Tag: Vocal music

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Bach Cantatas

CD cover Bach Cantatas Oxford Bach Soloists

Nick Pritchard tenor, Yu-Wie Hu flute, Oxford Baroque soloists, directed by Tom Hammond-Davies
57:57
Signum Records SIGCD869

Tom Hammond-Davies had his formation at New College in the days of Edward Higginbottom, so the Oxford Bach Soloists which he founded were based there at first. Now they have taken wing, and after a few years as director of music at Wadham, he is now based in Dallas. Their first recording as a group is a programme of three Bach cantatas, which gives a good overview of their style and aims. Here I should confess a bias: I have worked with a number of his musicians, both singers and players.

First on this CD is BWV 82.2, Ich habe genung, is sung in the version Bach transposed up for traverso and soprano in 1731, elements of which found their way into Anna Magdalena’s Klavierbüchlein. Here it is sung by the tenor, Nick Pritchard, who is also the solo voice in BWV 55, Ich armer Mensch, the one cantata for solo tenor, which has an oboe d’amore paired with the traverso. In a quite different style which befits its earlier origin is BWV 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden, the cantata from Bach’s Mühlhausen trial on Easter Day 1707.

Common to all three is a string band of 3.3.2.1.1 which might be expected in Leipzig, but feels a little unbalanced in the early BWV 4, which has a 5-part string band with the two viola parts commonly scored in 17th-century Germany. But the reason becomes clear, as this cantata is performed by a chorus of 17 voices throughout – including in the numbers marked ‘solo’ – and has a basso continuo line bolstered by not only a fagotto but a harpsichord as well as the organ. These purist cavils aside, this is wonderful singing by (almost entirely) young singers with that direct, un-plummy tone that allows Bach’s polyphony to ring out with a clarity and energy that few more established choirs can rival. This is a triumphant vindication of one of the OBS’s aims – to bring on younger musicians. The chorale that concludes BWV 55, sung by a smaller group of singers – none of whom sang in BWV 4, save for Nick Pritchard – reveals what choral talent is available in Oxford; any of them could have sung in the choir for BWV 4.

The solo cantatas have a quite different feel. Here Hammond-Davies coaxes suave playing from his players, giving prominence to the traverso of Yu-Wei Hu whose long phrases and blending, woody tone means that Nick Pritchard never has to over-sing. Their best pairing is in BWV 55iii. Pritchard has a more soloistic persona in these Leipzig cantatas than he was allowed to show in BWV 4, but the clean lines of the chorale indicate that he can change mode.
Unique to this CD in my experience is a fine note on the text of Bach cantatas by Henrike Lähnemann, Professor of Mediaeval German at Oxford for the past ten years. A musician herself, she introduces us to the theology and craft of Christoph Birkmann, a university student and a candidate for the ministry, who was trusted by Bach to fashion the libretti for BWV 82 and 55.

This is a splendid CD. If they manage to make more, I hope that Hammond-Davies will manage to try out solo singers from the ranks of his ‘chorus’. He is ideally placed to perform works with a ‘choir’ of Concertisten whose parts are doubled selectively by Ripienisten from time to time, and he should trust his youngest singers: Bach did.

David Stancliffe

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Bach: Arias for alto

CD cover Zoltan Darago Bach arias for alto

Zoltan Darago, Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset
Aparté AP336

Zoltán Daragó is a young Hungarian countertenor who made a name for himself in his homeland as a star in the opera company there at an early age, and sang the title role of the Pharoah in Philip Glass’s opera AKHNATEN in Helsinki when he was just 28.

This CD is a set of splendid arias from the Bach cantatas, put together as a dramatic showcase of the range and diversity of arias for the alto voice. It was recorded in Paris, where Daragó has made his European base, with a period band, Les Talens Lyriques, who are directed by Christophe Rousset, a deservedly well-known Parisian harpsichordist.

This sounds all good. But – and it’s a big but – there are some real oddities. First, I do not care for his voice much – there’s a tight vibrato that means that the instrumental and vocal timbres never meet; and second, some of the wonderful music is really beyond what this style of singing can cope with: In the opening aria from BWV 83, Erfreute Zeit, he barely gets his voice round the semiquavers in tempo while the violin concertato and corni are whooping it up. The third oddity is the enormous size of the band: 6.5.3.4.1 plus another cello in the continuo group is a bit much with traversi, a four-part oboe band, and a couple of corni, and so they are miked down. There’s some splendid playing, like the oboe d’amore obbligato in BWV 115, but the instruments are not conceived as a Bachian band of equal partners so much as an accompanying orchestra.

