Tag: Renaissance

& 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5555

The Marian Consort, conducted by Rory McCleery. The Rose Consort of Viols, led by John Bryan.
66:12
Delphian DCD34160

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his superb disc manages to be both rewarding and frustrating: rewarding, because of the fine performances and excellent repertory; frustrating, because so many of the pieces are already available in equally distinguished recent versions, leaving other material from John Baldwin’s partbooks awaiting commercial recordings. On the one hand, it can be argued that there cannot be too many recordings of the title track, Tallis’s Loquebantur variis linguis, the luminous Whitsun Respond in seven parts which survives only in manuscript. On the other hand, the two motets by William Mundy on this disc, Adolescentulus sum ego and Adhaesit pavimento, are available in equally fine performances by Magnificat on “The Tudors at Prayer” (Linn CKD 447), while Sive vigilem by the variously spelt Derrick Gerarde (who with a name like that nowadays would be playing in goal for Tranmere Rovers) is on Signum Classics’ first disc of music from the Baldwin Partbooks “In the Midst of Life” sung superbly by Contrapunctus (SIGCD408). It all raises the question as to whether the putative purchaser would wish to own all these recordings, or would stick with just one. The latter would be a serious misjudgement because, despite the overlapping contents, all three consist of wonderful music, at least some of it not duplicated elsewhere; on the disc under review, one such work is the premiere recording of the Canon 6 in 1 by Byrd, played by The Rose Consort. These days Byrd premieres are few and far between, so this item is valuable discographically, but it is also valuable in its own right as an intriguing and delightful piece of music. It is followed appropriately by Byrd’s early motet O salutaris hostia whose violent discords are triggered by its complicated canonical construction. The Marian Consort’s interpretation does not begin as assertively as that of The Cardinall’s Musick (ASV CD GAU 178) but by the end is singeing listeners’ eardrums.

Another premiere recording is Christian Hollander’s Dum transisset Sabbatum which, despite possible first impressions, should emphatically not be dismissed as mere Franco-Flemish note-spinning. Concluding the disc is a work seldom recorded, but which becomes more remarkable as it proceeds, and which then compounds that remarkableness in subsequent hearings: this is John Sheppard’s Ave maris stella, a selection all the more welcome during what is being regarded as his quincentenary. Finally, multiple recordings have helped me out of one particular quandary. Hitherto I have been unable to decide whether I think that Taverner’s sublime six-part piece Quemadmodum, which survives with the Latin title but no text, was intended by the composer as a work for instruments or voices. Comparing the brisk performance on this disc by The Rose Consort with the more leisurely performances by Contrapunctus and Magnificat on the discs mentioned above, has convinced me that Taverner intended it as a vocal setting of Psalm XLII. For example, the sonority at the first appearance (in the modern edition) of the words “ad te Deus” is far more successful when sung; and the musical phrase accompanying the words (again in the modern edition) “et apparebo” sounds much more like a phrase that would be set to words (even if not these) rather than one composed for instruments. In summary, this is a superb disc, and however many pieces from it one might possess on other recordings, its outstanding performances, wonderful repertory and profound interpretations justify its purchase, without hesitation.

Richard Turbet

José Antonio Escobar vihuela de mano
66:05
Naxos 8.573305

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]uys Milán’s El Maestro (1536) was the first of seven books of vihuela music published in the 16th century. The first nine pieces are fantasias, in modes 1-4, not too hard to play, and graded according to difficulty. There follow nine fantasias with redobles (running passages) exploring all eight modes, four fantasias in modes 5-8, and six pavanas, the last of which is in triple time. José Antonio Escobar plays all the solo music in the order in which it appears in the source, and plans another CD to cover the rest of El Maestro (Libro 2). Milán’s music has an improvisatory feel, and he seems to enjoy the repetition of little motifs or riffs, which may be heard in more than one piece. In bars 73 and 77 of Fantasia 19, there is an extraordinary throw-back to earlier times with a double-leading note chord. There are some curious changes of harmony, such as the unexpected shift from major to minor in bar 15 of no. 3.

Escobar’s playing is clear and expressive, and he creates a variety of moods from the lively to the slow and reflective. He adds his own ornaments sparingly – an upper mordent here and a lower mordant there – and a flourish in the repeat of Pavana 1. He articulates chords to good effect, for example in Fantasia 19. He sounds fine when he keeps the rhythm steady, and he has a nicely paced ending to Fantasia 7, but sometimes he has a jerky way of playing – accelerating through fast passages – which creates a feeling of instability and unease. Milán advises playing fast notes extra fast, but he doesn’t invite a drastic change of speed within each phrase. Dotted minims tied over the barline are clipped in no. 3, also adding to the effect of stumbling forward. Escobar strums a few chords in the final track, but the momentary uplift from that, is spoilt by rushing the fast notes (minims).

Nine bars from the end of the second fantasia there is a serious mistake which has slipped through the editing net: instead of a chord consisting of just two E flats and B flat, Escobar catches the fourth course, adding a minor third, yet if a full triad had been desirable, a major chord would have been appropriate. The same rogue G flat can be heard in bar 83 of no. 3, bar 70 of no. 7, and bars 107, 165, 178 and 191 of no. 19. Rather than risk this happening, one might be tempted to hold down a G at the 2nd fret of the 4th course, so if the wrong string is sounded, at least the resultant major chord wouldn’t be so bad. However, the way to avoid G flat sounding at the fourth course, is to stop the second and third courses with the first finger of the left hand as if an open 1st course were needed, rather as a violinist would for stopping a perfect fifth, and not use a full barré across all the strings at the first fret.

For the final cadence of no. 4, I would dampen the open 6th course of the dominant chord before playing the final chord with the open 5th course in the bass. Escobar lets the 6th course ring on, producing a second inversion for the last chord – interesting, because in no. 5 he does dampen the string for a clearly stated final chord.

Escobar’s vihuela was made by Julio Castaños from Málaga, and is tuned to G at A=415. It has a clear, bright sound, which suits the music well.

Stewart McCoy