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Dowland: Lessons

CD cover Dowland Lessons Jonas Nordberg

Jonas Nordberg lute
72:14
BIS-2627 | SACD

From the first few notes of this CD it is clear that Jonas Nordberg sets out to put his own gloss on well-known music by John Dowland (1563-1626). He begins with Dowland’s Prelude, playing at quite a slow speed, taking liberties with the rhythm, adding a few more ornaments than were in the unique source (Margaret Board’s lute book), and exaggerating the briskness of repeated high notes towards the end. There follows A Fancy (Poulton 73) which opens with a theme similar to “All in a Garden Green”, and develops many contrasting musical ideas – little four-note rising scales overlapping each other, the introduction of a new theme which shares the first four notes of the opening theme, more rising scales but with a quaver followed by six semiquavers, a lengthy tremolo passage, and rounding off with Dowland’s characteristic alternation of tonic and dominant chords before the final grand 6-note chord. Nordberg wisely does not add a chord at the end of bar 19 as suggested by Diana Poulton, since this would interfere with the theme reiterated in the bass.

For The Frog Galliard Nordberg creates a gentle mood, perhaps thinking of the words “Now oh now I needs must part”. However, those words, supposedly for the Duc d’Alençon leaving Queen Elizabeth after a failed courtship, were probably loaded with sarcasm, and a happier mood might have been more appropriate. Who is to say? One thing I do like about Nordberg’s performance of this piece is his ornaments of which there are many. Some match Poulton’s edition, no. 23a, others are his own, but they are all most convincing. It is Nordberg’s use of ornaments and imaginative little touches of his own, which bring Dowland’s music to life.

A good example of Nordberg’s little touches comes at the end of Lady Hunsdon’s Puffe. There is a rising scale in parallel tenths, where each note of the treble is followed by a note a third higher before moving on to the next tenth; this means that the treble has a succession of rising thirds in quavers. On the repeat Nordberg introduces a fast passing note between each of these thirds – such a simple idea, but a pleasant surprise which put a smile across my face.

The title of the CD is Lessons, meaning pieces to be learned. Nordberg gives a good account of five pieces from Robert Dowland’s Varietie of Lute-lessons (1610): Galliards for Queen Elizabeth, the King of Denmark, and the Earl of Derby, John Smith’s Almain, and Fantasie (Poulton 1a).

An important aspect of English music at this time, whether for lute, virginals or other instruments, was the writing of variations on simple folk melodies. Dowland’s variations on “Loth to depart” are a fine example of this, with a wealth of musical ideas displaying the expressive capabilities of the lute. In contrast is Dowland’s simple setting of Orlando Sleepeth, which is a short piece with no ornaments or decorated repeats. Nordberg plays it through with some decoration of his own, and then again with more embellishment.

For Solus cum Sola Diana Poulton used the setting in the Ewing lute book, but Nordberg instead turns to the setting in Cambridge University Library, Dd.2.11. The last strain appears only once in the manuscript, so Nordberg repeats it with his own tasteful additions. In another pavan, Semper Dowland Semper Dolens, Nordberg creates a suitable melancholic mood, but I am puzzled by the penultimate chord of the second strain. The Ewing lute book has d’ and b, and the Weld lute book has f’ and d’. Either is fine, but Nordberg plays f’ and b creating a diminished fifth, which cannot be right.

Nordberg plays a nine-course lute strung in gut, with a string-length of 65 cm tuned to g’ at A=392. It was built by Lars Jönssen. In modern times it has been common to tune lutes to g’ at modern pitch (A=440), which requires a smallish lute with a string-length of 60 cm, and which can sound a bit tinkly. Nordberg’s larger lute is effectively tuned a tone lower, giving a richer, warmer sound, which is ideal for Dowland’s lute solos.

The number seven and multiples of seven seem to have been important for Dowland. There are 21 songs in three of his four printed collections of songs (The Second Booke has 22), 21 instrumental pieces in Lachrimae [1604] of which the first seven pavans are seven different Lachrimaes, and 42 lute solos in Varietie of which there are seven of each of the six genres represented. His setting of “Loth to depart” consists of seven variations. Significantly Robert  Nordberg’s CD has 21 tracks.

