Program
Program Notes

Plaine and Easie

Continental Connections:
Musical Channel Crossing

Saturday, November 13, 2010 8:00 pm Synod Hall

A brisk international trade in music and musicians brought songs and dances by Europe's great composers to the courts, taverns, and theatres of 16th and 17th century London. Our selection for the first Emerging artist program are the winners of the Early Music America Competition 2009, who bring you a program ranging from bodaciously bawdy to serenely cerebral, lyrical to danceBLE - a melange of English, Italian, French, Dutch, and Spanish music.

Programme

Continental Connections:
Musical Channel Crossing

LINDA TSATSANIS, SOPRANO
SHULAMIT KLEINERMAN, VIOLIN
NATHAN WHITTAKER, BASS VIOLIN
JOHN LENTI, LUTE

SEE, SEE, MINE OWN SWEET JEWEL MISTRESS WINTER’S JUMP THOUGH PHILOMELA LOST HIR LOVE	THOMAS MORLEY (C. 1557-1602) ATTR. JOHN DOWLAND (1563-1626) THOMAS MORLEY
SUSANNE UN JOUR SUSANNE UNG JOUR	ORLANDO DI LASSO (C. 1532-1594) GIOVANNI BASSANO (C. 1558-1617)
LA BOUNETTE LA DOUNE CELLA LA SHY MYZE EN VRAI AMOUR	ANON. (THE MULLINER BOOK, C. 1545-1570) HENRY VIII
SI LE PARLER ET LE SILENCE SIR ROBERT SIDNEY, HIS GALLIARD AUX PLAISIRS, AUX DÉLICES, BERGÈRE	PIERRE GUÉDRON (C.1570-1620) JOHN DOWLAND PIERRE GUÉDRON

Intermission

PAVANE DE SPAIGNE PASSAVA AMOR SU ARCO DESARMADO THE OLD SPAGNOLETTA MUY LINDA VUESTROS OJOS TIENEN D’AMOR	MICHAEL PRAETORIUS ANON. (MUSICALL BANQUET, 1610) GILES FARNABY (C. 1560-C. 1600) ANTHONY HOLBORNE (C. 1545-1602) ANON. (MUSICALL BANQUET)
FLOW MY TEARS LACHRIME PAVAEN IN DARKNESS LET ME DWELL	JOHN DOWLAND JOHANN SCHOP (C. 1590-1667) JOHN DOWLAND
EV’RY SINGING BIRD DUO FANTASIA A 3 AMARILLI MIA BELLA	LUCA MARENZIO (C. 1553-1599) ENGLISH TRANS. THOMAS WATSON (CA. 1557-1592) ALFONSO FERRABOSCO (C. 1543-1588) BASSANO GIULIO CACCINI (1551-1618)/ JACOB VAN EYCK (C. 1589/90-1657)/ANON.
CHI PASSA PER ’STA STRADA>	FILIPPO AZZAIOLO (1530 - 1569)

PROGRAM NOTES

Continental Connections: Musical Channel Crossing

London in the early seventeenth century was, as now, one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities and a productive center (viz., centre) of literature, art and music. The turn of the century comprised some of the best years of Shakespeare and John Donne, Nicholas Hilliard and Anthony van Dyck, William Byrd, Thomas Morley and myriad others. The kind of people that patronized the great artists of the Elizabethan era were of a rare breed: fabulously wealthy, powerful people with exquisite taste, one of whom was very much in charge and could have any of the others beheaded. There weren’t many of them, and they all knew each other. As such, we hardly need imagine the gossip and intrigue and rumors that must have flown among these elect patrons of the artistic giants of their time.

What whispers there must have been, for example, among the musical cognoscenti, among the fashionable amateur-lutenist set, among the power brokers at the royal court when in 1610 John Dowland, the greatest lutenist of his time, the composer of the Lachrimae pavane (renaissance Europe’s greatest hit) and of three volumes of lute songs, one of which (Volume 1) was already in its third printing, returned home to England after becoming one of the greatest celebrities in the hemisphere, only to be passed over for a job at the royal court for the fifth time. While he had gotten himself in trouble for being Catholic back in the 1580s, and had a bit of a reputation for being kind of surly, Dowland would have been a prestigious ornament for any court; indeed, he had already spent some years in what he referred to as a kind of exile, as one of Europe’s best-paid musicians in the court of Christian IV of Denmark.

