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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 publicduellobetween 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 Ribeiroperhaps 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

Categories
Recording

Josquin: Inviolata

Jacob Heringman lute & vihuela
65:07
Inventa INV1004

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There have been many excellent recordings of lute music in recent years, and Jacob Heringman’s new CD of music by Josquin Des Prez (c.1450/1455-1521) is surely up with the best of them. Josquin’s music is sublime, and is enhanced by Heringman’s unhurried interpretation. There are no foot-tapping dance rhythms, no complex fantasies to amaze with virtuosity. This is sacred music – Marian motets –  by arguably the finest composer of his generation, and with it Heringman succeeds in creating a sound world of inner peace and serenity.
 
Lute intabulations are more than merely re-writing music in tablature. Skill is required in  deciding which notes to include, which to leave out, and which to decorate. In some cases, lutenists would use material from a vocal original as a starting point for creating an entirely new composition – a prelude or a fantasia.
 
In his excellent liner notes Heringman writes: “We know very little of the circumstances in which lute intabulations were played but they require a calm, small space, a refuge from the outside world where one might contemplate an inner one.” Such a place is St Cuthbert’s Chapel at Ushaw, where the recording was made. Its warm, clear acoustic is ideal for the lute. Heringman maintains that today’s lutenists should be as creative as their forebears were 500 years ago, and add something of their own to the music they play, rather than always slavishly recreate note for note the intabulations of others.
 
The CD begins with Heringman’s own intabulation of Josquin’s Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, Virgo serena. It is a long piece – just short of nine minutes. All four voices are included in the intabulation. Heringman sustains it well, with tastefully restrained divisions, as it works its way through contrasting sections. The motet ends with some very slow chords for the words “O Mater Dei, memento mei. Amen”, not actually sung, of course, but imagined through the lute. Heringman uses a lute in E built by Michael Lowe, the lower pitch adding a certain gravitas.
 
Using the same lute, there follows an intabulation by Hans Gerle (published in 1533) of Josquin’s 5-voice Inviolata, integra et casta es. There are three sections. Gerle extends the range of the lute by tuning the 6th course down a tone for the sake of including all the low F’s. Alternative solutions could have been to omit them, include them an octave higher, or transpose all voices up a tone, which would set the piece uncomfortably high on the fingerboard of the lute. Re-tuning the sixth course of the lute seems the best option to me, although it results in some pretty weird chord shapes. Gerle omits some long notes, particularly where two voices are close in pitch. Almost all the divisions decorate the top part. They are for the most part formulaic and predictable, but nevertheless effective in sustaining the overall sound.
 
Heringman plays tracks 5-10 on a vihuela in G by Martin Haycock. The lute and vihuela share the same tuning, and often it is possible for the same music to be played on either instrument. However, apart from the obvious difference in body shape, there is another important difference: the strings of the lute are spaced closer at the nut than they are at the bridge, whereas the strings of the vihuela are close to parallel. Parallel stringing helps with awkward stretches high up the neck, and enables a vihuelist intabulator to make fewer compromises in tracking the original voice parts. The shorter string length of Heringman’s vihuela also helps with difficult chords.
 
Tracks 5-11 are derived from Josquin’s Missa de Beate Virgine. First is an intabulation by Alonso Mudarra (c.1510-1580) of Kyrie I, which has sections marked “Josquin” (for example, the last nine bars) to show where the intabulation closely follows Josquin’s original, and “Glosa” for extra material added by Mudarra. For Kyrie II Heringman turns to another vihuelist, Enriquez de Valderrábano (fl. 1547), but rather than use the note-for-note intabulation on folio 85r of Silva de Sirenas, he plays Valderrábano’s Fantasia on 73v which parodies Josquin’s Kyrie II (Fantasia remedada al chirie). In a similar vein, Heringman includes a short prelude of his own based on Mariam coronans from the same mass.
 
For the last track of music associated with Josquin’s Missa de Beate Virgine Heringman plays an intabulation of Cum sancto spiritu by Hans Neusidler (c. 1508/9-1563) printed in Der ander theil des Lautenbuchs (1536). It tracks Josquin’s vocal original quite closely, with divisions added mainly to the top part, but not exclusively so. Neusidler’s divisions in this volume are faster and more complex than those in his earlier volume – Ein Newgeordent Künstlich Lautenbuch – and there are some semiquavers here and there. As with other intabulators working long after Josquin’s death, Neusidler sharpens some notes and modernises cadences, so Josquin’s archaic endings of submediant-tonic are altered to leading note-tonic, usually with fast divisions. The piece ends – as do many German intabulations – with an extra flourish to a reiterated final chord.
 
