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1 LP -
1C 063-30 111 - (p) 1973
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1 CD - 8
26478 2 - (c) 2000 |
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MUSIK DES TRECENTO UM JACOPO
DA BOLOGNA |
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Anonym
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Saltarello
- Schalmei, Bandurria und
Schlagzeug
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2' 11" |
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Lorenzo Masini
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I. Non perch'i'
speri, donna (Ballata) - Tenor
(b), Fiedel |
4' 03" |
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Anonym |
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Saltarello -
Trotto - Rebec, Laute
und Tambourin |
2' 31"
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Giovanni da Cascia (Johannes
de Florentia) (14. Jahrhdt.) |
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II. Per ridd'
andando - 2 Tenöre,
Fiedel |
4' 30" |
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Anonym |
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In pro - Fiedel,
Tambourin, Trommel |
3' 44" |
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Gherardello
(Ghirardellus de Florentia) (14. Jahrhdt.) |
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III. I' vo' bene
a chi vol bene a me (Ballata)
- Tenor (b),
Blockflöte, Rebec, Fiedel, Laute,
Harfe, Schlagzeug
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2' 38" |
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Anonym |
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Saltarello
- Blockflöte,
Laute |
3' 16" |
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Giovanni da Cascia (Johannes
de Florentia) (14. Jahrhdt.) |
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IV. Appress' un
fiume chiaro (Madrigal) - 2
Tenöre, Blockflöte, Fiedel |
3' 01" |
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Maestro Piero
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V. Sovra un
fiume regale (Madrigal) - Tenor
(a), Blockflöte, Fiedel, Harfe |
3' 22" |
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Jacopo di Bologna (um 1350) |
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VI. O dolce
appress' un bel perlaro
(Madrigal) - Sopran, Tenor
(b), Laute, Harfe |
3' 41" |
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VII. Non al so
amante (aus dem Codex Faenza)
- a) Portativ,
Harfe - b) Sopran, Tenor b),
Laute, Harfe |
2' 12" |
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VIII. Nell'
acqua chiara (Caccia) - 2 Tenöre,
Fiedel |
3' 23" |
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IX. Lucida
petra (Madrigal) - Tenor (a), Fiedel |
3' 03" |
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X.
In verde prat' a (Madrigal) -
2 Tenöre,
Blockflöte, Laute, Rebec, Fiedel,
Harfe
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2' 31" |
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RICERCARE -
Ensemble für alte Musik, Zürich / Michel
Piguet, Leitung |
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Wally Staempfli, Sopran |
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Kurt Huber, Tenor (a),
Schlagzeug (Seite 2, Titel 6) |
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Fritz Näf, Tenor (b) |
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Michel Piguet, Schalmei,
Blockflöte, Tambourin |
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Christopher Schmidt, Rebec,
Portativ |
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Jordi Savall, Fiedel, Schlagzeug |
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Françoise Stein, Harfe |
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Anthony Bailes, Laute,
Bandurria, Trommel |
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Luogo
e data di registrazione |
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Neumünster,
Zürich (Svizzera) - ottobre 1972 |
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Registrazione: live /
studio |
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studio |
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Producer / Engineer |
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Gerd
Berg / Johann Nikolaus Matthes
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Prima Edizione LP |
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EMI
Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 063-30
111 - (1 lp) - durata 48' 32" -
(p) 1973 - Analogico |
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Prima Edizione CD |
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EMI
"Classics" - 8 26478 2 - (1 cd) -
durata 48' 32" - (c) 2000 - ADD |
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Note |
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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)
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EMI Electrola
"Reflexe"
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