Luogo e data di registrazione		Evangelische Kirche, Séon (Svizzera) - 21-24 febbraio 1978
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Gerd Berg / Johann-Nikolaus Matthes
	Prima Edizione LP		EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 065-30 943 Q - (1 lp) - durata 57' 07" - (p) 1978 - Analogico (Quadraphonic)
	Prima Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - CDM 7 63067 2 - (1 cd) - durata 57' 07" - (c) 1989 - ADD
	Edizione CD		EMI "Classics" - 8 26512 2 - (1 cd) - durata 57' 03" - (c) 2000 - ADD
	Note		-

SAMUEL SCHEIDT In 1620, Markgraf Christian Wilhelm von Brandenburg, administrator ot the Archbishopric of Magdeburg in Halle, appointed his court organist Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654) to the post of director of music at court. Soon afterwards Scheidt published a collection of instrumental pieces, since “some of them have been brought out in secret and against my wishes”, those pieces moreover having been altered. The printed edition contains 32 pieces of richly imaginative instrumental music. In the years 1622, 1625 and 1627 Scheidt published further volumes of the official repertoire of the court chamber orchestra, this music now being known as Ludi musici (musical games). Unfortunately, with the exception of one of the basso continuo voices, this music has disappeared. Each piece in the first volume is dedicated to a musical friend at the court or to one of the court orchestral musicians. The order, style and tonality of the music in Scheidt’s collection is only to be fully understood in the light of the strong influence of English instrumental music, namely that ofthe English Consort. He himself hinted at this influence in the title of No. 26, Canzon Bergam.(asca) Angl.(ica) and this same influence can be seen quite clearly in other pieces. The Markgraf was related through the Duke of Braunschweig to the English King, James 1st. The famous English virtuoso viola player William Brade visited Halle in 1618. The title of Scheidt’s work which rather clumsily lists the varied contents is similar to a large extent to that of Brade: New, selected Pavanes, Galliards, Canzonas, Allemandes and Courantes (1609), and also to that of the English composer Thomas Simpson: An opus of new Pavanes, Galliards, Intradas, Canzonas... Allemandes, Courantes (1617). Simpson was a viola player in Copenhagen in the court orchestra of the Danish king who was an uncle of the Regent in Halle. Scheidt’s collection was published by Michael Hering in Hamburg, as had been the works of Brade and Simpson. The Ludi musici contain two kinds of music: dance pieces and free instrumental pieces. The dances, as they are listed in the title: Pavanes (6), Galliards (5), Courantes (10) and Allemandes (3), are arranged in consecutive groups. Scheidt does not arrange them in the cyclic form of a Suite, as does Brade in 1609, or his Leipzig friend Johann Hermann Schein in 1617 in Banchetto musicale. He even ignores the conventional practice of varying the material of the Pavane to form the ensuing Galliard which is its partner. The variation on a model movement was used by Scheidt, but usually in dances of a similar type: take, for example, the Courante No. 17, of which the variation, No.32 (ad imitationem Courant 17) forms the end of the work. A further example is the Galliard No. 24 which is a five-part version of the four-part Galliard No. 7. The different, highly artistic design of the individual dance movements by Scheidt reflects the stage of development of dance music and concert music. The Allemande and the Courante have only two repeated parts, and these parts in themselves show little musical development. The Allemande has the character of a functional dance-piece through its song-like melody and clear 4 and 8-bar phrases; on the other hand the increasingly polyphonic nature of the second half is evidence of the English characterisation of this dance which contrasts with the compact, plain form of the German type which is simply called Dantz. The old French court dance Courante, which was first introduced into Europe around 1600, and which was characterised by its buoyant 3/4 or 6/4 time, has similar dance-like features, for example, in the five-part No.23, where short melodic parts are linked tonally by means of a second high part written a third below the first part. For the most part the Galliards retain their rhythmically profiled, 3/4 time, dancelike character, full of courtly grace. All three parts of No. 25 have the even phrasing of 16 bars which corresponds with dance-figures. In No.24, the dance rhythm is also emphasised by, for example, repeated notes, however, the plain melodic phrases of the model (No. 7) are transformed into virtuoso figures and divided in alternating fashion between two high solo parts. This alternating between parts is expanded in the third section of the Galliard No. 25 to achieve the effect of two juxtaposed instrumental forces, over the fundamental structure of a diatonically ascending bass part. In No. 21 the alternating use of two instrumental groups is exploited programmatically in a Galliard Battaglia. The close succession of one motif upon another, their rivalry and final union in excited momentum bears witness to the genre of “musical battle” which had been so popular since Janequin’s chanson La Bataille (1530), The work Battle Galliard by John Dowland (1604), dedicated to the Danish king, was the direct model for Scheidt’s work which is typical in its ideas, with rhythmically emphasized repetitive notes, slow-moving harmony and fanfare-like motifs, Scheidt took Dowland’s original thematic concept in Battle Galliard and expanded it fourfold in his own work. He also rewrote it for Clavier under the title Galliard Dulenti variirt. The process of stylisation which can also be observed in the other dance movements reaches a final stage in the Pavanes which open Scheidt’s collection. The framework of dance music is finally broken. Serious and solemn in expression, intricate and tightly woven, built in three larger parts, they follow the type of the English Pavane, as V. Haussmann explicitly called them in 1604. They can only be called Pavanes in so far as they are characer pieces. Otherwise they already breathe the spirit of the free instrumental canzone. This is shown, for example, in the homogeneous