Pescodd Time - Elizabethan Virginal Music

An Alpha record so let’s take a look at the pic first.

We might as well start with the title but Pescodd Time means, in the antique vernacular, the period of pea harvest, that, is, summertime for these 16th century kind of peas used to ripen late in the summer, in a word, some 400 years later it’s sort of a challenge to realise that the pic is about some vintage dance or it has some deeper meaning; far too obscure it seems … 

Well, the painting. 

What is it like, anyway? 

Well, the artist is anonymous, around 1610, at first sight it appears to be a concurrent linear structure, two dimensions, no trace of any spherical Renaissance perspective, nothing of the stern ecclesiastic stories of the paintings in sober cathedrals.

We’re in England in the era of Queen Elizabeth or a bit later. Everything bears some clear-out simplicity, the Heavenly Freedom of the Renaissance is entrapped in the Anglican system; bear in mind that it is the period when an intensely powerful empire was built, severe rules everywhere - in each tiny detail of outfits just like in the hierarchy of the Royal Court, everyone knew their stuff, it was a system of strong determination the direct print of which is visible in painting just like in architecture.

Cholmondeley Sisters is the title, it’s relevant for the author is not known, however, the family belonged to the ancient aristocracy, therefore, several documents survived so the archivists got into the dusty drawers and thus it turned out who the painting might include, or rather, we suspect that there were three sisters, Mary, Lettice and Frances but which two the painting shows will remain an eternal secret for good.

Some think that the girls are twins for they much resemble each other, indeed, so much that the painting is called “Cholmondeley Twins”, well, it profoundly reminds us of Béla Hamvas and the A Jóisten uzsonnája (God’s Afternoon Snack) - how strawberries should be eaten; 

...they’re the ones who prefer cream but these people are mistaken as for the point of food … Using cream is a mistake … cream with strawberries tells of a bad taste. Faulty taste leads to faulty judgement and, eventually, to a faulty lifestyle, therefore, such things are to be avoided.

For let’s use our high-capacity brains. 

Look at the painting longer than half a second only. If we can perform this unusual stunt, unusual at least these days, we might as well simply call it attention, more nobly: concentration, then the same thing takes place as while listening to the record. We start to notice more and more tiny differences which loom to get embodied out of nothing, out of the mist of our inattentiveness. 

Nicely, one after the other, not at the same time - it’s important. 

Differencias, like in music, they haul and tow each other (out of trouble) hand in hand nicely. The outfits, the ornaments, the complexions, the swaddles and canvases, the hues and shades and the shine of the eyes, yes, they’re a bit different. 

Twin theory? Full nonsense. So are the dances, the variations, the accords and the runs. For if they were completely the same then the whole project on the keyboard would get choked in boredom in a minute. They’re similar but the difference, those tiny bits are felt to be more and more important. 

For this is the point of the whole thing - in Early Music at least.

Do you remember Patmos’ tractates? 

The nature of the world lies in differences rather than in opposites. (This statement should be displayed in many musicians’ desktop)… All similar have differences and each difference is similar but in a way that the similarities never coincide entirely and the differences never become complete opposites …

So the tractates teach us to see the differences in music, teach us, I mean you, teach all fans of classical music and teach musicians - all those who have a fashion of thinking in opposites and counterpoints.

William Byrd.

He was called ’Father of Music’ by his contemporaries. This fact tells us everything that’s important. You can find out more about his life in Wikipedia, just one click.

He was in a special favour with the Queen given to few, which secured inviolability for him in times of gloomy religious warfare.

Peter Philips and Dr Bull were both Byrd’s students. Three composers in the heyday of English Virginal Music; Bertrand made a selection of at least 5 collections.

Pavan, Galliard, Allemande and Courante. Dances. Each has its own character, rhythm and steps and all of them were very popular. So were the early songs which Byrd included in these volumes. The best known is Une Jeune Fillette, a French chanson sung by the whole of Europe about the girl in love who was compelled to join a nunnery; it was decorated with endless variations.

We know not whether Bertrand reads analogical metaphysics; once, a few years ago, we had lunch together, we could hardly communicate even in English. However, his play, in this record, is an audible appendix of the above.

For the whole record doesn’t include two accords hit in the same fashion. I have a feeling that neither are two similar touches. Like someone who keeps contemplating and keeps talking to us, nicely and mincing their words, neither in French nor in English but bordering on a prehistoric tongue whose remaining morsels are better included in music than in spoken language. So is in painting. 

’ut pictura musica’ (La musique est peinture, la peinture est musique) It’s the slogan of Alpha and this is why there’s this intensely weird artwork with fragments of the painting. Rather, there used to be for Outhere swallowed the publisher; the second edition is short of this nice painting-philosophy free University… 

However, we have seen records of such calibre released. 

This one is even in front of me. I have been looking at this pic for long listening to the sound of the virginal which is a sort of muselaar where the keyboard, strangely, is not in the middle for the mere reason that the strings are plucked right in the middle thus the entire instrument miracle sounds with some special veiled fineness. 

And I think that it’s so beautiful together in joint unison that we should reconsider how we could make the world even better a bit …

Highly, highly recommended.

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Thank you for the image.

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Quotes:

Hamvas Béla

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For hifiers.

