Three Early 17th Century English Instrumental Albums

Program: #22-34   Air Date: Aug 22, 2022

I. John Dowland: Lachrimae or Seven Tears (Phantasm). Linn CD CKR 527.

John Dowland's gifts as an exceptional melodist are evident throughout Lachrimae or Seven Tears, an artistic achievement which has cast a remarkable spell on early music.

This wonderful album has won two major Early Music awards: the 2017 Gramophone Award and the 2017 Diapason d'or de l'année. It was also named a Building A Library: 'First Choice' by BBC Radio 3 - Record Review.

Summing up the Renaissance preoccupation with melancholy, this extraordinary collection of dance music for viols and lute includes Dowland's 'signature' piece, Semper Dowland semper Dolens. Dowland reveals a personal world of sublime sadness, grief, anger and melancholy mollified by moments of joy and gladness.

A skilled lutenist, Dowland's intricately-worked parts demand perfect synchronicity between Phantasm and Elizabeth Kenny, who rise to the technical and tempi challenges of marrying their instruments.

The popularity of Dowland's music in his own lifetime continued through the centuries with Lawes, Jenkins and Gibbons all paying homage to Dowland's 'Tears'. Although freed from lyric constraints poetic images linger prompting Phantasm's Laurence Dreyfus to describe this as ‘the most sensuously tuneful hour of music ever written'.

II. William Lawes: Complete Music for Solo Lyra Viol (Richard Boothby). Harmonia Mundy CD HMU 907625.

Some of the most famous English composers of the 17th century wrote pieces for the lyra viol, or even entire anthologies. These composers include John Cooper, John Jenkins, Christopher Simpson, Charles Coleman, and William Lawes. Due to the number of strings and their rather flat layout, the lyra viol can approximate polyphonic textures, and because of its small size and large range, it is more suited to intricate and quick melodic lines than the larger types of bass viol.

Employed as “musician in ordinary for lutes and voices” at the court of Charles I, English composer Lawes (1602-1645) is most admired today for his sublime suites for viol consort. His less familiar solo repertoire for lyra-viol is performed here by Richard Boothby, a founder member of Fretwork, on the best preserved instrument of the period (Richard Meares, c. 1647-1725) which is now part of the Kessler Collection in the museum of the Royal College of Music, London.

From Music Web International: From Harmonia Mundi comes a superb disc of music for lyra viol performed by early-music expert and musician Richard Boothby. The lyra viol and its music are now rarities. Around the size of a small bass viol, it sometimes had a set of wire strings that ran under the bridge which would vibrate sympathetically when the gut strings were played; the booklet notes cite Shakespeare, in his Sonnet VIII, as one of many writers of the time who were fascinated by this phenomenon.

Most of the works featured here were composed in the early 1630s; all except for a Prelude and an Air are dances - Almains, Corantos or Sarabands – and all 35 extant pieces are short - none exceeds three minutes and most are around a minute and a half. Nevertheless, there is great variety in them, from melancholy, introspection and dark beauty to vivaciousness, energy and invigoration.

All are superbly played, as would be expected. Boothby has a lightness and delicacy of touch, and an appropriate economy which works extremely well in these works. His sympathy for this music is apparent and his joy in, and love of, the repertoire comes across clearly. He plays on a seventeenth-century lyra viol currently in the collection of the Royal College of Music where Boothby is Professor of Viola da Gamba and where this recording was made. The instrument was made by London-based viol-maker Richard Meares and boasts a page of the booklet notes all to itself, complete with a useful photograph.

The notes, written by Boothby himself, are in English, French and German, and slightly brief at four well-spaced pages but nevertheless very good. A picture of Lawes and a brief biography are included, along with a photograph of Boothby himself.

This disc can be highly recommended; it is quite intense and introspective to listen to all the way through (not as back-ground listening!), but very rewarding, especially given the excellent performances and the high standard of disc and booklet production from Harmonia Mundi.

