Luogo e data di registrazione		Villa Beatrice d'Este, Baone,Padova  (Italia): - 18/19 maggio 2010 (CD 1, clavicembalo) - 30 luglio 2010 (CD 2, clavicembalo) Chiesa di San Bernardino, Verona (Italia) - 28 luglio 2010 (CD 2, organo)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Sound Engineers		Matteo Costa, Gabriele Robotti
	Artistic direction		GianMichele Costantin
	Prima Edizione CD		BRILLIANT CLASSICS - 94109 - (2 CD's - durata 79' 48" & 64' 32") - (p) 2011 - DDD
	Cover		-
	Note		With the patronage of PROVINCIA DI PADOVA.

 

IL PRIMO LIBRO DELLE FANTASIE A QUATTRO This recording is dedicated primarily to the music from Frescobaldi’s second publication, his Fantasie of 1608. In that year the composer became firmly established in Rome, obtaining the coveted position of organist at St. Peter’s basilica, where his playing for most of the ensuing 35 years gained continued admiration for its virtuosity. He dedicated the Fantasie to Francesco Borghese, brother of the reigning Pope Paul V, a calculated move encouraged by his having already played many of them to the dedicatee, as he tells us in the dedication. It was the composer’s first keyboard publication and announced his arrival on the European stage. What sort of works did Frescobaldi choose for this important print? Significantly he picked pieces of a strongly contrapuntal nature. The term ‘fantasia’ could mean different things in the early 17th century but generally it described pieces in which consistent imitation between different ‘voices’ or sections of the keyboard played a key role. In Frescobaldi’s hands there is little to differentiate the Fantasia from the Ricercar (both were published in open score), while both are rather different from the more free-flowing Toccatas engraved on two staves. The fantasias are sectional works, based on between one and four distinct (though sometimes related) subjects or themes. Successive sections can be quite contrasted, often having changes of time-signature. They are complex works written for cognoscenti and include devices such as augmentation and diminution which are not easily heard without consulting the score. This is not to say that they cannot be appreciated without reading the music, but the full extent of their ability to combine both rigour and imagination only hits home on repeated listening. The twelve fantasias are organised into four groups of three, based successively on one, two, three and four motives. These are introduced at the start of each fantasia; additional counter-subjects provide rhythmic and harmonic variety. The fantasias are also grouped in pairs in ascending modal order, using the twelve-mode system of Glareanus rather than the traditional eight-mode ecclesiastical system. The two fantasias in each pair use a different part of their particular modal range, those with odd numbers being generally a fourth higher than those with even numbers. On this recording the Fantasia pairs are sandwiched with seven canzonas, part of a set of eleven from a manuscript now in the British Library (the remaining four appear on the recording of Canzoni alla Francese, CD2). The instrumental canzona started life in the early 16th century imitating French vocal chansons and gradually developed an independent existence. It is similar to the fantasia in structure, with a series of sections, each based on a basic musical idea; changes between duple to triple time often mark out the different sections here too. While some doubt remains about the authenticity of these canzonas they certainly adequately represent Frescobaldi’s late canzona style in which sections are separated by improvisatory-like passages, some with virtuoso fingerwork, giving the whole work both flexibility and continuity. On this recording the player improvises briefly at the beginning of each canzona, following the custom of the time and using Frescobaldi’s own toccatas as models. The recording commences with one such toccata, taken from the same British Library manuscript, which displays features common to the genre: short passages capturing particular moods come in quick succession, with musical ideas moving between the hands and featuring bravura fingerwork at the end. Canzona Prima is also typical of its genre, featuring the common long-short-short rhythm in the first main subject (after the opening improvisation) and following with a series of contrasting sections; the others follow a similar pattern. The first two fantasias are in the transposed Dorian mode on G with one subject each, transformed rhythmically in successive sections. The theme of the first resembles the plainchant litany refrain which everyone at the time would have known. Fantasia Seconda’s subject uses the stepwise falling fourth which in this period signified sorrow and weeping, and was most famously used by the English composer John Dowland to set the words ‘Flow my tears’. In the final section Frescobaldi increases the tension by adding a semitone to make a partly chromatic fourth. The third and fourth fantasias are in the Phrygian mode, the third based on a simple rising and falling semitone pattern (E–F–E) typical of that mode. The fourth has two complementary subjects: one features a leap of a fourth, followed by stepwise descent, while the other moves by step both up and down a fourth, later filled out chromatically as in the second fantasia. The two subjects of the Lydian fifth fantasia are mirror images of each other, making the whole piece very homogenous. Fantasia Sexta contrasts a strong four-note subject in slow notes with a quicker repeated-note figure, though augmentation and diminution later changes the relationship between the two. The next two three-subject fantasias, in the Mixolydian mode, use very similar themes and rely on rhythmic transformations for variety. Fantasia Ottava ends with another dark chromatic section. The ninth fantasia in the Aeolian mode is the most chromatic of the set, with Frescobaldi exploiting the unequal semitones produced in meantone tuning. Two of the four subjects of Fantasia Decima are simply inversions of the other two; it too turns chromatic at the end. Each of the final two fantasias relies on a strong first subject for its character: Fantasia Undecima uses a falling fifth followed by a rising fourth while Fantasia Duodecima uses the same C–A–D–C motive found at the start of the sixth fantasia, linking this final fantasia with that at the halfway mark. Written in the Ionian mode on F (essentially our modern F major), they provide a strong conclusion to the set. In Frescobaldi’s hands the three genres