Perhaps the opening aria of BWV 170, Vergnügte Ruh’, shows Daragó at his best: not hurried, and the ensemble neater. But I still would not rush to buy this CD, however much of a hoped-for calling card this might be.

David Stancliffe

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Monteverdi Testamento: Vespro della Madonna 1643

CD cover Monteverdi Vespro della Madonna Le Poème Harmonique Vincent Dumestre

Le Poème Harmonique, Vincent Dumestre
87:28
Château des Versailles Spectacles CVS145

Those familiar with the life and works of Monteverdi can be forgiven if they feel slightly confused by the title of this thrilling, pulsating issue. They are, of course, likely to be aware that 1643 is the date of Monteverdi’s death, not a date of publication for a setting of Vespers. There is, as many will also know, only one unified Monteverdi collection of the five Vespers psalms (Dixit Dominus, Laudate pueri, Laetatus sum, Nisi Dominus and Lauda Jerusalem) plus the Magnificat and attendant motets, that being the famous publication of 1610. This present set is therefore a conjectural Vespers put together largely from two much later publications, Selva morale e spirituale of 1640/41, which includes 38 sacred works, including two quite separate settings of the Magnificat and several of the Vespers psalms, in addition the Laetatus sum and Nisi Dominus from the posthumous 1650 collection. And this is where ‘testimento’ comes in, for Selva morale in particular does indeed represent a summation of the almost bewildering variety of styles Monteverdi employed during his long career as a composer of sacred music. Rather pretentiously termed ‘Monterverdi’s “other” Vespers’ at the heading of a detailed and fascinating note by Matthieu Franchin, it should be obvious from the above that this is not the only way an alternative Monteverdi Vespers can be performed and indeed it is not unique in that respect.

What it is, as the above spoiler implies, is an exceptional recording in which the glorious acoustic of the Chapelle Royale at Versailles plays its own role. Vincent Dumestre, now one of the doyens of the French early music scene, has never been one to eschew extremes or a grandiose approach. Here he not only employs large choral forces, 24 voices, plus a continuo section including two theorbos and a triple harp to help provide a ripe bed of arpeggiations that at times feels a trifle over-egged. But there is little music so suited to lavish gesture as much of this is, especially that written in the polychoral style founded in Venice by the Gabrielis. The first psalm, the 8-part Dixit Dominus secondo (SV 264) is a mouth-watering introduction to what is to come. The first entry of the full chorus is electrifying in its rhythmic vitality, while ‘Virgam virtutis’ introduces a first-rate team of soloists, firstly in solos, then as an ensemble drawing the first of many rich tapestries of sound evoked by Dumestre. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the words ‘De torrente’ bring a memorable moment of stillness before we are hastened to the doxology with its rapid iteration of words tumbling over each other.

Throughout the performance, there are so many points of interest that it would be impractical to try to draw attention to many of them. Certainly, one is the six-part Laetatus sum primo (SV 198), scored primarily for Monteverdi’s favourite combination of pairs of voices. Here it is the two tenors (Paco Garcia and Cyril Auvity) especially that excel, as indeed they do throughout the performance, communicating strongly in a manner not quite achieved by their soprano and bass colleagues. The doxology, sung by the full choir, is a magnificent blaze of almost overwhelming glory. While on the subject of the doxology, it should be noted there is an error in the booklet’s text, where that of Laudate sum pueri (SV 270) is printed as the opening of the following Stabat Mater (SV 96)! That solemn motet is given a beautifully judged reading, mournful brass succeeded by the male voices of the choir joined by the lovely sound of the upper voices. This is ravishingly lovely, perfectly tuned choral singing. Finally, mention must be made of Pianto della Madonna, a solo motet in the stile rappresentivo that is a contrafactum (or sacred adaptation) of the famous Lamento d’Arianna from Monteverdi’s lost opera L’Arianna (1608). Here it is given great intensity by Perrine Devillers, passages done with organ accompaniment communicating more strongly than those where the lute and harp tend to be obtrusive.

