Topic: Early English Instrumental Music

[Mandryka]

Woolley, do you mean this one?

Yes, that’s the one. Some good singing in it too, and some nice organ music when you’re in the right frame of mind for it. The instrument is characterful.

By the way, I’m going to send you the Jaud Erbach later this weekend, it’s good!

[vers la flamme]

I think you will like this one:

Music of Byrd, Bull and of course Gibbons.
Played on 6 different harpsichords and virginals, 3 of them originals. Played in the sort of harpsichord style in vogue nowadays that lovers will call dreamy and poetic, and haters limp-wristed. I like it!

This looks good, promising selection. But where can it be found? I see it's available as a download on Amazon, but I'd prefer a CD if possible.

[bioluminescentsquid]

This looks good, promising selection. But where can it be found? I see it's available as a download on Amazon, but I'd prefer a CD if possible.

It's online (If youtube allows you to see it in your region) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNGTlT5Ndi8&list=PLSZX05Flsi-sNtRjo_icCdWBEDBiR6-X_
Probably on Spotify too, just to try it out.

Of course, CD has better quality. Edit: CD is out of print everywhere! But there are hi-res downloads.
https://www.carpediem-records.de/en/parthenia

Not Early English music, but also check out her Il Cembalo di Partenope disc if you like her style.

[bioluminescentsquid]

Yes, that’s the one. Some good singing in it too, and some nice organ music when you’re in the right frame of mind for it. The instrument is characterful.

By the way, I’m going to send you the Jaud Erbach later this weekend, it’s good!

Yes please!

[Mandryka]

<a href="https://youtube.com/v/CK5gYh7_Jnk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">https://youtube.com/v/CK5gYh7_Jnk</a>

There’s something about the modesty of these performances by Roland Götz which makes me think of Chorzempa’s Orgelbüchlein and Leipzig Chorales. I don’t think that the LP has every been commercially transferred.

Götz is someone who almost missed out on the transition from LP to CD because of distribution and marketing I guess, and who looks as though he’s completely missing out on the transition from CD to streaming and download. 

[milk]

Does anyone know this pianist? I just discovered this.
Also: how is Belder in the Fitzwilliam? Fans here?

[bioluminescentsquid]

Speaking of more early English organ music, any thoughts on this one? I feel like the organ is great and characterful, but just becomes less interesting when next to a great organ like the Uttum instrument. Playing is good, but so far not much has stood out for me.
I do hear a "family relationship" with Uttum, though - the organ sings too.

I just listened to Tomkins' colossal Offertory on this disc - 17.5 minutes of quiet ecstasy - and completely regret what I said above. The first 1/3 of the piece is played on a single 8' flute, so well voiced and beautiful that I wouldn't mind if the whole piece was played on it.

The same piece at Uttum with Klapprott is more dramatic, the soul-twisting dissonances more obvious (partly because of the pure meantone at Uttum, compared to the modified "Norden" temperament - but that doesn't matter), but Farr is better at carrying the intensity over the marathon of a piece - I guess is this what Mandryka would mean with a "sense of architecture".

In this disc, there's a rendition of the Offertory on harpsichord. I'm not convinced by it.. yet.

[Mandryka]

in fact the music seems to me to sound really good on a harpsichord, because of its virtuosity. I haven’t kept Bertrand Cuiller’s booklet, I don’t know whether he discusses this.

[Mandryka]

By the way, one thing you might enjoy is Gerard van Reenen’s meantone harmonium  performance of Tomkins set of variations on Fortune my Foe, on YouTube (I can’t provide a link easily as I’m using my phone.) This is a huge set of variations, a very late piece by Tomkins, a masterpiece!

[Mandryka]

A fluid, moving, noble and intense interpretation of Byrd’s fantasie on ut re mi fa sol la, the slowest harpsichord performance on record I know, and I think that Wilson’s gamble there paid off. In particular the tempo lets me appreciate the beauty of the dissonant section in the middle.

Wilson’s approach is more melodic than contrapuntal, that’s to say, he makes the left and right hand music align smoothly, and you don’t sense much by way of tensions and collisions between the voices like for example, Richard Egarr and Eliizabeth Farr on harpsichord on the same piece. I suppose it’s a case of swings and roundabouts. What you gain in melodiousness and sweetness you lose in complexity and tension.

[milk]

I'd like to know more about this; I think she's got a pedal harpsichord going and a clavichord too. Here is someone from a different generation but I think the music is magic in her hands and very fresh.

[Mandryka]

I'd like to know more about this; I think she's got a pedal harpsichord going and a clavichord too. Here is someone from a different generation but I think the music is magic in her hands and very fresh.

Harpsichord, clavichord and organ. I just listened to A Fancie, MB25, she plays organ.  I didn’t hear anything distinguished and the sound is not great.

[Mandryka]

It’s very good to have all these five part fantasias collected together like this, Spirit of Gambo are clearly committed to Jenkins like no other consort. It has only just been released and so I’ve just begun to listen. But my initial reaction is slightly mitigated by a nagging doubt - that their interpretations are too fluid and too lyrical. In short, that the performances are under-articulated. The result may sometimes come close to the thing which must be avoided in polyphonic music like this at all costs - an interwoven hotchpotch.

