers of early music she needs no introduction. I imagine that she gets feedback from many of them. English readers looking for repertoire or insight can find every work listed or discussed; the tables and bibliography offer information and leads with few linguistic obstacles. You will have to dip into it piecemeal, until it is translated. I found it very enjoyable to read. The vocabulary is scholarly, but the sentences are not long: they reflect how scholars speak. This added pleasure in reading to that of discovery and I was sorry to get to the end!

Barbara Sachs

Categories
Book Recording

Bernardina: Une vie secrète à la Pietà

Cover of Bernardina Une vie secrète à la Pietà

A novel (in French) by Arièle Butaux with a historical postlude by Olivier Fourés, and a CD of Venetian music
Collectif Cordis & Organo
64:00
Seuletoile SE 03

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Described as a ‘Livre-disque’, this is a short story set in Vivaldi’s ospedale in1741. There are supporting essays about this institution, its activities and the main characters in the story (all in French only), and tucked away at the back is a CD of chamber and keyboard music that includes attractive pieces by less well-known figures such as Gasparini and Laurenti, as well as Vivaldi and Albinoni. Where to shelve the package may be an issue for some, as it is significantly larger than a standard CD case but significantly smaller than any book I currently have within reach.

The recording was made in a Swiss church that boasts a 1786 organ and we hear this both as a soloist and used for the continuo – sometimes without a melodic instrument on the bass line. (In fact, we hear all three players together only in the opening and closing works.) This is a welcome and effective sonority, not least because the organ sound is so much richer than the ‘continuo boxes’ we usually encounter. The cello sonata by Benedetto Marcello, with organ only, is lovely and a further cello sonata (Vivaldi) with harpsichord only is also effective.

One small presentational issue clouds what is overwhelmingly a sunny musical picture. Here and there the gaps between movements and/or works feel slightly uncomfortable in their length. In a live context, this matter cannot always be artist-led, of course, but on CD .  .?

I will leave comment on the literary merits of the story to those more qualified, but I certainly enjoyed its musical complement.

David Hansell

Categories
Book

RECERCARE XXXI/1-2 2019

Recercare 31/1-2 LIM Editrice

Journal for the study and practice of early music
Arnaldo Morelli
LIM Editrice [2019] 230 pp, €30 ISBN 978-88-5543031-9

Click HERE to buy this volume at the publisher’s website

The 2019 RECERCARE contains three studies in English and three in Italian plus a detailed, illustrated “Communication” by Giacomo Silvestri on his discovery of a surviving 18th-century  recorder, Un nuovo flauto diritto contralto di Castel a Perugia, now in Perugia’s Museo Diffuso di Strumenti Musicali. As always the summaries are in both languages and quite informative on their own. Recercare means ‘to investigate’, and its articles always have a cultural or geographic connection to Italy or Italians or Italian culture outside of Italy. Paris figures in two studies, Venice and Rome in several others, and they are ordered chronologically.

Memory of the past and perception of sound in the Renaissance: the Aristotelian perspective by Stefano Lorenzetti addresses the specific Humanistic perception of music and the dual roles of theory and practice in what the theorists, composers and musicians of the Renaissance were actively concerned within writing, composing and playing. They positioned themselves as followers of those whose influence they acknowledged, but often their dialectical concepts about the ‘new’ versus the ‘old’ had limitations. Musical texts are not music until performed and heard, and subjective performances are lost, lasting only briefly in memory. Lorenzetti interestingly distinguishes (using Latin as theorists of the Renaissance usually did)  between what we think of as an opus by an author (a composition or text), and what Aristotle meant by the labour, or work, the activity of producing and performing a work. Subjectivity injected human qualities (at times inspired by historical and religious movements) to the performance of music by techniques that were themselves inculcated by memory. Lorenzetti sees the Aristotelian perspective – a potential activity and its realised product – inherent in treatises of the 16th century.  Ganassi, in 1535, had explicitly juxtaposed two abstract terms in his chapter Declaration of the ‘effects’ caused by diminished ‘acts’. And in 1596 Zacconi stressed the art of diminution as a means of renewal of written music.