Stewart McCoy

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Tudor Music Afterlives

CD cover Tudor Music afterlives

Ensemble Pro Victoria, conducted by Toby Ward, Magnus Williamson, organ. Toby Carr, lute
69:27
Delphian DCD34295

This is Ensemble Pro Victoria’s successor to their rewarding recording of music celebrating the quincentenary of Fayrfax, which I reviewed. And a very successful successor this album is too. The premise on which it is based might seem a tad academic, but it produces a fascinatingly varied yet coherent programme of music, containing some staggeringly fine pieces, excellently performed.

All these pieces are caught in their afterlife, and are presumed or known to have had a prior existence. There are several strands to this programme: “extreme” reconstructions of some of Sheppard’s many fragmentary psalm settings; reconstructions of sections of longer motets that survive only as solo songs with lute accompaniments; a reconstruction of a partsong by Robert Parsons – the stunningly beautiful When I look back – from isolated partbooks and a lute intabulation; Continental motets and chansons that have made their way over to England; excerpts from Ludford’s Lady Masses; two motets with only Elizabethan attributions to Taverner, who died over a dozen years before she ascended the English throne; and a famous work by Tallis – successively a fantasia, O sacrum convivium and finally (among other contrafacta) I call and cry – that seemingly began life as an instrumental work for a consort of viols, with an afterlife serving both the Roman and English Churches.

Musically the most interesting works are the two attributed to Taverner and the motet by Clement. It is unlikely that anyone listening to a “blind tasting” of Quemadmodum would guess that it is by Taverner; indeed, of its five surviving sources, two are anonymous, one ascribes it to Tye, and the other two to Taverner. All these sources are Elizabethan, and none provide any text beyond the initial word. The text of Psalm XLI can be fitted to the notes, so it is reasonable to conclude that it was composed as a motet but was performed instrumentally during its Elizabethan afterlife. What is beyond dispute is that it is one of the most strikingly beautiful works from the Tudor period. In the same class is O splendor gloriae which has Elizabethan ascriptions both to Taverner alone and jointly – respectively the first and second sections – to him and Tye (that man again!). It seems credible that the latter is accurate: either a work on which the two composers agreed to collaborate, or one that Taverner left unfinished and Tye completed; it is even possible that two independent compositions were at some point yoked together, as for instance seems to be the case with the two parts of Byrd’s anthem Arise O Lord/Help us O God albeit they are by the same composer. Clement’s Job tonso capite simply illustrates why he is among the finest composers of his own and of all time.

Musicologically the most interesting works are the five settings by Sheppard of Sternhold and Hopkins’ metrical psalms. These will be published in the forthcoming volume of Sheppard’s complete vernacular music in Early English Church Music, edited by Stefan Scot. Except in one case, only the upper voice of the original four survives for each of these 48 pieces, but the “extreme reconstruction” by Magnus Williamson mentioned above has produced five credible pieces of music for this disc. Given the constraints of a CD booklet it is good that Magnus has been able to summarise the process of reconstruction for each individual psalm. Meanwhile in the Mulliner Book there is an arrangement for keyboard of Sheppard’s setting of Psalm I, The Man is Blest, which, in the words of Stefan Scot, “permits a reconstruction and indicates something of the style of the remaining choral psalms.” Academia Musica Choir, conducted by Aryan O. Arji, recorded all of Sheppard’s Collected Vernacular Works on two discs (Priory PRCD 1081 and 1108, 2013 and 2015) and The Man is Blest is the first track on volume II. Mulliner’s arrangement is played on the organ by Michael Blake (who is scandalously uncredited!) on volume I, track 8.

The two Kyrie movements from different Lady Masses for three voices by Ludford perhaps fall within the category of worthy, albeit pleasantly so, and are enhanced by verses played on the organ by Magnus Williamson employing authentic methods of improvisation on given melodies called “squares”, but the third such movement, Alleluia. Veni electa mea, is, in modern colloquial parlance, an absolute belter, for all its brevity. Like the motet by Clement mentioned above, it illustrates why Ludford takes his seat at the same table as Clement himself, beside Sheppard, Lassus, Taverner, Tye and Tallis, to name only composers present on this disc.

Ensemble Pro Victoria sing all this varied music consistently well, be it plainsong or the augmented forces assembled for O splendor gloriae. I was concerned that the full-throated sound exhibited in some tracks on their disc of Fayrfax might be reproduced here and overwhelm the more understated material. This proves not to be the case. The performances and interpretations, whether assertive, neutral or restrained, are appropriate to each item. Toby Carr’s occasional contributions on the lute with the singers provide both variety of texture and authenticity. The organ played by Magnus Williamson, mentioned above, was built by Goetze and Gwynn in 2002 for the Early English Organ Project, and embodies evidence from fragments of pre-Reformation organs discovered in Suffolk. This combination of cutting-edge scholarship and outstanding performance gives us a recording of the highest quality, apt for edification and pleasure.