Uplifting, spiritually refreshing, moving and exhilarating by turn, this joyous set is strongly recommended.

Brian Robins

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Recording

The Madrigal Reimagined

CD cover The Madrigal Reimagined

Hannah Ely, Toby Carr, Monteverdi String Band, directed by Oliver Webber
63:41
Resonus Classics RES10341

This is an extraordinary CD – an exercise in recreating performance practice for music published around the year 1600, when the seconda prattica was sweeping through the world of song and reinvigorating the old forms with new techniques. Oliver Webber chronicles how the practice of ornamenting the melodic line of a song or a dance tune with diminutions grew from its vocalised beginnings to become the mainstay of what would emerge as the Italian concerto style in the hands of Vivaldi and his contemporaries.

What is so enlightening is that this exploration is about instrumental as much as vocal music. There is indeed vocal music – and Hannah Ely sings stylishly and elegantly – but much of the material is presented instrumentally. After a Canzona by Merulo, a setting of Cruda Amarilli by Johann Nauwach with his own vocal diminutions is followed by Monteverdi’s setting played instrumentally before we come to Cipriano de Rore, the father of the madrigal, where Toby Carr’s sensitive presentation of Anchor che col partire is given in lute intabulation by Emannuel Adriaenssen before we hear it vocalised with diminutions by Giovanni Battista Bovicelli – Ely’s final major third is splendidly tuned – and Webber presents his own diminutions alongside those of Orazio Bassani on Vergine Bella.

The string band (Oliver Webber and Theresa Caudle, violins, Wendi Kelly and David Brooker, alto and tenor viola and Mark Caudle, bass violin) are heard not only with the voice and in canzonas by Merulo and Giovanni Gabrieli, but in Monteverdi’s dance music. His Ballo dell’ingrate is the source not only of the ballo but of the lament Ahi, troppo è duro – introducing the theme of regret at losing this life and the shadowy underworld, the theme that is central to Monteverdi’s Orfeo from which a sequence of numbers concludes this elegant essay in balancing the melodic with the improvisatory which was such an important feature in establishing the new Baroque style. Webber’s diminutions for voice and bass violin on Palestrina’s Vestiva i colli show us how the old world of polyphonic madrigals morphed into the expressive world of the new music. The give and take here as the two listen to one another and exchange ideas reveals a central feature of performance practice in the Baroque – how to ornament a line while keeping your inventiveness within the bounds of what can be imitated: this is still the foundation for J.S.Bach’s two-part inventions 100 years later. Ornamenting a line is only possible of course when there is a single singer or player on each part – something taken for granted throughout the 17th century, I suspect.

I learned a lot not only from the splendid playing and singing on this CD but also by being introduced to novel ways of thinking about the evolution of and interplay between the musical elements that made up the momentous changes that music was undergoing in Italy. Storytelling, the foundation of what was becoming opera, would become public spectacle in the opera theatre of Venice and not just as courtly entertainment in private gatherings and so gripped the imagination in Italy. The combination of recitative and arioso, derived ultimately from the Madrigal, was translated into music of an extraordinary emotional intensity and would lead ultimately to Bach’s great Passion narratives.

Webber’s carefully planned programme is not only a treat to listen to; it also tickles the imagination and stimulates us to think hard about the source and development of the changes that were taking place in music in Italy at the hinge between the 16th and 17th centuries. This is a challenging as well as an elegant programme and I am grateful for having heard it. Webber’s liner notes are stimulating, and include details of the instruments as well as the sources: they are a model for what we need to engage with this stimulating performance.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Lodovico Viadana: Sacri Concentus

