16th & 17th Century Consort Musik - your favorites?

[James]

Small instrumental ensembles. "a company of musicians together".

2 main categories:

the first, "broken consorts", mixed ensemble ... feat. instruments of different types, a typical line-up would be bass & treble viol, recorder or flute and 2 or 3 plucked instruments, such as a lute, theorbo, cittern & bandora.

the second format (which produced the greatest music), the "whole" consort which feat. instruments of just one family, perhaps with keyboard or lute accompaniment. whole consorts were written for recorders, violins, sackbuts and many other instruments, but by far the most popular choice were the various members of the viol family: bowed, fretted, flat-backed string instruments that were eventually eclipsed by violins, violas & cellos. Composers revelled in the instrument combination that - much like a string quartet, which would become popular more than a century later - offered great flexibility and unrivalled expressive power.

Tallis,Byrd,Dowland,Gibbons,Lawes,Purcell & others ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consort_of_instruments

[Opus106]

Thanks for starting this thread, James. The EMC thread was hard to wade through to find information on consort music.

I tend to prefer the "mixed" consort which I find has more instrumental colour than the  (pseudo-synaesthetic) "dark" sounds of a viol consort. Nevertheless, I'm interested in hearing that also. (The 5-disc set by Fretwork, recommended by Que, is on my wish-list.)

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

One thing we need is a complete recording of Johann Hermann Schein's Banchetto Musicale, from 1617. This is a set of 20 suites for ensemble, instrumentation flexible, and one of the first significant collections of purely instrumental music. You can get bits 'n' pieces here 'n' there, but I've never seen a complete recording.

Otherwise I like composers of this time like Byrd, Gibbons and Sweelinck, tho' mainly for their keyboard music.

[hornteacher]

My favorite individual pieces of consort music are:

La Mourisque - Tylman Susato
Pastyme With Good Company - Henry VIII

Then there's also all the dances in Terpsichore by Michael Praetorius.

[False_Dmitry]

Then there's also all the dances in Terpsichore by Michael Praetorius.

They're great fun, but I'm not really sure they are "consort music" though?   Praetorius was a music publisher as well as a composer, and the "Terpsichore" collection appears to be mainly the music of masques and ballets from France, which MP arranged in 4/5-part settings and published.  The originals must have been from lavish courtly masques, if we are to judge from titles like "Dance Of The Apprentice Sorcerors Who Must Dance Before The King", "Chicken Dance", and the famous "La Battaille" (which, by bizarre coincidence, I heard this evening included in a kid's pantomime version of Alice In Wonderland).  I would imagine these pieces must have been played by ochestra-sized ensembles (with those new-fangled fiddles on the top lines), and not in one-to-a-part consort groups.

I'll put in a small bid for the consort music of Matthew Locke, Purcell's predecessor as Master of The King's Violins, and joint composer of the first (?) English opera, CUPID & DEATH (music now sadly lost).  His magnificent and solemn music "for the cornetts and sackbutts" marks the end of an era - within a generation the tradition of playing these renaissance-era instruments had disappeared entirely.  His two collections of music for "broken consort" are marvellous examples of the sophistication mid-C17th English music enjoyed, despite the prevailing Puritan mood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQQyuUWVfPM

[The new erato]

My two favorites of this repertory is the William Lawes and Anthony Holborne discs done by Savall on the Alia Vox label. They seem to click with me in a way that various recordings of British ensembles don't (I have some discs by the likes of Purcell, Jenkins, Gibbons etc by the likes of Fretworks et al). That probably makes me some kind of heretic.

[prémont]

Small instrumental ensembles. "a company of musicians together".

By using the specific word "consort" , you restrict the possible options almost exclusively to English music. My favorite English consort music is Dowland´s melancolic Lacrimae.

But outstanding ensemble music was composed elsewhere e.g. in Italy (Canzona´s by the Gabrieli´s and Frescobaldi - to mention some of the most prominent). 

[The new erato]

Anthony Holborne, an Elizabethan composer who, despite his obscurity, impressed NASA employees sufficiently to ensure that a sample of his work was included on the Voyager spaceshot as an example of human achievement. He published an important consort collection entitled Pavans, Galliards & Almains in 1599. Though his music lacks Lawe's daring or Byrd's polyphonic genius, it's nonetheless highly compelling, and sounds superbly rich & warm in this performance from Jordi Savall's group. The viols are complemented by keyboard instruments & occasional percussion.