In his liner notes Heringman argues a strong case for modern-day lutenists not always to follow slavishly intabulations of the past, but be creative and make up their own. This he does to good effect in his own intabulation of Josquin’s Salve Regina. The CD ends with an intabulation of Josquin’s Stabat Mater by Simon Gintzler (c.1500 – after 1547). Heringman gives a sensitive performance of Josquin’s touching portrayal of the inexplicable grief experienced by Mary watching her son die in agony on the cross.
 
Stewart McCoy



Categories
Recording

Orpheus Anglorum

Lute music by John Johnson and Anthony Holborne
Yavor Genov lute
72:36
Brilliant Classics 95551

[dropcap]J[/dropcap]ohn Johnson (c. 1545-1594) was lutenist to Queen Elizabeth I, (a post coveted but never gained by John Dowland,) and he composed some very fine music, which was still being played long after his death. The first track of the CD is Johnson’s Flatt Pavan, and judging by the numerous surviving sources, it was one of Johnson’s most popular pieces. Yavor Genov has chosen the version from the Euing lute book. Where possible, it is important to stick to one source rather than conflate sources to create something which never existed, yet one must distinguish between acceptable variants and unacceptable errors. Genov reproduces what is clearly an error in bar 6 of the manuscript – a nominal C major chord (not very Flatt) instead of C minor. He starts the piece slowly with minim = 38, but reaches minim = 42 by the end of the first section. There is no copy of the Flatt Galliard  in the Euing manuscript, so Genov uses the version in Dd.2.11. He opts for a slow speed at minim = 42, which really should be a bit quicker as a contrast to the Pavan.

For Johnson’s Delight Pavan and Galliard  Genov turns to the Board lute book, c. 1620. A feature of this late source is the extensive use of ornaments, yet Genov misses most of them out. For example, the first section has 24 ornaments of which Genov plays two. Unlike other sources, the Board manuscript has two six-note chords in bars 2 and 4 of the third section. They are made special, because they have to be spread, since a player does not have six fingers on his right hand. Genov reduces them both to four-note chords, which are not spread, and not special. Most lute music of this period has final bars which involve a broken chord of some kind to sustain the sound. Genov is understandably keen to get quieter through the bar to give the music shape, but he often overdoes it, so that the last note of the bar is scarcely audible. At its most extreme the last note of the second section of the Delight Galliard  vanishes altogether both times through.

Johnson’s music has much variety; it has attractive melodies and exciting and sometimes unusual divisions. If we put academic considerations to one side, Genov plays the music quite well. Gathering of Peascods  from the Board lute book may be short of ornaments, but Genov instils brightness and jollity. He gives a nicely paced performance of Johnson’s variations on Carman’s Whistle, enlivened with some swift semiquaver divisions, and he produces an upbeat interpretation of Johnson’s Passing measures Pavan, with its quirky broken chords over repeated minim bass notes.

The second half of the CD is devoted to music by Johnson’s contemporary, Anthony Holborne (c. 1545-1602), beginning with the Pavan  from 17v of Lbl Add 31392. Genov sustains it well, albeit with rather a lot of rolled chords. However, there seems to be something wrong with the recording halfway through bar 6, where it suddenly skips straight to bar 7 omitting half a bar. Halfway through bar 22, something is not quite right either, which sounds more like badly patched takes rather than bad playing – two extra notes are clumsily inserted, which match the divisions for the repeat in bar 30. The next track, The New Year’s Gift, also suffers from something similar – the first two sections are played without repeats, but the third section has a repeat starting halfway through the second section.

The last two tracks, Muy Linda  and As it fell on a holiday, are played at breakneck speed. Muy Linda  races on apace, so that there is no way of telling where one section ends and the next begins. The unfortunate exception is when Genov goes back for the repeat of the third section. The last bar has a final flourish involving four semiquavers, which Genov cannot possibly play at the speed he is going. He slows down, as if bringing the piece to an end, to be able to play them at half speed; he then goes back for the repeat a tempo, sounding as if he had forgotten he had a repeat still to play. To avoid all this, he could have re-written the final bar for the first time around, as he does with a similar final bar in As it fell on a holiday, and saved those semiquavers up for a rallentando only at the very end. Alternatively he could have played the piece slower.