CD cover Viadana Sacri Concentus

The Viadana Collective
Maximilien Brisson
75:01
Passacaille PAS 1142

This admirable CD from The Viadana Collective offers us a glimpse of a key figure in the background of music-making in the churches of northern Italy in late 16th and early 17th century Italy. One of the chief instructors and a notable composer in his own right was Viadana, very little of whose music has been recorded. He was in charge of the music at the cathedral in Mantua in the 1590s and this recording made in the Basilica di Santa Barbara there uses its historic Antegnati organ of 1565, which includes a 16’ Fiffaro rank, tuned to beat with the Principale which can be heard in track 17, as well as split keys for the ‘black notes’, so using a remarkably clean pre-Baroque Meantone tuning. What Viadana is chiefly remembered for is the creation of what we know as the figured bass or basso continuo, and his motets for single voices performed here with the fine full-bodied organ that he certainly knew, shows the motet shifting from a solid polyphonic style towards one in which a single line – often ornamented – is accompanied by at least the organ basso continuo, but sometimes with instruments substituting for the vocal lines. The group’s organist, Iason Marmaras, contributes some Intonazione in the style of Andrea Gabrieli to introduce each group of motets, which allows us to hear the organ on its own.

The motets here are largely from the collection Viadana published in a revised form in Frankfurt in 1615 as Centum sacri concentus ab una voce sola ecclesiastici which are harmonically more adventurous and belong more distinctively of the seconda prattica than his earlier collection Centum concerti ecclesiastici of 1602. This argues Maximilien Brisson, the moving spirit behind this welcome production, was a seminal contribution to the emerging solo monody, where consideration for the voice type as well as close attention to the speech rhythms of the text placed this work at the forefront of the new monody in church music.

These are contrasted with ensemble singing which reveals that the singers in the single voice motets, where their vocal agility and stylish word painting is so much in evidence also make an impressive ensemble, so key in performances like this with absolute parity between voices and instruments. The singers are Suzie LeBlanc, Vicki St Pierre, Charles Daniels and Roland Faust and they show in Vinea mea how important it is to have such a clean, violone-like bass as the foundation for such an ensemble.

Bruce Dickey sets the instrumental style with amazing diminutions in O quam suavis. And I was unprepared for the equally remarkable passaggii played by Maximilien Brisson in Rognoni’s divisions on Lassus’s Susanne ung jour. There is also an example of Viadana’s instrumental Sinfonie musicale a otto voci (Venice 1610), virile instrumental canzone in two 4-part cori.

In style, the Viadana Collective has some things in common with groups like Jamie Savan’s Gonzaga Band and Gawain Glenton’s In Echo. Distinctive about this fine CD however is that it concentrates on a single composer and affirms the importance of a substantial organ of the right period as a foundation for a convincing balance where voices and instruments have absolute parity, substituting regularly for one another.

This is not only a welcome addition to our understanding of this hinge moment in western music, but also essential listening and a delight throughout. I thoroughly recommend it.

David Stancliffe

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Recording

Fasch: Die Vier Tageszeiten

CD cover Fasch Die vier Tageszeiten L'arpa festante Uhl

Ulrike Hofbauer, Monika Mauch, Georg Poplutz, Thomas Gropper SATB, L’arpa festante, conducted by Markus Uhl
64:54
Christophorus CHR 77480

Johann Friedrich Fasch is today arguably best known for something he didn’t do rather than what he did. In 1723, having recently accepted the position of Kapellmeister at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst, he withdrew his application to become cantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig, of which he was an alumnus, apparently because he did not wish to teach Latin. That post ultimately went to J S Bach. What Fasch did do was create a body of compositions, many now lost, that makes Bach’s prodigious output look positively miserly. In addition to a huge number of instrumental works, it includes no fewer than eight cycles of sacred cantatas, having been expected during his tenure in Zerbst (from 1722 until his death in 1758) to provide at least three cantatas for each weekend.

It is not known how much Fasch contributed to a genre that played an important role in the occasional life of an 18th-century court. That was the ceremonial odes or serenatas that were an integral part of the celebration of births, birthdays, marriages and deaths of rulers and their closest kin. In Fasch’s case only two such works survive today, the first celebrating the birthday of Johann August, the ruling prince of Anhalt-Zerbst on 9 August 1723, the second, interestingly, that of the Princess Sophie Augusta Frederica of Anhalt-Zerbst, the future Catherine the Great in 1757. It is the earlier with which we are concerned here.1

Freudenbezeugung der Vier Tageszeiten (Joyful Testimony of the Four Times of Day) is described as a serenata, implying it was given in a dramatic context, although this is not clear. Both words and music were written by Fasch, the text introducing four allegorical figures – Aurora, the morning, Phoebus, noon, Hesperus, the evening, and Cynthia the night – whose panegyrics celebrate Johann August’s birthday. The work is lavishly scored for three trumpets and timpani (who only appear in the final chorus, sung by the soloists), two recorders that have a concertante role in the charming triple-time sleep aria for Cynthia, and oboes, given a concertante part in arias for Aurora. Arias are all in da capo form, while stylistically the music is in the galant style that forms the bridge between the Baroque and Classical. As anyone that has heard any of Fasch’s innumerable suites or concertos knows, his music is never less than enjoyable, melodically highly inventive and frequently displaying felicitous touches of instrumental colour – all features on generous display here.

