MYNSTRELLES WITH STRAUNGE SOUNDS
THE EARLIEST CONSORT MUSIC FOR VIOLS
1 anon. And I were a maiden* [2:16]
2 anon. De tous biens plaine a 4 [2:48]
3 anon. Fortuna desperata a 4 [1:14]
4 Henry VIII (1491–1547) Helas madame* [1:44]
5 Hayne van Ghizeghem (c.1445–before 1497) De tous biens plaine* [6:09]
6 Josquin des Prez (c.1450–1521) De tous biens plaine a 3 [1:25]
7 attrib. Antoine Busnoys (c.1430–1492) Fortune esperée* [1:39]
8 Josquin des Prez Fortuna desperata a 3 [1:20]
9 Francisco da Peñalosa (c.1470–1528) Vita dulcedo / Agnus Dei II* [1:40] from Missa Ave Maria
10 Alexander Agricola (1445/6–1506) Cecus non iudicat de coloribus [5:21]
11 Juan del Encina (1468–1529/30) Triste España* [2:46]
12 Johannes Martini (c.1430/40–1497) Des biens amors a 4 [2:07]
CLARE WILKINSON
* ROSE CONSORT OF VIOLS
JOHN BRYAN ALISON CRUM ANDREW KERR ROY MARKS
Recorded on 26-28 November 2014 in the Great Hall of Forde Abbey, Somerset
Producer/Engineer: Adrian Hunter
24-bit digital editing: Adrian Hunter
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter Design: Drew Padrutt Cover image: Lorenzo Costa, Madonna and Child enthroned with Saints, S. Giovanni in Monte, Bologna Booklet editor: John Fallas Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk Join the Delphian mailing list: www.delphianrecords.co.uk/join
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Johannes Martini La martinella [2:15]
Josquin des Prez In te Domine speravi* [4:20]
anon.
Juan del Encina Fata la parte* [1:53]
Juan Ponce (c.1476–after 1520) La mi sola Laureola* [1:46]
William Cornysh (d. 1523) Fa la sol [5:52]
Juan de Anchieta (1462–1523) Con amores, la mi madre* [3:05]
Henricus Isaac (c.1450–1517) Agnus Dei II [1:38] from Missa La Spagna
Josquin des Prez Adieu mes amours* [7:42]
playing time [67:20]
The Rose Consort of Viols gratefully acknowledges financial assistance towards this project from the University of Huddersfield.
A rapid transformation in musical tastes occurred in the years around 1500, with the relatively widespread distribution of part-music in the new medium of print, and the creation of novel instrumental resources. One of these was the consort of viols, whose music was described by the Renaissance Italian courtier Baldessare Castiglione as ‘verie sweet and artificiall’ (meaning ‘full of artifice’ rather than ‘false’). Castiglione was at the epicentre of early viol consort development: he played the instrument himself and knew the younger members of the ruling d’Este family of Ferrara, Isabella and her brother Alfonso, who both owned and played viols, as did their allies in nearby Bologna. Unfortunately none of these very early viols has survived, but there is an altarpiece dated 1497 painted by Lorenzo Costa, who had trained in Ferrara and later became court painter to Isabella d’Este. His Madonna and Child enthroned with Saints, in the church of San Giovanni in Monte, Bologna, depicts two young musicians playing viols of different sizes, which thus might form the nucleus of a consort. For this recording the Rose Consort uses a set of viols modelled on those depicted in this Bolognese altarpiece, made by Roger Rose and students on the early musical instrument-building course at West Dean College.
The music that these newfangled viols played can be found in a number of manuscripts surviving from the cultural circles of the
innovative North Italian courts, as well as elsewhere in Europe. This repertory also found a wider outlet in the ground-breaking prints that emerged from the Venetian presses of Ottaviano Petrucci in the early 1500s. The most highly favoured composers were not native Italians, but were more often French or Flemish: men like Josquin des Prez and Henricus Isaac, both of whom were sought out as potential maestri di cappella for Ferrara by Duke Ercole d’Este. Josquin’s In te Domine speravi shows him adopting the musical language of the Italian frottola with ease: its memorable melody allows the text to communicate with utmost clarity, supported by a harmonic bass part and two equal tenor parts that constantly scurry across each other, maintaining the momentum of the song. This piece is known from a number of sources, including a manuscript [Q 18] largely copied in Bologna just before 1506, probably for the ruling Bentivoglio family who were on good terms with the d’Estes and who also employed Lorenzo Costa, painter of our viols.
