Categories
Recording

Lucrezia: La figlia del Papa Borgia 1480–1519

Medusa, Patrizia Bovi
56:14
Micrologus CDM0025.13.1

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his CD by a spin-off group from the Ensemble Micrologus  uses the colourful life of the notorious Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of the Borgia Pope and twin sister of the bloodthirsty Cesare as a peg on which to hang a selection of appropriate 15th- and 16th-century repertoire. Lucrezia’s short life was packed with incident, and as the daughter of one of Italy’s foremost families she had direct contact with many of the musicians whose music features here. Her family intrigues also meant that she moved constantly throughout Italy, experiencing the great centres of culture such as Rome and Mantua. Patrizia Bovi, who sings and plays the bray harp, and Medusa, who play a variety of stringed instruments take the same the same forthright approach to the repertoire as does Ensemble Micrologus, and there is a pleasing sparkle and energy about this CD. Lucrezia’s biography is a compelling one, and the carefully selected music evokes this very effectively. The concluding group of devotional songs is particularly affecting, bearing in mind that Lucrezia spent her last few years frequently visiting the convent of Corpus Christi and died in childbirth at the age of just 39 – emblematically Ms Bozi is left singing on her own at the very end. If as a vocalist she doesn’t always sound entirely comfortable in the upper register demanded by some of the pieces, her singing is always characterful and convincing, and I found I got used to the rather ‘room-next-door’ acoustic of the recording. And yes, the small fly in the notes next to number 11 is a printer’s trick – at least I hope it is.

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

Ockeghem: Missa l’homme armé

Ensemble Nusmmido
69:19
Rondeau Productions ROP6106
+Agricola: Cecus non iudicat de coloribus*
Busnoys: In hydraulis*
Morton: Il sera pour vous – L’homme armé
Ockeghem: Ut heremita salus*
*=instrumental

Ensemble Nusmido is a group of four young musicians ‘specialising in the performance of medieval and renaissance music’; as well as singers, they are also accomplished instrumentalists. They bring their considerable talents here to some exceptionally complex 15th-century music, interspersing an all-vocal performance of Ockeghem’s magnificent L’homme Armé  mass with all-instrumental performances of pieces by Ockeghem and his contemporaries Busnois and Agricola.

One of the most satisfying features of the mass (and indeed of much of the instrumental music) is its resourceful use of the cantus firmus, both as a melodic basis for counterpoint and also as the essential isorhythmic underpinning of extended movements such as the Gloria or Credo.

In these perfomances, the overall sound is exceptionally smooth and luscious, but often at the expense of words (in the mass) and rhythmic characterisation (in the motets), so that especially in the longer movements, the structure is less evident and the music sometimes loses its direction. The cantus firmus  in the magnificent instrumental In Hydraulis  repeats its three notes at three different pitches (as in Josquin’s Hercules Dux Ferrariæ  mass, for example), but the use of the bell here, because of its complex overtones, rather confuses this, to my ears.

No caveats about the actual L’homme armé  chansons which conclude this disc, however- these are beautifully done, both vocally and instrumentally.

The sleeve notes give interesting slants on the music from each of the performers – one would perhaps have liked a little more detail about the actual pieces, particularly their structure, to aid one’s aural navigation.

Alastair Harper

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Book

Katherine Butler: Music in Elizabethan Court Politics

The Boydell Press, 2105
x + 260pp, £60
ISBN 978 1 84383 981 1

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n this book Katherine Butler sets out to answer a seemingly straightforward question: ‘how and why was music useful within Elizabethan court politics?’ (p. 6). The evidence for ‘how’ – or maybe rather ‘when’ and ‘where’ – music was used, though multi-faceted, is relatively concrete and straightforward to interpret, but the consideration of ‘why’ music was politically useful rests on less tangible concepts. Butler argues that, for Elizabethans, music had three types of political purpose: the analogy between political and audible harmony; the association of musical knowledge and skill with high levels of education and social status; and its use as a means of persuasion. These themes form consistent threads throughout her study.

As Butler makes clear at the outset, there is virtually no surviving music on which to base her work. There are a few more than a dozen extant musical settings of lyrics from performances associated with the Elizabethan court, and even these settings cannot equivocally be said to have been the versions performed at those events. This is, therefore, not a consideration of how composers used musical techniques to deliver political aims, but rather an investigation into where and when music was used, and its intended effect. Butler’s primary source material comes from contemporary accounts of private music-making as well as public performances such as tournaments and progresses, along with song texts preserved in those accounts. Her comprehensive citation of recent research into other aspects of Elizabethan cultural and political life provides a solid and very helpful context for her study.