Richard Turbet

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The Mysterious Motet Book 1539

CD cover The Mysterious Motet Book 1539

Siglo de Oro, Patrick Allies
67:14
Delphian DCD34284

For once the word “mysterious” used in a title is not an exaggeration or a misrepresentation. The provenance of this publication really is, and remains, a complete mystery. But first, what of the musical contents, 28 Latin motets of which twelve have been chosen for this recording? There is absolutely no mystery about the quality which, on the basis of this selection, is respectable and, in a few cases, high. Indeed, although the programme concludes with a work by Gombert and another which is attributed to him in this source but to others elsewhere – of which more below – it is pieces by lesser-known composers, or composers known better in other genres, which are the most striking. The disc opens with Salus populi ego sum, a work of seamless beauty punctuated by some delightful dissonances, composed by Pierre Cadeac. There is a fine animated setting of Haec dies by Johannes Sarton, with memorable “noe noe” refrains concluding both sections, while Postquam impleti sunt by Jhan du Bilon, after a rather bland beginning, develops with some wonderfully undulating phrases and intensifying harmonies, before releasing the tension for a satisfying close. Of the composers better known, Arcadelt’s Dum complerentur might be thought to contain more dissonances than would be expected in this context, for instance in the Alleluia, while a breath of madrigalian ethos occurs near the end at “ubi erant sedentes”. Willaert’s two items, Laetere sancta mater and Peccavi super numerum seem in these performances to be interesting rather than striking, the latter somewhat soporific beside the anguished setting by Byrd, and the disc concludes with two pieces by Gombert. Veni electa mea may not be by him, and Jacquet of Mantua receives equal billing as composer in the lists of contents, but although the relevant passage in the otherwise very informative booklet draws attention to the existence of attributions other than to Gombert, these – including Jacquet – are not explained in any further detail. The DIAMM website notes an attribution not only to Jacquet but also one to Jacques Berchem. There are settings of the similar text Veni dilecta mea by Gombert and of Veni dilecte mi by Jacquet, and the thought occurs that since identical or similar titles are a significant cause of misattributions during this period, perhaps this piece is the work of Berchem, who does not seem to have set such a text. Or, as the saying goes, not as the case may be. Judging by this performance, the work does not seem to shout that it is by either of the named composers. Nor is Laus Deo one of Gombert’s most distinguished works, always bearing in mind that even a modest work by Gombert is equal to the best works of many other composers. Perhaps in this instance the silvery sound of Siglo de Oro is less suited to the more bronze sound-world of Gombert’s music.

It remains to mention the two finest pieces on the disc. Apparens Christi is a wonderfully sustained work of over eight minutes’ duration, composed by Johannes Lupi. He shares a disc with Lupus Hellinck (Hyperion CDA68304) which I praised warmly in EMR (review published 1 February 2020) and this work confirms his status as an outstanding contributor to the Franco-Flemish repertory. Best of all on the current recording is Exsurge quare obdormis by Dominique Phinot. (There is a disc devoted to his music on Hyperion CDA67696 sung by The Brabant Ensemble.) Unlike Peccavi mentioned above, this setting really is fit to be mentioned in the same sentence as the sprightly setting by Byrd. Its luminous SAAAT scoring and minor mode, delivered with impressive momentum by Siglo de Oro, give it a hypnotic plangency, and Phinot’s sure-footed variations of texture beside his immaculate insertions of occasional striking passages of homophony within the prevailing polyphony make this motet irresistible. It is no surprise that in his booklet notes to the recording mentioned above, Roger Jacob – who is largely responsible for the modern revival of Phinot’s music – observes that “the theorist Hermann Finck in 1556 placed Phinot behind only Gombert, Clemens, and Crecquillon (and ahead of Willaert) in a list of composers he described as ‘foremost, most excellent, subtlest and, in my judgement, to be imitated’.” The evidence provided by the current recording bears this out.

The mystery in the title remains. Why was this book of blatantly Catholic music published in a blatantly Protestant city? (Significantly the motet by Phinot lauded above is one of three in the publication for which there are no known surviving manuscript sources.) Daniel Trocme-Latter offers some useful background in the accompanying booklet. Furthermore, there is certainly no comparison with the circumstances under which Byrd published either his Masses or his subsequent Gradualia in Protestant London. As the Philip Henslowe character repeats throughout Shakespeare in Love, “It’s a mystery”, and like the one in the film, this mystery looks set to remain.

