There is a record that has played a historical role in the
art of playing lute music of the Baroque period. Here it gained little
attention with few lute players recognizing it but not daring to play it yet,
the reason for which may become clear from what follows below.
French Baroque in music stimulates the limits of
our reception differently. Those superfluous ornamentations and rococo
titivation, which when sprayed around by the instrumental groups in an opera by Lully
appear somewhat superficial but nice and appealing, will grow into an
unbearable act of thrashing around by the solo keyboard instruments 50 years later.
As there are simply too many sounds, especially two-manual ones: 10 fingers may well pick on 40-50 strings on instruments with several string rows at the same time and Scarlatti, for instance, was very much in favour of this pretentious insanity while he was driving in total despair the flagged listener who, in his attempt to develop a liking of solo harpsichord music, is often in a hopeless struggle with his less sophisticated hifi system.
As there are simply too many sounds, especially two-manual ones: 10 fingers may well pick on 40-50 strings on instruments with several string rows at the same time and Scarlatti, for instance, was very much in favour of this pretentious insanity while he was driving in total despair the flagged listener who, in his attempt to develop a liking of solo harpsichord music, is often in a hopeless struggle with his less sophisticated hifi system.
During this period for an unexplicable reason solo lute music turned towards depth and slight melancholy coupled with a bigger grip of the Baroque lute and its additional strings, thus spreading some exceptional beauty all over. Many suspect Dowland’s effect in this, his tears are still flowing after half a century…but we do not know for sure.
This whole thing is easily spoilt, of course, as the parts are complicated and rich in
ornamentation, too, thus they are remarkably difficult to play and the
performance may easily become square: Youtube is well loaded with this kind of
retarded recordings, a few of which are good but this record in particular is
so outstanding of the whole mass that some consider it the best of all Baroque
lute records. I can also add if anybody knows a better one, be happy to enjoy
it and then show it to us, too…
Imagine a pink colour record to the cover … what else can
come???
Rolf Lislevand is a great whizard, much has been said about
him; he tends to do reorchestrations: Bach becomes fully ornamented to come
back to life; Kapsberger gets some turns after which his jazz musician friends
keep hugging him; Renaissance hits are interpreted in a way nobody recognizes
them; but here there are no vagaries whatsoever – we take it dead seriously
that everything is played according to the scores and if he at some points
seems to be carried away by the decorations, this is only a little extra that
has nothing to do with the very essence.
This all casts a nicer light on the pattern for us… Remember that in this age everything was precisely written down, every single trill and fake closure, hand position, as well as exact rhythm instructions. Lislevand himself remarks that first he tried to understand music with his usual reactions, then he locked himself up together with his lute and a copy of the Barbe Manuscript to discover the meaning step by step and finally he completely changed his way of playing.
This all casts a nicer light on the pattern for us… Remember that in this age everything was precisely written down, every single trill and fake closure, hand position, as well as exact rhythm instructions. Lislevand himself remarks that first he tried to understand music with his usual reactions, then he locked himself up together with his lute and a copy of the Barbe Manuscript to discover the meaning step by step and finally he completely changed his way of playing.
The composers are Gaultier, Mezangeau, Gallot Boquet and
Mouton, the date is the second half of the 1600s.
Killing Beauty.
This is an effective title. Every man is
aware that a certain level of female beauty is connected to such power that is
almost impossible to survive if it bursts out. The musical performance is
rather a sophisticated description of this phenomenon, although even Lislevand
goes insane for around 10 seconds.
He says, though in vain, that these
well-sounding titles were already myths at that time and with the following
ornamentation he pays tribute to the cyclone emerging from the peaceful rhythm
pattern:
Les Castagnettes – my great favourite; the series of waves
and ligatures can almost be drawn on a bigger sheet of paper.
What is this performance like?
It’s ultra precise and
smoothly rolling at the same time, having several layers like fractals, and why
is this math stuff here again? Well, this is an appealing, fine performance for
the first sight and a little later if we listen carefully, we’ll discover an
interesting inner melody: the base harmony together with the ornamentation
yield another kind of harmony, which can be further intensified when we compare this second harmony to the basic one
again … I usually do not recommend concentrated listening to music but this one
is an exception now as so many different things may come out of the depth.
On top of all this, Lislevand hands over some of these pieces as if they were lovely poems accompanied by rhymes, rhythms, metalanguage and secret messages.
On top of all this, Lislevand hands over some of these pieces as if they were lovely poems accompanied by rhymes, rhythms, metalanguage and secret messages.
The last piece is a Double in Fis moll and it offers us
something of real interest. We shall not notice it first as in the continuous
flow a lot of different things drift in the same current side by side. Words pop up in our mind such as mosaic or
rather relayering in the same way as the tiles are placed
on the roof and the way we keep cards in our hand: one fourth of the
King of Hearts is followed by one-third of the Seven of Spades;
the theme begins, the rhythm is set, then everything turns towards the
half of
the Queen of Diamonds and a slice of Joker, but the structure remains
intact
since the fact that not everything is to be seen does not mean that
anything is
missing : the whole of the card pack is in play just in the same way as
the
musical ligature is present without a fracture.
This latter is worth pondering about for a while as its
significance goes deep and cannot be overemphasized: in fact, this is what
makes this kind of music so enjoyable for us.
The lack of fracture means that the individual pieces fill
the entire composition so that there are no slits anywhere and the small bits
occupy the space completely without a hiatus. Mosaic was our first thought and
rightly so for this very much resembles girih, the famous Arabian art of mosaic
design in which five different types of shapes, rombuses, pentagons, hexagons
and several other polygons with a strictly defined number of angles have been
used for 800 years now to cover regular surfaces such as a rectangular floor or
an unusual bird figure without a single gap or any tiles to be cut to form.
Is this difficult?
I guess it is as Penrose was able to lay the foundations of his mathematics in the 1960s in a very complicated manner, practically incomprehensible for laymen and even in 2007 there were fractal simulation experiments for simpler formulas, so far without any result.
I guess it is as Penrose was able to lay the foundations of his mathematics in the 1960s in a very complicated manner, practically incomprehensible for laymen and even in 2007 there were fractal simulation experiments for simpler formulas, so far without any result.
The recording quality is simply amazing; it has become a
strong hifi reference record. It was recorded in a 12th century French
cathedral during a couple of nights; forest and wild water life was fully on at
the time, we can really hear everything: half of the Brehms lexicon is
gaggling, grunting, stridulating, croaking and clattering here.
The sound engineer was just about to digitally snap these
out, but in an appropriate moment Lislevand suggested that all these should
remain because if this was part of the circumstances then why should they lie …
and in some cases they even got amplified to make the base choir parts more audible…
The tone is marvellous; string selection was like training a
whole ballet group; the performance is extremely sensitive though at some more
complicated points the 11 choir Baroque lute gets such a grip that it cracks …
We also get this grip in some other way though somewhere
inside; our sense of taste is gently but firmly directed as he opens a window
and we can look out and listen to the frogs while making comparisons; we can
feel happy and sad or even forget about everything else.
It is definitely recommended.
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Thank you for the images.
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Translated by Sebestyén Rita
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Thank you for the images.
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