The majority of pieces in Bologna Q 18 have no printed texts, but this does not necessarily mean they were meant for instruments alone. Several have titles, such as Josquin’s Adieu mes amours, so the appropriate rondeau poem found in other sources can be fitted to the music. The musical style here is more refined than in his Italian song: the lower two parts largely follow each other canonically,
and elements of their melodic lines are also heard in the upper parts. Other pieces appear never to have had texts, and therefore form the earliest body that we might truly describe as chamber music. La martinella, with its intimate dialogue between the parts, was perhaps designed as a ‘calling card’ for the composer whose name it bears. Johannes Martini was for more than twenty years the master of Duke Ercole’s chapel in Ferrara, and taught singing to the young Isabella. Des biens amors was copied in just three parts in other sources, but the version of Martini’s piece in Bologna Q 18 has an additional altus part, enriching the texture with its flowing lines. Many pieces unique to this manuscript have no composer’s name, but nonetheless show considerable skill. The four parts of In te Domine sperabo are all of equal interest, creating an ever-changing interplay of textures in an idiom that presages the later fantasia. La quercia has one melodic phrase (first heard in the top part at the start) that weaves its way throughout the entire piece in one voice or another, while Biblis is largely constructed from short motifs moving sequentially up and down scales.
As the viol consort became established it appears that players and composers sought a means to create longer pieces, comparable in scale to the rondeau or motet, yet without a text. Alexander Agricola, originally from Ghent, worked for a time with Isaac in Florence, but ended his career in the chapel of Philip the Fair
of Burgundy, dying ‘of the raging fever’ in Spain in 1506. His Cecus non iudicat de coloribus is an extraordinary piece in two large sections, each of which develops extensive musical paragraphs from apparently inconsequential material, including repeated ostinatos, sequences, and a playful technique by which an extra note is added each time a motif is repeated.
Quite when and by what means the viol consort arrived in England is difficult to determine, but the accounts of the Revels at Henry VIII’s court on 6 January 1515 describe ‘vi mynstrelles with straunge sounds as sagbuts, vyolles & outhers’. Years later a Tudor court inventory included four instruments ‘caulled Spanishe Vialles’. This may have been a consort of viols, possibly brought over by Catherine of Aragon when she arrived in 1501 to marry Henry’s older brother, the ill-fated Prince Arthur. Catherine certainly brought with her the musical culture of her parents, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille. Her mother had ensured that Catherine enjoyed a modern humanist education, and although there’s no record of her having learned to sing or play instruments, she was a keen dancer and brought her own minstrels with her from Spain. A rich variety of songs from the Spanish court is preserved in the manuscript known as the ‘Cancionero de Palacio’. These range from the dreamy lullaby Con amores, la mi madre, with its mesmeric five-beat patterns, by Juan
de Anchieta (who taught Catherine’s brother Don Juan) to the dance-like, gossipy Fata la parte by Juan del Encina. Juan Ponce’s La mi sola Laureola uses the poem’s first words to determine the opening pitches of each part by using the names of the notes in the traditional hexachord. A completely different emotional plane is reached in Encina’s Triste España, a lament on the death of a member of the Spanish royal family, most likely that of the nineteen-year-old Prince Juan in 1497.