Richard Turbet

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RECERCARE XXXII/1-2  2020

Cover of Recercare 2020 1-2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barbara Sachs

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Ockeghem: Masses 2

CD cover Ocheghem Masses 2 the sound and the fury

the sound and the fury
53:19
fra bernardo fb2122007

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The label Fra Bernardo specializes in some wonderful vocal music from the Franco-Flemish school, sung by ensembles with self-consciously eccentric names, on discs that are encased in packaging usually fronted by illustrations of half-naked men and only slightly less naked women, in expressive (contrived, contorted, whimsical, postmodern, amusing, idiotic – according to taste) postures, ostensibly conducting music by the likes of Ockeghem and Gombert.

The Sound and the Fury (TSATF) are four fellows – David Erler, John Potter, Colin Mason and Richard Wistreich, respectively CT T B B – and this recording, released earlier this year, was made in 2010. Their previous recording of masses by Ockeghem was released in 2013. Strangely they are in competition with another of Fra Bernardo’s ensembles with a whacky moniker, Beauty Farm, who have recorded their own selection of Ockeghem’s masses over three discs, including the two under review here (Fra Bernardo FB1909373, surprisingly the only other currently listed version of the striking Missa Ecce ancilla Domini though a fine version two to a part by The Clerks’ Group on Proudsound PROU CD 133 has been deleted). Given the unarguably stratospheric quality of Ockeghem’s masses, the question of recommending the current disc comes down to the quality of the performance and of the recording. TSATF have a warmer vocal sound than Beauty Farm in their recordings of these two masses, less strident and more considered in their interpretations. The recording venue, Mauerbach Charterhouse Church, in Austria, has a noticeable but not distracting resonance, and TSATF adopt tempi that renders every note clearly audible. This pays off in, for instance, the Credo of Missa My my where the steady tempo is able comfortably to accommodate the syncopations that occur in the latter half of the movement, without any sense of haste and also without any detriment to the clarity of the notes.

The quality of the music in both masses is of the highest order, as one would expect of Ockeghem. Missa My my is based on Ockeghem’s own chanson Presque transi. This can be heard on Cut Circle’s double album of Ockeghem’s complete songs (Musique en Wallonie MEW1995) which I reviewed favourably for Early Music Review on 15 October 2020, referring to this song expressing “downright depression” – a compliment in the context! Missa Ecce ancilla Domini is based on a segment of the antiphon Missus est angelus Gabriel. Sung as well as this, these masses can of course be listened to as superior background music, but it is also most rewarding to engage closely with the music: it is not essential to have profound musicological or mathematical knowledge to appreciate that it has been created by a remarkable intelligence, an experience which is in itself rewarding, but by an intelligence that is capable of creating beauty as well as satisfying musical structures. The subtle change of harmonic gear in the Agnus of Missa My my from the final “peccata mundi” to “Dona nobis pacem” illustrates this beauty perfectly, while the striking phrase used to open the movements lacking an intonation illustrates both beauty and structural eloquence. There can of course be more than one ideal interpretation of music as fine as this. TSATF provides one such interpretation, a superb performance to complement superb music.

Richard Turbet

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Nürnberger Lautenschläger

CD cover Nürnberger Lautenschläger Magnus Andersson

 Virtuoso Lute Music from Nuremberg
Magnus Andersson lute
66:02
Klanglogo KL2537

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This interesting CD is an anthology of renaissance lute music from 16th-century Germany. It begins with music by Adolf Blindhamer (c.1450-c.1531), who was lutenist to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459 – 1519). It is possible that Blindhamer is one of the lutenists depicted in the well-known set of woodcuts known as “The Triumphs of Maximilian”. Impressive is Magnus Andersson’s performance of Blindhamer’s jolly Nach-Dancz to Ach Betler, which bounces along with a steady foot-tapping beat, and is not held back by the exceedingly fast flurries of notes which appear from time to time.

There is much interesting information about the composers, the sources of their music, and their connection with Nuremberg, to be found in John Robinson’s liner notes. Blindhamer was awarded citizenship of Nuremberg. One of his pupils may have been Hans Gerle (c.1500-1554), whose books of lute music were published in Nuremberg. Andersson plays four pieces from them, including a particularly attractive setting of T’Andernaken, which he sustains well with effective contrasts of tone.