Stewart McCoy

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Categories
Recording

Stolen Roses

Xavier Díaz-Latorre lute
63:41
passacaille 1030
Music by Bach, Biber, Telemann, Weiss & Westhoff

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his excellent CD of baroque music, most of it “stolen” from violinists, begins with a most extraordinary piece to be played on the lute: The Guardian Angel Passagalia, which completes Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber’s Mystery Sonatas. It was composed for solo violin, and it is interesting to see how Díaz-Latorre uses the lute to enhance Biber’s original work. The descending bass line – G, F, E flat, D – is heard alone at the beginning, with gravitas, two octaves below the pitch of the violin. Then a slowish melody is heard above for two statements of the ground, while the harmony of Biber’s thin two-part texture is enriched by a fuller texture on the lute. Thereafter though, apart from adding numerous ornaments and a run-up to a tasteful cadenza of his own before the notes of the ground return from the top of the texture to the bottom, Díaz-Latorre reproduces Biber’s notes for the most part just as they were. It is a fine performance, with impressive technical skill and clarity of tone, from slow, dignified, chordal passages to exciting sequences of sparkling hemidemisemiquavers racing up to the higher reaches of the lute.

There follows J. S. Bach’s well-known Suite for the Lute in G minor (BWV 995) – “Pièces pour la Luth à Monsieur Schouster” – composed originally for the cello, but re-arranged by Bach. Díaz-Latorre plays a 13-course lute by Grant Tomlinson, and the low A of the 13th course is effective in the opening Präludium. The long Presto proceeds apace, but with nicely shaped phrases, unhurried until the last group of descending semiquavers accelerates to the final cadence. After a highly ornamented Allemande, comes a Courante, which doesn’t quite flow as it could, because Díaz-Latorre keeps switching between égales and inégales quavers. The Suite ends with a fine Gigue, which hops and skips along energetically with nice interplay between treble and bass.

In contrasting style – with less dissonance and fewer diminished sevenths – is Georg Philipp Telemann’s Fantasia 1 in B flat, one of twelve composed for solo violin, and published in Hamburg in 1735. A nicely poised Largo, a super-slick Allegro, a well-sustained Grave, and an exciting Allegro, are most effective in Díaz-Latorre’s arrangement for baroque lute.

Johann Paul von Westhoff (1656-1705) was a violinist at the Hofkapelle in Dresden. His Suite in A minor is one of six for unaccompanied violin, and like the other “stolen roses”, sounds very well on the lute. (A facsimile of the original may be seen on IMSLP, with its curious stave lines split into groups of 3+2+3, white quavers for the Courante, and a Sarabande with three semibreves per bar.) Westhoff’s music has a surprisingly rich texture for an instrument with only four strings – many 3- and 4-note chords and parallel thirds – and Díaz-Latorre tastefully adds extra bass notes and ornaments. The Gigue has a lighter texture, with a chromatic descending opening motif imitated in the bass.

Most impressive is Díaz-Latorre’s performance of Bach’s Ciaccona from the second Partita for solo violin (BWV 1004). The piece consists of many contrasting sections, which Díaz-Latorre transfers well to the lute. He adds ornaments here and there, and where the violin texture is thin, he adds suitable bass notes discreetly and effectively to underpin the harmony. The speed and clarity of his demisemiquavers is breathtaking, and the first arpeggio passage has all the excitement of a flamenco guitar.

The CD ends with a bonus track: Fantasia in C minor by Sylvius Leopold Weiss, the only piece not stolen from other instruments. With this enthralling collection of “stolen roses” Xaxier is in danger of giving theft a good name.

