1 LP - 1C 069-1466961 - (p) 1983

1 CD - 8 26534 2 - (c) 2000
1 CD - CDM 7 63147 2 - (c) 1989

VON VENEDIG NACH WIEN - Frühe Kammermusik im 17. Jahrhundert




Dario Castello (1. Hälfte d. 17. Jh.)

- Sonata quarta a 2 (aus "Libro primo Sonate concertate", Venezia 1658) - Violine, Viola da gamba, Orgel 4' 21"
- Sonata seconda a soprano solo (aus "Libro secondo", Venezia 1644) - Violine, Cembalo 4' 47"
Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643)


- Toccata decima (aus "Secondo Libro di Toccate", Roma 1637) - Cembalo 4' 15"
- Canzon terza (aus "Secondo Libro di Toccate", Roma 1637) - Orgel 5' 09"
- Canzon quinta a basso solo detta la Tromboncina (aus "Il Primo Libro delle Canzoni", Roma 1628) - Viola da gamba, Cembalo 4' 36"
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704)

- Sonata IV (aus "Sonatae a violino solo", Salzburg 1681) - Violine, Orgel
11' 41"



Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1623-1680)

- Sonata terza (aus "Sonatae Unarium Fidium", Nürnberg 1644) - Violine, Viola da gamba, Cembalo 6' 48"
Johann Jakob Froberger (1616-1667)

- Toccata 2 (Mainz 1699) - Cembalo 3' 51"
- Canzon 2 (aus "Libro secondo di toccate, fantasie... gigue et altre partite", Wien 1649) - Orgel 4' 36"
Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde (1570/80-1638)

- Canzon a 2 Tenori (aus "Primo Libro Canzoni", Venezia 1638) - 2 Viole da gamba, Orgel 4' 34"
Johann Nicolai (1629-1685)

- Sonata a 2 Viol d Gamb: et basso contonuo (aus "Manuskript Durham.D.IO.") - 2 Viole da gamba, Orgel 3' 53"
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1623-1680)

- Sonata a 2 (aus "Manuskript BL Add ms 31423") - Violine, Viola da gamba, Orgel
5' 14"



 
LONDON BAROQUE
- Ingrid Seifert, Barockvioline (Anonymus, München ca. 1670)
- Charles Medlam, Viola da gamba (Barak Norman, London 1718)

- William Hunt, Viola da gamba (Anonymus, engl. ca. 1670)
- John Toll, Cembalo un Orgel



Cembalo: Bill Dow, 1978 nach italienischem Vorbild an Italian model.
Orgel: Justin Sillman, 1982 nach einer englischen Kammerorgel del 17. Jh..
 






Luogo e data di registrazione
Temple Church, London (Inghilterra) - 8-10 giugno 1982

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Producer / Engineer
Gerd Berg / Neville Boyling / Mark Vigars


Prima Edizione LP
EMI Electrola "Reflexe" - 1C 069-1466961 - (1 lp) - durata 64' 59" - (p) 1983 - DMM (Analogico)

Prima Edizione CD
EMI "Classics" - CDM 7 63147 2 - (1 cd) - durata 64' 59" - (c) 1989 - ADD

Edizione CD
EMI "Classics" - 8 26534 2 - (1 cd) - durata 64' 57" - (c) 2000 - ADD

Note
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London BaroqueFROM VENICE TO VIENNA
Early chamber music of the 17th century