Examples show Aristotle’s underlying concepts echoed in Zacconi, the most interesting competition in 1555 between Andrea Festa and Benedetto Spinone, each challenged to add a sixth voice to a madrigal by Adrian Willaert and one by Cipriano De Rore, composed in Willaert’s revered style. Willaert himself, reluctantly, was persuaded to be the judge, receiving the submitted parts sent to Venice from Genoa. Rather than just scrutinizing the two radical rewritings of each madrigal, he had them performed by his singers at St Mark’s. His judgements were thus based on fleeting executions – newly performed ‘repetitions’, of madrigals the singers might have already known.

Lorenzetti’s writing is fine, but the study’s title, alluding to three mental functions, makes it more difficult to follow! A simpler one might be ‘The Humanistic Perception of Music and its Roots in Aristotle’. He gives the Italian or Latin wording of citations he translates: readers should look at these in every case. For example, translating Zacconi’s materie as ‘subjects’ might misleadingly suggest contrapuntal themes, whereas here the theorist must have meant poetic ‘subject matters’. And ‘… popular singers … expected nothing more than pure & simple modulatione’ does not refer to changes of key, mode or pitch names (here), but rather to intonation or melody itself. Instead of using the cognate ‘modulation’, perhaps ‘melody’ would do? Cognates are deceptive traps, best left in italics, as Lorenzetti does in the case of accento, which here means any sort of ornament, and often (e.g. in Diruta) a specific one.

We are again in Venice in Marco Di Pasquale’s Silvestro Ganassi: a documented biography, again at the time of his contemporary, Adrian Willaert. RECERCARE always excels in presenting detailed biographical articles on figures about whom little is yet known. This very detailed account, if sometimes fragmentary or circumstantial, is beautifully illustrated (paintings, prints and portraits such as the 1577 fire at the Doge’s palace; a map by G. A. Magini of the territory of Bergamo; other historical events and figures; a procession of trombe, piffari, tubae et barbiton on Palm Sunday by M. Pagano and another by G. Franco), and is followed by 25 pages of 50 transcribed documents.

Perhaps this biographical study was translated into English for the sake of non-Italians who could never hope to locate so many unpublished documents;  and additionally because the treatises of Ganassi (?1492 – after 1571) on recorder playing (La Fontegara, 1535), the viola da gamba (Regola Rubertina, 1542) and the violone (Lettione Seconda, 1543) are of such great interest to players. Here these works are discussed only in relation to their printing, publication, dedications, and commercial longevity.

Silvestro, his father, two of his three brothers and one of his sons were musicians (two, as was common in Venice, working also as barbers). At least four of them were among the six prestigious pifferi del doge [the duke’s private pipers, trumpeters and trombonists, founded in 1458], who accompanied ceremonial events and played for an hour daily from a balcony of the ducal palace in St Mark’s Square. Silvestro was appointed piffero in 1517 and was still an active player there in 1566. He was also a lutenist, a gamba player and a teacher of professional musicians. His son Giovanni Battista was also a virtuoso cornettist, and the family performed for aristocrats as a private free-lance ensemble. Much of the study shows how free Venetian musicians were to play in various venues, such as the Scuole, St Mark’s and palaces. An open question (among many) is whether Silvestro played with Willaert. Fires, upheavals (and floods?) destroyed many of the historical archives over the centuries, so we will probably never know.

In Pietro Aretino’s bantering Dialogo of 1543 Silvestro Ganassi is addressed with friendly sarcasm as a ‘musician, painter and philosopher’. Di Pasquale cites other references to his serious interest in painting, possibly earning him admiration for his portraits. Numerous links to other figures in cultural circles are discussed as likely or possible, but so far without hard evidence. The study is a perfect example of RECERCARE’s function: pointing out new directions for further research.

