This is the first all-Uccellini CD, presenting 18 sonatas and arias for violins and bass continuo. It is a treasure. There's a vitality and richness to the music that goes beyond the boundaries of the Renaissance dance forms that appear in Uccellini's compositions, suggesting the level of invention that put his work into the first published collection of pieces for solo violin. McGegan and his colleagues-who all play with winning high spirits-have rediscovered a major figure.
Harmonia Mundis Century Collection - A History of Music[mp3]
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From Music Web International: Luigi Rossi was one of Italy's most celebrated composers of the 17th century. He was mentioned in the same breath as Cavalli: Rossi's stature in Rome was comparable to that of Cavalli in Venice. They are also similar in that their fame stretched as far as France. Operas by Cavalli and Rossi were performed in Paris, mainly thanks to Cardinal Mazarin, who was of Italian origin and tried to enthuse French audiences about Italian music.
The pieces on this disc are written for two or three female voices. And Luigi Rossi had specific singers in mind. 'Le Canterine Romane' was a trio of singers, consisting of a mother and her two daughters. The mother, Adreana Basile, sang with two sisters at the Mantuan court early in the 17th century, where Monteverdi got to know her. She had two daughters: Leonora (b.1611) and Caterina (b.1620), who also became singers. After a stay in Naples from 1624 to 1633 they settled in Rome where they often performed and were part of the circle around Cardinal Barberini. All three not only sang, but also accompanied themselves and each other on instruments, like lirone, viola da gamba and harp. Leonarda was considered the most brilliant of the three. A whole collection of poems was written in her honour. And in 1639 the English poet John Milton heard them and wrote three epigrams in honour of Leonora as well. In that same year the French gambist André Maugars heard them during his visit to Rome and wrote that "three fine voices and three different instruments so took my senses by surprise ... I forgot my mortality and thought I was already among the angels".
There can hardly be any doubt that Luigi Rossi wrote these cantatas specifically for these three fine singers. For this reason the disc does not restrict itself to a selection of Rossi's cantatas. Instead it also gives an idea about the art of the ladies who left nobody unmoved by their singing. Whether the three ladies on this disc - the mezzo only takes part in the first two items - are a match for their 17th-century predecessors is anyone's guess, but their singing is certainly exciting. This recording demonstrates that being Italian is no prerequisite to revealing the emotion in this kind of music. One need only slough off any shreds of reserve, and that is what the singers do here. Another important aspect of this recording is the playing of the basso continuo which supports the singers brilliantly and follows the 'affetti' very closely. The musicians also give splendid performances of some instrumental compositions which are of the same quality as Rossi's vocal works.
Giorgio Mainerio (c.1535-1582) was born in Parma, apparently of Scottish extraction. Although a cleric by training, he was interested in a wide range of subjects, including persistent rumors of occult dealings. The present collection was published in Venice in 1578, apparently the result of a somewhat belated musical carrer on Mainerio's part. It is one of the first significant collections of European folk dances, frequently reprinted in part in later anthologies, without credit to Mainerio. Together with this work, which is becoming better known, Mainerio published a few pieces of liturgical polyphony.
A team of musicologists, literary scholars and performers from Melbourne University and La Trobe University and the Australian Research Council, under the direction of John Stinson and John Griffiths, have collaborated to research and interpret works by principal composers and from the central collections of the fourteenth century. The musical sources of France and Italy in the age of Machaut, Petrarch and Boccaccio include some 1500 works, most of which have never been available on recordings.
There are many contemporary and near-contemporary accounts of Landini's fame, some attributing him with an almost mythical status. However it is his surviving music manuscripts that reveal the most about Landini, the musician. The music of Francesco Landini is the kernel of every surviving manuscript which documents the music of fourteenth century Italy. However, even now 600 years after Landini's death, less than half his works have been recorded.
We inherited a form of music which has been with us for centuries and, in fact, we have even seen major-minor harmonic polyphony peak in the 18th century and then gradually give way and break down completely. However, what we take for granted took centuries to develop: from improvised melismatic elaborations of a plainchant over a drone tone to the first attempts to organize this free melodic movement with notated rhythm and early ideas of organizing the vertical sounds into progressive movement toward a cadence.
