The Myth of Venice: 16th Century Music for Cornetto & Keyboards
Gawain Glenton (Curved cornetto at A=465, Mute cornetto at A=465)
Silas Wollston (Metal-pipe organ, Organo di legno, virginals)
rec. April 13-15, 2021; St. Saviour’s Church, Hampstead.
DELPHIAN DCD34261 [61:50]
The title of this CD might, I suppose, be thought ambiguous. Could it be meant to suggest that Venice’s reputation as a great cultural centre during the Renaissance was a ‘myth’ – i.e. “a widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief” (Oxford English Dictionary, sense 2a). Clearly no such meaning is intended, given the statements made by Gawain Glenton in his excellent booklet notes, from which an edited quotation follows – “During the sixteenth century, Venice developed an international reputation as the model city; wealthy, independent, militarily strong and architecturally rich […] The emergence of this view both at home and abroad was no accident. It was in fact deliberately and painstakingly cultivated by generations of Venetian politicians and rulers who, time and again, took strategic decisions to enhance the standing of the city. These included commissioning opulent architectural projects”. And, as Ellen Rosand puts it, “Within the rhetoric of Venetian propaganda, music assumed a particularly relevant role, the appropriate symbol of a government well-tempered, harmonious, consonant, balanced in the relationship of its parts” ('Music in the Myth of Venice', Renaissance Quarterly, 30, 1977, pp.511-37. Quotation from p. 512). Justifiably, and fittingly, Rosand quotes (p.514) words from Francesco Sansovino's Venetia città nobilissima, et singolare of 1581, “musica ha la sua proprià sede in questa città” (music has its own proper home in this city).
Venetian propagation of its ‘myth’ had an efficiency and success that any modern PR business would be proud of. However, unlike many such modern campaigns, it had the advantage that most of Renaissance Venice’s claims (whether made explicitly or implicitly) were true, being essentially based on a reality confirmed by many foreign visitors and modern historians. So, for example, the eccentric English traveller (and famous walker), Thomas Coryat wrote thus about a concert (of (1608) in the Scuola di S. Rocco – “I heard the best musicke that ever I did in all my life […] so good that I would willingly goe an hundred miles a foote at any time to heare the like. The place where it was, is neare to Saint Roches Church, a very sumptuous and magnificent building.” He heard, he reports “Musicke, which was both vocall and instrumental, so good, so delectable, so rare, so admirable, so superexcellent, that it did even ravish and stupifie […] for mine owne part I can say this, that I was for the time even rapt up with St. Paul into the third heaven” (from Coryat’s Crudities, Hastily Gobled Up in Five Months’ Travel, 1611, quoted thus in A Traveller’s Companion to Venice, ed. John Julius Norwich, 2002).
A single brief quotation from a standard modern work will illustrate the importance of Venice as a musical centre in the renaissance (D.J. Grout and C.V. Palisca, A History of Western Music, 4th edition, London 1993): “The Venetian school, everywhere admired as the most progressive in Italy, exercised wide influence in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Pupils and followers of Gabrieli were numerous in northern Italy and scattered all over Germany, Austria and Scandinavia” (pp.340-41).
As Gawain Glenton puts it “[t]he appointment in 1527 of Adrian Willaert as maestro di capella at San Marco heralded the start of a new era for music in Venice”. Born around 1490 (possibly in Bruges), Willaert is though to have studied in Paris with Jean Mouton before entering (around 1514-16) the service of Cardinal Ippolito I d’ Este in Rome. In the early 1520s he was working at the court in Ferrara. He had a considerable international reputation prior to taking up the post at San Marco and his appointment was what nowadays might be called a ‘coup’ for both San Marco and the city of Venice. He remained in this post until his death in December 1562. His prolific output as a composer included many forms of sacred music (including 8 masses and more than 170 motets), over 70 Italian madrigals, instrumental music and French chansons. As a teacher his pupils included Gioseffo Zarlino (1517-1590), Costanzo Porta (c.1528-1601), Cipriano de Rore (c.1515-post 1565, who was, like Willaert, of Franco-Flemish origin) and Andrea Gabrieli (c.1532-1585). Both Cipriano da Rore, first, and then Zarlino succeeded Willaert as maestro di capella at San Marco.
Alongside the quality of its musicians and their music, Venice's position as the European centre of music publishing in the Sixteenth-Century was also of supreme significance. Between 1530 and 1560 Venice produced more printed music than the rest of Europe put together (see J.A. Bernstein, Print Culture and Music in Sixteenth-Century Venice, 2001, p.22). One important pioneering publisher was Ottavio Petrucci (1466-1539), the first to print polyphonic music; the two largest music-publishing houses of Venice were those of Scotto and Gardano. Each has been the subject of a valuable modern study – J.A Bernstein's Music Printing in Renaissance Venice: The Scotto Press (1539-1572), 1998 and R.J. Agee's The Gardano Music Printing Firm 1569-1611, 1998.