Paolo Alberto Rismondo’s article Antonio Grimani ‘musico galileiano’ tra Venezia e Roma also provides scattered facts, references and hypotheses about the life and activity of an esteemed castrato (? -1665) who took his surname from the noble Grimani family who raised him and whom he first served. The study connects him significantly to Galileo because he later served a highly respected liberal Florentine prelate and poet, Giovanni Ciampoli (1589-1643), travelling with him and singing at his gatherings in Venice and in Rome, which were frequented also by Galileo. There are letters to Galileo in 1630 specifically inviting him to some of these in order to hear Grimani. Up to 1632, Ciampoli enjoyed the favour of Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) and Antonio thus became active in Roman clerical circles. He also sang in Parma under Monteverdi in 1628, in the Marches after Ciampoli fell into disfavour with Urban and became governor there, and in Venice at St Mark’s from  January 1617 (‘cantor soprano eunuco’) to at least 1637, and at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

Grimani began his career performing chamber cantatas for the nobility but continued it in the opera theatre, to which his voice was less suited. He sang: the title female role in Giovanni Felice Sances’ lost opera-tourney La Ermiona, performed in Padua (1636) in a place suitable for the processions and stylized battles with horses and armaments; the principal role of Clizio in Benedetto Ferrari’s Pastor regio (1641); and that of the old nurse Delfa in Francesco Cavalli’s Giasone (1649). There is a note – possibly by Barbara Strozzi herself – about Grimani singing in praise of her for the Accademia degli Unisoni. His life was an extremely lucky one if indeed he was the orphan of Turkish parents: he benefitted from the care, education, contacts and inheritance of the important Grimani family, with its widespread cultural and clerical connections.

Michael Klaper’s article An Italian in Paris: Giovanni Bentivoglio (1611-1694) and a neglected source for seventeenth-century Italian cantata poetry is about a 790-page manuscript of 1050 poetic works, begun in Rome in the late 1630s, mainly written in France from the early 1640s to the late 1680s, and now no.19277 in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. Two-thirds of these works were for musical settings (sonnets, cantatas, madrigals, canzonettas and serenatas), making this source unique. A copyist entered the poems up to 1670. The remainder are in the hand of the poet, the Abbey Giovanni Bentivoglio. Born in Ferrara, he worked in Rome in the 1630s, and lived in France from the early 1640s to the later 1680s. The Italian composers for whom he wrote also went to France in the 1640s. Together they responded to the demand for Italian music in the court of Jules Mazarin, and then Louis XIV’s, and for public occasions from 1643 to 1715. Klaper’s table of 62 cantata texts shows the number of works for which an actual musical setting and possible dates of composition are known, and whether the text was written in Italy or in France. There are: 1 by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (1643-1704); 8 by Teobaldo di Gatti (1650-1727); 26 by Marco [dell’Arpa] Marazzoli (ca. 1602 – 1662); 1 by Atto Melani (1626-1714); 1 by Francesco Petrobelli (1618-1695); 13 by Luigi Rossi (1598-1653); and 12 are anonymous.

The second part of the study describes the works for Marco Marazzoli, identified by concordance with Chigi manuscripts, and possibly for a Roman soprano in Paris. Five cantatas were for ceremonies, meetings, or publicly celebrated occasions. It is assumed that many of the texts for these were set by other composers – the music and the concordance lost. Bentivoglio’s poetry might have been set by Cavalli in 1660-1662 or by Lully. Thanks to manuscript 19277 we know that 7 of Gatti’s 12 Airs italiens, published in 1696, are set to poems of Bentivoglio. It is probable that the poet and Gatti had direct contact, but nothing excludes the possibility that Bentivoglio’s poems were set to music by others and later borrowed by the composers of the concordances we now know.

Klaper also gives a telling example of lyrics not properly allotted to the right voice in a musical setting, compared to the text as written or corrected by the poet. The author’s version improves the structure and meaning of a dialogue between an Amante and his Amata. In this case, a correction to the music can easily be implemented, since the Lover and his Beloved are both sopranos: the notes themselves are fine, and can easily be sung by the right singer!