The performance is dutiful and efficient without ever catching fire. Of the four soloists only soprano Monika Mauch is likely to be familiar outside Germany and here in the alto role of Aurora she is the pick of the soloists singing her single aria with considerable charm. The soprano Ulrike Hofbauer (Cynthia) has a bright, agile voice, but her diction is poor even by the low standards that prevail today. The opening of the central section of the ‘sleep’ aria mentioned above screams for a messa di voce but doesn’t get one, but Hofbauer’s ornamentation is good and she even has a trill. Neither of the male soloists rises above average, while the orchestral playing is proficient but hardly inspired by Markus Uhl’s pedestrian direction. Like so many German Baroque ensembles, L’arpa festante favour fussy, over-indulgent continuo that includes a lute, an instrument that was not on the pay role of the Anhalt-Zerbst court in 1723. I was recently berated by a reader on my Facebook site for complaining about the lack of an essential translation of a text. Well, this also comes with only the German text, but it would be idle to pretend it matters as much here.

The serenata is preceded by a four-movement Fantasia featuring different concertante instruments, including in the Largo (iii) a chalumeau. Full marks here to Uhl for understanding that a Baroque largo does not proceed at a funereal pace.

Brian Robins

  1. Textbooks for many others survive in the library of the Francisceum in Zerbst, now a secondary school but once a renowned university. ↩︎
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Un clavecin pour Marcel Proust

CD cover Olivier Baumont Un clavecin pour Marcel Proust

Olivier Baumont
46:00
Encelade ECL2204

The idea of a harpsichord for Marcel Proust may at first glance seem like a bit of a historical mismatch between an essentially Baroque instrument and a writer of the late 19th and early 20th century. But of course this is an author in search of times gone by, and harpsichords and harpsichordists make regular appearances in his writings. Olivier Baumont has cleverly sought out these allusions and constructed a programme of the music mentioned as well as pieces ‘in the old style’ by Proust’s friends and fellow enthusiasts for earlier centuries, Reynaldo Hahn and Louis Diémer. Playing appropriately three impressive 20th-century copies of 18th-century original harpsichords, Baumont explores the 19th-century revival of this Baroque repertoire witnessed by Proust and included in his novels. Grouping the music by Rameau, Bach, Scarlatti and Couperin interspersed by pastiches by Anthiome, Hahn and Ravel under the heading of the Proust characters the music is associated with, Baumont constructs a concert programme for an event which never in fact took place on an instrument (Proust’s clavecin) which never actually existed – a very proustian questioning of memory! He is joined by soprano Ingrid Perruche, violinist Pierre-Eric Nimylowycz, and fellow clavecinist Nicolas Mackowiak for what turns out to be a very engaging sequence of music. This CD is very much a flight of fancy of harpsichordist Olivier Baumont and for all it hangs on what in Scotland we would call ‘a bit of a shoogly peg’, his beautiful playing and the thought-provoking juxtaposition of pieces makes for a satisfying and involving experience.

D. James Ross

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Lucrezia: Portraits of a Woman

CD cover Lucrezia Les Paladins

Sandrine Piau, Amel Brahim-Djelloul, Karine Deshayes, Lucile Richardot SSSmS, Les Paladins, Jérôme Correas
64:00
Aparté AP359

The story of the rape and subsequent suicide of the Roman noblewoman Lucretia in 509 BC has resonated down the centuries. As a political event that spelt the end of the Roman monarchy and as a personal tragedy, the sexual violence of Sextus Tarquinius, son of the king of Rome, has captured the attention of writers such as Livy, Ovid and later Shakespeare, painters like Artemisia Gentileschi, herself a victim of rape and portrayer of the scene in four separate paintings, and composers. The best-known versions in music are the early cantata by Handel, included here, and Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia. Surprisingly we are told by Jérôme Correas in his note that the Baroque era yielded only three further versions of the tale set to music, all of which are included on the present disc, providing a unique opportunity to compare and contrast the settings.