Very little is known about the life of the Venetian composer Dario Castello. The title of his first collection of instrumental works describes him as “Già Capo di Compagnia de Musichi d’instrumenti da fiato in Venetia” (head of the players at St Mark’s) whereas his second book of pieces has “Musico Della Serenissima Signoria di Venetia In S. Marco, & capo di Compagnia de lnstrumenti” (head of the instrumentalists). His first book contains 12 sonatas in two and three parts. Some are for two treble instruments and bass, some for treble, tenor and bass, and others for two violins and “fagotto”. The second book is more enterprising and contains two sonatas for treble and bass, a number for larger forces, in which pairs of violins or cornetti are set against trombones or other strings, and two sonatas in four parts specifically for string ensemble. The treble instrument for parts labelled “soprano” could be violin, cornetto or recorder according to the lie of the part. The middle part is usually labelled “trombon overo viola” and can be played on an alto or tenor trombone, or a tenor or bass string instrument such as the viol or an early form of cello. Similarly, the bass part can be played either on a string bass or the dulcian, an early form of bassoon which was the most prominent solo bass instrument of Castello's Venice. The bass trombone is an unlikely choice since many of the parts are extremely virtuoso. Castello’s writing for each instrument is perfectly idiomatic and we can only speculate which instrument or instruments he played himself. The Sonata quarta from Castello's first book is a typical Venetian sonata of the period: it alternates between fugal and homophonic textures and triple and duple time, and includes solo passages for each instrument. The lower part is only intermittently independent of the bass line, so that the texture varies between two and three real parts. The Sonata seconda from his second book seems to have been composed more with the violin in mind: it goes below the range of the cornetto and soprano recorder, exploits the whole musical and emotional range of the violin and makes use of violinistic arpeggio figuration. The sonata alternates between the old polyphonic style and the new monodic vocabulary, where rhapsodic passages are “invented” over held chords. In addition, some eastern-flavoured ornamentation towards the very end of the sonata as passages make this perhaps the most finely balanced piece in Castello's output and one of the most formally satisfying in all the classical period of Venetian instrumental music.
Girolamo Frescobaldi was born in Ferrara in 1583. At that time Ferrara was one of the most important cultural centres of Italy and its duke, Alfonso II d`Este, was a keen musician (he is reported to have liked between two and four hours of music a day at court). Frescobaldi studied with the court organist Luzzaschi and was presumbaly influenced in one way or another by the arrival in 1594 of the mannerist madrigal composer Gesualdo, whose chromatic style pushed the prevailing harmonic language to its absolute limit. Unfortunately the d’Este court was disbanded in 1597 because of the lack of an heir and the once brilliant circle was dispersed. By at least 1604 Frescobaldi was in Rome, where he became a member of the Accademia di S Cecilia and subsequently organist at St Peter’s. Here he enjoyed the patronage of the artistically influential and enormously wealthy Cardinal Aldobrandini. In 1607 Frescobaldi spent ten months in Brussels with another patron, Guido Bentevoglio, who had been appointed Papal Nuncio there and took Frescobaldi with him in his entourage. Here he would definitely have met the English keyboard virtuoso Peter Philips and also possibly Sweelinck, who was at Amsterdam. After an exasperating three months of negotiations with the Gonzagas at Mantua - the same administrative difficulties that Monteverdi encountered - Frescobaldi moved to Florence, where he was court organist until in 1634 he moved back to Rome, where he died some nine years later. He seems to have been a rather rough and somewhat irregular personality: he was hardly able, if one report is to be believed, to write his own name and appeared to have married as a result of a bastard son.
His second book of toccatas and canzonas (Il secondo libro di toccate, canzone, versi d’hinni, Magnificat, gagliarde, correnti et altri partite d’intavolatura di cimbalo et organo) was published in 1637 in Rome. In addition to all the things mentioned on the title page it contains an interesting example of the old technique of setting a wellknown song as a keyboard piece with the parts embellished, something he must have learned from his teacher Luzzaschi. Frescobaldi's toccatas feature the closest possible juxtaposition of contrasting elements in an improvisatory style in which material is seldom repeated or used again. His source of inspiration seems to have been much the same as that of the “tenebristi”, a school of painters originating with Caravaggio and the Caracci brothers and their striking “chiaroscuro” technique. His canzonas are rather stricter, with fewer free passages between the contrapuntal sections and the themes often telescoped towards the end for extra intensity.
Probably one of the greatest violin virtuosos of all time was Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. Born in Wartenberg near Reichenberg (now Liberec) in Bohemia, he soon entered the service of Prince-Bishop Karl, Count Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn of Olomouc at Kromĕříž (Kremsier) in central Moravia. This was one of the most important centres of instrumental music in the German-speaking world and the library at the monastery still holds most of the known manuscripts of Biber’s compositions. In about 1670 he moved to Salzburg, where his duties were to provide both sacred and secular compositions for the archbishop. The exact circumstances of Biber’s departure from