One of the best-sounding early keyboard music records I've ever listened.

Highly recommended, especially for BBC monitors.

Heart-boards - The music of William Byrd

This is a Naxos record.

This record company is famous for its cheapness. Minimal booklet, a lot of second-line composers and performers, shallow sound quality – usually not recommended. Strangely enough, there are a few exceptions, though, and some genuine pearls may accidentally get mingled with the lot of phoney fake/semi-precious stones.

William Byrd – he is regarded as the greatest English composer by many. He used to be the organist at Lincoln Cathedral in his early years until in 1572  Chapel Royal offered him a well-paid post in London. Owing to his exceptional sense of diplomacy he survived the obtrusive push of the Anglican Church and, although he was a Catholic, even Queen Elizabeth turned a blind eye on his religious discrepancy since  he composed high-quality music for the new Protestant liturgy. His main profile was sacred music, masses and motets together with  transcriptions of psalms from song- book collections. In addition to these, he had a collection of keyboard pieces, My Ladye Nevells Booke, which was published in 1591 and achieved great popularity.

The collection includes pavans, galliards and variations, some are in rigid counterpoint form, some in Italian-like free style. The queen loved this instrument and played it herself, which was assumingly the secret link that ensured  a lasting invulnerability to the renitent composer.

On this record we can listen to the musical instruments from the workshop of  an  American, Keith Hill, fascinating us by four different ways of sound. It is an undeniable fact that America known for its lack of culture makes up for its handicap in the field of instrument building.

Luteharpsichord – a strange side branch of plucked string instruments, its sound is not quite similar to that of a lute and even more distinct from a harpsichord – it is a totally new sound. The tone is sophisticated and moderate but a 'great' sound with case-resonance, it is extremely elegant while the mechanic noise is there in a discrete dance in the highest register. Comparing it with a good piano record can be very illuminating: the focus is on the difference between pounding and plucking, which will not make piano fans lose their conviction for the two repertoires have no intersection whatsoever and the probability rate of live performances is 1 to 16000 in favour of the piano, thus no change in preferences can be expected.

It is a very rare instrument, though something similar was made in the workshop of Tihamér Romanek in Hungary. Those few who had the chance to hear its sound say unbelievable things about it.

There is the Flemish double-manual harpsichord on the other extreme, two of which appear on the record and both are copies; they produce an incredible array of overtones softly expanding into a whole orchestra with a low octave that sounds lower than most bass instruments.

Splendid variations to splendid harmonies.

And there is also a genuine simple-manual Zentis from Rome. This has a lean, clear, simple and more straightforward tone.

Unfortunately, the role of the hifi cannot be left unnoticed here. A favourite pastime of our beloved audio systems is to distort those overtones which the resonant layers of harpsichords are so much full of. Although the rate is 0.00 something only, it is still not very difficult to get to the level of unenjoyability. And it all can be due to a single cable...

But when magic occurs, the sound experience becomes pleasant and pleasing with full capability to drift us into this musical galaxy.

Being plucked instruments, they cannot produce piano/forte. No matter how we hammer or pat them, their volume will not change – our arsenal seems to diminish but it soon proves not to as what we have left will seduce us more. Such is tilting that plays a significant role here: a faster or slower plucking will make the chord react in a different way. Sometimes the sound is so gentle as the one produced by a slight sweep of a guitar accord with a clearly discernible resonance of the pluck, which is made of goose feather or a thin piece of precious wood. Some other times the quick touch produces overtones so different that we can hardly recognize the same key. Thus there is this strange situation when the performer plays piano or forte on the keyboard, yet it is not the volume that changes rather the tone instead to a much greater extent than on a piano.

The other one is the rhythm, or Tactus, which develops into an intricate network intertwining the basic rhythm, the spread rhythm, the rhythm of the decorations as well as the phrases of musical punctuation and constantly modifying the growing or decreasing deviations from the theoretical metronomic regularity in accordance with an inner rhythmic pattern. This way it all contributes to the encumbrance of engineering activities aiming to produce these rhythmic patterns with a synthesizer or a robot.

These latter ones are by no means to despise because it is just enough to think of those humanoid  robots that are capable of continuous small talk accompanied with mimicry and humour in an adaptive way, thus they can also be taught how to do so –  however, we will certainly be able to tell the difference when listening to an old keyboard instrument for a little more while.

To set up a model for the irregularities of organic systems, which  in our case derives from the personality of the performing artist, is extremely complex and the correlation is still unknown. If we consider the rhythm of heartbeat, we shall see that its being regular is far from the truth. With a more close examination we can discover some surprising facts, namely that some deviations from the rhythmic pattern have an underlying regularity thus they correlate, while others display a seemingly chaotic behaviour. The situation in live music is very similar to this: the behaviour of the harpsichord, being strongly rhythm-based, is easily discernible even for unexperienced ears. What makes it even more intriguing is the reaction we get from the performing artist saying that it is not something they are aware of, they just play the music the way they do because this is how they feel  or think, and that is all.

Our [Hungarian] language in some cases has preserved the depths of metaphysics.

We say that it is the lady - Elizabeth Farr - playing from her heart that makes this record  excellent.

Highly recommended.

Translated by Sebestyén Rita

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Thank you for the images.

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