The early years following Catherine’s marriage to Henry VIII in 1509 were filled with masques, jousting and dancing. Catherine danced the basse danse, whose elegantly undulating movements were cultivated by courtiers throughout Europe. Music for these dances was indicated in manuals by tunes consisting of an unpromising-looking sequence of long notes. This slow melody (the ‘tenor’) was played by one instrument while others improvised counterpoint to give the dancers their rhythmic impulse. One particular basse danse tenor known as ‘La Spagna’ was used as a cantus firmus over which composers constructed counterpoint well into the seventeenth century.* Isaac used it as the basis of a mass setting, the second Agnus Dei of
*One composer, Costanzo Festa, wrote as many as 125 contrapuncti based on the melody. A selection is included on the Rose Consort’s previous Delphian disc (DCD34149), Serenissima: music from Renaissance Europe on Venetian viols
which appears without its text in manuscripts in Leipzig and Verona, and so lends itself to instrumental performance. Bologna Q 18 preserves an anonymous four-part setting of La Spagna, in which the two upper parts indulge in some rapid-fire conversational dialogue above the sustained tenor and a slower-moving bass part.
Five years after Catherine’s arrival in England, by which time she had married Prince Arthur and been tragically widowed by his sudden death, her sister Juana and brother-in-law Philip the Fair of Burgundy were shipwrecked on the Dorset coast en route to Spain. During their stay there was feasting and revelry involving musicians from both Tudor and Burgundian courts. The famous composer Agricola was in Philip’s train: might his music, then, have inspired leading English composers such as William Cornysh, Master of Children of the Chapel Royal and responsible for many of the early Tudor court entertainments? Music by Agricola and Isaac was certainly known at the English court, for copies of their pieces occur in the so-called ‘Henry VIII Book’. This opens with a number of textless songs by Flemish composers and shares some of the same repertory as Bologna Q 18. These European ‘hits’ are immediately followed by Cornysh’s own Fa la sol, much of whose melodic material is derived from solmisation syllables. Just like Agricola’s ‘Cecus non iudicat’, this piece develops in long sweeping paragraphs,
creating three substantial sections and using the repetition of fragments of melody and syncopated counterpoint in ways very similar to the constructions heard in the Burgundian court composer’s earlier piece.
Other songs in the ‘Henry VIII Book’ have texts in English and French, including a number by the King himself, but generally in a less learned style than their Flemish models. And I were a maiden probably derives from a courtly entertainment and is unusual in having five parts, though at its heart is a beguiling melody of folklike simplicity. Helas madame is a homophonic chanson in three parts, to which someone, probably Henry himself, has added a further contratenor voice that cavorts enthusiastically around the tenor. Such a practice, either enriching an existing song by adding a voice or replacing a voice with a new one, was a common way in which early sixteenth-century composers paid tribute to the work of previous generations while simultaneously bringing the music up to date. So the ‘Henry VIII Book’ contains a version of Fortuna desperata, a panEuropean ‘hit’ attributed to Antoine Busnoys, perhaps the leading French composer of the post-Dufay generation, but gives it a French title and adds an inventive altus part. Josquin keeps both the original superius and tenor parts in his setting, but creates a completely new and highly virtuosic bass part beneath them. The unattributed version found in Bologna Q 18 is further removed from the original song: only
the top part remains, while below it the lower parts maintain an incessant clattering somehow suggestive of a manic clock mechanism.
Another song that appears in the ‘Henry VIII Book’, as well as in multiple continental sources, is Hayne van Ghizeghem’s courtly rondeau De tous biens plaine. It too was the origin of a whole family of variant versions that found their way into the partbooks used by early viol consorts. Petrucci appears to have commissioned a version from Josquin for publication in his Motetti A of 1502: Ghizeghem’s original superius is here supported by a pair of lower voices that move in strict canon at the fifth. The anonymous four-part version in Bologna Q 18 deletes Ghizeghem’s superius altogether, replacing it with a transposed version of the original tenor part, beneath which three newly created parts weave a rich sonic tapestry and breathe new life into the old song some fifty years after its composition.
