Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI

“The court of Europe”: this could be an alternative title for a program that offers an overview of great composers who lived in different European regions between the Renaissance and the Baroque, at a time when forms and compositional techniques of the 16th century coexisted with those of the new century—the “new music,” Monteverdi’s “second practice”—which also appeared in the world of instrumental music. This new music could be completely unknown or reappear like an old friend,who changes over time while maintaining characteristic features. Thus we find a series of dances that still partly refer to the Renaissance world alongside toccatas and fantasies decidedly in line with the new aesthetics.

Tonight’s program is ordered chronologically: we start from three Renaissance pieces collected in the first edition of Capricci in musica by Vincenzo Ruffo and here arranged as a small suite. Ruffo, from Verona with a musical career in Northern Italy, was appointed Maestro di Cappella of the Duomo of Milan in 1563, and the following year dedicated his collection of Capricci to Marc’Antonio Martinengo Marquis of Villachiara—partially to signal himself to the local nobles, voracious consumers of instrumental music. With La Gamba and La Disperata is also a piva, fast dance of popular origin that was already belonged to the context of the 15th-century dance and that, although apparently absent from the choreographic world of the 16th century, appears sporadically in instrumental music collections of the time.

The two selections by Emilio de’ Cavalieri are emblematic pieces: The first is part of a composition that is vying for the rights of primogeniture as compared to the “new music” then beginning to emerge. The second is notable for its incredible popularity; it belongs to the cycle of Intermedii that first appeared during a time of exceptional ferment and experimentation that will lead to the birth of the opera.

A well-known dance between the 16th and 17th centuries was the gagliarda, built on a basic scheme of five dance steps on six beats of music, which could also be varied choreographically in a very virtuosoc ways. It was usually preceded by a Pavane with a slower course and the character of a procession; the gagliarda was very popular both as a dance and in instrumental form. The Earle of Peembrookes Galiard, by the London composer and soldier Tobias Hume, is contained in the collection Poeticall Musicke (1607) together with Start; this collection constitutes the first repertoire composed for lyra viola (a kind of viola da gamba), the real protagonist of Hume’s songs. Other Gagliardes are proposed during the program with more specific connotations: the Battle of the German Samuel Scheidt and the Gallarda Napolitana by the blind Neapolitan Antonio Valente.

The famous anonymous song “Greensleeves to a Ground” reminds us of another element very present in the musical practice of the time throughout Europe, namely the composition on a basso ostinato (a ground, in English), on which the other parts propose a series of variations.

Continuing we will listen to the Ciaccona, whose presence is attested in Spain already at the end of the 16th century. Traditionally accompanied by guitars, tambourines, and castanets both in Spain and in Italy (especially in Naples) the Ciaccona was often introduced in theatrical performances of the commedia dell’arte. The Italian variant is more exuberant than the Spanish one; it has a faster time, and prefers greater shades. Andrea Falconiero will introduce us to a Ciaccona with three voices, in which the three instrumental parts launch into a passionate back-and-forth.

Another important musical form at this time is that of the canzona, a term that developed largely in Italy around the 17th century; it is described by Michael Praetorius as “a series of short fugues for ensembles of four, five, six, eight, or more parts, with a repetition of the first at the end.” Girolamo Frescobaldi dedicated himself on several occasions to this type of instrumental composition: the songs we will listen to this evening belong to the First Book of Songs, published in Rome in 1628. The edition was prepared and put into score by the composer’s pupil Bartolomeo Grassi who, as is explained in the afterword of the work, gave each of the 37 songs a dedicatory name inspired by the names of gentlemen from Lucca.

The viola da gamba, in different sizes and different combinations, is the protagonist this evening: the instrument, born around the 15th century, had great success due to its ability to express itself in consort, in homogeneous ensembles or mixed with different instruments, and as a soloist, pushed to levels of virtuosity; today’s program, in addition to demonstrating the musical richness of early 17th-century instrumental music, also makes clearl the different shades of the voice of the viola.

—Text by Francesca Pinna in collaboration with the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage, University of Pavia, Cremona campus