This seems rather different from what they did on their recording of four part fantasias, and of course the sound is different too, thicker in the five part music of course, but also I’d say less strongly underpinned by the bass viol. This could be partly due to the engineering - there seems to me to be more air between the musicians in the four part recording



Of course the music is different. Four the five part music we read

while for the four part music we read

a comment which is followed up by a tantalising (for me) remark on enharmonics

Anyway it’s probably not right to post these very preliminary reactions because I’m almost bound to change my mind. But I thought I’d state them in case anyone else felt like listening to see if they feel the same way  p

Returning to the five part music I’m very impressed by the depth of feeling and subtlety of the expression of the music, especially away from the start of the CD. This is a recording which is rewarding for me in the sense that it has repayed repeated listening.

[Mandryka]

Alina Rotaru's vision of Byrd, Gibbons and Bull is angry. She pounds out the music in a one dimensional way, there's no emotional complexity here. Accents are forceful.  She likes to play fast. Rhythms are fairly rigid. It's thrilling but jejune.

Anyway that's my conclusion after two listens. I posted something like this yesterday but deleted it because I feared I may be doing her an injustice. But no. I hope someone will point out the error of my ways.

In fact I've come across this conception of English music before, in a live performance of Bull's Walsingham Variations by Leon Berben. Bull and Byrd had a lot to feel angry about - but did Gibbons?

She's playing some sort of German harpsichord I believe, I haven't found more details.

Revisiting this. Parthenia sounds a bit like παρθένα, which means virgin in Ancient Greek. Indeed in the essay to the CD, the writer notes this and suggests that it’s in part an allusion to the instrument intended for the music in Parthenia, which was published at the start of the c17 - i.e. a virginal.

Nevertheless Alina Rotaru chooses to use a modern copy of a c18 German harpsichord. I wonder why.

[Mandryka]

The lovely CD by Jordi Savall, which is devoted to solo music for Lyra Viol, is dedicated mostly to William Cockrine and Alfonso Ferrabosco ( fils). The Lyra Viol is made for playing chordal music, contrapuntal music, and both composers make ample use of that capacity. The music of both composers is lyrical and austere at the same time. Savall plays mostly with his characteristic organistic sound: long deep sustained notes.


This is music far removed from the dance floor. These are abstractions, at least as played by Jordi, whose style here resembles his Demachy and his Gibbons. Once again I can't help but wonder whether Bach was influenced by Lyra Viol in the last three suites for cello.

Returning to this for the first time in 3½ years, I'm just so impressed by the quality of music, recording and performances. No-one has touched this music as far as I can see either before of after Savall's pioneering release, and it shows something about his courage and imagination. Wonderful release!

[Mandryka]

Just released -- with no indication of who it is playing or what they are playing on the cover other than the photo. It turns out to be Thomas Morley's fantasias for 2 viols played by one of my favourite viol masters -- Thomas Dunford, with Jérôme Chaboseau on a treble instrument, Chaboseau  is a new name for me, I can see he's recorded the new Telemann solo viol music, and various c18 composers who are beyond by ken. It is absolutely outstanding in every sense of the word. I knew  Morley wrote some attractive consort pieces but this is in quite a different league, and suggests he is a major figure of late 16th century English instrumental music.

[Mandryka]

And another new release of English music for two Lyra viols from Dunford, this time with Sylvia Abramowicz. The music is taken from a manuscript by John Merro, and if you go to Dunford’s very active Facebook page you’ll see it’s specially interesting for tunings. The music - well it’s mostly by petits maîtres who are new to me - Simon Ives for example and Thomas Gregore - and a lot of anonymous stuff. Something to explore, good that it exists.

Dunford’s Facebook has an extraordinary note on Tobias Hume’s madness.

https://m.facebook.com/groups/violadagamba.it/permalink/3117147154995468/?comment_id=3119426508100866

[Mandryka]

And another new release of English music for two Lyra viols from Dunford, this time with Sylvia Abramowicz. The music is taken from a manuscript by John Merro, and if you go to Dunford’s very active Facebook page you’ll see it’s specially interesting for tunings. The music - well it’s mostly by petits maîtres who are new to me - Simon Ives for example and Thomas Gregore - and a lot of anonymous stuff. Something to explore, good that it exists.

Dunford’s Facebook has an extraordinary note on Tobias Hume’s madness.

https://m.facebook.com/groups/violadagamba.it/permalink/3117147154995468/?comment_id=3119426508100866

Repays repeated listening, easy to dismiss the music prematurely, beautifully recorded - needs the right hifi to appreciate it.  In short, one of the most interesting 2020 recordings so far.

[Scion7]

And another new release of English music for two Lyra viols from Dunford, this time with Sylvia Abramowicz.

Repays repeated listening, easy to dismiss the music prematurely, beautifully recorded - needs the right hifi to appreciate it.  In short, one of the most interesting 2020 recordings so far.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lgp03Ax60-LCbD4ETjbHr4FA_RhlRQRwk

- thanks for the tip


the players, from a previous release:
 

[vers la flamme]

I ended up getting this over the Jordi Savall/Hésperion XX Dowland Lachrimae due to cost concerns. This recording seems more tempered, less dark and passionate, more Baroque, almost. But it is good; it seems to more clearly tie into the context of the music that was to come, whereas some seem to play Dowland as if he were a complete anomaly in his time and place (though his uniqueness was something that drew me to his music in the first place).

Anyway this is the only early English viol consort music in my library and my interest is piqued. Need more... Maybe onto Purcell's Fantasias next, as well as more Dowland of course.