It has never been fully explained why Dowland, the greatest Elizabethan lutenist and songwriter, was never in the employ of Elizabeth herself, but intrigues aside, what is of greater interest is what he brought back with him from his years abroad, and to a certain extent what he left in Europe when he went home. Dowland mentions a wife and some children in some correspondence, the only one for whom we have a Christian name being a son, Robert. Shortly after Dowland’s return in 1610, Robert, not yet twenty, published two anthologies, A Varietie of Lute-lessons and A Musicall Banquet. The Varietie is a collection of solo lute music from most of the best-known lutenists of the late sixteenth century, English, Italian, French, and northern European. The Banquet is a stupendous collection of songs for voice and lute, mostly also with a written bass line, English, French, Italian and Spanish. The Italian ones, such as Caccini’s “Amarilli”, are of special interest to lutenists as they provide fully written-out examples of contemporary continuo practice. It’s a little surprising to find any Spanish numbers included, particularly as Hispano-British relations were a trifle frosty right around the end of the sixteenth century, something to do with an Armada or something. As it has been for musicians of every era, however, music with what Jelly Roll Morton called “the Spanish tinge” never fails to pique the enthusiasm of an audience, and composers from Holborne to Ravel have done some of their most charming work in the Spanish idiom. Pierre Guédron’s “Si le parler” was included as a truly breathtaking example of the tone of hushed innuendo that characterizes the best of French courtly song. We also include a gay pastoral ditty with less innuendo and more happy shepherds.

Since we have no reason to believe that young Robert had ever left London by the time of these two ambitious publications, we can presume that John Dowland (who contributed at least nine pieces to the Varietie and two songs to the Banquet, including the real black pearl of the collection and of tonight’s program, “In darkness let me dwell”) handed his kid a couple of reams of music he had collected in his years on the Continent and helped him sort them into a couple of viable commercial publications.

Something else Dowland picked up while in Europe was Orlando di Lasso’s chanson “Susanne un jour”, which enjoyed great popularity throughout the late sixteenth century. Dowland borrowed Susanne and reworked it as a galliard, The Right Honourable the Lord Viscount Lisle...his galliard. Both on the Continent and in England, Susanne was the basis of dozens of instrumental pieces. Our inclusion of Bassano’s diminutions (extravagant ornamentation of the melody) gives some indication of the improvisatory practices to which the tune was frequently subjected.

Now, what did Dowland leave in Europe?

The Lachrimae pavane is one of the first real hits in world music. It’s best known as the song “Flow my teares,” but it seems Dowland wrote the instrumental version some time before he set words to it. The famous “tear” motif that opens the song is likely traceable to a madrigal by Luca Marenzio, but wherever the material came from, Dowland worked it into a melancholy lather at a time when melancholy was terribly fashionable, and the piece survives in at least 100 continental sources. Though Schop was born a little later than most of our composers, his treatment of the theme shows a not only good example of improvisatory style, but demonstrates the currency that Lachrimae retained on the Continent even a few decades after its composition.

Dowland has also received credit for the charming dance tune “Mistress Winter’s Jump,” which was picked up later and printed by Michael Praetorius.

Marenzio, the probable supplier of the tear motif, was already well-known in England from the inclusion of a number of his madrigals in the successful 1588 publication, Musica Transalpina. This collection of Italian madrigals with English words, from which we take “Ev’ry singing bird” (originally “Vezzosi augelli”), started a bit of a mania in England for Italianate madrigals, and Thomas Morley (whose Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke gives our ensemble its name) took to the new style with aplomb, writing not only scads of charming madrigals but also many light canzonets and instrumental compositions with the same lithe contrapuntal charm and pictorial writing as his Italian models.

All this foreign musical flavor was not new to London, however. The Tudor court had been importing musicians for years, from Philip van Wilder to the Ferraboscos (Alfonso senior, Alfonso junior) and the Bassano family (huge clan of instrument makers and musicians). Henry VIII himself wrote a number of rather good French chansons and dances with French titles. Besides the ostentatious cosmopolitanism of the royal court (where the actual Britishness of just about every British monarch was and is a matter of some debate) and the fashionable circles that surrounded it, Filippo Azzaiolo’s “Chi passa” was one of those catchy numbers that survived in so many forms that it’s nearly impossible to think of 16th-century London, and not just the fabulously wealthy part, not resounding with it. Indeed, it was listed as a tune for at least a few broadside ballads, so without doubt, it was known and whistled by common folk. Here it is with its original words, with our own divisions (variations) interspersed.

—John Lenti

   

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