Aldo Bova on getting a good tone

Photo by Lisa Banlaki Frank, taken at the Boston Early Music Festival exhibition hall in 2009

Gesualdo
Alex Ross's article about Gesualdo appears in the December 19 issue of the New Yorker. Gesualdo's life is lurid and entertaining. Enjoy.

Rehearsal scenes and interviews of Charpentier's Orphee, to be performed by the Boston Early Music Festival this Saturday and Sunday. Aaron Sheehan, who is performing the role of Orphee, will be singing with the New York State Baroque in the spring of 2012.

Serenissima una noche
Fray Geronima Gonzalez, c. 1633

Double recorder


For an audio sample and information, follow this link
http://www.flute-a-bec.com/flute-doublegb.html

Elizabethan Conversation and guests
performed yesterday at Ithaca's Community School of Music and Art. In the photo, from left to right, are Rebecca Leistikow, soprano, Derwood Crocker, lute, Susan Sandman, viol da gamba, and Stefanie Green (me), bass recorder.

I hope to post an audio file soon.

Click on the link below to hear Vincent Lauzer in a 2010 recital on the CBC/McGill University Concert Series. Barbara Kaufman's student, Alexa Raine-Wright and Vincent Lauzer formed Recordare, at McGill in 2010. 


http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/concerts/20101114lauzr

A native of Saint-Constant, 22 year old Vincent Lauzer won the grand prize at the national finals of the Canada Music Competition, as well as first prize and the audience appreciation prize in the Montreal International Recorder Competition. Last year, he won first prize in the inaugural edition of the Concours de musique ancienne Mathieu-Duguay at the Festival de musique baroque de Lamèque in New Brunswick. He currently studies performance with Matthias Maute at McGill University. 

Noah Greenberg and the New York Pro Musica
(Early years)


Excerpt from a master's thesis by Eriko Aoyama: 
Noah Greenberg and the New York Pro Musica: The Career, Reception, and Impact


For the complete text, here's the link:

http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?ucin1092344734

Noah Greenberg was born in the Bronx, New York, on April 9, 1919, the first and only

child of Lillie and Harold Greenberg, who had recently emigrated from Warsaw, Poland. Already at an early age, Noah was an active child with a curious mind. In a photograph of Noah’s baseball team, Noah, who is a year or two younger than the other boys, stands out with his size and confident smile. James Gollin interprets it as “the determination of somebody who will never let himself be left out or overlooked, even if he’s not fully part of whatever it is that’s going on.”

Music was a great and important part of the life of the Greenberg family. As Gollin aptly puts it, the “Jewish Bronx . . . was steeped, was virtually marinated, in music.” Families and friends gathered regularly to sing, play instruments, or listen to and talk about music, from folksongs and workers’ songs to operas and classical music. At age fourteen, Noah began to study composition with Arnold Zemachson, a highly promising Russian composer who had his recent orchestral work premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski. In the two years of study with him, Noah learned some basic theory and harmony and the potential of “the drama that could be gained by combining rigorous musical structure with novel and expressive sonorities,” and developed his notable skill in music notation and copying.

Around 1935 Greenberg met Harold Brown, who was then one of the substitute teachers at James Monroe High School, which Greenberg attended. Brown, a graduate of Columbia, was an aspiring but struggling composer, who, in his “introverted, intense argumentative” style, was said to have had “very strong views on music and everything else, most especially on politics.”  It was because of Brown that Greenberg gave up piano and started on double bass, and got heavily involved with the leftist socialist and Trotskyite movements. Thus Greenberg’s formative teenage years were dedicated to political activities and music. Among his circle of musicians were Robert Levenstein, Barry S. Brook, Israel Horowitz, and Harold Brown; all of them became professional musicians. They gathered to listen to music, attend concerts, study music scores, and exchange their thoughts on music.