The book is organised into five main chapters, moving from very intimate uses of music to public performances in which music played a significant role. The first chapter – ‘Music, Authority, and the Royal Image’ – sets the scene and debates the challenges of the ambivalent sixteenth-century attitude to the acquisition and display of musical knowledge and skills for Elizabeth. The following four chapters deal in turn with the political uses made of intimate performances by Elizabeth and her courtiers; performances within the royal household, including masques and choir-boy plays; tournaments; and finally performances put on by aristocratic households and cities for Elizabeth and the court during her summer progresses. Butler sees the path through chapters two to five as a passage from events in which music delivers value to the monarch through those that benefit the nobility, arriving at performances in which the primary beneficiaries are public bodies and performers. This is true to an extent but one of the striking aspects of her investigation is that, in almost all cases, there is the potential for more than one party to a musical event to benefit in more than one way.

Who, then, benefitted politically from the use of music? At the intimate end of the scale, access to the Queen’s personal performances bestowed exclusivity to the listener, particularly useful for diplomatic purposes. Larger-scale court and public performances helped enhance the image of the monarchy as a significant political player in Europe, or promulgated the idea (or perhaps myth) of a harmonious country at home. For courtiers wishing to enhance their image, petition the Queen, complain about something or dispense advice, there were opportunities ranging from the private performance of a song especially composed for the Queen, through participation in court masques and tournaments, to the large-scale staging at one’s country seat of a performance for a royal progress. For civic bodies and individuals such as performers access was more limited but, even so, the opportunities were there to put forward one’s cause. Butler argues that the ephemeral nature of the music associated with these events meant that it was a safe medium in which to deliver advice and sometimes critical messages to the Queen.

Given that most types of entertainment could be used to achieve similar ends, there is inevitably some repetition of concepts and, occasionally, examples across Butler’s chapters. On the other hand this does mean that the chapters are relatively self-sufficient, so that someone particularly interested in tournaments, for instance, could get a great deal from reading just the relevant chapter.

Given the material available to her, Katherine Butler has largely met the challenge she set herself. We have a clear picture of both how and why music was used by people other the Queen to further their ends, although in the case of some types of theatrical performance we might debate just how crucial was the inclusion of music. In the case of Elizabeth, the situation is more complex, reflecting her multiple roles in relation to music in court politics. Butler’s analysis of the apparent efforts of the Queen and her advisers to manage the tactical use of her own performances, the patronage of others, the employment of music to contribute to the positive image of the state, along with the need to decide how far to go in exploiting the feminine and sensual associations of music, and, crucially, how far to tolerate petitioning, the giving of advice, and chastisement by others through the medium of music, paints a picture of a sophisticated and subtle state machine working in this case through the medium of music.

Tessa Murray

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Recording

Le jeu de Robin et de Marion

& Mottetti & Rondeau polifonici di Adam de la Halle
Ensemble Micrologus
58:22
Baryton CDM0026 (© 2003)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his account of the Pastourelle of Robin and Marion  by ‘the last of the trouvères’, Adam de la Halle, is painted in very bright aural colours indeed! The brash sounds of shawm, bagpipe and trumpet dominate in a spirited rendition of Adam’s music, but there are also calmer and beguiling episodes on double flute and harps where the composer’s more lyrical side is on display. Adam stands intriguingly at the confluence of the ars antiqua  and ars nova  styles, and it is fascinating that although his music inclines mainly towards the former it remained very popular and was copied long after his death, by which time the latter style was firmly in the ascendant.

