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Sheet music

Francesco Antonio Pistocchi: Scherzi musicali [op. II] and Duetti e terzetti, op. III

Critical edition by Alejandra Béjar Bartolo.
Lucca, LIM: 2015. 256pp.
ISBN: 9788870967777 €30

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his well-researched and well-printed modern critical edition of the 24 surviving printed vocal works of Francesco Antonio Pistocchi (1659-1726) is welcome: he was a more than competent composer, and his music is charming and lyrical. Precocious as a composer, his instrumental Capricci puerili…, were published in 1667 as Op. I, when he was eight. His actual first opus of cantatas, published in Bologna by Silvani in 1698, and lost, was unknown to Estienne Roger when the latter printed the Scherzi musicali as ‘Op. I’ in the same year, in Amsterdam. So despite the composer’s authorisation to call it ‘op. I’, it is now dubbed ‘[Op. II]’. In fact his Duetti e terzetti was published by Silvani in 1707 as Op. III.

Pistocchi, born in Palermo, and whose father was a violinist and a tenor, was in Bologna by the age of two, sang from the age of 11 in S.Petronio (the Bologna cathedral) and had an active operatic career from 1675 to 1695, teaching singing thereafter. This volume gives a detailed biography, only in Italian. He composed operas and oratorios, sacred and instrumental music, and was highly regarded by Torelli, Perti and Tosi.

Op. II contains 12 pieces, all with continuo: three cantatas for soprano, two for contralto, one for bass, two Italian duets (SS and SC), two French solo arias (S and C, emulating Lully), and two German solo arias (C and S, in ‘Italian’ style). They are above all pleasing, relatively undemanding, and short, with good and sometimes bold harmony. Not only are the da capos written out, but Pistocchi tends to repeat phrases and sections as well, which is perhaps more typical on the stage than in cantatas, or perhaps a reason for calling them collectively ‘scherzi musicali‘.

The prints can also be consulted instantly online here (Op. II) and here (Op. III).

This permits me to comment on Béjar Bartolo’s transcription and critical notes. The source itself is very good, but as inevitable in all prints in movable type, manuscript copies will yield some additional details, different lyrics or underlay, innumerable ties, and may confirm or not other questionable readings. So to that extent, this is not really a complete critical edition. The print requires relatively few things to be noted. I found a manuscript viewable online for the first cantata, which Béjar Bartolo does not list, and this makes me assume that many other manuscripts of these diffusely circulated pieces may not be listed!

I was especially eager to find the first cantata (In su la piaggia aprica) because I suspected a mistaken interpretation of the text, a simile that makes no sense as Béjar Bartolo explained it, abetted by an incorrect comma which she inserted. She misinterprets ‘veloci piante‘, the soles of the feet of the fleeing Mirtillo, as ‘pianti‘, or sobs (of spurned Lucinda), thinking that the spelling was compromised to rhyme with amante! No, these piante are Mirtillo’s fleet feet. The point is that Mirtillo wants nothing to do with poor Lucinda, who isn’t quite crying yet, though she will be at the end. In the opening narrated recit, Mirtillo, as the mythical Daphne had to, is running away, in this case from the girl who loves him (‘che a fuggir la sua amante,/ al par di Dafne, ebbe veloci piante.’).

To her credit, Béjar Bartolo has carefully aligned the continuo figures from the Amsterdam print with the music, providing where necessary the editorial accidentals without which a continuo player would be apt to err. Since movable type has no beaming and this print does not tie any continuo notes, it might have been nice to follow the beaming and to include or comment on the omnipresent continuo ties from manuscript versions, and, where differing, any alternative lyrics or underlay. The print sometimes uses black notation for hemiolas, which the editor then indicates silently by adding coloration brackets. I found one wrong vocal note in this first cantata (in Aria 1 bar 38, b’ instead of a’), and several questionable notes in the others. Players and singers should be suspicious enough to double check with the online original. Pistocchi’s audacious chromatic surprises are, however, theoretically acceptable, if at times challenging. His precise tempo indications are also uncommon: abbastanza adagio, adagio assai, andante ma non presto, più andante; and almost all of his interesting recits turn into substantial ariosos, longer than the recits themselves.

Op. III includes ten duets (SC), and two trios (STB and SCT). These are also cantatas in form, with solo or dialoguing recits between the arias. It is not mandatory, but the entire sequence could be performed as a unified work, since the soprano and the contralto are figures complementing one another in their contrasting points of view, and the final madrigalistic trios address those who have ‘sailed the undulating sea of love’ (Ecco il lido, a terra, a terra) and remind them with downward arpeggios (Tramonta il sol e lascia il mondo tutto) of the sunset of ‘beauty which is born and dies in a flash’.