After graduating from high school at age seventeen, Greenberg moved in with Harold Brown. It was Brown who introduced Greenberg to early music. Brown, an accomplished violist and aspiring composer who was Columbia University’s Mosenthal Fellow in Music Composition in 1930 and who later studied with Nadia Boulanger, was also a philosopher of music. One of his firm beliefs was that “beauty and meaning in music are functions of musical structure.”  For Brown, structure gave music its meaning and aesthetic value. For a musical work to be successful, this structure must be expressed clearly by giving energy and forward movement in phrasing. Brown was very critical of the contemporary classical music scene with its overemphasis on virtuosity and fame. He thought that this system of making classical music into a business was corrupting the music itself. Furthermore, Brown disdained large-scale Romantic works because he believed that their “ornate orchestration” served to cover up the structural weakness of the compositions, thus violating the “very nature of music.” James Gollin partially attributes Brown’s steadfast adherence to his strong opinions to “the arrogance and iconoclasm of youth and to Harold’s chronic dissatisfaction with life,” but this frustration led Brown to search into the music of the distant past. For Brown, music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance was the only kind of music “in which structure is indeed allimportant.” It did not discourage him that early music was not well known or not performed often. Brown, together with Greenberg, meticulously studied scores and manuscripts of works by early masters that they could obtain from the Fifty-eighth Street Music Library, and “they puzzled over Gregorian neumes and tried to imagine what the masses of Isaac, Ockeghem, Josquin, and Lasso would sound like if singers could be found to sing them.”

Porchfest 2011
September 25

A division on a ground
performed by Maurice Steger


sadly, only a short clip

More on hands

Helperic used a diagram of the hand as a mnemonic device for determining the correct date of Easter. Guido of Arezzo used a diagram of a hand, in which a musical note is assigned to each fingertip, joint and knuckle. 


In the diagram in the image below, note the labels "diatessaron" and "diapente," referring to a perfect fourth and a perfect fifth. 


(See blog entry of March 8, 2011)

From a manuscript in the British Library

Helperic and Guido of Arezzo, Miscellany of treatises relating to computus and music, imperfect at the end, including Helperic's 'Liber de computo' (ff. 2-55v); Guido's 'Regulae rhythmicae' (ff. 55v-56), 'Prologus in Antiphonarium' (ff. 56v-58), 'Epistola ad Michaelem (ff. 58v-65) and 'Micrologus' (ff. 79-88v, 91v-94v); 'Musica enchiriadis', excerpt (ff. 65-69v); computus text (ff. 71-74); 'De tonis', dialogue (ff. 74-79); office of the nativity of the Nativity of Virgin Mary’ (ff. 89-91). England or France; 1st half of the 12th century. 

Here's a video from the Madison Early Music Festival I attended this July. This was the final piece in the all-festival concert---a series of choral works from the New World.

Here is the first part of an interview with Adam Gilbert, director of the early music program at USC, and co-founder of Ciaramella (see post of 7/25).

http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/an+introduction+to+early+music+instruments+part+1+of+2+recorder+bagpipe+and+shawm

Amherst Early Music Workshop in New York City


Here's a link to their workshop in October
http://www.amherstearlymusic.org/

Ciaramella
Ciaramella performs "Dies est laetitiae" on its CD, Sacred and Secular Music From Renaissance Germany, on the Naxos Label. Ciaramella is an ensemble for Music of the 15th Century, based in Los Angeles, and directed by Adam and Rotem Gilbert. More info at www.Ciaramella.org

J'ay pris amours

ANTONIO VIVALDI Concerto in C major for two flutes
(1678-1741)
*Praambulum by Matthias Maute


Concerto for two transverse flutes, strings, and basso continuo in C major RV533
1. Praambulum* - Allegro
2. Largo
3. Allegro


Performed by Ensemble Caprice
Directed by Matthias Maute




*This group's recording of this piece was inspired by a current theory that Vivaldi may have had come into contact with and was strongly inspired by Slavic and Gypsy folk music. The evidence to support this claim is very reasonable: for instance, the "ospedale della pieta" thsat Vivaldi taught at for years lay on the Riva degli Schiavi (the slavic canal). He also traveled extensively through slavic country. Perhaps though, the best evidence can be seen in various concertos. A book published during Vivaldi's lifetime known as the "Uhvroska" collection featuring folk and gypsy music contains music with many strikingly similar features to Vivaldi's music.