Kromĕříž are not known; but Prince Karl, in a letter to Schmelzer in Vienna about new players for his orchestra at Olomouc, writes, “Biber, the fellow who slipped away, played the violin, bass and viola da gamba: he also composed tolerably well”. His first appointment at Salzburg was as trainer of the choirboys, from which he was promoted to second and eventually (in 1684) first Kapellmeister. His output comprises several collections for all sorts of wind and string instruments, the most unusual being those for his own instrument, the violin. His first (undated) collection consists of 16 programmatic sonatas, each illustrating an event from the scriptures. All of these have a different tuning for the violin, known as “scordatura", a device which Biber often used to extend the sonority and chordal possibilities of the instrument. The sonatas also use every conceivable bowing refinement: ricochet arpeggiation, flying staccato in both directions, tremolos and unusual pairings and slurrings. The pieces of his 1681 set are mostly in the normal tuning and are generally longer and more virtuoso. The fourth sonata from this set consists of a slow-fast prelude, a gigue with two variations, a rhapsodic “gypsy” section in the minor and an aria with four variations which concludes with a long dominant pedal over which the violin plays with a number of suitably bizarre motives.
The other great violinist of the German-speaking world in the 17th century was Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. In contrast to Biber, Schmelzer seldom uses any other than the normal tuning of the violin (only one instance is known) and only rarely calls for double stops. Born some time in the early 1620s the son of a baker in Scheibbs in Lower Austria, he was already playing in the Hofkapelle in Vienna while still in his teens. He was not however formally appointed as a violinist in the court orchestra until 1649. He seems to have spent his whole life at the Viennese court, composing chamber and ballet music for court productions and even helping Emperor Leopold I with his compositions. His collection of violin sonatas, Sonatae Unarum Fidium (Nuremberg, 1644), was the first outside Italy for violin and basso continuo. The third sonata in G minor is a set of variations on the bass of the first ten bars - the melody could be a popular song of the time or Schmelzer’s own - and contains one of his few passages in double stops. Like Biber he exploits the full upper range of the instrument, going up as far as an octave and a third above the open E string. His manuscript sonata in D minor shows many of the same characteristics as the Sonata a due by Castello. Similar in form and dialogue between the instruments, the piece has a richer harmonic language and a later and more Germanic feel about it, and the lower string instrument's part shows a greater emancipation from the bass line.
Johann Jakob Froberger came from a family of Halle musicians but was born in Stuttgart, where his father and elder brother were employed in the court orchestra. By 1634 he was in Vienna, where he aroused the interest of Ferdinand III, who financed a period of study with Frescobaldi in Rome. He was in Vienna again between 1653 and 1658, having made various journeys in the meantime. He spent some time in Paris, where he came into contact with Chambonnières, Louis Couperin and the lutenist Gaultier. His journey to London was less fortunate. It appears that he was robbed on the boat to Dover and as result had to find employment as an organblower, a circumstance which was beneficial for posterity at least, as he wrote an exceptionally powerful allemande to document the experience. A further period of study with Carissimi is mentioned, but sadly virtually no vocal compositions nor any for any instrument except the keyboard have come down to us. Froberger must have been one of the most cosmopolitan musicians of his age: he excelled in all the available forms and styles of his time. He is perhaps the first composer in the history of western music to define tonality with total precision. Froberger spent his last years in the service of Sibylla of Württemberg-Montbéliard at Héricourt in France, where he died in 1667. His toccatas and canzonas reproduce the form and spirit of those of his teacher Frescobaldi but show an additional organisation and classicism which stems from his advanced tonal vocabulary and resulting harmonic perspective.
Fra Bartolomé de Selma y Salaverde was an Augustinian friar of Spanish origin who worked in Italy but was also employed by Karl Ferdinand of Austria and the Archduke Leopold, who employed him in Innsbruck between 1628 and 1630. He appears to have been a virtuoso dulcian player, to judge by the prefatory sonnet by a fellow padre in his collection of Canzoni, fantasie et correnti, which describes him as the Orpheus of the bassoon, and some of his canzonas are variations for dulcian on popular songs. His sonata for two tenor instruments is the only one of its kind in the collection.
Johann Michael Nicolai appears to have been greatly respected in his own time. He published three collections of instrumental music, and the wide dispersal of manuscripts containing his works testifies to the great interest shown in his compositions and more specifically in those for unusual combinations, such as two and three bass viols. His A minor Sonata for two bass viols and continuo was probably conceived as the first movement of a dance suite and comes from an important collection of bass viol pieces from all countries and in all combinations in the library at Durham Cathedral. Nicolai was born near Weimar about 1629 and after a period in the service of the Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg moved to Stuttgart, where he spent the rest of his life as a member of the court orchestra.
Charles Medlam, 1983

EMI Electrola "Reflexe"