The earliest of the four is that by Alessandro Scarlatti, the ‘father’ of the Italian cantata, whose setting of a text by the Roman nobleman Cardinal Benedetto Pamphilj dates from 1680. An abridged version of the same libretto was employed by the Venetian Benedetto Marcello, who omitted the final aria. Handel’s version is something of a mystery, since it is not known where or when it was composed, nor has the author of the libretto been identified. It is frequently attributed to Pamphilj, though if it is his work it is a quite different text to the one set by Scarlatti and Marcello. Examination of the paper type has also led scholars to believe it was composed before Handel arrived in Rome, either in Florence or Venice. It is interestingly also the only one of the four cantatas to have a text entirely in the words of the stricken Lucrezia, the others all including narrative passages written in the third person. The final cantata by the French composer Michel Pignolet de Montéclair has an Italian text but the musical style tends to that of the ‘goûts réunis’ that sought to unite French and Italian taste. All four cantatas fundamentally employ the alternating recitative and aria structure, though within this pattern is an array of contrast. Scarlatti, for example, binds his final stretch of recitative with a touching vocal ritornello, ‘Ma che farai mia cor’, its repetitions more affecting as Lucrezia comes ever closer to death. It is here one of the highlights of the performance by the Algerian soprano Amel Brahim-Djelloul. But no one can match the sheer exuberance of the young Handel, whose structure abides by no rules in an extended setting that includes only two arias, but concludes with passages of an infinitely moving arioso, as death starts to steal in on Lucrezia and then a final, furious recitative outburst of unrestrained anger directed at the man who has defiled her.

In nearly every respect, this ought to have been an outstanding release, but sadly it is seriously flawed, not for musical reasons but because Aparté have taken the foolish step of issuing the CD without bothering to translate the texts into English. Such is the importance of the communication of words in this repertoire, both directly by the singer and to the listener that the lack of translation seriously diminishes the impact of these works to those without Italian or French.

It is a luxury to have four different singers, including three of France’s leading early music artists, although Karine Deshayes is generally associated more with bel canto. Her singing of the Handel has considerable merit, but in a work so frequently performed doesn’t quite match the finest versions. The lesser-known name, particularly outside France, is Brahim-Djelloul , whose singing of the Scaralatti veers between the sensitivity described above and some rather overwrought singing more suited to the opera house than the chamber. No reservations apply to Sandrine Piau’s exquisitely nuanced Montéclair or the Marcello of mezzo Lucile Richardot, whose powerful projection reminds us she is today one of France’s paramount actor-singers. Finally, it must be mentioned that the support by Les Paladins is exemplary; on their own account they contribute a fine performance of Marcello’s Concerto in F minor, op 1/7 and a brief but affecting sinfonia from Bernardo Pasquini’s oratorio Il martirio dei santi Vito.

No one that has a fair understanding of Italian and/or French should miss out on this fascinating collection. Those that don’t, well, you’ve been warned. Three boos to Aparté, whose slovenly presentation does poor service to the outstanding performers on the CD.

Brian Robins

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Book

“Puote Orfeo col dolce suono”

Giacomo Sciommeri, “Puote Orfeo col dolce suono” Il mito di Orfeo nella cantata italiana del Seicento

Giacomo Sciommeri: “Puote Orfeo col dolce suono” Il mito di Orfeo nella cantata italiana del Seicento
Strumenti della ricerca musicale No. 24 of the Società Italiana di Musicologia.
Libreria Musicale Italiana,  Lucca: 2022
ISBN 978 88 5543 124 8
viii + 152pp. €20

The title in quotation marks is from the poetry of Benedetto Pamphilj, set by Handel as Hendel non può mia musa. The cover is Orfeo suona tra gli animali by Luca Giordano, ca. 1697 in the Palazzo Reale di Aranjuez in Madrid.

