1 LP - Telefunken 6.42874 AZ (p) 1983
1 CD - Teldec 8.42874 ZK (c) 1984

ORIGINALINSTRUMENTE - Cembalo





John Bull (1562-1628) In Nomine IX
6' 25" A1

The King's Hunt
3' 46" A2

Queen Elizabeth's Chromatic Pavan and Galliard
10' 03"

- Chromatic Pavan 6' 43"
A3

- Chromatic Galliard 3' 23"
A4

Dutch Dance
1' 22" A5

Fantasia XII
6' 13" A6

Fantastic Pavan and Galiarda
9' 00"

- Fantastic Pavan 6' 44"
B1

- Galiarda 2' 16"
B2

In Nomine XII
3' 39" B3

Germanin's Alman
2' 32" B4

Fantasia X
4' 41" B5

Canon in subdiapente, two parts in one with a running base ad placitum
 6' 06" B6

Doctor Bull's My Selfe
0' 47" B7





 
Bob van ASPEREN, Cembalo (Ruckers, 1624)
 





Luogo e data di registrazione
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Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Recording Supervision
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Edizione LP
TELEFUNKEN - 6.42874 AZ - (1 LP - durata 55' 39") - (p) 1983 - Digitale

Originale LP
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Prima Edizione CD
TELDEC - 8.42874 ZK - (1 CD - durata 55' 39") - (c) 1984 - DDD

Note
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Cryptograms, lamentations, dances, satires, musical souvenirs, naturalistic and surrealistic fantasies, fatalistic canons..., all this paradoxical wealth is presented to us in the œuvre of Doctor John Bull, whom we may regard certainly as the most intriguing of the English virginalists.
As, in his most substantial works, we meet with tendencies which almost evoke the metaphysical, it does not necessarily surprise that this "musical doctor", born in Radnorshire, Wales, took a special interest in the occult sciences - like so many other artists and scholars those days - having several friends in hermetic circles and choosing to have his portrait painted, flanked by alchemistic symbols. As an organist of the Chapel Royal, Bull’s place in the hierarchy surrounding Elizabeth I is unclear.
In any case he was not one ofthe Queen’s private musicians as has generally been assumed. His services must have been important nonetheless, as he was recalled to London by Elizabeth in several letters during the course of a sick(?) - leave passed on the continent; he also received her special permission to give his lectures in English (as he obviously did not speak Latin fluently) and his name stood at the head of the list of the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal at the Queen’s funeral.
However, in connection with a serious scandal, in which he becomes involved in 1613, to avoid prosecution, he has to leave his home country hurriedly and seeks safety in the South Netherlands. As a catholic refugee he ends up inBrussels, entering the service of Austrian Archduke Albert (governor ot the Spanish Netherlands) to which court his friend and colleague, virginalist Peter Philips, had preceded him before.
Within a year he was dismissed though, through pressure from a furious James I, receiving nevertheless private gratuities from the Archduke for three years thereafter...
The 52-year old man now presented a request to the Mayor of Antwerp as a result of which he received alms to relieve his poverty, and was appointed as an organist at Antwerp cathedral, a position which he held until his death.
By what capricious, sometimes almost apocalyptic invention, coupled with learned austerity, this keyboard fanatic was driven, (upon being challenged by a musician to add a new part to a composition, he added fourty!) we may discover when looking upon him in the perspective of his contemporaries Byrd, Sweelinck and Philips, and most importantly of his predecessors; Preston, Farrant and Tallis. Possibly we should not underrate either the influence of l6th century composer William Blitheman, whose epitaph once contained the following lines:
In Nomine IX
Bull's most capital composition, in the form, as it were, of a crossword puzzle, brings the cantus firmus, the antiphon "Gloria tibi trinitas", in the bass. The remarkable 11/4 meter is formed from two groups of four and one group of three units.
The King's Hunt
A rare example of "painting from nature" in keyboard music, evoking the royal hunt of James I (after 1603).
Queen Elizabeth's Chromatic Pavan and Galliard
Was this perhaps written as a "tombeau" for the Virgin Queen? At the end of the Pavan we seem to hear the carillon (in a major key!) of high funeral bells...
Dutch Dance
The title might explain itself...
Fantasia XII
Contrasting fragments are accumulated in an improvisatory style.

Fantastic Pavan and Galiarda
An apocalyptic vision of this classic pair of dances.
In Nomine XII
A more diminutive rendering of this form than "In nomine IX", marked by an aleatory effect of bell-like syncopations.
Germain's Alman
Suggests a connection to the Court of St. Germain in Paris. during Bull's continental journey in 1601.
Fantasia X
This meditative bicinium later develops a curious chromatic bass ostinato.
Canon in subdiapente, two parts in one with a running base ad placitum
In this painfully worked-out "fugue" the two upper voices pursue one another at the fifth, over the continuous accompaniment of a so-called running bass.
The harpsichord used for this recording had remained at least since the eighteenth century at the castle of Condé-en-Brie (Aisne, France), and is now beeing kept in the Museum Unterlinden at Colmar (Alsace). It must have been built by Hans Ruckers the Younger in 1624 as a so-called transposing instrument, with two keyboards and two sets of strings (one eight-foot and one four-foot choir), a disposition which may be regarded as representative for a harpsichord from Bull's time.
In the course of several modifications during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it obtained amongst other things a larger keyboard compass (although the case was not enlarged!), and a second eight-foot register was added; also the "oldfashioned" transposition system was normalised and the instrument received its present elaborate baroque stand and decoration.
(Although this now enriched and more "expressive" harpsichord type was caracteristic for the later period, especially in France, it existed obviously already in the early 17th century as well, as several iconographic documents prove.)
The instruments recent restauration, finally, by Christopher Clarke and the atelier "Les Tempéraments Inégaux", Paris, permits us to verify also today the resonance and speaking quality for which the old Flemish harpsichord building was so highly prized.
A visual complement to the instruments eloquence presents itself in the striking, also younger painting within the lid: in an Arcadian landscape, king Midas judges the contest between Apollo and Pan...
Bob van Asperen