The Ensemble approaches the work with their hallmark naiveté of style, vocal and instrumental, which works very well in this bucolic context. We should perhaps bear in mind that this synthesis of apparently ‘country’ verse and popular melody existed in a stylized fictional courtly world of shepherds and shepherdesses, created and performed by highly sophisticated 13th-century courtiers and professional musician/poets, so perhaps any rough rural edges to their performances were just as contrived as those cultivated by 21st-century professional musicians! There is in any case no doubt of the 13th-century taste for the bright and (to us) garish, and I have little doubt that the very immediate sounds of shawm and cornamuse and the Ensemble’s bright stringed instruments would have delighted the original audiences for this entertaining work. Given that we can be pretty sure that the Jeu de Robin et de Marion  would have been ‘staged’ in some sense of the word, I wonder if a case can be made for it being one of the earliest examples of operas. The addition of further lively dances and polyphonic motets by Adam valuably fills out our impression of the versatility of the composer, and of the Ensemble Micrologus. It is a pity in light of the vividness of the recording that the (uncredited) medieval illustrations of the Robin and Marion geste which cover the CD booklet are pixilated almost out of existence and lose much of their original impact. For those of you who like to sample tracks, please note that the track divisions are those denoted by the red Roman numerals rather than the black Arabic ones.

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

Un Fior Gentile

L’ars nova di magister Antonio Zacara da Teramo
Ensemble Micrologus
68:41
Baryton CDM0023 (© 2008)

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]s it possible that the music by up to three shady figures spanning the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th centuries is actually by the same man? The programme notes of the present CD by Goffredo Esposti hedge their bets, but it is amusing to think that the papal singer whose works made it into the Old Hall Manuscript was as also responsible for virtuosic instrumental music in the Faenza Codex as well as frankly erotic Italian ditties. All the more remarkable when we learn that the Zacara ‘Doctus in musicis’, rather bluntly represented in an initial illustration in the Codex Squarcialupi suffered from serious phocomelia, the deformity of limbs exhibited by Thalidomide victims. In addition to presenting sacred music, similar in style to Machaut, in a wonderfully ‘forward’ head-voice style, sometimes in conjunction with brass, the Ensemble Micrologus are also in a position to give us some instrumental music, one piece a stunning duet between positive organ and organetto.

And then there are the splendid ballate  and caccia, with their evocative verse, possibly also by the composer as he features in many texts either by name or in elaborately coded terms, which are given wonderfully gritty performances by Micrologus. If the intonation just occasionally falls victim to the forthright performance style in a couple of the sacred pieces and the recorded sound is rather immediate and brittle in some tracks, the Ensemble’s vision of Zacara’s works is compelling, and the interplay of voices and instruments stunningly convincing. So whether the group has conflated the work of up to three contemporary composers, or more likely to my mind introduced a single remarkable eclectic, transcendent and exuberant figure to the musical world, they have done us a great service with this CD.

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

Ensemble Micrologus: Carnivalesque

Sex, lies and… musical tales in 16th-century Venice
67:41
Baryton CDM0027 (© 2014)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his Venetian Carnival repertoire seems ideally suited to the versatility and forthright presentational style of Ensemble Micrologus, and indeed most of it is highly engaging and irresistibly evocative of the seamier side of Renaissance Venice. Only a couple of times in the more decorous part-music are there moments of uncomfortable intonation – it is hard to imagine that even in their unguardedly raucous moments the citizens of the Pearl of the Adriatic would have sung out of tune! Elsewhere an engagingly organic treatment of these popular tunes, with a galaxy of unusual instruments including bray harp, sordellina and buttafoco, merging in and out of the ensemble sound brings them vividly to life. Various sound effects, vocal interpolations and ‘informal percussion’ further enhance the ‘live’ and lively impression of this CD. The pieces are arranged into themed groups such as a Lanzo/Scaramella collection and a sequence celebrating the ‘rolling pin and the bread loaf’ in both of which the Ensemble lets its hair down to enjoy in full the obvious doubles entendres  of the texts. This is a joyous recording in which the performers manage to capture the risqué playfulness and folky virtuosity of this repertoire on CD, providing a useful antidote to any overdose of San Marco-based polychorality. This is the sort of music the Venetians enjoyed in the streets during Carnival time, and in many ways it provides a usefully scurrilous counterbalance to the more serious aspects of this multi-faceted and remarkable city state – also colourfully invoked on the accompanying visual material which is based on Canaletto’s representation of the magnificent Bucintoro.

