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