Nuremberg was the home of Hans Newsidler (c.1508/9-63), who busied himself producing six books of lute music and at least 18 children. Andersson plays three of Newsidler’s intabulations: Tartara by Heinrich Isaac similar in style to T’andernaken, a sober Sancta Trinitas by Antoine de Févin, and a bright Cum sancto spiritu by Josquin des Prez. All three pieces are from Newsidler’s Der Ander Theil des Lautenbuchs (1536), which contains harder, more extensive pieces than those in his first book which was aimed at beginners. Ornate figuration is a feature of the intabulations in Der Ander Theil, but Andersson does not let the apparently mindless divisions obscure the musical integrity of the original.

There follows a Passamezzo and Saltarello pair by one of Hans Newsidler’s lute-playing sons, Conrad Newsidler (1541-1603). The divisions, which have interesting chromatic inflections, float over a static bass, which eventually moves to create some pleasing harmonic clashes. The Passamezzo and Saltarello should be contrasting movements, so I would have preferred to hear the Saltarello played a little faster. In contrast are two short sacred pieces set by Conrad Newsidler, which plod along as do so many Lutheran hymns.

Conrad’s older brother, Melchior Newsidler (1531-c.1595), was an exceptionally skilled lutenist. His Recercar Primo is a particularly fine piece of counterpoint, slow-moving, with unexpected changes of direction, rather like Bakfark on a good day. The CD comes to a peaceful end with Melchior Newsidler’s intabulation of Bewahr mich Herr, over seven minutes long.

The organist and composer Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612) was born in Nuremberg. Andersson plays two canzonas by Hassler which appear in a lute book owned by one Michael Eysertts (c.1580-after 1600), who lived in Nuremberg. It is not clear who made the intabulations, so Eysertts’ contribution may have been no more than owning a book.

Andersson uses three lutes built by Lars Jönsson, which are strung in gut with strings from Aquila and Kürschner. There is a tendency for treble notes to be louder and brighter than those lower down, which is probably more to do with a sound engineer’s switch than the luthier or string-makers. Unfortunately, there are a fair few squeaks and other extraneous noises coming from the strings. That, together with an echoey acoustic makes me wonder if the microphone was placed a bit too close to the lute for the recording.

Stewart McCoy

Categories
Recording

Elizabethan Organ Music

CD cover Elizabethan organ music Leonhardt

Gustav Leonhardt at the Schnitger organ, Zwolle, Holland
Paradizo PA0019
48:34

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For goodness’ sake do not do what I initially did, and dismissively assume that this is another re-hash of Leonhardt’s greatest hits. It is a unique recording, it is an historically significant recording, it is a superb recording, and anyone with an interest in early keyboard music will be delighted that this recording has been resurrected and made generally accessible. As Skip Sempé explains in the booklet, it was originally made for a niche American recording company in the spring of 1962, in a pressing of only a few hundred copies, available only in the USA. Now anyone and everyone can buy it, and the quality of the music and of the performances makes this a cause for rejoicing.

Sempé states that Leonhardt subsequently re-recorded only three of these eleven pieces: two for harpsichord and one for organ. The two harpsichord works are Farnaby’s Fantasia, and Gibbons’ Fantasia MB XX/6, both currently on Philips 4381532. The third re-recording that I have traced is Byrd’s Clarifica me pater III (on the CD it retains the superceded title that was current back in 1962) which Leonhardt plays on the claviorgan (Alpha 073); either Sempé has taken this performance to be on an actual organ, or I have missed a commercial recording of one of these pieces, played on an organ by Leonhardt. Either way, this is a release additionally to be treasured for these unique renditions by Leonhardt of eight fine Elizabethan pieces.

The organ which Leonhardt uses is in San-Michaelskerk, Zwolle, Netherlands, built by Arp and Frans Caspar Schnitger, 1721. Some Elizabethan music ostensibly composed for the virginals or harpsichord can sound strident at one extreme or reedy, even weedy, at the other when played on early organs. The Zwolle instrument sounds beautiful, though it does of course date from over a century after the repertory on this disc was composed. The choice of music is excellent, intermingling folk material with the rigours of plainsong fantasias, and free fantasias (and a prelude) with the discipline of a ground. The fantasias by Byrd and Philips are particularly well chosen, not only because they are both masterful compositions, but also because Philips, a pupil of Byrd, uses the same theme as his teacher. Their respective working out of the material makes for an enthralling comparison.