Ultimately, Catherine of Aragon’s inability to produce the heir that Henry VIII needed led to her gradual isolation and the final ignominy of the annulment of her marriage, and house arrest. In these years she was sustained by her devout faith, perhaps looking back to her youth in Spain, when her parents’ chapels rang to the masses of Juan de Anchieta and Francisco da Peñalosa. The latter’s Missa Ave Maria ends with a five-part Agnus Dei in which the
Notes on the music
cantus part sings the chant ‘Salve Regina’. With her musical upbringing, Catherine no doubt would also have relished the fact that Peñalosa managed to combine this with the tenor of ‘De tous biens plaine’ performed in retrograde. Such sophisticated musical games were exactly the ‘sweet and artificiall’ material so beloved by those initial enthusiasts of the consort of viols in the first decades of the sixteenth century. The intricacy of such music went hand in hand with instruments capable of subtle interplay, expressive ‘singing’ tone and clear articulation, all of which seem to be borne out by these examples based on the ones painted in 1497 by Lorenzo Costa, just when the craze for viols was getting under way.
© 2015 John Bryan
Vivien Jones
1 And I were a maiden And I were a maiden
As any one is, For all the gold in England I would not do amiss.
And I were a wanton wench Of twelve years of age; These courtiers with their amours They kindled my courage.
And when I was come to The age of fifteen year In all this land, neither free nor bond, Methought I had no peer.
4 Helas madame
Helas madame, celle que j’aime tant Souffrez que sois votre humble servant; Votre humble servant je serais a toujours, Et tant que je viv’rai aultr’ n’aimerai que vous.
Alas, madam, whom I love so much
Suffer that I may be your humble servant: I shall be your humble servant always, And as long as I live I shall love none other but you.
5 De tous biens plaine
De tous biens plaine est ma maistresse
Chascun lui doit tribut d’onneur; Car assouvye est en valeur
Autant que jamais fut déesse.
En la voiant j’ay te léesse
Que c’est paradis en mon cueur.
De tous biens plaine …
Je n’ay cure d’aultre richesse,
Si non d’estre son serviteur,
Et pour ce qu’il n’est chois meilleur
En mon mot porteray sans cesse.
De tous biens plaine …
7 Fortune esperée
Fortuna desperata iniqua maledicta che di taldona electa la fama ay denegrata.
9 Vita dulcedo
[Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae,] vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.
Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevae, Ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle.
My mistress is full of every virtue. Everyone should pay homage to her, for she is as worthy as was ever any goddess.
When I see her I am as happy as if paradise was in my heart.
My mistress is full …
I seek no riches other than to be her servant, and since there’s no better choice, I will always use as my motto: ‘My mistress is full of every virtue.’
Desperate fate, iniquitous and evil, who blackened the good name of a woman beyond compare.
[Hail, Queen, Mother of Mercy,] our life, our sweetness and our hope, hail.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
11 Triste España
Triste España sin ventura, todos te deben llorar, despoblada d’alegría; para nunca en ti tornar.
Tormentas, penas, dolores, te vinieron a poblar.
Sembrote Dios de placer porque naciese pesar.
Pierdes toda tu esperança, no te queda que esperar; pierdes Prí tan alto hijo de Reyes sin par.
14 In te Domine speravi
In te Domine speravi
Per trovar pietà in eterno.
Ma in un tristo e obscuro inferno
Fui et frustra laboravi.
In te Domine speravi.
Rotto e al vento ogni speranza
Veggio il ciel voltarmi in pianto. Suspir lacrime m’avanza
Del mio tristo sperar tanto.
Fui ferito, se non quanto
Tribulando ad te clamavi.
In te Domine speravi.
Sad, unfortunate Spain, all should weep for you; bereft of joy, never to be restored again.
Torments, pains and sorrows came to live in you. God sowed pleasure in you, but only pains would grow.
All your hopes are gone, no hope is left to you; you lose so great a prince, a son of kings without peer.
In thee, Lord, did I hope to find eternal mercy; but I was in a sad and dark hell and suffered in vain.
In thee, Lord, did I hope.
All hope is broken and scattered to the wind; I see heaven turn to me weeping. Only sighs and tears remain to me of my sad, strong hope. I was sore wounded, but in my sorrow I called upon thee. In thee, Lord, did I hope.
Lo cecato voler mio
Per sin qui m’ha fatto muto. Et hor poco al dolor mio
Per mio dir vien proveduto.
Deh! Signor, porgime adiuto, Quia de me iam desperavi.
