Nuove Musiche - Rolf Lislevand

The entire blog expounds one sole and relatively short period, namely the first third of the 17th century.

What is so important in this era onto which a complete collection of records can be construed?

Has Bach nearly fallen into oblivion in the Early Music horizon of record publishers?

This period is a sensitive transition between the Renaissance and the Baroque. Something is borne and something is terminated, is it? This is what the miracle lies about.

Truly, this is not the case; it is a lot more complicated.

A lot more.

It is a bit like when two layers grind along, generating all sorts of turbulence, making the passengers in the plane pale by weird split-offs of the flow and stream. Albeit there was some wind of an odd direction and temperature. New winds are blowing. 

We have a nice [Hungarian] language, do we?

What’s more, it was not a mandatory evolutional step in society or music history as we learn it from academic books but it was a well-conceived and pre-planned action. It was a wanted manoeuvre in music philosophy.

All leads to Firenze where culture blossomed at in unimaginable heights. A society of the many was Camerata Bardi, actually a parlour with all kinds of performances in the evenings and occasionally. The members included philosophers, architects, painters, businessmen, historians, clerical leaders, politicians and their flatterers, and loads of musicians and composers.

Antique pieces of art were being re-discovered as in vogue during the Renaissance, but, take care, music-wise it is the very end of the Renaissance. It is clear that the boundaries of the periods are not clear at all.

The Camerata Bardi proclaimed that “the music of the era is fundamentally unsuitable to express human relations either upwards to Heaven or toward one another”.

Therefore, they created, in theory, the music that they called Nuove Musiche.

Slowly yet steadily we come to the record as it bears this title.

Indeed, the then fashionable Palestrina-type polyphony was suitable to express emotions only limitedly.

This novel music became the accompanied monody, a lot simpler thing than this repelling so-called vocation. Only one line remained of the parts, usually the topmost, and below it a bass accompaniment which always holds a mirror at a distance of a fine sound, it did become basso continuo. Thus the one single melody could faithfully follow the lyrics, practically, syllable by syllable, so the text became prima again just like in Hellenic times. 

Do you remember? It was the aim of Camerata, indeed.

And it did get started, including the Opera as well, which punctually follows the principles laid down even today, after 400 years, and it hauled at least ¾ of the classical music repertoire of the following centuries. And many more things … for instance, In the House of the Rising Sun  on guitar …

Among the theorist-composers Caccini had the greatest role. He, being a requested expert, created a precise tractate, he even touched upon the techniques of breathing.

The new music spread like wildfire working its way out of Italy; three opera houses were built in Venice in 15 years out of the void.

And the audience?

They simply got crazy. People flooded into the opera houses and they played music in small circles too, at home, following the new style. 

Fantastic masterpieces were borne the time.

I love them so much.

When the strong metaphysics of the Renaissance still exists.

Maybe you know this story - it is good old evidence in the Early Music academies.

Rolf Lislevand knows it too, he even put it down in the booklet, not because he wanted to be included in Wikipedia but he wanted us to understand his story which he tells us in this album. 

For Lislevand took a very brave turn pursuing a beautiful idea.

The brevity is as much to my liking as the record itself. 

This is why this article is being written.

He asks me if we know similar stories from the near past.

We know one for sure.

The basics of today’s performing Early Music were established by a few thinkers, composers, music-theorists and musicians some 40 years ago in Europe. Do you remember the contemporary instruments, 415 mean tone, the old sources, the old depictions of instruments, the gut-strings, the tabulatures, the viola da gamba itself and who Harnoncourt was?

The Early Music academies set off in this direction. The 3rd generation is producing their records, and the new Early Music became such a big success that they must be the last active actors of the dying record industry.

In this record Lislevand does nothing but return to Camerata’s Firenze and play the composers clustering there in his way as we can hear it.

The eyebrows are lifted in astonishment - it is an adaption then, a bit better than the Classics in disco rhytm…

Well, nope.

Extreme ignorance which slowly breaks up at the Bach-grey clouds - is not an excuse for such a big mistake.

Well, the reception of the CD was a little bit mixed; understanding and outcasting…

ECM is a contemporary music publisher so it shows that it is not the cake of Baroque Highlights.

For Lislevand makes a  really smart argument: Let us observe how it all started 40 years ago? Everyone basked in the sea of Romanticism and we had to struggle out of it step by step; the performances we are happy about today are merely the gradual face lifts of the old recitations one after the other. 

The human mind is able to make comparisons only, we compare everything to everything. It simply does not work that in 1980, in the air smelling Mendelssohn we suddenly play Vivaldi like in 2015. He was not played like that indeed, so we should not go back to Firenze, a restart from 40 years ago is sufficient … it is another branching this way, which may be parallel with what is in vogue right now…

It is said that there is some inner voice in a few musicians who devote all their life to sound it. 

Rolf and some jazz musician friends of his gathered together with this thought in mind to make the record on an autumn afternoon in Oslo.

All of them are practicing improvising blokes, and, here comes a branch of Harnoncourts’ tractate. For Pellegrini and Foscarini and later Gaspar Sanz did recommend improvisation even in the first phase of learning, then even more, all the time, whenever it was possible, and mainly during the performance.

Listening to the record I can see that there is no mock modesty here indeed. The flouncing of the improvisations in a bound form is amazing. 

It touches me. 

What is this form? For instance, toccata, long before Bach and Vivaldi were born, when it was not a structural enforced pressure but what the word truly means, touching, a definitely special word because it also means an extraordinary point in time, the moment when the hand touches the string, when silence becomes non-silence, when something steps out of non-existence. 

And when the audience is touched inside.

Or Passacaglia which gives the structural frame of the whole record. What is it indeed?