Stewart McCoy

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Recording

Galanterie: Music for Lute by Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750), vol. 3

Nigel North lute
73:58
BGS Records BGS 125

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his is Nigel North’s third volume of music by Weiss, in which he plays a Parthie in D minor, a Sonata in C minor, and a Sonata in F minor. Weiss’s works have been catalogued by Douglas Alton Smith, “The Late Sonatas of Silvius Leopold Weiss”, Stanford University, Ph.D. 1977 [SM], and more recently by Tim Crawford and Douglas Alton Smith in Silvius Leopold Weiss, Sämtliche Werke für Laute in Tabulatur und Übertragung / Complete Works for Lute in Tablature and Transcription  [SC], so it is a pity there are no SM or SC numbers to identify which the pieces are in the present CD. All of them appear in one or both of the two main sources of Weiss’s music – London, British Library, Add. MS 30387  [not 3038 as given incorrectly in the liner notes], and Dresden, Landesbibliothek, MS Mus. 2841-V-1  – but it is not always clear which of these sources is used for each track of the CD.

The Partie in D minor consists of seven movements: SM 241, 55-60; SC 11.7, 11.1-6. It begins with a prelude-like Fantasia from the Dresden manuscript, followed by an extremely ornate Allemande. North describes the Courante and Gavotte as “the strongest contenders for galanterie.” The Sarabande uses almost the whole range of the lute, starting with a top d” at the ninth fret, and a bass line which slowly works its way down to bottom A at the 13th course for the final cadence.

The Sonata in C minor consists of eight movements: SM 173-180; SC 27.1-8. The Sarabande and Angloise (La Belle Tiroloise) are in E flat major. The latter appears in Track 14 with the Rigaudon, which is played twice, with and without repeats. The music is sprightly, but the range of notes is low-lying and the overall tone is fairly lugubrious.

The Sonata in F minor is easy to track down, since it is the only Sonata by Weiss in that key: SM 128-133; SC 21.1-6. North gives an unhurried performance of the Allemande, allowing time for the music to breathe. There are many appoggiaturas from above and below to which he tastefully adds extra notes of his own on the repeats. A dramatic diminished seventh chord with a low E natural on the 9th course presages the final cadence. The Courante flows along smoothly, although he waits rather a long time on the first quaver of the first full bar of each section. He plays the Bourrée before the Sarabande in the order of the Dresden manuscript. In the Sarabande, after a passage of emphatic thirds, Weiss uses extremes of pitch to heighten the final climax; the melody rises to a high d” flat at the 8th fret of the first course underpinned by a low B flat on the 12th course. That B flat is repeated in the next bar to create an unexpected third inversion of C major, as part of the final cadence leading to F minor. There is an interesting effect in the Tempo di Menuetto – the bass is quite sparse, and drops out completely here and there, leaving the running quavers of the treble unaccompanied. The Gigue has an ear-catching opening theme of repeated notes, which returns for the last few bars. What is so pleasing is North’s tone quality – sweet treble notes which sing, and unobtrusive bass notes which do not ring on too long. He creates a variety of tone colour which is consistently pleasant on the ears. He plays a 13-course lute by the Swedish maker, Lars Jönsson, although he is pictured on the cover of the CD holding a seven-course renaissance lute. Weiss’s music is always excellent, and North’s interpretation is masterful.

Stewart McCoy

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Recording

Ich ruf zu dir

Werke für Laute von Silvius Leopold Weiss, Johann Sebastian Bach, David Kellner
Bernhard Hofstötter
61:43
VKJK 1606

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he CD begins with the Ciacona in G minor by Silvius Leopold Weiss (SW14.6) from the Weiss London manuscript (GB-Lbl. Add. MS 30387). Hofstötter is aware that the piece is listed in the Sämtliche Werke  as a duet perhaps to accompany a flute or violin, but instead he chooses to play it as a solo. Although it sounds very nice, I find it unconvincing as a solo; sections with just chords alternate with sections with melodies at a higher pitch, implying that two instruments are taking it in turns to carry the melody. However, he plays with clean, well-arched phrases, and creates a suitable feeling of grandeur, although there is rather a lot of echo in the overall sound, as if the music were recorded in a very resonant room.