My two favorites of this repertory is the William Lawes and Anthony Holborne discs done by Savall on the Alia Vox label. They seem to click with me in a way that various recordings of British ensembles don't (I have some discs by the likes of Purcell, Jenkins, Gibbons etc by the likes of Fretworks et al). That probably makes me some kind of heretic.

[kishnevi]

Speaking of Fretwork, but non-English music:

[False_Dmitry]

Written for upper-class amateurs, the fantasia was essentially a free form in several movements performed by a consort of between 3 & 7 players.

Yes, and there's a further sociological element to this repertoire - the Puritans had come to power in England under Cromwell, and they had closed the theatres as an "immoral entertainment".  Although strictly musical concerts were not banned,  in practice they were forced underground - and many of the performers lost their livelihoods, and entered other professions (many as music-masters to amateurs).   All of this drove music-making into the home, where roundhead rule had less control,  and there was a corresponding "boom" in both the performance and publication of music for domestic consumption.  Even after the Restoration Of The Theatres, the enthusiasm for home performance continued unabated for several decades.  Effectively it kept the viola-da-gamba "in use" in England, long after it had been supplanted by the violin family (the instrument of the professional player) in Italy and Germany.   There's persuasive evidence that even once the theatres were reopened,  the bass-lines in orchestras in England (ie in Purcell's operas etc) were played on bass viols, and not cellos, until around 1700 - and there weren't any double-basses or violones in England until around the same period (when Italian & French professionals arrived, with their own instruments, to take up this role).

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

Gibbons was a versatile and wide-ranging composer.

Glenn Gould once claimed that Gibbons was his favorite composer. He also did a recording of music by Gibbons and Byrd (on piano!) that I think is one of his best discs.

[listener]

"16th & 17th Century Consort Musik"

that rules out Prince Albert, then.  (19th century)

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

The info on William Lawes (hitherto unknown to me) is intriguing. I'm contemplating putting this composer on my To Buy list. Particularly due to comments like

Lawes revels in dissonances and unexpected changes of key, sometimes to the point that the results sound positively strange - as in the end of the first movement of the Sett in F major.

The connection between early music and modern music always interests me.

[Que]

Dip Your Ears, No. 129 (Viols and Organ)
http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2013/03/dip-your-ears-no-129-viols-and-organ.html
"Consorts to the Organ" confusingly means exactly what it says: a consort – of viols – to accompany a – chamber – organ. The consort makes the majority of the merry noise of the musicke of Billy Lawes (1602 – 1645)...

You missed one, Jens!  And it is even the more suitable thread...

Q

[petrarch]

All of the Jordi Savall releases mentioned are exceedingly good (I am an avid collector of his stuff, with some 110 releases of his). The following contains works from lesser known composers but is equally good:

[asin]B0000242AT[/asin]

[petrarch]

And for completeness, here are the remaining Consort Music releases by Savall I would recommend:

[asin]B0000CEWV4[/asin]

[asin]B00004R7PE[/asin]

[asin]B0000501A5[/asin]

[asin]B00004R7PC[/asin]

[Rinaldo]

The info on William Lawes (hitherto unknown to me) is intriguing. I'm contemplating putting this composer on my To Buy list. Particularly due to comments like

The connection between early music and modern music always interests me.

Made me immediately jump on the internets to sample this guy and -- whoa! I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

[HIPster]

Agreed Rinaldo!

Thank you for posting all of those Petrarch.  Tempting. . .

[jlaurson]

You missed one, Jens!  And it is even the more suitable thread...

Q

Ah! Thanks. I didn't find that one, when I was searching for an appropriate place.

[TheGSMoeller]

One of my favorite pieces of music, and possibly favorite composer of this era, is Dowland's Lachrimae. Dowland was the Prince of Melancholy and this music is the epitome of his genius. The Parley of Instruments with their baroque violins, and the viol-group Dowland Consort are two fine recordings, and a great comparison for their different offerings in tone.

 


Another great collection is from countertenor Robin Blaze and the gourp Concordia performing consort songs by William Byrd.




Another from Phantasm, this time with a recording of Orlando Gibbons.