1 LP - 1C 063-30 111 - (p) 1973

1 CD - 8 26478 2 - (c) 2000

MUSIK DES TRECENTO UM JACOPO DA BOLOGNA




Anonym


Saltarello - Schalmei, Bandurria und Schlagzeug
2' 11"
Lorenzo Masini


I. Non perch'i' speri, donna (Ballata) - Tenor (b), Fiedel 4' 03"
Anonym

Saltarello - Trotto - Rebec, Laute und Tambourin
2' 31"

Giovanni da Cascia (Johannes de Florentia) (14. Jahrhdt.)

II. Per ridd' andando - 2 Tenöre, Fiedel 4' 30"
Anonym

In pro - Fiedel, Tambourin, Trommel 3' 44"
Gherardello (Ghirardellus de Florentia) (14. Jahrhdt.)

III. I' vo' bene a chi vol bene a me (Ballata) - Tenor (b), Blockflöte, Rebec, Fiedel, Laute, Harfe, Schlagzeug
2' 38"



Anonym

Saltarello - Blockflöte, Laute 3' 16"
Giovanni da Cascia (Johannes de Florentia) (14. Jahrhdt.)

IV. Appress' un fiume chiaro (Madrigal) - 2 Tenöre, Blockflöte, Fiedel 3' 01"
Maestro Piero


V. Sovra un fiume regale (Madrigal) - Tenor (a), Blockflöte, Fiedel, Harfe 3' 22"
Jacopo di Bologna (um 1350)

VI. O dolce appress' un bel perlaro (Madrigal) - Sopran, Tenor (b), Laute, Harfe 3' 41"
VII. Non al so amante (aus dem Codex Faenza) - a) Portativ, Harfe - b) Sopran, Tenor b), Laute, Harfe 2' 12"
VIII. Nell' acqua chiara (Caccia) - 2 Tenöre, Fiedel 3' 23"
IX. Lucida petra (Madrigal) - Tenor (a), Fiedel 3' 03"
X. In verde prat' a (Madrigal) - 2 Tenöre, Blockflöte, Laute, Rebec, Fiedel, Harfe
2' 31"



 
RICERCARE - Ensemble für alte Musik, Zürich / Michel Piguet, Leitung
- Wally Staempfli, Sopran
- Kurt Huber, Tenor (a), Schlagzeug (Seite 2, Titel 6)
- Fritz Näf, Tenor (b)
- Michel Piguet, Schalmei, Blockflöte, Tambourin
- Christopher Schmidt, Rebec, Portativ
- Jordi Savall, Fiedel, Schlagzeug
- Françoise Stein, Harfe
- Anthony Bailes, Laute, Bandurria, Trommel
 






Luogo e data di registrazione
Neumünster, Zürich (Svizzera) - ottobre 1972

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Producer / Engineer
Gerd Berg / Johann Nikolaus Matthes


Prima Edizione LP
EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30 111 - (1 lp) - durata 48' 32" - (p) 1973 - Analogico

Prima Edizione CD
EMI "Classics" - 8 26478 2 - (1 cd) - durata 48' 32" - (c) 2000 - ADD