Alessio Ruffatti’s study ‘Un libro dorato pieno di ariette’: produzione e circolazione di manoscritti musicali tra Roma, Parigi e Venezia nel Seicento also treats Italian vocal music exported to Paris, illustrating particular investigative challenges and opportunities. He describes some general characteristics of manuscript sources of 17th-century Roman cantatas, how historical conclusions can be deduced from them, and he concentrates more on one exceptional source. This fascinating study shows how potentially useful the analytical techniques of musical palaeography and philology are, and the ‘golden book full of airs’ itself is of great interest. By coincidence – and before seeing Recercare XXXI – I had downloaded from IMSLP the first half of the large ‘golden’ Roman manuscript of cantatas (F-Pn, Rés Vm7. 59-101) in order to accompany two of its 47 cantatas. I thought immediately about the ambiguous accidentals and continuo figures, but not at all about its physical characteristics! Ruffatti’s analysis of such evidence, as applied to Roman vocal sources of this period, uncovers their makers, purpose, chronology, sponsors, and reception. He is a musicologist, a professor of music history, a singer, and an authority on this repertoire and on Luigi Rossi in particular.

Now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (F-Pn Rés Vm7 59-101 and 102-150), these cantatas were bound and probably sent to Richelieu in Paris in 1641. They attest to a very early demand for ‘contemporary’ Italian Roman vocal chamber music, especially laments modelled after Monteverdi’s influential Lamento di Arianna (Ariadne), an aria from his otherwise lost opera (1608), later published by the composer as a madrigal (1614), as a monody (1623), and in Latin as a lament of the Madonna (1641). One of the two extant manuscript copies of the monody, now in the British Library, is in fact in Luigi Rossi’s hand1. It cannot be over-estimated how it inspired a taste for dramatic ‘airs’ and cantatas in Italy and quickly thereafter in France.

The contents of such codices say a lot about the music in vogue in courts in Rome, Venice, Naples, and those of Louis XIII, Mazarin, and Louis XIV in Paris: as the demand grew, the figures who ordered manuscripts to be copied for execution abroad, and the letters and reports of ceremonial occasions yield possible dates for some copies. Physical evidence, however, is often ambiguous: the paper could have been produced and watermarked long before it was used, the ink and the handwriting, even of well-known copyists, varied over time and could have been deliberately adopted for specific jobs. The more equivocal these clues are, the more Ruffatti gleans from them: specialized professional scribes worked in teams – some notated the music, some the texts, still others the decorated initial letters. And they knew how to imitate the styles of other scribes! To produce each and every codex these processes were sequential.

The potential to uncover more clues multiply when many different sources, as in the cases described by Ruffatti, share some of the same cantata repertory, with inevitable variants in the musical and poetic texts. Philological reasoning attempts to ascertain the historical lines of transmission between sources, which then leads back to History, and musicology overlaps with musicianship in the final challenges of editing or performing from the sources.

The Appendix provides three useful tables. The first lists in alphabetical order by title the 15 cantatas shared between three sources: the first and second parts of manuscript F-Pn Rés. Vm7 59-150 (59-101 and 102-150) from before 1643; and the later manuscripts I-Rc 2505 and I-Nc 33.3.11. In only one case is the composer unknown, and 7 of the other 12 are by L. Rossi. For each cantata, Ruffatti gives the poet, the voice or voices, and the library shelf numbers. The second table lists the 18 cantatas of the Naples Conservatory source in order, of which only 5 have known composers (Carissimi, Savioni, and L. Rossi). The third lists all 47 cantatas in order of the first Rés Vm7 volume, of which 41 for solo soprano, followed by the 50 cantatas of the second, of which 48 for solo soprano. The first volume can be downloaded under Cantates italiennes de différents auteurs.

1  Monteverdi, Claudio: Lamento d’Arianna and Addendum, for soprano and b.c., a critical performing edition edited by Barbara Sachs. (London: Green Man Press, 2001)

Giacomo Silvestri’s Un nuovo flauto diritto contralto di Castel a Perugia follows the previous studies as a short technical ‘communication’. With close-up photographs and measurements, it meticulously describes an 18th-century alto recorder by [N.?] Castel, to which 5 keys were added, probably in the 19th century, possibly suggesting that the instrument was for an amateur. It was recently discovered by Silvestri and is housed in the Museo Diffuso degli Strumenti Musicali in Perugia. The communication includes his findings about this instrument maker or team of makers, and the rest of their surviving production: 18 wind instruments, including oboes and transverse flutes along with recorders.