It is slightly inconvenient that the critical apparatus of Op. III was put in the middle of the volume, between the two works, and much more so that a fairly heavy book of 256 pages needs so much manhandling to make it stay open for playing from. The LIM has very moderate prices, and I wonder how much more it would have cost to print Op. II and Op. III in separate bindings, with the critical material, which is not needed when playing and should have been translated into other languages, in a third. Are we ‘supposed’ to resort to photocopying in order to be able to use the music we buy?

Barbara Sachs

Categories
Book

Andrew Parrott: Composers’ Intentions? Lost Traditions of Musical Performance

The Boydell Press, 2015. xiii + 407pp, £19.99.
ISBN 978 81 78327 032 3

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is essential reading. Few performing directors spend as much time and effort on early Music as Andrew. I’ve known him since the early 1970s. We first met at Dartington Summer School. Andrew struck me first as a singer, though I soon learnt that he was far more than that. A few years later, I was involved in a student and amateur run on the Monteverdi Vespers, and it was there that the down-a-fourth (D) first appeared, with the two low basses in “Et misericordia” sung by the lute-maker Michael Lowe and myself – and I’m not a competent singer. I had, however, sung earlier music which went down to bottom D and I found that I could hit that pitch and could take it as the landmark – this didn’t depend on any perfect pitch.

I suspect – and hope – that most readers will have come across Andrew’s powerful imagination in a way that verges on common sense. Nearly 100 pages were devoted to Monteverdi. The size of choirs is crucial in connection with Monteverdi and Bach. Roger Bowers claimed that Monteverdi had ten singers available, so why is it performed by The 18 (ie the pseudo-16) or more?

Bach’s music, too, seems generally to have been sung by soloists, though Handel in church music and oratorio usually had choruses. There are certainly reasons why people who love singing the music should be able to perform it, but that’s not how it should go professionally. Not all conductors are concerned whether singers should be soloists or chorus: reading chapter 2 will give some advice.

Andrew primarily establishes that falsetto is not relevant to high singing at least until the 16th century, though according to Simon Ravens, what we now call counter-tenor was barely known until well into the 20th. Opera singers have been moving up for several decades to enable falsettists to sing natural high male voices, which at least gives a sort of validity. “Performing Purcell” is a fascinating fifty pages. I was intrigued by his review of six Dido and Aeneas recordings in 1978. Of these, Geraint Jones, with Kirsten Flagstad as Dido, was supported by Schwarzkopf as Belinda and two other characters, but she was not in the 1951 Mermaid Theatre stage: I bought the recording in 1960 and it was my favourite version for some 20 years. The other five recordings are Anthony Lewis/Janet Baker, Alfred Deller/Mary Thomas, Raymond Leppard/Tatiana Troyanos, Steuart Bedford/Janet Baker and Barbirolli/Victoria de los Angeles. I also have a 1970 recording by Colin Davis with Josephine Veasey, though I have no recollection of why I have it! My favourite recording, however, is Andrew with Emma Kirkby from 1981 – a new world!

I’m not going to make critical comments. I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember their value, and at a price like this, virtually anyone playing, enjoying or studying will find it invaluable.

Clifford Bartlett

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Recording

Binder: Sei Suonate per il Cembalo op. 1

Paulina Tkaczyk harpsichord
117:24 (2 CDs)
Dux 1153/1154

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]hristlieb Siegmund Binder (1723-1789) is described by some writers as Dresden’s answer to Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach; if these sonatas, printed in 1759, are typical, then that is an exaggeration. Though tuneful and not without exciting outer movements, they are fairly workaday and rarely deviate from the mid-18th-century norm. Paulina Tkaczyk is a lyrical interpreter and uses the full potential of her instrument (there are no details of of the maker in the booklet notes), which means that listening to one CD or the other makes for pleasant background music for a summer’s afternoon, reading Jane Austen.

Brian Clark

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Recording

Schein: Ich will schweigen

Alice Foccroulle, Béatrice Mayo-Felip, Reinoud Van Mechelen SST, InAlto, directed by Lambert Colson, Marc Meisel organ
62:42
Ramée 1401

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n the whole, I’m more familiar with Scheidt than Schein, though some Scheidt is a bit over-regular. My main criticism here is that Schein deserves a complete disc rather then jumping to the end of the 17th century, and J. S. Bach really is too late!

Most of the Schein works come from Opella nova, 1617, and very impressive they are, though in “Exaudiet” the tenor texts were more audible than the soprano, and cornett/sackbutts do tend to need more gaps, much as I like them. I reckon that this could be a brilliant CD had it been more thought out, though do buy it. The booklet is excellent, apart from not noting which soprano is which.

