La Barca d'Amore

15 tracks - MP3 192 Kbps - RAR 110Mb


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Sixteenth-century Italian virtuoso music for the Renaissance cornett, a tube-shaped (or snake-shaped) wind instrument that produces a sound somewhere between that of an oboe and a horn. It's difficult to play to begin with, and the performer here, William Dongois, delved into treatises and uncovered some of the instrument's improvisatory traditions. The result is some very exciting playing, an example of which can be heard in the Sonata seconda ("La cesta"), track 13. All of the music involves considerable ornamentation, and Dongois' notes don't make the procedures used totally clear. Much of his essay discusses the procedure known as division, a type of variation form that was partly left to the ingenuity of the player. The divisions here (not thus marked in the tracklist) are the pieces based on preexisting models, such as Jouissance vous donneray (track 4), with a model by Willaert elaborated by one G. dalla Casa. Other genres represented are sonatas, which at this point were instrumental analogues to the keyboard toccata, and dance pairs. All, according to Dongois, were vigorously ornamented, although the style would differ in each case. It requires a little work to figure out what's going on in the music, but it's enjoyable and smoothly done, and the album remains an important step in rescuing Renaissance instrumental music from the dry bones of its notated versions. 

James Manheim

contents:


Giacomo Gorzanis - La barca d'amore, galliarde for lute
Giovanni Bassano - Susanne un jour, diminution after Lassus
Anonymous, Italian - Pavane & Saltarello, for ensemble
Giovanni Della Casa - Jouissance vous donneray, diminution after Adrian Willaert
Pierre Attaingnant - Pavane - Galliarde No. 4
Giovanni Bassano - Vestiva i colli, diminution after Palestrina
Pierre Attaingnant - Pavane & sauterelle, for lute
Giovanni Bassano - Mirami vita mia, diminution after Claudio Merulo
Giovanni Battista Fontana - Sonata Quarta
Giovanni Battista Bovicelli - Variations on Palestrina's "Io son ferito"
Giovanni Battista Fontana - Sonata 6 per il violino o cornetto
Riccardo Rognoni - Anchor che col partire (after Cipriano de Rore)
Giovanni Mealli - Sonata for violin & continuo, Op. 3/2 "La Cesta"
Riccardo Rognoni - Pulchra es amica mea, diminution
Benedetto Ferrari - Ciaconna for solo voice


William Dongois, cornett
Le Concert Brisé