Barbara M. Sachs

Categories
Book

Chant, Liturgy, and the Inheritance of Rome. Essays in honour of Joseph Dyer

Essays in honour of Joseph Dyer

Henry Bradshaw Society Subsidia
Edited by Daniel J. DiCenso and Rebecca Maloy
The Boydell Press, 2017.
596pp, ISBN 9781907497346  – £60

Joseph Dyer is a scholar of early medieval plainchant and liturgy, based in the University of Massachusetts. He has made a seminal contribution to our understanding of early Medieval Roman liturgy, how it developed and was performed, what are its sources, and how it fitted into the topography of the city. This hefty collection of nineteen essays by some of the biggest names in early medieval scholarship is offered as a tribute to his decades of quiet work. Most are based in the US, but they are joined by two from Cambridge, UK (Susan Rankin and Christopher Page) and one from Regensburg (David Hiley). Although the period covered is earlier than my own, I found much to stimulate me, and I am confident that the same would apply to a wide variety of readers. There are specialist contributions on chant and liturgy, certainly, but there are also essays on the layout of medieval Rome, the construction and continued expansion of Old St. Peter’s Basilica, the design and functions of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral and Sainte-Chappelle, the powerful role of the medieval archdeacon, and the codification of monastic psalm-chanting. There isn’t room here to cover all the essays in detail, so I will highlight some that particularly caught my attention, while giving a generalised overview of the collection.

One abiding area of controversy among scholars has been the exact nature of early ‘Roman’ chant, and how it might – or might not – have been reflected in the codified ‘Gregorian’ chant which began to appear in manuscripts dating from the time of Charlemagne (c. 800 AD). One of the book’s editors, Daniel J. DiCenso, tackles this in his ‘Revisiting the Admonitio generalis’, taking a revisionist approach to the accepted narrative that the Carolingians forced the adoption of a standardized ‘Roman’ Rite and its chants, to the detriment of local traditions. Taking just one chapter of the Carolingian Admonitio of 789, he shows convincingly that this was not intended to be prescriptive and that the situation was generally more nuanced than the accepted narrative would have it, with each locality making its own choices, and uniformity only gradually being established, if at all. Adding the word ‘Roman’ could give a spurious authority to practices not necessarily connected to that city. The problem for scholars has been a dearth of genuine Roman sources from the period before 800, making it difficult to judge such claims of papal authority. Other essays in this area deal with the earliest office antiphons which are found in Roman sources (Edward Nowacki), the development of the Roman Paschal Vigil (Thomas F. Kelly, another crucial figure in researching early Roman chant sources), and with Western sources for the Greek Doxa in ipsistis Theo (Gloria in excelsis Deo) which Charles Atkinson thinks were not derived from Orthodox sources, as scholars have generally assumed.

Liturgy cannot be separated from buildings and places, and a number of these contributions focus on particular locations. I was struck in reading Charles McClendon’s article, ‘The Changing Role of Old St. Peter’s in Late Antique and Early Medieval Rome’, by how little we know about when the basilica was actually built – whether by Constantine or by his successors – or how it developed during its first six centuries. McClendon summarises recent research on the change in function from high-class burial ground to world pilgrimage centre, taking the story up to the visit of Charlemagne in 800. Equally enlightening to me was Catherine Carver’s ‘As the Bell Tolls: Parish Proximity in Medieval Rome’, conjuring up the city’s narrow streets and its very high number of parish churches c. 1200, with conflict between local and centralised power being tolled out by innumerable bells. In a later section of the book, dealing with more peripheral developments, Rebecca Baltzer discusses medieval Paris’s two great sacred buildings – Notre Dame and the Sainte-Chappelle – analysing the symbolism inherent in their sculpture and stained glass. The former, devoted to the Virgin Mary, exploited polyphony; the latter, dedicated to Christ and symbols of his Passion, preferred to utilise rhymed offices and sequences, in plainchant. In that same section of the book Mary Wolinkski usefully compares the surviving sources for liturgy in two Parisian churches, both hosting confraternities dedicated to St. James, with those describing liturgy at the heart of that cult, Santiago di Compostela. Susan Boynton’s ‘Music and the Cluniac Vision of History in Paris, BN Ms lat 17716’ takes a detailed look at a complex manuscript from the monastery of Cluny, seeing its liturgy and music as a catalyst in the construction of memory and a Cluniac vision of history.