thematic material moving in seconds in the manner of the old classical vocal polyphony at the beginning of Nos. 3 and 5, or in the constructive conception of the bass in the lamentoso steps in chromatic fourths in No.5 (Part II). The cantus-firmus type octave passage in No.6 (Part III) reminds us, when it transfers to the upper voice, of Monteverdi's Sonata sopra Sancta Maria (1610). Thus the Pavanes, with their intricately constructed voices, their imitation and filigree work present an example of the highly developed English chamber music of the Consorts. In spite of the fact that Scheidt did not put the single five-part Intrada (No. 22) at the beginning, it preserves, beyond its possible function as a processional march, the character of a festive opening music in C major. Scheidt’s work anticipates the duo concertante sonata form which was composed, for instance, by the Vienna Director of Court Music, J.H.Schmelzer, around 1660. In the 2nd part two soloists compete in three-part chord figures derived from the wind motifs which are extended in Part III also to a bass part. This baroque trio form is accompanied by standing notes on the other instruments. Thus the Intrada could also be performed without the continuo part as open-air music. The Intrada has an additional section in the more lively 6/4 time. This was derived from the habit of dance musicians of playing improvised versions of 2/4 dances in three time. The Pavane No. 3, for instance, has such a Nachtanz (added dance) in the so-called Proportion (proportia tripla). This rhythmic modification was formalized about 1600 in paired movements like Pavane-Gulliard and Allemande-Courante. Scheidt did not use these pairs, but artfully used this contrast of duple and triple times in the non-dance orchestral pieces, the Canzones. Sizewise the six large Canzones make up an entire half of the collection. They are instrumental pieces based on vocal themes, as Scheidt states himself. All three instrumental Canzones very distinctly show English influence. The Canzon ad imitationem Bergamasca Anglica consists of variations on a typical dancing song from Bergamo in Northern Italy which was known all over Europe; for instance, it was wittily quoted by Bach in his Goldberg Variations from the Augsburger Tafelkonfekt of 1733 where it had the text “Kraut und Rüben”. Scheidt keeps to the melodic form of the English virginal players Giles Farnaby and John Bull which was also used by his teacher Sweelinck. “Oh, neighbour Roland” was a melody very popular in England - William Byrd among others composed a piece for the virginal around it. In 1603 it was found in Ph. Hainhofer's Lute Tabulature “A Song of English Players performed here", which since Franck’s Quodlibet of 1611 became part of the German folksong repertoire as “Rolandston”. The Canzon super Cantionem Gallicam ses a widely known melody, the one of “Est-ce Mars”, the impudent chanson of the victory of Amor over the God of War, Mars. Scheidt himself followed up the Clavier variations by his teacher Sweelinck in 1624 with ten variations in his Tabulatura nova. Out of the tension between popular melodies and most elaborate five-part arrangement Scheidt created a completely new type of canzone. Admirable is the way in which Scheidt builds a spacious and varied piece from the two-bar phrases of the Bergamasca-melody. The construction of the setting is “English” (Anglica) with imitation and most elaborate fugues including stretto, canonic writing and double counterpoint. Already in 1604 V. Haussmann had rewritten the Rolandslied as a “Fuga” for the Hamburg musicians. Added to this three are the variations of the theme itself, also in expansion and contraction. Particularly drastic, however, is his changing of the rhythms into triple time which is at the same time an effective means of achieving contrasting expression. As in the Canzone on “Est-ce Mars", sections in animated dancing rhythms in triple time are found at the end of each of the three parts, making the subdivisions of fugues and variations of the three melodic sections transparently audible. The Canzon Bergamasca is conceived formally from the contrast of the lyrical first half of the theme and the playful and lively one of the second. Four different fugal statements of the first half are each contrasted with concertante sections on the second half of the theme. After the fourth part in changed bar time, with its cantus-firmus-like transformation of the theme, the shortened return of the first part completes the basic structure. The Canzon Cornetto on the other hand makes use of the typical rhythms of the Italian Canzona. The stipulation “Cornetto” (cornet) refers to the cornet player Zacharias Hartel from Halle to whom the Galliard Battaglia (No.21) is dedicated. This brings us to the question of the tonal realization. The written music only gives the structure of a piece; neither instrumentation nor dynamics and phrasing are fixed, but offer many possibilities of interpretation. The liberal attitude of the time also permitted improvisation around the written notes, manifold repetition of single parts, etc.. The title designates the pieces as particularly for viol players, as this had become accepted in Germany since Brade and Simpson. But Scheidt expects wind-players not only for the two pieces for cornet, Nos.18 and 21. In the title of the second part of Ludi musici Scheidt states that the pieces are optionally to be played on “4 violas da Gamba, 4 trombones, 4 bassoons, but also on cornets”. Further the repeating and alternating of motifs and figures suggest different types of orchestration already by the nature of the composition, partly in the form of two concertante juxtaposed instrumental groups. The musical structure, by means of temporary shifting of the lower voice into the tenor as Bassett in Nos.11 and 16 is also a special sound texture, as is the string tremolo at the climax of the Roland’s Canzone, The use of the bass continuo gives the Ludi musici thetraditional character of chamber music. In the tension between stylised society dance and artistic concert music the Ludi musici were used at many different functions, as table music and generally “for happy recreation of the heart” (Simpson 1610). Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller Translation: P H. Linnemann
EMI Electrola "Reflexe"