Gawain Glenton and Silas Wollston are not, of course, by any means the first to celebrate the music of sixteenth-century Venice, but they do so, on this disc, in an attractively distinctive fashion – not least because the only two instruments used are versions of the cornett and the organ (plus a brief appearance by the virginals). This throws a fresh light on the city's music in the sixteenth-century, often primarily represented on disc by the choral music written for the basilica of San Marco.
Venice seems to have had a particular respect for organists. Unusually, the post of organist at San Marco existed for a century before the first maestro di capella was appointed (see H.C. Robbins Landon and John Julius Norwich, Five Centuries of Music in Venice, 1991, p.41). Of the composers whose music is played on this disc several were famous as organists and several worked as such at San Marco; in the following list I have made no distinction between time spent as first or second organist at the Basilica: Annibale Padovano (organist at San Marco 1552-65), Andrea Gabrielli (organist at San Marco 1566-86), Claudio Merulo (organist at San Marco 1557-84), Girolamo Diruta (organist at the cathedrals of Chioggia 1593-1609 and Gubbio 1609-post 1610), Gioseffo Guami (organist at San Marco 1588-1591) Giulio Segno da Modena (organist at San Marco 1530-33), Girolamo Parabosco (organist at San Marco 1551-57) and Vincenzo Bellavere (organist at San Marco 1586-87).
Venice also had its virtuoso players of the cornett, such as Giovanni Bassano (c.1561-1617) and Girolamo Dalla Casa (c. 1545-1601). Dalla Casa is first recorded in Venice in January 1568 when, along with his brothers Giovanni and Niccolò, he was employed to set up the basilica’s first full time instrumental ensemble. Both Bassano (Ricercate, passaggi et cadentie, Venice 1585), and Girolamo Dalla Casa (Il vero mode di Diminuir con tutte le sorti di stromenti, Venice 1585) published treatises on instrumental ornamentation. No doubt, players such as these were predominantly used in the instrumental ensembles deployed in the kind of large-scale Venetian ceremonial music we associate with Giovanni Gabrieli. But it is entirely plausible that they might, on occasion, have performed in duet with one of the organs in San Marco or, more probably, with a smaller instrument in an aristocratic palazzo. If so, we can hear echoes of such occasions in the superb work of Gawain Glenton and Silas Wollston on this disc.
Alongside its musicians and their music, Venice's central position in Renaissance music also owed much to its preeminence in the realm of music publishing. Between 1530 and 1560 Venice produced more printed music than the rest of Europe put together (see J.A. Bernstein, Print Culture and Music in Sixteenth-Century Venice, 2001, p.22). One pioneering publisher was Ottavio Petrucci (1466-1539) one of the first to print polyphonic music; the two largest music-publishing houses in the city, those of Scotto and Gardano have each been the subject of a valuable modern study – Bernstein's Music Printing in Renaissance Venice: The Scotto Press (1539-1572), 1998, and R.J. Agee's The Gardano Music Printing Firm 1569-1611, 1998.
I have delighted in the organ music of Claudio Merulo since around 1998 when, on a visit to Parma (some thirty miles from Correggio, where Merulo was born) where he died, I bought a CD of his Toccate d’intavolatura d’organo: Libro Primo (Ermitage 431-2) played by Francesco Tasini on a Positive Organ, in the ‘Arrigo Boito’ Conservatory (Parma), made by Merulo himself and restored by Bartolomeo Formentelli in 1964. It was, therefore, to track 9 of The Myth of Venice that I chose to listen first. Merulo was organist at the Cathedral of Brescia (where his mother was born) from 1556 to 1557 before becoming second organist at San Marco (he was promoted to first organist in 1566). After resigning from San Marco in 1584 he settled in Parma, entering the service of the Farnese court and becoming organist both at the city’s Cathedral and the church of Santa Maria della Steccate. At his death in 1604 he was buried in the cathedral. Merulo was a particularly influential figure – as a composer (his toccatas seem to have been particularly popular), a composer and a teacher. One of his many students was Girolamo Diruta, who praises Merulo (and cites examples of his work) in his treatise (in dialogue form) on the organ and the art of playing it, Il Transilvano, published in two parts, in 1593 and 1608. In his booklet notes to the CD mentioned above, Francesco Tasini writes that “Merulo’s Toccate are without doubt a model of excellence in the elegant art of the diminution”. Merulo’s toccatas have a fluidity and variety which sounds more ‘improvisatory’ than the toccatas written by most of his Venetian contemporaries, as he contrasts stretches of ricercar-like contrapuntal writing with some strikingly florid passagework. The toccata recorded here is a fine example of Merulo’s artistry in this genre and Silas Wollston does full justice to it.