With this concerto, the "umpa umpa" octaves of the bassline and the eighth note rythm followed by two sixteenths of the opening tutti, are identical to rythms used in the "Uhrovska". This has inspired the ensemble to create a Fantasia in the gypsy style to act as an introduction.

This story was broadcast on NPR this morning:
Major Trove Of Classical Music Manuscripts For Sale

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/30/137403434/major-trove-of-classical-music-manuscripts-for-sale?ft=1&f=10003

The Music of the Spheres. Shown in this engraving from Renaissance Italy are Apollo, the Muses, the planetary spheres and musical ratios.

Hemiola
from the wiki article:
In modern musical parlance, a hemiola is a metrical pattern in which two bars in simple triple time (3/2 or 3/4 for example) are articulated as if they were three bars in simple duple time (2/2 or 2/4). 

The interplay of two groups of three notes with three groups of two notes gives a distinctive pattern of 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2. This rhythm is common in Africa and known as African hemiola style.

The word hemiola derives from the Greek adjective ἡμιόλιος - hemiolios, meaning "one and a half". This term was used in a music-theoretic context by Aristoxenus. (The noun ἡμιολία - hemiolia "one and a half (fem.)" was also used by the Greeks to refer to a galley powered by one and a half banks of oars.) It was originally used in music to refer to the frequency ratio 3:2; that is, the interval of a justly tuned perfect fifth.

Masque
from the wiki article:
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier inItaly, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). Masque involved music and dancing, singing and acting, within an elaborate stage design, in which the architectural framing and costumes might be designed by a renowned architect, to present a deferential allegory flattering to the patron. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts. Often, the masquers who did not speak or sing were courtiers: King James I's Queen Consort, Anne of Denmark, frequently danced with her ladies in masques between 1603 and 1611, and Henry VIII and Charles I performed in the masques at their courts. In the tradition of masque, Louis XIV danced inballets at Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully.


for the complete article, go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masque

The Boston Early Music Festival is over, but you can listen to two concerts held last week.


Listen to Thursday's concert by the BEMF Orchestra on NPR Music!

Listen to Monday's concert by Les Voix Baroques on WGBH.org!

More from Aldo Bova

More on European early music workshops
Here's one in Amsterdam, sent to me by Toni Ameslav
http://www.ahk.nl/no_cache/en/conservatorium/study-programmes/workshops-masterclasses-and-summer-schools/early-music-summer-school/?print=1

A recorder workshop in the Czech Republic
Last Saturday at the Eric Haas workshop in Schenectady, I learned of a recorder workshop held in Prachatice, Czech Republic during the summer. Michael Murphy, of the Hudson Mohawk chapter of ARS told me about the program. Here's the URL:
http://www.lssh.euweb.cz/en/index.php
Michael said he was thinking of organizing a group to attend it. The photos on the website look great. And Peter Holtslag, one of the instructors, comes highly recommended. He performs with Han Tol, and has many solo recordings.
http://www.peterholtslag.com/

Finally, here's a photo of Prachatice:

Eric Haas led the workshop on Saturday, May 14 in Schenectady, hosted by the Hudson Mohawk chapter of the ARS. The music was unusual---everything chromatic, with some quarter tones thrown in for more variety. We were advised not to try these because with twenty or so people, the sound might be ear-splitting. Eric did demonstrate, though, and also provided lots of commentary. We played pieces by Frescobaldi, Gesualdo, Coprario, Purcell and others, all of it strange and beautiful.

Here's an excerpt from the Wiki article on Gesualdo:

Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo da Venosa (March 8, 1566 – September 8, 1613), Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian music composer, lutenist and nobleman of the late Renaissance. He is famous for his intensely expressive madrigals, which use a chromatic language not heard again until the late 19th century, and also for committing the most notorious murders carried out by any musician.