Clifford Bartlett

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Recording

Haydn: Klaviertrios

Boyan Vodenitcharov fortepiano, François Fernandez violin, Rainer Zipplering cello
62:08
Flora 0805
Hob. XV:10, 18, 21 & 23

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hese delightful performances of four witty works by Haydn were recorded in 2005. The interplay between the three musicians (even though the cellist does little more than reinforce the bass line – and sustain it when necessary, of course) is excellent – listen to the unisono opening to Track 7, and then contrast it with the snippets of melody tossed back and forth between the violin and the right hand of the keyboard part. The recording is lively and captures all the excitement. Like other reviewers, I am slightly frustrated by Flora’s minimal notes (here restricted to a lengthy quotation – only in German – from the composer himself) but, as I have written before, sometimes the music (and this line-up’s contagious enjoyment of it) should simply speak for itself; if I need more information, I can always read a book!

Brian Clark

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Recording

The Virtuoso Organist: Tudor & Jacobean Masterworks

Stephen Farr
68:35
Resonus RES10143

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he music on this disc was recorded on the new Taylor & Boody organ (opus 66) at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. The Gentlemen of the College Choir, conducted by David Skinner, provide plainsong in those pieces where its inclusion is appropriate. The instrument in question is comprehensively described by George Taylor in the accompanying booklet. Stephen Farr’s playing makes the best possible case for a selection of pieces that, if they are not all actual masterworks, are the works of masters.

He begins and ends appropriately with Byrd: first A voluntarie for my Ladye Nevell BK 61 and concluding with the Fancie BK 46 which is the penultimate piece in My Lady Nevells Booke; the latter contains what seems to be a fairly overt reference to the plainsong Salve Regina in the opening “alto” part. The earliest named composer is Tallis, and the alternate verses of his hymn Ecce tempus idoneum are chanted by the attendant Gentlemen. The neglected and underrated John Blitheman, one of Bull’s teachers, is represented by two of his settings of Gloria tibi trinitas (a.k.a. In nomine I and IV), while Bull himself provides the second of his several substantial In nomines plus the slighter Coranto joyeuse.

Indisputably the most monumental work from the Tudor and Jacobean repertory is Tomkins’ massive Offertory, timed here at 17’30”. (Bernhard Klapprott hurtles through it in a mere 16’29” during his recording of Tomkins’ complete keyboard music on MDG 607 0706-2 from 1997.) This wonderful and passionate peroration was quite recently found to have been based upon the theme to which Byrd set the words “Let me never be confounded” in the Te Deum from his Great Service, information that does not appear in Magnus Williamson’s fine notes. This is excusable because no mention is made of Stephen Jones’ discovery (published in 1993) at the appropriate point in the third revised edition of Tomkins’ complete keyboard music (Musica Britannica V, 2010), despite the fact that the editor had written an article in 1999, based around this very discovery. Stephen Farr compensates with a riveting interpretation of this masterwork. The youngest of the named composers is Orlando Gibbons, and he contributes one of his many fine fantasias, GK 9.

It remains to mention the two anonymous pieces selected by Stephen Farr. One is a Magnificat in which the Gentlemen sing alternate verses (Early English Church Music VI, no 4). This ascetic piece is the second longest on the disc, but such is the creativity (vivacious rhythms, striking themes, varied textures) of the composer (possibly Thomas Preston), and the responsiveness of the organist, that the time passes disappointingly quickly. Preston is also a candidate as composer of the other anonymous work, Bina caelestis II. This track was the catalyst for my deciding to purchase the disc. In the first edition of his early short study of Byrd written to coincide with his tercentenary in 1923, E.H. Fellowes attributed this and several other such pieces in British Library MS Add. 29996 (not as given in the notes) to Byrd, only to have to return them to anonymity in his major book on Byrd published in 1936. Beginning with what Tomkins noted as “a good 2 parts”, the piece develops melodically and harmonically, the gifted composer increasing the texture to three parts and finally four in a climax that sounds, in context, little short of a form of ecstasy. As someone with a low tolerance of plainsong, I found that the contribution of the College Gentlemen enhanced the overall structure of the piece – worthy of Byrd, even though not by him.

This is an outstanding recording that surpasses most of those based on this repertory and which have appeared on more prominent labels. The presentation is of a piece with the consistent excellence of the music and of Stephen Farr’s playing: by eschewing interpretational gestures he allows the music to speak through him all the more powerfully. The information about the organ and the music (the lacuna about Tomkins’ Offertory not being the fault of the author) is complemented by fine colour photographs. In all, this is the best disc of music from this rich repertory that I have encountered in a long time.