It is the old Spanish theatrical accompaniment insert, perhaps we know it, but how come it is here, well, yes, you make the right guess, it comes from the New World, where the Mexican origin competes with the ancient culture remnants of the natives of Africa, well, it is just fine that this slave stuff beats up the dust on European blue-blood noble stages…

E-moll Passacaglia obviously changes to the song Con qué la Lavare, it cannot be anything else, for it is very much the same; I admit that it is strange for me too. What is weird is not the way it sounds but where I have put my ears so far, it hasn’t rung the bell until now, 7 cm between the two CDs on the shelf, what a big gap in our head, as if we were afraid to notice things, almost ridiculous…

The modern forms of Kapsberger and Piccinini are being re-sequenced. What the toccata desires after being finished, they continue from that point. 

Frescobaldi’s Aria is a response to the fact that it is poetry indeed that shows the right direction at the meeting point of the music and the lyrics.

And in Frescobaldi’s Passacaglia the last word is echoed, addio, Arianna’s soprano is very nice, it is a truly pretty farewell.

Owing to today’s authentic playing of Early Music. 

Or due to our prejudices?

Or simply because of our very kind record at this moment around midnight?

Heiligenblut, 2017, August
at 1200 m AMSL

Translated by Kenesei Andrea

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Thank you for the images.

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Piccinini's strings and the Medieval Skyscrapers

Bologna.

What comes to our mind first?

Spaghetti. 

There is nothing to be done. For me too, no need to lose your hair.

Our marvellous mother tongue got fixate and you cannot evade its slowly moving spheres.

Indeed, Bologna is one of the famous gastronomical centres, however, nota bene, it is not spaghetti that is a big deal here but tortellini shaped after Lucrezia Borgia’s bellybutton by a heated innkeeper who goggled at her through a keyhole; in a word, let us be gastro-communicative even if there are other more fascinating things to talk about.

For example, let us mention that there were 180 towers in the city in the 1200s. We can only guess what this amount was for. They were 60-80m high medieval skyscrapers located on a relatively small area. 

It is more than astonishing

Because this height is that of a twenty storey building today and they were not familiar with either tensioned concrete or steel support rails and they constructed these gigantic and slim oddities from brick and stone the size of two fists; inside there was a complicated flight of stairs only to go up to the roof. 

Today there are 20 of them left with Two Towers among them which inspired the designer of Twin Towers too.

The university. It is the oldest in Europe; it was in function in 1088 already.

Its library contained the knowledge of the then world and the book agents turned back only at the Great Wall in China.

The gigantic San Petronio basilica got started as the biggest church of Christianity but Pope IV. Pius had enough of the mind-boggling waste of money so it was built as high as 47 m inside only so that the public could have enough air and spiritual perspective.

The 25 thousand people who can be seated in it. 

And Alessandro Piccinini lived here.

He was a harpist, lutenist, composer and performer. He dwelled and walked in this odd city with the many towers where the weird shadows of the prolonged extensions and dilatations floated in the air and the reimported vertical horizon had an extra effect on everything and everybody. Piccinini was no exception: his name is attached to the gearing of the Renaissance lute with extra strings and a longer neck; these prolate and prolonged instruments are called theorba and archiluto today.

His son published two volumes - Intavolatura di Liuto et di Chitarrone, libro primo (Bologna, 1623) and Intavolaturo di Liuto (Bologna, 1639).

The first edition in 1623 is practically a tractate too; several pages are about play modes, accords and stringing and a separate chapter is devoted to dynamics and the application of falses.

This period was the era of the break-through of monody; the base of Baroque performance mode - basso continuo dates from here; the emergence of the long bass strings is outright obvious just like the city stretched upwards as the scene…

Basso continuo is to be understood in these decades as Piccinini composed it, that is, the lower strings must be plucked as if it was an organ pedal.

The rising heyday is heard on the record.

The instrumentation is very special because Monteilhet took Piccinini’s tractate literally and a genuine organ, a small portative turn up in a few pieces as companion. There is a baroque guitar in many places mostly in unison to intensify the rhythm.

Piccinini travelled a lot; he made long detours in Ferrara and Naples.

While listening to Toccata Cromatica we have a strong feeling that he had a lot of cups of coffee with the prince of Venosa in Naples.  For they met each other indeed and Arabian coffee might as well be present and it was Gesualdo who created excellent music from the chromatic aberrations. 

So does it happen here. From about the 45th second things take a really odd turn; some false strings come up then the whole structure shifts into another system; a huge delight is borne out of the initially despairingly false accords. 

Very brave. 

Despite the different tuning and harmony constructing system of today everything comes over sound by sound even 400 years later. We do not seem to have changed a lot inside in this field.

We are given lines from variants of the contemporary favourite melodies in many places with the guitar in the same parts almost all along, however, with an extreme sense in a way that the different tones deliberately hang out just a bit, as little as the odd flavour stands out.

The whole record is covered with intense melodiousness just like a protective umbrella which attracts us to listen to it when the structures are a bit more complex or give in themselves with difficulties or when false accords stroke us backwards.

They are protective like the arcades against excessive sunshine to make us feel like taking a walk.

Arcades of which there are 38 kilometres in Bologna.

Ironically, later or even in today’s orchestral performances the lute and the whole instrument family itself - what remained of it - degraded back to plain basso continuo companion… Piccinini’s long strings toppled Apollo’s instrument off the throne then went into servility themselves. 

The towers of Bologna tumbled down.

Later, Early Music was the great come-back; we have lots to select from.

For we do have to make a selection, yes, because it is a complicated instrument to play with difficulties with the plenty of gut strings. You can hardly find a record with a perfect tuning and there are even fewer with some fine rolling and ease, and, at the same time seriousness and deepness penetrating deep inside.

Like this record.

Highly recommended.

Translated by Kenesei Andrea

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Thank you for the images.

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