There follow two of Hofstötter’s own arrangements for 13-course lute. The first is Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cello Suite no. 2 (BWV 1008). In the Prélude he adds extra bass notes sparingly, just enough to underpin the harmonic movement. At bar 48, after a long passage of continuous semiquavers and a repeated dominant pedal in the bass, there is a dramatic pause on a third inversion chord of the dominant with lots of decoration, then silence before carrying on. The movement ends with five bars of improvised arpeggiated chords. More bass notes are added to the Allemande to clarify the harmony, creating a texture reminiscent of Bach’s lute music. The bright semiquavers of the Courante flow beautifully with a lightness and pleasing clarity of tone. The added bass notes add sonority to a well-poised Sarabande, and after two brisk Minuets, the Suite ends with a moderately paced Gigue. The second of Hofstötter’s lute arrangements is his intabulation of Bach’s chorale prelude, “Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ” [“I call to You, Lord Jesus Christ”] (BWV 639). There are three voices, which fit well on the lute. The slow-moving chorale melody in crotchets is the highest voice; the bass moves in quavers, and the inner voice in semiquavers. Hofstötter has transposed the music down a minor third from F minor to D minor, and chooses a slow speed which helps let the music sing. It is an exquisite piece of music, which actually sent shivers down my spine.

The Sonata in G minor (SW 25) begins with an Allemande marked Andante. It explores the higher reaches of the lute and is highly ornamented. On the repeats Hofstötter adds even more decoration of his own, which I find imaginative and stylish. The fifth movement is called “La Babileuse en Menuet” in the London manuscript, and it paints a picture of a woman who just can’t stop talking. Hofstötter’s Babileuse is a lively character, and although she keeps repeating herself, she does have some nice things to say. The CD finishes with a Chaconne in A by David Kellner. There are some impressive variations over the descending ground bass requiring some nifty playing from Hofstötter. Towards the end there is some extraordinary chromaticism.

Stewart McCoy

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Recording

Jacques le Polonois: Pièces de Luth

Paul Kieffer
67:13
Ævitas Æ-12157

[dropcap]J[/dropcap]acques le Polonois (c. 1545-55 – c. 1605), otherwise known as Jakub Polak or Jacob Reys, was born in Poland, and moved to Paris probably in 1574, where he became one of the most outstanding lutenists of his generation. According to Henri Sauval in his Histoire… de Paris, Jacob Reys attached no importance to money and drank heavily, which apparently helped him play. Interestingly, Sauval describes Jacob’s playing technique: “he hardly raised his fingers and seemed to have them glued to the lute.” I take this to mean that Jacob probably played with a thumb-outside technique, as does Paul Kieffer for this recording. A modern edition of Jacob’s music is available: Jakub Polak (Jacob Polonois), Utwory Zebrane Oeuvres Collected Works, ed. Piotr Pozniak (Kraków: Polskie Wydawnictwo Muzyczne, 1993). His music is distinctly French in character, and foreshadows the development of lute music in France in the 17th century, in particular the style brisé.

The CD gets off to a good start with Prelude Polonois (Pozniak XI) from Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s manuscript. Kieffer plays it twice, adding a few graces here and there, and playing with a delicate touch, which I find subtly expressive. The tonality of Gall[iard] Polonois (track 2) reminds me of the lute music of Robert Ballard (c. 1572-5 – after 1650). I like Kieffer’s interpretation, with added graces and his own tasteful divisions for repeats. The similarity with Ballard becomes a reality in track 3, the first half of which is a Courante by Ballard, and the second half by Jacob. In Volte (track 4) Jacob creates contrasts of timbre with a wide range of melodic notes – down to the 6th course in bar 24, and then up to the 8th fret of the 1st course a couple of bars later. In bar 40 he switches octaves after a passage of descending thirds, to have the unexpected bright sound of a high b’ natural. The piece ends with a hemiola, a device Jacob often uses. His setting of Susanne un Jour (not based on the familiar setting by Lassus) is a nice piece of polyphony, with a section where a slow-moving melody is accompanied by flowing quavers below. One pleasing aspect of Kieffer’s playing is not to spread or roll chords excessively. He uses them here and there for a special effect, e.g. in bars 21-4 of a prelude (track 6) for some chords high up the neck, but generally he plucks notes neatly together, which enables polyphonic lines to come through clearly. Puzzlingly he makes what I think are unnecessary changes in the Fantasia (track 8) from 21v of Besard’s Thesaurus Harmonicus  (1603), simplifying fast notes at cadences. Jacob’s music is more akin to 17th-century French lute music as far as his choice of flat keys is concerned. Prelude Jacob (track 9) is flat enough in A flat major, but Fantasie Jacob (track 10) is in the extraordinary key of A flat minor – the transcription has a key signature of seven flats. In contrast to the many preludes and fantasies, there is a lively Sarabande, played with panache, and which literally gave my spine a tingle. According to the play list, 18 of the 28 tracks are premiere recordings. Kieffer plays an 8-course lute by Grant Tomlinson, strung in gut, and with the lowest two courses retuned where necessary.