I've added a link to the 'links' page on the lower right, to the Harmonia website. From there you can access past programs. Usually they put up the most current shows a few days after their first broadcast. There is a wealth of music and historical information on these shows and the website. 

Next Saturday, May 14, I will be attending a workshop in Schenectady, New York, hosted by the Hudson-Mohawk ARS chapter. The workshop will be led by Eric Haas.

Entitled Colorful Language, the workshop will feature chromatic madrigals, chansons, dances and fantasias from the 16th and 17th centuries--including music of Coprario, Frescobaldi, Gesualdo, Marenzio, Purcell, Tomkins and others.

The location is the Elks Club-Guilderland Lodge 2480

3867 Carman Road, Schenectady, NY 12303

For more information, contact  Linda Botimer 518-355-4686 or chall7@nycap.rr.com

www.hudsonmohawkrecorder.org

The Bressan recorder drawings

Click on the link above for the full set of drawings

Bressan alto recorder

from the Bate Collection at the University of Oxford

This instrument was made in about 1720 by the celebrated baroque recorder maker Pierre Jaillard, also known as 'The Bressan.'  He earned this soubriquet as he came from Bourg en Bresse, the capital of Ain province near Lyon in South-central France.  At the age of 15 Jaillard was apprenticed to a local woodturner but he left after two years.  It is not known where he learned his instrument making skills but it is speculated that he studied in Paris along with his contemporary Rippert.  He moved to England in 1688 and accompanied William III to the Netherlands as one of the Kings 'Hautboys'.

This instrument came from the collection of Edgar Hunt.  It had been kept in his flat in London which had been bombed during the blitz.  Hunt returned to the site some days after the event and, whilst poking about in the rubble, was overjoyed to find the instrument wrapped up in an old shirt.

Arnold Dolmetsch 1858-1940

I came across this photo in a book called Camera Portraits: Photographs from the National Portrait Gallery, London 1839-1989.

Here's a section from the accompanying text:

Born in France of Bohemian origin, Arnold Dolmetsch trained as a musical-instrument maker with his father, and came to England about 1883. With the encouragement of Sir George Grove (of dictionary fame), he began his investigations into early English instrumental music, and the way it was played. This led to the making of lutes, virginals, clavichords, harpsichords, recorders, viols and violins, which became his life's work. In 1925, close to the time of this photograph, he founded at Haslemere, Surrey, where he lived, an annual summer festival of early music. Here he, his family and friends attempted to recreate historically authentic performances, but not for their own sake: 'This music is of absolute and not antiquarian importance; it must be played as the composer intended and on the instruments for which it was written with their correct technique; and through it personal music-making can be restored to the home, from which two centuries of professionalism have divorced it.'

The photograph was taken by Herbert Lambert 1881-1936. It is a toned bromide print, lettered: ARNOLD DOLMETSCH, c. 1925

J.S. Bach,  Cantata, Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut

from an original manuscript in the Danish Royal Library's collection

For the complete manuscript, click here.

Bart Spanhove, of the Flanders Quartet, will be at the Amherst Early Music Festival in Connecticut this summer. Here's a link to a brief interview with him about his book on practicing methods. The quartet will be in residence at AEFM, and his book will be published some time this year.


http://www.amherstearlymusic.org/node/111

Hieronymus Bosch Follower, Concert in an egg, ca. 1550
Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts

Workshop with Larry Lipnik
I attended a recorder workshop led by Larry Lipnik in Rochester, New York, last weekend, called Spanish Spice. This was a full day of music, both old and newer: Victoria, Flecha, Zipoli, Villalobos, and Piazzola. The workshop was put on by the Rochester American Recorder Society chapter. 
The work that stands out in my mind is El Fuego, by Flecha. The text reads like a something out of the Inquisition---putting out the fire of sin within us, and quenching it with water from the holy virgin. Larry read the translation with lots of gusto...