represented here have much in common, each blending improvisation with contrapuntal rigour in slightly different proportions. Although the fantasias and canzonas come from both ends of Frescobaldi’s creative life, they fit together convincingly, united by the composer’s lifelong exploitation of the creative tension between formal precision and imaginative extemporization. CANZONI ALLA FRANCESE The canzona alla francese for keyboard or other instruments originated in the early 16th century as an arrangement of the popular French vocal chanson. Before long, composers began to write canzonas independently of vocal originals, while continuing to follow the same basic pattern: a succession of different sections in which a series of simple musical motives was imitated and worked through the different ranges of the keyboard or of different instruments. The musical material was simple and tuneful and the genre’s attraction lay in the skill with which composers manipulated it. Many canzonas start with an opening motive in dactylic rhythm (long–short–short) which became somewhat totemic of the genre, though not an essential component. The opening notes often repeated the same pitch or exploited a well-defined interval such as a fourth or fifth. Canzonas could be used in all sorts of contexts, both sacred and secular. Frescobaldi, for example, included some as part of the organ Masses in his Fiori musicali print of 1635, to be played after the Epistle or at the end of Mass. They could be played during meals or on other social and ceremonial occasions, both indoors and outside. Since they had a sectional structure they could be shortened or extended according to the needs of a particular occasion. Their composition was very much the bread and butter work of instrumental composers in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The keyboard canzonas on this recording come from three quite separate sources. The first five were published by Frescobaldi in 1615, together with ten ricercars, and represent his earliest works in this genre. Numbers one to three are in the Dorian mode, transposed up a fourth to G: the third, in the secondo rather than the primo tono, occupies the range of a fourth lower than the first two. All three are in five sections, delineated by changes from duple to triple time or vice versa. The first canzona uses a different theme for each section, the only one of this group to do so. The other two are examples of what is called a variation canzona, where successive sections are based on versions of the same theme; this can be transformed rhythmically and melodically in all sorts of ways, but the basic interval pattern is retained, with a series of countermelodies adding colour and rhythmic contrast. The motive of Canzona Seconda rises by step to a fourth above before leaping down the same fourth and then back up again; Canzona Terza does the reverse, descending stepwise by a fourth before leaping back up and then down again. In the fourth and fifth canzonas the opening motive returns in the concluding section, after segments based on other themes, though the return is heavily disguised in the case of the A mode Canzona Quinta. Canzona Quarta is the longest of this set, in seven sections; it is in the true Lydian mode on F, without a B flat in the key signature, and also has a couple of freely-composed link bars between some of the sections, a feature more commonly found in the later canzonas. The next eleven canzonas come from a posthumous publication of 1645, printed in Venice two years after Frescobaldi’s death. We can be pretty confident that these are genuine works and they show how the composer’s approach to canzonas developed over his lifetime. The titles, referring to Venetian personalities, were assigned by the publisher, Alessandro Vincenti. All but two are played here on the harpsichord which helps bring out their greater quirkiness and allows the performer freedom for improvisation in the link passages, which regularly occur between sections, and at the end. These passages have much of the freer toccata style about them, with virtuoso passaggi or written-out ornamental figuration; this is particularly so in Canzonas 4, 6 and 8. All eleven are variation canzonas with a single underlying musical motive. Modally these 1645 canzonas are quite polarised, with five in F Lydian (numbers 2, 4, 5, 8 and 9 – though only Canzona Quinta is in true Lydian mode without B flats) and four in G Dorian (1, 3, 6 and 7). Of the remaining two the tenth is in A Aeolian and the final canzona is in G Mixolydian. There is a correlation between mode and opening motive, reflecting the common plainsong patterns which helped define those modes. An upward leap of a fourth generally characterises the Lydian and Mixolydian canzonas, while those in G Dorian feature filled-in downward fifths or stepwise movement. The Aeolian Canzona Nona has perhaps the most distinctive subject of all, combining an upward leap of a fourth with repeated notes. By filling out the fourth in the second section Frescobaldi creates an even more memorable version which he could not resist repeating at the end. The third and fourth canzonas in this set are played on the organ. This is particularly appropriate for the very homogenous Canzona Terza which has no tempo changes; there is a nice chromatic touch to the end of its motive which is exploited as the piece progresses. Canzona Quarta demonstrates that the free link-passages can also work idiomatically on the organ. The longest and most imaginative of the set, it even includes a short passage of ligature (dissonant suspensions and resolutions), which leads via two short sections to a final toccata-like flourish. The final four canzonas on this recording come from a manuscript preserved in the British Library where they are the last four in a set of eleven attributed to Frescobaldi (the other seven appear on the recording of the 1608 Fantasie in this series). They show further stylistic development over the 1645 set, especially in more elaborate improvisatory openings and link passages between sections, and could possibly be the work of a later composer though, if so, an accomplished one well steeped in Frescobaldi’s style. They retain the inventiveness shown in the 1645 canzonas, using even shorter motives and expanding harmonic and tonal possibilities. For Frescobaldi, writing canzonas was much more than a routine chore: it provided a template which allowed him to explore some of his most imaginative ideas and show off his technical ability with considerable panache. © Noel O’Regan, 2011