• Prelude, VdGS 435,
• Country Coll, VdGS 421,
• A Jigge, VdGS 422,
• Almain, VdGS 491,
• Coranto, VdGS 512,
• Almain, VdGS 461,
• Coranto, VdGS 423,
• Air, VdGS 596,
• Almain, VdGS 462,
• Coranto, VdGS 424,
• Almaine, VdGS 511,
• Coranto, VdGS 513,
• Saraband, VdGS 514,
• Almain, VdGS 463,
• Coranto, VdGS 465,
• Saraband, VdGS 467,
• Almain, VdGS 543,
• Coranto, VdGS 541,
• Almaine, VdGS 464,
• Corrant, VdGS 425,
• Saraband, VdGS 434,
• Almain (Pavan, VdGS 542,
• Coranto, VdGS 544,
• Almain, VdGS 430,
• Corant, VdGS 426,
• Saraband, VdGS 433,
• Corant, VdGS 427,
• Saraband, VdGS 591,
• Corant, VdGS 428,
• Saraband, VdGS 466,
• Coranto, VdGS 545,
• Coranto, VdGS 546,
• Corant, VdGS 429,
• Corant, VdGS 431,
• Saraband, VdGS 432

III. Terpsichore: Muse of the Dance (Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra/Skip Sempé). Paradizo CD PA011.

Capriccio Stravagante has further expanded their kaleidoscopic variety of sound and programming with the creation of the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra, including a long-awaited recording of the 1589 'Intermedii for La Pellegrina' on the Paradizo label, with the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra and the Collegium Vocale Gent, directed by Skip Sempe.

They offer virtuoso performers on highly distinctive musical instruments whose playing techniques are completely unknown to classically trained instrumentalists and mainstream audiences. The ensemble is the largest and most luxurious gathering yet assembled for the performance of masterpieces from this Golden Age of musical creativity.

The Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra has created one of the most beautiful, opulent and memorable sounds in music today, thanks to an assembly of the finest performers on Renaissance instruments including violins, viols, recorders, cornetti, sackbuts, lutes, harps, harpsichords, virginals, organs, regals and percussion. Though in our time many think of this instrumentarium as "Baroque", these instruments had been created and perfected by 1550, and the instrumental virtuosity they demanded was already highly evolved.

From BBC Classical Music Magazine:

Skip Sempé has given himself and Capriccio Stravagante something of a 25th-anniversary gift with this excellent, period performance rendering of the German composer Michael Praetorius. Though, it’s not just the repertoire and resources that elicit memories of the late David Munrow, the bold early music pioneer. Sempé’s career has been similarly Pied Piper-ish, making scholarship the servant, rather than the master of performance. He is unafraid to popularise, driven by curiosity and an eagerness to seize the spirit of the music by the scruff of the neck. In performance, he communicates with a real sense of immediacy.

Capriccio Stravagante takes on its Renaissance orchestra formation on this recording, which cuts excerpts from Praetorius’s Terpsichore with the less well-known dance music of the English composer William Brade. It’s all played by a ‘Theatrum Instrumentorum’ – including the exotic gut-strung keyboard tiorbino – based on the different combinations outlined in Praetorius’s written volume De Organographia. The pleasure principle might be uppermost here, but that doesn’t preclude a playful sophistication, as well as seductive sobriety. The players improvise exuberantly, as if at some Renaissance jam session; they are clearly having a ball. David Munrow would have loved it.

Paul Riley

Ballo I

Praetorius: Passameze – 3 Gaillardes – 3 Ballets

Brade : Ein schottish Tanz

Ballo II

Praetorius: Ballet – Bransles de Poictou – L’Espagnolette – Bransle de la Torche

Brade: Paduano & Galliard

Anonymous: When Daphne from fair Phoebus did fly

Ballo III

Brade: Canzon – Naglein Blumen – 2 Galliards – Allmand

Praetorius: La Bouree – Gavottes

Ballo IV

Brade: Paduano – Allmand – Galliard

Praetorius: Spagnoletta – 2 Courantes – Bransle de Village – Volte

Moritz Landgraf von Hessen: Paduana

Anthony Holborne: Heigh ho holiday

John Bennet: Venus’ Birds