Some information about Flecha from the wiki article:

Mateo Flecha (Catalan: Mateu Fletxa) (1481-1553) was a composer born in Catalonia, in the region of Prades. He is sometimes known as "El Viejo" (the elder) to distinguish him from his nephew, Mateo Flecha "El Joven" (the younger), also a composer of madrigals. "El Viejo" is best known for his ensaladas, published in Prague in 1581 by the same nephew.

Mateo Flecha directed the music at the cathedral of Lleida (Sept. 1523 - Oct. 1525). From there he moved to Guadalajara, in the service for six years of the Duke, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. From there he went to Valencia where he assumed direction of the chapel choir of the Duke of Calabria. While thus employed, three of his works were included in songbooks associated with that chapel, including the Cancionero de Uppsala. In 1537 Flecha moved to Sigüenza where he served as maestro di cappella for two years. From 1544 to 1548 he lived in the castle at Arévalo as teacher of the Infantas Maria and Joanna, daughters of Philip II of Spain (1527-1598). Toward the end of his life Mateo Flecha became a monk of the Cistercian Order, living in the Monastery at Poblet, where he died in 1553.

Mateo Flecha's music was published in part by Fuenllana in his Orphenica Lira. The majority of his works can be found in the Cancionero of the Duke of Calabria (Venice, 1556), also known as the “Cancionero de Uppsala.” Flecha is best known as composer of the "ensalada" (literally "salad"), a work for four or five voices written for the diversion of courtiers in the palace. The ensalada frequently mixed languages: Spanish, Catalan, Italian, French, and Latin. In addition to the ensalada, Flecha is known for his villancicos, or Christmas carols.

In 1581 Flecha's ensaladas were published by his nephew, Mateo Flecha "El Joven" (the younger), in Prague. Of the eleven ensaladas, complete versions remain of only six, El jubilate, La bomba, La negrina, La guerra, El fuego, andLa justa. Four of the others are missing a voice. El cantate is lost because Flecha's nephew did not publish it, considering it to be too long.

Various Spanish vihuelists, like Enríquez de Valderrábano, Diego Pisador, and Miguel de Fuenllana, adapted Flecha's works for the vihuela.

Branle de la Torche, by Praetorius, performed by Richard Rand on all parts.
Richard uses a device (Boss RC-2 Loop Station) that allows him to record each part on top of the next one. 

The Guidonian Hand

The Division Flute
Thanks to Amalia Weinberg, who brought up this subject a few weeks ago. Here is some background on both the music, by John Walsh, and the terms "ground" and "division."
First, the score is available here:
The Division Flute

From the Wiki article:
The term 'Flute' at this date in England referred to the instrument known today as the recorder (Ger. Blockfloete), as opposed to the transverse or 'German' flute.

Division in music refers to a type of ornamentation or variation common in 16th and 17th century music [1] in which each note of a melodic line is "divided" into several shorter, faster-moving notes, often by a rhythmic repetition of a simple musical device such as the trill, turn or cambiata on each note in turn, or by the introduction of nonchord tones or arpeggio figures.

The word was used in this sense to describe improvised coloratura ornamentation as used by opera singers of the day, but it made a ready way of devising variations upon a theme, and was particularly cultivated in the form of the "division on a ground" - the building of successively higher and faster parts onto a repeating bass-line. Examples of "divisions on a ground" were written by, among others, John Jenkins and Christopher Simpson[2]. Simpson gives a lengthy explanation of the art of free improvisation over an ostinato bass-line in his book The Division Viol.

And from a related article from Wikipedia on ostinato:

In music, an ostinato (derived from Italian: "stubborn", compare English: obstinate) is a motif or phrase which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in itself. Strictly speaking, ostinati should have exact repetition, but in common usage, the term covers repetition with variation and development, such as the alteration of an ostinato line to fit changing harmonies or keys.

As a very accessible frame that allows improvisation, the ostinato was heavily used in the Baroque epoch. For about a century and a half (starting around 1770), the technique was almost abandoned.