Giacomo Sciommeri’s fairly short book on ‘the myth of Orpheus in Italian cantatas of the 1600s’ gives a rigorous account of how it was acquired historically, understood allegorically, and treated by poets and composers of Italian 17th-century cantatas, thus influencing the development of the pastoral cantata genre in general. The full story of Euridice and Orfeo, which inspired the birth of opera (Ottavio Rinuccini’s L’Euridice by Peri and Caccini in 1600, Alessandro Striggio’s Favola d’Orfeo by Monteverdi in 1607, and Luigi Buti’s Orfeo by Luigi Rossi in 1647) sowed other seeds, from lyrical, dramatic and instrumental laments to Ranieri de’ Calzabigi’s Orfeo ed Euridice by Gluck and perhaps – my conjecture only – even to the magical power of music, one of its themes, that saves and matures Tamino and Pamina in Mozart’s Magic Flute. Readers may already know about these, but less about the presence or mere allusion to Orpheus in cantatas! Sciommeri gives us something entirely different. He chooses six poetic texts on different portions of the story, illustrating four of them analytically in relation to five musical settings.

Analytical studies can be ungrateful reading, finding only dedicated readers, whereas here the intense emotions of the protagonists and those around them, expressed poetically and musically, like Orpheus’s power to move birds, beasts, trees and rocks, is irresistible! We know the fable, as did the Baroque poets, whether from Virgil, Ovid, or the 1480 drama La Fabula di Orfeo by the Tuscan Renaissance poet Angelo Ambrogini (Poliziano) – the earliest known secular theatrical text in Italian, performed in Mantua, probably with music, ending with the Menads’ killing of Orpheus. Some even interpreted Orpheus’s failure to rescue Euridice from death (symbolizing the salvation of the ancient world), as the allegorical defeat of Humanism after the bloody Pazzi Conspiracy against the Medici in Florence of 1478.

Fascinating as Chapters 1 and 2 are (the first one tracing the myth of Orpheus from the classics to the cantata, and the second finding its aesthetic and rhetorical echoes in cantatas that are not necessarily mythological, both replete with poetic excerpts), Sciommeri intensifies the interest for musicians in the next four chapters. He gives a running musical analysis of five mythological Orpheus cantatas, comparing their treatments of the key elements of the fable: the love between Orpheus and Euridice; the power of his music; his descent to Hades and return (catabasis and anabasis); his death. He gives the complete lyrics and structure of these cantatas, with short musical excerpts from every aria and recitative, illustrating how each cantata presents a single episode of the story we know:

♦ Chapter 3: Fuor della stigia sponda (anon.) – the anabasis (ascent) of Orpheus as set by Alessandro Stradella and also by Antonio Foggia

♦ Chapter 4: Cadavero spirante (anon.) – the lament of Orpheus, attributed to Orazio Antonio Fagilla, a Neapolitan abbot.

♦ Chapter 5: Ove per gl’antri infausti (anon.) – the catabasis (descent) of Orpheus, set by Giovanni Lorenzo Lulier, a Roman. (There appear to be one or two wrong notes in ex. 5.7 bar 15, possibly present in one or both of the Roman copies. Harmonically and melodically a”’d” makes more sense than f♯”d”, preserving the sequential imitations, and similarly G instead of B in the continuo – notes off by one staff line, as here, are very common errors by copyists!) Studies of this cantata are mentioned in footnotes, notably by Biancamaria Brumana in Recercare XVII, LIM 2005, and in Quaderni di Esercizi. Musica e Spettacolo, 15, Morlacchi 2007.

♦ Chapter 6: Del lagrimoso lido (anon.) – the lament of Euridice, attributed to Alessandro Scarlatti (cf. edition by Rosalind Halton, Cantata Editions 2005). At the moment Euridice finds herself ‘abandoned’ among infernal flames she addresses Orpheus, expressing her grief and love, encouraging him to come. She begs Cupid not to torment her further and tells Orpheus that she died loving him, while fleeing from Aristeo, and hopes he will use his lyre to rescue her. It is one of three cantatas by Scarlatti based on the myth of Orpheus. See Poiché riseppe Orfeo and Dall’oscura magion dell’arsa Dite in Scarlatti, Alessandro, L’Orfeo, ed. Rosalind Halton, Web Library of 17th-Century Music, 2012, n. 23 www.sscm-wlscm.org and Alessandro Scarlatti, Tre cantate da camera sul mito di Orfeo ed Euridice, in preparation by Giacomo Sciommeri, to be available both in print and online: http://www.sedm.it/sedm/it/musica-vocale/111-scarlatti-orfeo.html.