Note
-













The frequent allusions in Boccaccio's Decamerone to the dances, roundels and songs which, together with leisurely strolls, indoor games and story-telling, formed the daily routine of the company that had fled from plague-stricken Florence, are well known. Alter a meal, for instance, the instruments were sent for, and everybody stood up for a dance that was led by one lady, while another sang a song to the accompaniment of a lute. Music was generally performed in the open air, in heavenly, tree-shaded gardens, and the roundel was danced round a fountain of great artistic beauty. The texts of the songs that have been preserved in the Decamerone introduce us to exactly this sort of Arcadian setting, as do a large number of works preserved in musical manuscript, such as Giovanni’s Per ridd’ andando (While walking through the crowd) and Jacopo’s three-part madrigal:
    “In verde prato adiglion tenduti
    Danzar vidi, cantando a dolce tresca
    Donn’ e amanti super l’erba fresca.”
    (Spread in a green meadow, I saw
    ladies and their lovers dancing on
    the fresh grass, and singing a sweet folksong).
A caccia by Maestro Piero, Cavalcando con un giovine (Riding with a young man), tells of two young men, hungry for love, who arrive at a meadow, covered with flowers, where they receive the maidens of whom they have dreamed at the hands of Cupid himself. In this way fantasies, secret amorous desires and idealised landscapes find their conventional expression in poetry set to music.
As we learn from Boccaccio, the company wiled awaythe time not only by singing songs of the greatest possible variety, according to the mood of the moment, but by playing musical instruments and performing various dances, of which - since they were transmitted by aural tradition - only a few examples have survived until to-day in a manuscript of the trecento (The fourteenth century). The estampie (a dance in rondo form), the hopping dance and the trot, described as Istampita, Saltarello and Trotto, all consist of from four to six sections. The very nature of the istampita makes its sections longer than those of the trotto, and they also vary very considerable in length among themselves; they always lead back to the refrain. Some saltarelli follow the amusing practice of adding a short, new phrase to the previous section, so that each section is longer than the one that precedes it, and makes considerable demands on the attentiveness and musical memory of the listener. Attention is drawn to the single melodic lines by embellishing the basic themes with notes of lesser value woven around them, and by continual repetitions and sequences of musical figures, emphasised rhythmically by small percussive effects, and occasionally supplemented by improvised, extraneous melodies. The Decamerone makes it clear that the company danced tothe sound of the bagpipes late into the night.
The art of the secular song in the trecento was accepted and encouraged with particular enthusiasm not only in Tuscany, but also in North Italy, and especially in the courtly domain of the Visconti at Milan; the dedications of Jacopo’s motets and madrigals are sufficient proof of his very long connection with that court. Moreover Mastino della Scala. a great lover of the arts, issued invitations to an artistic contest at Verona in about 1350. Three of the most famous composers of the age, Jacopo da Bologna, Piero, and the Florentine Giovanni da Cascia, were among the competitors; they all celebrated in song their love for the distinguished Lady Anna, whose beauty made her preeminent in a roundel that she danced with some other young ladies. They named her both openly and indirectly. This enchanting scene was played in the palace garden on the bank of the River Adige under a perlaro, the tree that is the symbol of patience.
The accepted poetical form for musical homage of this kind was not the sonnet, which was regarded as belonging to the realm of pure poetry, but the madrigal, which was considered "second-rate poetry", and which had no direct connection with the later madrigal of the Renaissance. It generally consists of two stanzas of three lines each, which are sung to the same music, and a final ritornello, which is brought into contrast with the previous section generally by being divided into bars in a different way. The first terzet of Giovannni’s madrigal of homage sets the atmosphere admirably:
    “Apress’ un fiume chiaro
    Donn’ e donzelle ballavan d’intorno
    Ad un perlaro de bei fiori adorno.”
    (Beside a clear river, ladies and
    maidens were dancing around a
    perlaro adorned with beautiful flowers).
He weaves her name delicately into the remaining wording of the ritornello, and makes it particularly effective by the musical separation of the two significant syllables:
    "ANNAmorar mi fa el suo viso umano
    E' l dolce guardo e la polita mano."
    (Her human face inspires me with
    love, and her sweet glance and her soft hand).
Two madrigals written for this occasion by each of these three composers have been
preserved, and one by each of them can be heard on this record. It is unfortunately not known which of them won the prize; judging by the delicacy of the scoring, the thematically homogeneous musical form and the use of imitation, we should to-day award it to Jacopo da Bologna. His contemporaries may well have been of the same mind, as is indicated by the extensive circulation of his numerous compositions, and the interest in his work that is known to have lasted well into the fifteenth century. In this respect the poet Prudenziani, writing in about 1420, refers to one of his madrigals, No so al suo amante, composed in about 1350 to words by Petrarch, as a treasure among the Christmas Songs at Orvieto; “although it is already very old”, he writes, “it is non the less excellent”. Furthermore the fifteenth century transcription of this work for a keyboard instrument, preserved in the Faenza Codex, in which the treble is enriched by a well adapted bass in typical instrumental fashion, provides ample evidence of the viability of Jacopo’s madrigal.
In Lucida petra (Shining stone) for two voices, the Lady Margharitta, whose glances are eloquent with virtue and honour, is likened to a glittering jewel. The development of the two melodic lines is of transparent clarity. The leading part is given to the higher voices, as is shown by the falling progression at the end of each section. In contemporary French music this type of cadence is always given to the tenor voice. Jacopo also played an essentially active part in expanding the song for two voices into a song for three; in his In verde prato (In a green meadow), for example, he added a second high voice to the principal voice and the treble, which had become traditional. There is a specific difference between this and the tenor or counter-tenor canto fermo, such as is found in the compositions of Machaut.
If Jacopo’s work was somewhat overshadowed by that of Landini in the second half of the fourtheenth century, documentary evidence proves that he was but little influenced by the French Ars Nova: his pure, Italian notation, and the style of his compositions, reveal the pleasure in harmony and suppleness of melodic line that might be described as a typical feature of italian
music.
The caccia is a typical Italian musical form. Its characteristic is the development of a two-part vocal canon over an instrumental tenor canto fermo, from which the supporting voice can occasionally be omitted, as in Maestro Piero’s Caccia, to which reference has already been made. In its formal construction the text corresponds to that of the madrigal, and as the ritornello is often no longer composed as a canon, there are also technical similarities between the caccia and the madrigal. Originally, as the name implies, a caccia described the pleasures of the chase; other realistic descriptions in music, composed in later times, also exist to-day. In Nell’ acqua chiara (In the clear water) by Vicentius da Rimini, we take part in a fishing expedition, and the cries of street vendors, realistically set to music, are also worthy of note.
The ballata (a form of choral music to be sung and danced simultaneously) also treats of scenes from everyday life; there are many examples of utterances in semidialogue form, or of the resigned words of rejected lovers, as for example in Non perch’ i’ spero (Not that l hope), a one-part ballata addressed to the beloved of the Florentine composer Lorenzo Masii. In this example, the division between the melismatic and syllabic sections is easy to distinguish. The compactness of the parts designed to give emphasis to the words makes the text easily comprehensible, while the longer melismata, at the beginning of each piece and preceding the perfect cadences, give prominence to the construction of form and music. In the italian ballata, whose development is not similar to that of the French ballade, the anticipated repeat is followed by one or two strophes, of which two lines (piedi) are each sung in the second part of the music; the following aftersong (volta) and, once more, the repeat, are heard yet again with the opening phrase of the music, and the second strophe follows immediately.
However tiresome the explanations of the technical scheme may be, to read, everything sounds perfectly natural when the music is performed. This record opens with a ballata by Gherardellus, Io vo bene a chi vol bene a me, e non amo chi ama proprio a sè (I love those who love me, and I do not love those who love themselves); the playful manner in which the form of the text and of the music, and the sincerity of the sentiment expressed, are brought into harmony, ought to inspire all present-day listeners with a love for the spontaneous nature of the music of the trecento
.
Hans Schoop
(translated by Geoffrey Watkins)

EMI Electrola "Reflexe"