Stewart McCoy

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Recording

Galilei: The Well-Tempered Lute

Žak Ozmo
63:03
Hyperion CDA68017

[dropcap]V[/dropcap]incenzo Galilei (c.1520-1591), father of the famous astronomer, was a remarkable musician. As a member of the Florentine Camerata, he contributed to the evolution of opera, and to the transition from renaissance polyphonic compositions to the new baroque style with elaborate melodies supported by simple chords. He was also one of the first to advocate a system of equal temperament. His Libro d’Intavolatura di Liuto  is a manuscript dated 1584, which was intended for publication, but was never published. It is kept at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, as Fondo Anteriori a Galileo 6. A facsimile edition has been published by SPES. The first part of the book contains passamezzi antichi, romanesche and saltarelli, in all twelve minor keys; the second part has passamezzi moderni and romanesche pairs in all twelve major keys, with cross references to saltarelli in the first part. Galilei is clearly making a theoretical point about equal temperament, but in practice there seems little sense playing in keys like F# major, which cause considerable difficulty for the player, with awkward barré chords, hardly any open strings at all, and consequently a difficulty in sustaining notes for uninterrupted melodic lines.

Žak Ozmo begins with a passamezzo antico, romanesca antica, and saltarello in G minor, followed by a passamezzo moderno and romanesca moderna in G major. These are followed by similar pieces in G#/A flat, A, and A#/B flat – four suites in all, and each with the same basic chord sequences. Ozmo’s aim is presumably to show how Galilei has used these five grounds in different keys, and Ozmo does what he can to overcome the lack of variety: he plays the minor pieces with some rhythmic freedom, and the major ones in a stricter tempo. He has chosen not to include any of the gagliarde or other pieces from the third part of the manuscript, which might at least have added some harmonic variety for easier listening.

Ozmo plays nicely with a pleasing tone, but he does not always play exactly what is in the manuscript. For example, alterations to Passamezzo Primo, the first piece in the book, include: bar 5, a full chord of F major (f a c’ f’) is reduced to an octave (f f’); bar 18, he omits two passing notes which look as if the scribe had added them later as an afterthought; bar 22 he omits the note e’ (fret 2 on 2nd course), leaving the suspension unresolved; bars 43 and 50 he omits g (2 on 4) losing the 4 of a 4-3 suspension; bars 51 and 52 he omits the middle note of the last chord of the bar. Galilei’s music can be frustratingly difficult to play, but one wonders if Ozmo’s constant tweaking to make it easier can be justified. At the start of bar 74 of Saltarello Primo there is an awkward chord of C major (3 on 3, 2 on 4, 4 on 5, 5 on 6) amongst a running passage of quavers. All four left-hand fingers are needed for that chord, so it is impossible to sustain it (ideally to the end of the bar), because two of those fingers are also needed for the following notes (2 on 2, and 4 on 2). Ozmo’s solution is to replace the lowest three notes of the chord with an open string (0 on 5), which is much easier to play, and allows the bass c to ring on to the end of the bar.

After so much G minor, it is a pleasant relief to hear Passamezzo moderno in G major. (For this, think Quadro Pavan.) Ozmo chooses the second set of variations (pp. 135-7), playing three out of four of them. Perhaps unhappy with the prosaic ending to the third variation, he replaces its last four bars with the last four bars of the fourth variation, but why not play all four variations complete?

The start of Track 6 comes as a shock: A flat minor after so much G minor and G major, and bizarre chords in bars 44 and 76. In bar 111 Ozmo overlooks a quaver rhythm sign, and so plays 16 quavers as crotchets. In Track 6 he omits quavers in bars 18 and 38, and crotchets in bars 45 and 46.

In spite of my criticisms, Ozmo is to be congratulated on bringing this important manuscript to life, and finding ways to make the music attractive. There is much to enjoy, for example Passamezzo moderno in A, which bounces along gently with well-shaped phrases.

Stewart McCoy

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