Sciommeri’s considerations about the historical reception of the Orpheus myth in 17th-century literary circles should stimulate musicians, writers and composers to view the 18th-century pastoral cantata genre linking poetry and music more profoundly. The cantatas analyzed here may also give someone the idea of programming a group of Orpheus cantatas in the order of the narrative!

Barbara Sachs

Categories
Recording

Handel in Rome

Nardus William Dunedin Consort John Butt Handel in Italy

Nardus Williams soprano, Dunedin Consort, John Butt
60:20
LINN CKD747

Handel’s youthful stay in Italy would shape him as a composer in a variety of ways. Not only was it a period that witnessed the defining development of his style and an extraordinary fecundity, but, particularly in the case of the chamber cantatas he wrote, provided a rich storehouse of materials that the resourceful composer would draw on for the rest of his creative life.

Of the large number of secular cantatas Handel composed in Italy, some thirty-odd are designed on a larger scale than chamber cantatas with only continuo accompaniment. Three of the better-known examples are included on the present CD, all composed for Handel’s noble patrons in Rome. Here they are performed with somewhat larger forces than Handel might have had at his disposal, a total of ten strings and continuo, including theorbo, which is not as obtrusive as is now customary but is in my view in any event superfluous (the excellent series of the cantatas with La Risonanza on Glossa found no need to include continuo lute).

Ero e Leandro, ‘Qual ti riveggio, oh Dio’, HWV 150, probably written in 1707 for Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, also the likely author of the text, relates the words of Hero in the aftermath of the death of her lover Leandro, drowned as he tries to reach her on the opposite side of the Hellespont. Largely cast in the grieving words of the distraught Hero, the cantata ends surprisingly not with an aria but recitative in which four lines from the end a narrator takes over to tell us with dispassionate simplicity that Hero has taken her own life. Tra le fiamme, H 170, one of the most popular of the early cantatas, is one of the few for which we know for certain the name of the text’s poet. He was Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili, who took the well-known story of Icarus’s fatal flight to illustrate a morality with a Christian message – rather than attempting impossible literal flight, send your thoughts soaring heavenward. The mood of much of the cantata is playful, in keeping with the youthful rashness of Icarus. Armida abbandonata, HWV 105 inhabits a very different world. Dating from 1707, it was composed for the Marchese Ruspoli, the most important of Handel’s secular patrons, and originally sung by the soprano Margherita Durastante, the first of the series of great sopranos Handel encountered. Unusually it opens with an acompagnato describing the Crusader Rinaldo’s desertion of the sorceress Armida, a topic Handel would of course re-visit four years later in his first London opera, Rinaldo. The opening aria is a magnificent lament for Armida, ‘Ah, crudele!’, here opened with a breathtakingly lovely pianissimo by Nardus Williams. The cantata as a whole is an outstanding example of Handel’s stunning development in Italy. Finally, as a kind of encore, we have ‘Tu del ciel’, the last aria from the oratorio Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno (The Triumph of Time and Truth), composed in 1707, also to a text by Cardinal Pamphili. John Butt takes it a little more slowly than I personally would prefer.

Since winning the Rising Talent award at the 2022 International Opera Awards, the young British soprano Nardus Williams has confirmed her place as an outstanding artist. The voice itself is glorious, lustrous, yet bright and securely produced across its range. Her cantabile singing is a special joy, the honeyed-tone spun out with unwavering security and especially impressive in an aria like ‘Si muora’ (the final aria of Ero), another case of the tempo being arguably too slow. Bravura work is also excellent, with passaggi cleanly articulated, while ornaments are in the main well-turned. However, her trill is at an embryonic stage, being at present too shallow and hazy. But at least Williams offers something in that area. Her diction and projection is good in recitative, but tends to lose focus in cantabile writing. But all in all this is a highly impressive display in repertoire that presents challenges quite different to opera. Butt’s conducting is as supportive and as idiomatic as one would by now expect.     

Brian Robins