In te Domine speravi.
18 Fata la parte
Fata la parte, tutt’ ogni cal, qu’es morta la muller de miçer Cotal.
Porque l’hai trovato con un españolo en su casa solo, luedo l’hai maçato.
Lui se l’ha escapato por forsa y por arte.
Fata la parte …
Restava dicendo porque l’hovo visto ¡O, válasme Cristo! el dedo mordiendo gridando y piagendo: ¡Españoleto, guarte!
Fata la parte …
My blind wilfulness till now has made me mute. And now little is provided to help me in my pain: O Lord, offer me aid, since I am in despair. In thee, Lord, did I hope.
Tell it everywhere that Señor Cotal’s wife is dead! Because he found her with a Spaniard alone in the house, he killed her in a rage. He escaped, by luck and by cunning. Tell it everywhere …
I say so, since I saw him biting his fingers, screaming and weeping: ‘O, help me Christ! Spaniard, watch out! Tell it everywhere
¡Guarda si te pillo, don españoleto!
Supra del mi leto te faro un martillo tal que en escrevillo piangeran le carte.
Fata la parte …
Miçer me compare, gracia della y de ti.
Lasa fare a mi y non te curare.
Assai mal me pare lui encornudarte.
Fata la parte …
20 La mi sola Laureola
La mi sola, Laureola
La mi sola, sola, sola.
Yo el cautivo Leriano
Aunque mucho estoy ufano
Herido de aquella mano
Que en el mundo es una sola.
La mi sola Laureola
La mi sola, sola, sola.
Watch out if I catch you, Little Sir Spaniard!
On my bed
I will teach you such a lesson that if it were written down, even the pages would weep.’
Tell it everywhere …
Sir, it seems to me, thanks to her and to me you should let him be and do not worry. It seems bad enough that he has been cuckolded. Tell it everywhere
She’s my only Laureola, my only one and only!
I’m but her captive, Leriano, and though I’m very proud I’ve yet been wounded at her hand. In this world she is the one and only!
She’s my only Laureola, my only one and only!
22
Con amores, la mi madre
Con amores, la mi madre,
Con amores me dormí;
Así dormida soñaba
Lo que el coraçón velaba,
Que el amor me consolaba
Con más bien que merecí.
Adormeçióme el favor
Que amor me dió con amor;
Dió descanso a mi dolor
La fe con que le serví.
Con amores, la mi madre,
Con amores me dormí!
24 Adieu mes amours
Adieu mes amours, on m’atent.
Ma boursse n’enffle ne s’etend,
Et brief je suis en desarroy,
Jusquez a ce qu’il plaise au roy
Me faire avancer du content.
Quant je voy que nul ne m’entent,
Ung seul blanc en main il s’en tent,
Qu’il fault dire sans faire effroy:
Adieu mes amours …
Ainsi qu’il vient il se despent
Et puis aprés on s’en repent.
N’est ce pas cela je le croy.
Remede n’y voy, quant a moy,
Fors publier ce mot patent:
Adieu mes amours …
With love, mother, with love I fell asleep; and as I slept I dreamed of what was hidden in my heart. That love consoled me more than I deserved. This blessing of love lulled me to sleep and lessened my grief, together with the faith with which I serve. With love, mother, with love I fell asleep.
Farewell my loves, someone awaits me; my purse neither swells nor stretches: I’m in some disarray until the king is pleased to put something in it.
When I see no one listens, holding out only a blank sheet, it means that without causing offence, I say ‘Farewell my loves …’
Just as it comes, so is it spent, and then one repents afterwards. I believe that this is the case. So I see no other remedy but to issue this public statement: ‘Farewell my loves …’
Described as ‘flawless … heartfelt … heavenly’ (Early Music America), ‘heartstopping’ (The Guardian), and ‘one of the best young singers in the Renaissance game’ (The Independent), Clare Wilkinson makes music with Baroque orchestras, consorts of viols, and vocal consorts – and loves them all. Particularly noted for her interpretations of Bach, Clare has been alto soloist in all his major works with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, particular highlights being Cantata No. 170 at the Spiegelsaal, Köthen and the St Matthew Passion at the Thomaskirche, Leipzig. Her recordings of Bach’s music include Welt, gute Nacht (Gardiner), the St John and St Matthew Passions (Butt), the St Mark Passion (Willens) and Trauer-Music (Parrott – Gramophone Critics’ Choice).
