That the ‘house musicians’ to the Globe Theatre should be such an eminent band of specialists in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century performance is tantalizing in itself to theatre-goers. Of still greater musical significance are the projects which Philip Pickett, Artistic Director of the Musicians of the Globe, has put together for an exciting series of recordings for Philips. “The Masque of Oberon” is an ominous debut, judging by its spirited instrumental playing and fragrant vocal contributions; this is a skilfully concocted ‘reconstruction’ (though devising speculative programmes is a growing fashion which can render the ‘here-and-now’ incidental to historical navel-gazing) which is largely the work of Peter Holman, that indefatigable scholar of all things English and early. The Jacobean masque has been written about extensively though attempts to piece together an evening’s entertainment are few and far between. The occasion celebrated here is New Year’s Day, 1611, where Ben Jonson’s Masque of Prince Henries was performed at the Banqueting House. The Prince Henry in question is, of course, James I’s eldest son whose young life ended only a year later, attracting a widespread outpouring of grief and a casket of musical elegies from the great and the good.
This Masque is anything but prescient of approaching sadness, rather an excuse for an uplifting and eclectic celebration of dance. We can imagine, in this opulent panegyric, the principal masquing revellers led by the 16-year-old Prince Henry and his troupe of Hoorays. Although we know that Alphonso Ferrabosco II and Robert Johnson – both court musicians – wrote music for Oberon, most of the music has had to be patiently stitched together from contemporary sources. A curmudgeon would point out that there is no evidence that the majority of songs and dances (and certainly the choruses which Holman has composed ‘from scratch’) were heard on this particular occasion. Such a view, however, limits the imaginative process of reaching beyond the fragmentary nature of masque sources and rediscovering something of the distinctive features of a celebrated indigenous genre. Through fine performances (Paul Agnew, amongst the soloists, stands out) and a thoroughly satisfying choice of instrumental music for the revels, Pickett and Holman have contributed something especially valuable to English recorded music.
The Musicians of the Globe’s second programme, “Shakespeare’s Musick”, is equally adventurous. Few original song settings survive, as Andrew Pinnock points out in his note, though it is hard to imagine that a good proportion of dance music in ‘neutral’ sources would not have had theatrical connections. Reconstructing and inventing a repertoire for the new Globe is clearly work in progress, represented here in familiar ‘art’ songs such as Robert Jones’s Farewell, Dear Love (beautifully shaped by Roderick Williams), significant lute repertoire covering the gamut of ‘complaints’, virginal equivalents, colourfully played by Gary Cooper, and songs closer to the popular vernacular in spirit and tone.
Alongside consistently strong solo vocal contributions, this is a sensitively devised programme with artistic merit well beyond its contextual modus operandi, and one which alerts us to the elusive and multi-faceted role of music in and around contemporary Shakespearean theatre. Both these recordings can be strongly recommended and in addition are accompanied by a free preview disc of forthcoming releases.'