Richard Turbet

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Recording

Jenkins Fantasies a4: ‘Tis a singing age

Accademia Strumentale Italiana
70:36
Stradivarius STR 37002

Robert Oliver

[]

[]

[]

[]

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Recording

Bach: 6 suites a violoncello solo, Sonate à cembalo è viola da gamba

Wieland Kuijken violoncello, violoncello piccolo, basse de viole, Piet Kuijken harpsichord
210:00 (3 CDs)
Arcana A383

[dropcap]E[/dropcap]very cellist will have their own view on the interpretation of the six unaccompanied suites. I have my own distinctive ideas, developed over some 50 years since struggling with the first suite – on modern cello, of course – as a schoolboy barely out of short trousers. Kuijken, in this re-issue of the recording made in 2001-02, takes a very personal, relaxed and reflective interpretation of these works. Allemandes and sarabandes are especially unhurried, although courantes and other subsequent movements retain their dance spirit, Kuijken adopting a detached, at times almost spiccato-like bow stroke for many movements. The text of the early ms sources is strictly adhered to, with little if any added ornamentation. Not only that, the chordal passages, as at the end of the Prelude of Suite II, are played as written, without any of the customary elaboration into arpeggio figuration. Perhaps the most difficult suite to interpret convincingly is Suite IV in E flat, a key which gives hardly any opportunity to exploit the natural resonances of the cello’s open strings. Fortunately Kuijken’s Amati instrument, no doubt aided by a good recording acoustic, helps to negate this problem. The sombre quality of Suite V in C Minor, however, is well captured, with the instrument’s resonances enhanced by the required tuning of the top string down to G. In contrast, Kuijken gives Suite VI, for the five-string violoncello piccolo, its bright, airy texture that is needed for this work.

Perhaps because of the very generous tempi of many of the movements, there was not room for more than two suites on disc 2; so Suite V, together with the three gamba sonatas, appears on disc 3 of the set. These sonatas receive a more conventional reading, with Wieland on a 7-string Bertrand instrument with Piet Kuijken playing a particularly full-sounding copy of a late Baroque German harpsichord. Piet makes his harpsichord (which is well balanced in the recording) sing, and his phrasing carefully matches that of the gamba.

It is difficult to recommend one recording over another, for there are so many HIP versions from which to make a choice, from the sensible to the ridiculous. Both Wispelwey (at Cöthen pitch A=392) and Sigiswald Kuijken (on viola da spalla) are really interesting musical concepts, while this more conventional recording by the latter’s brother (at A=415) I feel ranks highly against many of the others, though not all will appreciate some of his more his leisurely tempi. If you prefer the whacky, there is even Pandolfo on viola da gamba (with suitable transpositions) – or even two recordings on marimba! Certainly Wieland Kuijken is one to consider, even if you have another, though everything he does is not always to my taste.

Ian Graham-Jones

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Recording

Minoritenkonvent – Manuscript XIV 726

Vienna / Praha / Kroměříž, 1700
Aliquando (Stéphanie Paulet violin, Elisabeth Geiger organ)
72:32
muso mu-008
Music by Biber, Faber, Teubner, Viviani, Vojta & anon

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is one of the finest recordings I have heard of solo violin music from the 17th century. Paulet and Geiger (who plays one an André Silbermann organ) have selected nearly a dozen extracts from the extensive manuscript which exhibit all the virtuoso techniques of the period, such as scordatura and multiple stops. Four of the works (sonatas 4, 77 and 87 and toccata 94) also appeared on Gunar Letzbor’s Anonymous Habsburg Violin Music (on Pan Classics).

Apart from the outstanding playing from both musicians, the recorded sound really makes this a “must buy” disc – the fuller sound of the “church organ” really fills the space, but is never allowed to dominate. I would love to hear these two in a selection of Schmelzer’s solo sonatas, with the same recording engineer, please!

Brian Clark

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Recording

Un concert pour Madame de Sévigné

Marc Hantaï & Georges Barthel flute, Eduardo Egüez theorbo, Philippe Pierlot bass viol
70:10
Flora 2110
Music by Hotteterre, Lully, Marais, de Visée, etc.

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]e sometimes complain about rambling or pompous programme notes, but no such issue here. In an extraordinarily minimalist production we have no programme note booklet, indeed hardly any information about the music at all. The voluptuous lady of the title, a mistress of the Sun King, is pictured inside the cover, but again there is no information about her career as a dancer, court beauty and royal mistress. Even the printed sequence of music is confused in that while sections are devoted to Hotteterre and Marais the opening sequence is not credited to any composer at all, although it is presumably by Lully. This is a huge pity as we are denied a full context for the lovely music on the CD, duets and trio sonatas for two flutes and continuo exquisitely played by four of the leading figures in French Baroque performance today. I thoroughly enjoyed their accounts of this engaging repertoire, but did feel a little bit at sea without any background information. When I went on to the listed website to see if they had a set of programme notes there, it proved to be in Japanese! Curiouser and curiouser.

D. James Ross

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