Two monastic houses are particularly important to our understanding of these new genres, the monastery of St Gall in the East Frankish kingdom, and the monastery of St Martial in the heart of the Aquitaine region of West Francia. Their libraries preserve the largest collections of early tropes and sequences; their books are the foundation of our knowledge about this music before 1100.[10]
The first great executive name in English music however was JOHN DUNSTABLE, who died in 1458, and at this initial point in church music history it is clear that Britain possessed the leading composer in Europe. His greatness lay in the composing, chiefly in three parts, of fluent contrapuntal music, and in the avoidance of those harmonic clashes that were the bane of lesser polyphonic writers.
We have little of his music available today, but pupils coming to him from the continent set in motion the great Netherlands schools of musical composition. Exchange of knowledge was very free in this age, and the profound influence Dunstable had on European music was returned about a century later. The continental composers advanced quickly, and one of the developments they brought back with them was the Motet (roughlywhat we would call an anthem).
The value of the motet was soon apparent to English musicians, for it gave a wide choice of texts for musical settings. The formal Mass was naturally a restricted medium- and tended to become tied to its plainsong origins, but the motet encouraged composers to make their music more widely and more personally expressive. The motet-form had found its way, into this country before the end of the fifteenth century.
Although the century was a quiet one after Dunstable's death, there were several composers whose names are still recalled, and - fortunately - whose music can still be heard. FAYRFAX, who died in 1521, had been a worthy contemporary of Dunstable, and later in the century came REDFORD, SHEPPARD, and CORNYSHE - all of whom helped to lay the foundations for the wonderful work of their successors. Their chief value lay in increased ease and fluency of part writing. Music was becoming less of an ingenious and laborious science.
This century showed the first full flower of English music, and almost a score of fine composers of the period are heard today. Advance now became rapid, helped additionally, by the introduction of music-printing about 1500.
Composers of the century were well equal to the challenge and JOHN MERBECKE (died 1585): issued his Boke of Common Prayer Noted (i.e., set to music) within twelve months of the Prayer Book being issued. He used the ancient plainsong to the English words, and showed that the new simpler Communion Service could be successfully set in the English tongue. This work is still in wide use. Listen to Merbecke's 'Creed'.
Several famous collections of these hymns, led by that of Sternhold, Hopkins and Day, in 1562, achieved very widespread popularity. Strongly influenced by plainsong, they retained the melody in the tenor part- and it was almost a century later that the present form of hymn with the melody in the treble was finally established. In the matter of hymn singing the English Church has always been much indebted to non-conformist invention, and the Scottish influence beginning in this period is typical.
Anglican chanting was a development of the now harmonized (Gregorian) plainsong, and was more musically balanced in keeping with the trend of the times. It is from this period that the formal composition of chants began, as opposed to the mere adaptation of old plainsong melodies to Anglican use. The double chant, so common in all our churches today was essentially a product of the next century, as was our established system of "pointing." Our present method, although envisaged in Reformation times, was hindered in its development by a falling away of choral singing in the churches. It was, in fact, a cathedral product, and congregational psalm singing did not reach its present status in thenormal church service until the nineteenth century.
At the close of the century it was secular music, especially the madrigal, which was the chief concern of composers' minds. MORLEY, DOWLAND, BEVAN and WEELKES are typical of this great secular school, although their church music is still frequently heard. They are all worthy companions of Byrd. THOMAS TOMKINS was notable for introducing solo parts into anthems, while JOHN BULL (a kind of minor Handel in his expansiveness and varied interests) showed distinct harmonic advances in his church compositions.
I have showcased recordings of the operas of the French baroque frequently of late, drawing upon the many recent CD releases of the works of Lully and his successors. This Sunday I turn to the lyric theater music of the German baroque. The most important opera house in Germany during that period was in Hamburg at the Gänsemarkt or "Goose Market." So many of the best German composers of the early eighteenth century wrote music for this theater: Keiser, Mattheson, et al. The young Handel got his start in opera at the Goose Market. Another young composer, a contemporary of Handel, Johann Christoph Graupner (1683-1760) got his start, like Handel, as a harpsichordist there circa 1707-09. 2ff7e9595c
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