D. James Ross

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Categories
Recording

Exquisite Noyse

Music of the 16th century for violin consort
la voce del violino
55:07
Perfect Noise PN1501
Music by Arcadelt, Janequin, Josquin, Verdelot + anon & improvisations

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here have been several attempts to explore the repertoire of the early violin consort, most notably Peter Holman with the Parley of Instruments and David Douglass with The King’s Noyse. Where they played primarily instrumental music, la voca del violino explore chansons and madrigals which sometimes survive in contemporary copies without texts. Using violin, two violas (the lower of which speaks particularly freely – and I mean that in a nice way!) and bass violin, sometimes with harp accompaniment, the make a most eloquent case for this approach to such music. I especially enjoyed rediscovering an old, old favourite, Josquin’s Ave Maria… virgo serena (which I first encountered on an epic tape recording – remember them? – by The Hilliard Ensemble). The booklet notes, as well as a stimulating essay on the early history of the violin, prints the texts with German and English translations; since the whole point is that the music does not require the words to work, I wonder how much this says about the way la voce del violino approached the project – did they, for instance, play from parts that showed the words, thereby helping them shape the lines? Or are the printed texts purely for the listeners’ benefit? Either way, I hope this is the start of a voyage of discovery that brings many a revelation; let us hear more liturgical music next time?

Brian Clark

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Categories
Recording

Lassus: Magnificat

die Singphoniker
64:16
cpo 777 957-2
Settings of the Magnificat along with the chanson or motet upon which they were based: Da le belle contrade & O s’io potessi donna  (de Berchem), Praeter rerum seriem  (Josquin), S’io credessi per morte essere scarco  (de Reulx), Il est jour  (Sermisy) & Ultimi miei sospiri (Verdelot)

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he thesis of this CD is both simple and brilliant – to present six ‘parody’ Magnificats by the eclectic Lassus paired with their source chanson or motet. I have previously admired the Singphonikers’ splendid unanimity of timbre and intonation, and both are again in evidence here. They have a clear affinity with the music of Lassus and present these alternatim settings complete with chanted episodes in flawless performances which are throroughly convincing and beautifully crafted. The true genius of this format is that having established the unifying theme for the CD we get to hear a bewildering variety of ‘stimulus material’ composed by a diverse basket of European composers including Cipriano de Rore, Giachet de Berchem, Josquin, Claudin, Anselmo de Reulx and Philippe Verdelot. Sitting at the heart of Europe in Munich Lassus cast his net far and wide, and absorbed influences like a sponge. It is fascinating how he employs his chosen ‘models’ at the same time stamping them firmly with the Lassus trademark. I loved this CD, and even as someone who has sung, played and listened to more than my fair share of Lassus’ music I found the programme a fruitful learning experience, and a delight to listen to. Forty of Lassus’ jaw-dropping 110 settings of the Magnificat are ‘ad imitationem cantilenarum’, so there is plenty of material left for future Singphoniker albums!

D. James Ross

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Recording

The church music of John Sheppard: The collected vernacular works – volume II

Academia Musica Choir, conducted by Aryan O. Arji
77:02
Priory PRCD 1108

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Latin church music of Sheppard, who died late in 1558, is finally beginning to receive the recognition it deserves. It suffered a setback nearly a hundred years ago when the Wall Street Crash put paid to a second series of Tudor Church Music  in which Sheppard’s music was going to feature, but a revival begun during the latter half of the twentieth century led to the publication of three volumes containing his Latin music in the series Early English Church Music, well before the notional quincentenary of his birth in 2015. Alongside this slow-burning but effective revival of his music for the Roman Catholic Church there has been parallel interest in his smaller Anglican oeuvre, leading to volume I of a pair of discs being released in 2013, with this volume II coming along just in time for the quincentenary.

The Academia Musica Choir is an interesting ensemble, being a combination of choral scholars and musicians in residence at Hereford Sixth Form College. Although this is a mixed choir, with young sopranos on the top line and a combination of males and females making up the altos, they have a sound not unlike a traditional male cathedral choir, and this is probably due to their age range. Volume I (PRCD 1081) included anthems for full choir and for men’s voices, the whole of the First Service, and all of Sheppard’s minute surviving repertory of music composed (or possibly arranged by contemporaries) for keyboard. This remains a disc to savour. Volume II contains more anthems, some carols, a reconstructed Evening Service, and the whole of the mighty and influential Second Service – another feast of music.