Other recent collaborations have been with Jos van Veldhoven (NBS), Adàm Fischer (SCO), Bart Van Reyn (Le Concert d’Anvers), Gijs Leenaers (Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra), Mats Bertilsson (Drottningholm Baroque) and Philip Pickett (Odense Symphony Orchestra).
Clare also enjoys stage work – Venere in Monteverdi’s Ballo dell’Ingrate (BBC Proms), Galatea (London Handel Festival) and I Fagiolini’s ‘secret theatre’ project The Full Monteverdi.
Equally at home with viols, Clare is a regular guest of the Rose Consort of Viols and of Fretwork, in repertoire from William Byrd to Tan Dun. She has premiered works written for her by John Joubert, Duncan Druce and Stephen Wilkinson at Wigmore Hall, London. In addition to the Bach discs listed above, Clare’s many recordings include Orfeo (Parrott), the Gramophone Awardwinning Messiah (Butt), Four Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal and Adoramus Te (Rose Consort of Viols), and The Silken Tent (Fretwork), featuring two songs of Byrd never before recorded.
The Rose Consort of Viols takes its name from the celebrated family of viol-makers, whose work spanned the growth and flowering of the English consort repertory. The Consort performs extensively throughout the UK and Europe, appears regularly on the BBC and in the major London concert halls, and has also featured at festivals in Canada and the USA, and as a guest ensemble at the PanPacific Gamba Gathering in Hawaii. Concerts have featured guest soloists such as sopranos Emma Kirkby and Ellen Hargis, mezzosopranos Catherine King and Clare Wilkinson, the vocal groups Red Byrd, Stile Antico and the BBC Singers, lutenists Jacob Heringman, Jakob Lindberg and Christopher Wilson, and keyboard player Timothy Roberts. Recent engagements have included performances at the BBC Proms Matinees at Cadogan Hall with vocal ensemble Tenebrae, at the National Gallery in London, and for Semana de Musica Religiosa in Cuenca, Spain. Members of the Rose Consort of Viols are in demand as tutors
on courses throughout the world, including those at Little Benslow Hills and Dartington International Summer School.
The Rose Consort has received awards for its research and performance of newly devised programmes, and has made a number of highly acclaimed recordings for Delphian and other labels, including most recently An Emerald in a Work of Gold: Music from the Dow Partbooks (Delphian DCD34115), a disc of music by Byrd and his contemporaries in collaboration with The Marian Consort, and Serenissima (DCD34149), a programme of music from Renaissance Europe performed on instruments by Richard Jones copied from the earliest surviving viol, a Venetian instrument by Francesco Linarol from c.1540. A second recorded collaboration with The Marian Consort, Loquebantur: Music from the Baldwin Partbooks (DCD34160), will be released in autumn 2015.
Serenissima: Music from Renaissance Europe on Venetian viols
Rose Consort of Viols DCD34149
A disc of journeying and exploration, paying homage to the pan-European tendencies of a period in which composers, instruments and manuscripts crossed geographical borders; in which a song by one composer might become the subject of ingenious contrapuntal treatments by another and of Mass settings by a third; and in which new dance genres evolved alongside the widespread adaptation of vocal music for performance by instrumental consorts.
The Rose Consort of Viols, already acclaimed for their recordings of later English repertoire, have been inspired by viol-maker Richard Jones’s reconstructions of a Venetian instrument by Francesco Linarol – the earliest viol surviving from the sixteenth century – and they trace a path from the viol’s northern Italian origins to England, where it found a particularly welcome home at the turn of the 1600s.
‘well-nigh flawless … Restrained, refined readings, informed by a deep understanding of the viol and its repertoire’ – BBC Music Magazine, December 2014, *****/*****, CHAMBER CHOICE
, EDITOR’S CHOICE