There were many facets to the practice of plainchant, some of which are explored here. Susan Rankin’s ‘Singing the Psalter in the early Middle Ages’ investigates the layout of psalters and what they can tell us about the process of memorising the psalms, as well as how psalm texts were organised and divided up for the monastic hours. This is a particularly layered contribution which shares the author’s deep knowledge of both sources and practice; it might have benefitted from more than the one illustration which accompanies it. David Ganz shows how basic prayers like the Creed and Pater Noster were taught to catechumens in Merovingian and Carolingian France: this teaching was reinforced by their inclusion as chanted items in the liturgy. Luisa Nardini examines ways in which the Italian secular literary tradition began to seep into liturgical chant, through the process of adding texts – called prosulas – to complex melismas. John F. Romano looks at the role of the archdeacon in both Rome and elsewhere: as well as being a powerful administrator, the archdeacon played a crucial role in organising the liturgy.

Finally, a number of essays look in detail at specific chant repertories, mainly from outside Rome. Emma Hornby shows how four extended tracts were added late to the Beneventan Easter Vigil in the ninth century, in an attempt by this waning local dialect to compete with new Franco-Roman models. James Borders looks at a twelfth-century Pontifical from Lyon, trying to pin down the sources for the antiphons etc. which it contains, mostly for the service of Dedication of a church. It is painstaking work which typifies the labours of chant scholars. Also complex but rewarding is Barbara Haagh-Huglo’s ‘The Tonality of the Numerical Offices in Cambrai Ms. 38’, dealing with modal ordering of antiphons and how this might have been understood by singers. William Mahrt’s ‘Melodic Trope as Modal Rhetoric’ analyses a series of chants which either change mode briefly in the middle, or use a mixture of modes, as a rhetorical device. Christopher Page’s ‘To Chant in a Vale of Tears’ seeks to explore, through music psychology, how those singing the chant might have been moved by melodies which, on the face of it, seem to do little to reflect their text; he uses Rex autem David as an example. Finally, David Hiley examines some proper office chants for the feast of St. George in a South German noted breviary from c. 1140. As well as providing a thorough analysis, he explores the possibility that they might be part of a lost office for St. George by the medieval chronicler and writer Hermannus Contractus, though is unable to give a definitive answer.

Of their nature, Festschrifts can be a bit hit or miss: scholars are invited to contribute, with only very general guidelines, and the temptation to visit the bottom drawer can be strong. Divisions into sections are made after the submissions have come in and can seem rather arbitrary: that is the case here where something like my own divisions above might have worked better than those used by the editors. That said, this particular Festschrift has a very weighty set of contributions which readers will find useful on many levels. For chant scholars, there is a compendium of useful models and methodologies which are applied to sources, analysis, and performance contexts. Other readers will be able to pick and choose between articles which cover architecture, manuscript layout, memory and transmission, centres versus peripheries. Commissioning this book has been a worthwhile undertaking for the editors, as well as being a clear labour of love. Production values by the publishers, Boydell Press, and the Henry Bradshaw Society which has sponsored the book, are very high.

Noel O’Regan

Categories
Book Festival-conference

Sara Levy’s World: Gender, Judaism and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin

Sarah Levy's World: Gender, Judaism and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin

Eastman Studies in Music 145
Edited by Rebecca Cypess and Nancy Sinkoff
302pp. ISBN 978-1-58046-921-0 £80
University of Rochester Press, 2018.

This book is the outcome of a symposium in 2014 at Rutgers University. Eleven chapters, packed with information and extensive notes, attest to one of the cornerstones of musicological research: learned contributors excavate, analyse and explicate figures hidden from history.