As early as the 1590s John Baldwin had noted that at least one passage in Byrd’s Great Service owed something to the setting of the same text in Sheppard’s Second Service. Roger Bray developed this line of thought in some sleevenotes about the evening canticles in 1996, and the following year, in an article published in Musical Times, I compared both Services in their entireties, noting Byrd’s structural and melodic debts to Sheppard – not that one would realise this from listening to Byrd’s Great Service, which is typically a work of relentless creativity and supreme confidence. Thanks to the performance on this disc, Sheppard’s Second Service emerges as a worthy inspiration and model for Byrd’s transcendent masterpiece. The seven movements, including the shortest – the Kyrie – supplied by the obscure John Brimley in the presumable absence of Sheppard’s original, are impressive as an entity, while the individual movements are just as impressive as separate pieces. Interestingly the uncredited writer of the sleevenotes seems more taken with the Evening Service for Trebles, which has been reconstructed by David Wulstan from the organ score, but for all that the writer feels that what we have of the Second Service is possibly an unpolished draft, to this reviewer it is the Second Service rather than the admittedly fine Evening Service for Trebles which is Sheppard’s Anglican masterpiece. Although necessarily not as expansive as much of his Latin music, there are still many moments of what we have come to expect of Sheppard: a case in point is the remarkable harmonic change in the Venite at the words “Forty years long”. The anthems and carols provide thinner gruel, again by liturgical and theological necessity, but I give you a new commandment  is one of the finest of all Tudor anthems.

The Academia Musica Choir gives a good account of this music. The singing is not perfect – there is for instance a particularly adolescent tenor entry in the Magnificat at the words “in God my saviour” – but it manages to be idiomatic, and this edginess combined with the accommodating acoustic of Gloucester Cathedral enables one to feel like being as close as possible to a real service without actually being present.

The sleevenotes are a major work of scholarship, and were in fact written by the editor of most of the music, Stefan Scot, who has also edited all of Sheppard’s Anglican music for a forthcoming volume in the series Early English Church Music. Stefan was responsible for discovering that the Creed from Sheppard’s First Service, on volume I, is virtually identical to the Creed in Tallis’s Mass for Four Voices; and on this recording he has included a carol with an attribution to Merbecke which he has discovered bears many hallmarks of other works by Sheppard. The project is fortunate to have the cooperation of this leading Sheppard scholar, and it is a mystery as to why his notes and editions are not credited – especially as he is ethical enough to credit Wulstan with editing the Evening Service for Trebles. Incidentally the organist who plays Sheppard’s few surviving keyboard pieces on volume I is also uncredited. For the record [sic] he is Michael Blake.
Everyone with any sort of interest in, or penchant for, or even taking a punt on, Sheppard should purchase this disc, at the least for the premiere of the complete Second Service. Although the recordings of its two evening canticles – by Christ Church Cathedral and The Sixteen – are tidier, they do not convey the sprawling magnificence of these movements. Indeed the only recording which is incontrovertibly preferable to one on this CD is Stile Antico’s version of I give you a new commandment  on their disc “Media Vita” (Harmonia Mundi HMU 807509) which is devoted to Sheppard, and which contains some of even their very best singing on record. Obviously all Sheppardista  should own both recordings.

Richard Turbet

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Categories
Recording

Isaac: Missa Misericordias Domini & Motets

Cantica Symphonia, Giuseppe Maletto
70:04
Glossa GCDP31908

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is indeed remarkable that this present disc is the first complete recording of the Isaac’s Mass Misericordias Domini, and several of the motets which accompany it here are also receiving premiere recordings. As one of Josquin’s most accomplished contemporaries, Isaac suffers perhaps from his versatility resulting in several of his minor works becoming very familiar but some of his great masterworks remaining neglected. One such is the Mass recorded here, a work of profound and original genius, and demonstrating the virtues so highly praised by the scholar Glareanus after Isaac’s death. Glareanus admires Isaac’s ability to decorate a cantus while embodying it fully into the polyphonic texture as well as his skill with brief musical motifs, often developed in elaborately extended sequences.

What is perhaps more striking to us is the highly ‘modern’ sound of this Mass setting, anticipating those concise settings of the French Court some fifty years after his death. Although the Mass is given a purely vocal treatment here, allowing Isaac’s magnificent and distinctive counterpoint to shine through, some of the motets are given altogether more lavish performances incorporating organ and stringed and brass instruments. The performers seem utterly at home with Isaac’s music and give highly persuasive accounts of all of the music here, making this a very valuable addition to the limited Isaac discography. An informative, intelligent and very readable programme note by Guido Magnano rounds off this impressive and highly enjoyable production.

D. James Ross

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