These compositions from a golden age are performed superbly. Leonhardt had a particular respect for Byrd, and there is the added frisson in hearing works of the first great composer for the keyboard being played by arguably the greatest modern performer on early keyboard instruments: it would be hard to imagine finer performances of either piece. The same can be said of the other nine pieces. Whether you own one, some, most, all, or none of these tracks, this is a recording that simply recommends itself: it is a major discographical event.

Richard Turbet

Categories
Recording

Enigma Fortuna

CD cover Enigma Fortuna

Zacara da Teramo : Complete Works
La Fonte Musica, Michele Pasotti
237:00 (4 CDs in a card box)
Alpha Classics Alpha 640

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Zacara of Teramo, AKA Antonio di Berardo di Andrea, is a kenspeckle figure who has only recently coalesced out of a number of shadowy figures of the period as a result of scholarly research into the early Italian Renaissance. (The ‘new’ Zacara now incorporates all of the first three entries under Z in J and E Roche’s excellent 1981 ‘Dictionary of Early Music’!) Active in the Brescia region, Zacara (‘Tiny’) probably acquired his nickname due to his restricted growth, while further deformities meant he had only ten digits altogether on his hands and feet, a fact unshrinkingly demonstrated in a surviving portrait. Now that a larger body of music by this one composer has been identified, he has emerged as an extremely important link between the ars subtilior of the 13th century and the music of the early Renaissance. This comprehensive 4-CD account of his complete sacred and secular oeuvre, including many premiere recordings, is a revelation, both sacred and secular works receiving very fine performances indeed on convincing blends of voices and instruments. It is perhaps easier to identify a specific individual style once a body of work has been confidently ascribed to one composer, but it is hard to see why it wasn’t clear all along that this was the work of a single distinctive and highly talented musical mind. There is also satisfaction for us nowadays in the discovery that a man coping with considerable physical challenges could be so successful in his chosen career and lead such a long and fruitful life in the 14th and 15th centuries. The sacred music (recorded on the first two CDs) in particular is among the finest I know from the period, and these superb idiomatic accounts by La Fonte Musica go a long way to re-establishing Zacara’s seminal role in the development of sacred Italian music. This is not to diminish the attractiveness of the two CDs of Zacara’s secular music, which open with his splendid Cacciando per gustar with its vivid evocation of a busy marketplace.

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

A 14th-century Salmagundi

CD cover A 14th-century Salmagundi

Blue Heron
40:04
BHCD 1011

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How lovely to see the enterprising Bostonian vocal ensemble Blue Heron back in the recording studio, albeit for this rather brief CD of music earlier in period than their previous impressive discography – particularly memorable was a ground-breaking series of CDs of music from the Peterhouse Partbooks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Blue Heron prove superbly in tune with this 14th-century music, which I notice they have approached through recordings of the secular music of Johannes Ockeghem. The voices are occasionally joined by instruments for music by Machaut, Cruce, Vitry, Landini, Jacob Senleches and Jacopo da Bologna. Incidentally, this CD has nothing to do with psalms, the title coming from Rabelais’s Pantagruel and denoting a hodgepodge, and its contents consisting of secular songs! The performances are as I have suggested entirely enjoyable, although I noticed some unfortunate mic popping on a couple of tracks. It is interesting to hear the voices of Blue Heron sounding so natural one-to-a-part and with instruments, including a fine idiomatic contribution on bray harp by the group’s director, Scott Metcalfe. 

D. James Ross

Categories
Recording

Banchieri | Giulio Cesare Croce: Festino del Giovedi Grasso (1608)

CD cover Banchieri Festino del Giovedi Grasso Tactus

Dramatodía, Alberto Allegrezza
78:36
Tactus TC 550008

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This performance of extracts from sequences of music and texts for Carnival time by Banchieri and Croce is presented with the irony and humour essential for this celebration of the reversal of the normal order of things. Like the comedic tightrope walker whose technique must be flawless, the singers of Dramatodía adapt their singing style to a range of parody productions, but at the same time demonstrate that they can sing beautifully too. If I found this element of the CD slightly outweighed by caricature and narration, and felt occasionally that we needed a visual element to bring the programme fully to life, the more seemly performances were entertaining and enjoyable. This is one of the many musical elements in early Baroque Italy, which eventually aggregated into the first operas, and it is intriguing to hear this fine music put into something of a dramatic context. The highlight is undoubtedly Banchieri’s Contrapunto bestiale alla mente!

D. James Ross