Here the subject is Sara Levy (nee Itzig, as she signed herself in some of her few surviving letters). Madame Sara Levy (1761- 1854) was Felix Mendelssohn’s (he of the historic1829 performance of J. S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion) great-aunt. She died aged 94, had no children, and is a fascinating and significant figure for two reasons.

The first reason is musical. Levy was a friend and patron of the Bach family. She was a skilled harpsichordist, taught by W. F. Bach, and performed privately and publicly into her 70s – Charles Burney apparently heard her play. Her banker husband played the flute (alright for some), and they commissioned music from C.P.E. Bach. She had a remarkable collection of autographed music manuscripts and prints of the works of the Bach family, which she donated to the Sing-Akademie in Berlin (there is a photo of the house in the book). The collection disappeared, and was – finally – discovered, largely intact, in Kiev, in the Ukraine, in 1999.

Till then, Sara Levy was virtually unknown, However, Peter Wollny, director of the Leipzig Bach-Archiv, published a book about her in 2010 (in German, as yet untranslated, as far as I know). He is also responsible for the Grove entry on her.

Sara Levy was a significant figure for another reason. She was one of the salonnieres in the 18th-early19th centuries in Berlin. These salons were gatherings of friends, family and acquaintances, and they were cultural as well as social events: there might be discussions about books or politics, play-readings, and, of course, music. The salons were generally hosted by women, who were thus able to take part domestically in cultural activities from which they were excluded in the public sphere.

The added dimension to this part of musical/social history is that Sara Levy was one of an elite group of Jewish salonnieres in Berlin. Thus, as more than one chapter points out, she was part of a community of Prussian Jews who were involved in shared cultural activities with Christians – activities which straddle the two concepts of ‘emancipation’ and ‘assimilation’, in the process, as one of the chapters puts it, ‘of becoming modern Europeans’.

However, these oases of cultural coexistence should not be idealised. While there were conversions and intermarriage, there was also fierce controversy. Some of Sara Levy’s family became Protestants, but she remained steadfastly Jewish, though there is no evidence as to whether she was observant. She was involved in Jewish organisations, subscribed to the publication of Hebrew books and supported Jewish and Hebrew education.

At the same time, ‘she embraced Christian elements from German and European culture’. However, while some Jews ‘acquired a taste for church music’, and even had Christmas trees, ‘she and other Jewish women’s musical training (was) through Bach’s instrumental music’, rather than through compositions with Christian religious texts. Women were banned at the time from participating in Catholic and Protestant liturgical music.

It is clear that there were cultural tensions in operation, intertwined with the co-operations. Perhaps one of the most telling examples is the case of Mendelssohn himself. Baptised aged seven into the Protestant faith, at the age of twenty he was responsible for the revivalist performance in 1829 of J.S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion, the story of the passion of Christ as king and Messiah, a challenge to Jewish theology. Contradiction and co-existence in a single piece of music. This historical period marked, as so many others have, arguments for Jewish tolerance alongside anti-semitism.

The book is fascinating, since, in the absence of autobiographical writings and other evidence, Sara Levy and her world are presented through an interdisciplinary perspective. It would have been great to have more information and gossip: was Sara present at the 1829 Passion? Did she know how Mendelssohn got the music in the first place? We will just have to imagine.

Towards the end of the book, an essay aims to clinch the cross-cultural argument by referring to the number of duets for various instruments in Sara Levy’s collection – including nine duets by Telemann which do not appear attributed anywhere else. These duets, it is argued, show that, in the equal balance of voices consists the metaphor through which an analogy and model for cultural co-operation is sealed. In turn, concepts of counterpoint and imitation, drawn from music, become metaphors for conversations between cultures. The images are elegant, anthropomorphic and musicomorphic (to coin a term).

While they function as an attempt to elide cultural and religious tensions, the book, in its carefully researched detail and variety of approaches, shows its subject, Sara Levy, as a social exception who serves to prove the musical rule, that women in music were rarely seen or heard. In this case, she is retrieved as having a crucial role in helping to generate, preserve and revive, the music written by the Bach family (all men, in case the point needs to be made!).

Michelene Wandor