Merulo attracted students from Germany, Poland as well as from many other Italian states. By 1585 his work was being published in Nuremburg. His influence is audible in some of the organ compositions of figures such as Hieronymus Praetorius and Hans Leo Hassler – these and many other examples demonstrate the validity of Kimberley Marshall’s observation (‘Organ music from Merulo to Buxtehude’, Early Music, 35:2, 2007, p.34) “The keyboard music of Merulo had an enormous influence on the development of Baroque music”.
But Merulo's is not, of course, the only fine organ music on offer here. So, for example, Wollston brings a pleasing lucidity and sensitivity to Padovano's 'Ricercar del VI tuono' – a delightful piece. The combination of organ and cornett is not uniformly happy. On the disc's opening track, Andrea Gabrieli's 'Ricercar del XII tuono', the result is intriguing, but also slightly uneasy, as one senses a degree of awkward juxtaposition in the insistent rhythms of Wollston's organ and the freer ornamentation of the works second 'voice', played here by Glenton's cornett. Elsewhere, the marriage of organ and cornett is completely happy, as in a beautiful account of the 'Toccata di salto cativo del VI tuono' by Gorolamo Diruta (probably a pupil – and certainly an admirer – of Merulo).
Two organs are used on the recording. On most of the pieces the organ played is a copy (by Goetze and Gwynn) of a six-stop Italian positive organ (from Lucca) of the late Seventeenth-Century. On tracks 15 and 16 Silas Wollston plays an organo di legno by Walter Chinaglia, actually made of cypress wood. The instrument has a strong but sparkling sound. In two pieces by Giacomo Gorzanis, Wollston plays a virginal by Alan Gotto, modelled on the instrument (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum) known as 'Queen Elizebeth's Virginals', which probably dates to around 1570 and may, aptly, be by the Venetian Benedetto Fionari.
Gorzanis was a blind lutenist, who may have been born into an aristocratic family in Puglia. A virtuoso player of the lute, he published (in Venice) four lute books between 1561 and the mid 1570s. Much of his music consists of short suites of dance movements – from which the two pieces recorded here are taken. In both Il todeschino and Padoano del todeschino the crisp sound of the virginal and the brightness of the cornett complement each other beautifully. Indeed, with its three different keyboard instruments and two cornetts, this disc offers a greater and subtler variety of colours than its subtitle might suggest. Much of that variety of colours is, of course, the product of the technical skill and artistic perception which Silas Wollston and Gawain Glenton display throughout.
A consistently fascinating album of Venetian music of the Sixteenth Century, played with both scholarship and imagination.
Glyn Pursglove
Previous review: Johan van Veen (Recording of the Month)
Contents
Andrea GABRIELI (1533-1585)
1. Ricercar del XII tuono [2:52]
Adrian WILLAERT (c.1490-1562)
2. Jouissance vous donneray [4:09]
Guilio SEGNO DA MODENA (1498-1561)
3. Ricercar 13
Girolamo PARABOSCO (c.1524-1577)
4. Ricercar 14 ‘Da pacem Domine’ [2:01]
Annibale PADOVANO (1527-1575)
5. Ricercar del VI tuono [5:06]
Andrea GABRIELI
6. Pass’e mezzo antico [3:46]
Adrian WILLAERT
7. A la fontaine [5:46]**
Guilio SEGNO DA MODENA
8. Ricercar 5 [2:07]
Claudio MERULO (1533-1604)
9. Toccata 8 [6:01]
Girolamo DIRUTA (c.1544- post 1610)
10. Ricercar a 4**
Andrea GABRIELI
11. Caro dolce ben mio [3:06]
Vincenzo BELLAVERE (c.1540-1587)
12. Toccata per organo [3:16]
Girolamo DIRUTA
13. Toccata di salto cativo del VI tuono [2:17]
Claude GERVAISE (1525-1583)
14. Pavane ‘La venissiene’ [1:57]
Giovanni Pierluigi da PALESTRINA (c.1525-1594)
15. Introduxit me rex [3:45]**
Gioseffo GUAMI (1542-1611)
16. Toccata del II tuono [1:51]**
ANONYMOUS
17. El todescho [1:03]
Giacomo GORZANIS (c.1520-post 1575)
18. Il todeschino [2:08]*
Giacomo GORZANIS
19. Padoano del todeschino [2:01]*
Gioseffo GUAMI
20. La brillantina [3:01]
*premiere recordings; ** played on an Organo di legno, by Walter Chinaglia
