Four and Twenty Fiddlers
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Henry Purcell, Matthew Locke, John Banister, Louis Grabu
Label: Hyperion
Magazine Review Date: 6/1994
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 69
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: CDA66667
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Curtain Tune |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Matthew Locke, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Suite of Brawles |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Matthew Locke, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Suite |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Matthew Locke, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
(The) Tempest, Movement: ~ |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Matthew Locke, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
(The) Tempest, Movement: Curtain Tune |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Matthew Locke, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
(The) Tempest, Movement: First Act Tune (Rustick Air) |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Matthew Locke, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
(The) Tempest, Movement: Second Act Tune (Minoit) |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Matthew Locke, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
(The) Tempest, Movement: Third Act Tune (Corant) |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Matthew Locke, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
(The) Tempest, Movement: A Martial Jigge |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Matthew Locke, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
(The) Tempest, Movement: Conclusion (A Canon 4 in 2) |
Matthew Locke, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Matthew Locke, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
(The) Musick att the Bath |
John Banister, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments John Banister, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Valentinian, Movement: Air pour les suivans de Jupiter |
Louis Grabu, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Louis Grabu, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Valentinian, Movement: Air pour les songes affreux |
Louis Grabu, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Louis Grabu, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Valentinian, Movement: Air pour les satires |
Louis Grabu, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Louis Grabu, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Valentinian, Movement: Menuet |
Louis Grabu, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Louis Grabu, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Valentinian, Movement: Air pour les hautbois |
Louis Grabu, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Louis Grabu, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Valentinian, Movement: Air pour les flutes |
Louis Grabu, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Louis Grabu, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Albion and Albanius |
Louis Grabu, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Louis Grabu, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
(The) Staircase Overture |
Henry Purcell, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Henry Purcell, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Chaconne for Strings |
Henry Purcell, Composer
(The) Parley of Instruments Henry Purcell, Composer Peter Holman, Conductor |
Author:
Peter Holman is exceptional among professional musicians for his scholarly command of his chosen repertory, deriving from his work on archives and his command of detail. He is a communicator as lecturer and writer as well as keyboard player and conductor. Readers will know his thoroughly researched CD notes, and that for ''Four and Twenty Fiddlers'' is no exception: for example, as to the ''firks'' which appear in Matthew Locke's Suite in G minor, we are told that the verb 'to firk' means ''to move rapidly, to dance, jig, flaunt or frisk about''. He puts his research to practical use, performing and recording his treasure trove of English music and providing fresh perspectives on known works, as here with Purcell's Chacony. With The Parley of Instruments he continues to produce a series of recordings for Hyperion entitled ''The English Orpheus'' which, together with this CD, form an aural counterpart to his monumental study, Four and Twenty Fiddlers: The Violin at the English Court 1540-1690 (Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1993).
Holman is attentive to detail over period instruments and playing techniques: in this recording the violins, played with short bows which let the music breathe, are copies of the sort of early seventeenth-century Italian instruments the king's musicians favoured: silvery-toned violins, translucent violas and soft-edged bass violins. The branles by Locke and the incidental dance music by Grabu for Valentinian are performed without continuo, in accordance with Holman's research. The use of continuo (harpsichord and theorbo) elsewhere adds a pleasing gravitas to the ensemble texture and the addition of oboes and then recorders (played by Paul Goodwin and Lorraine Wood) to the ensemble in the first two airs of Grabu's Valentinian music creates particularly striking contrasts, at least in the context of the recording. For many the difference will be a novelty.
Laudable on so many planes, the recording nevertheless raises a vexing question: how should one listen to a single CD of 49 tracks, some of them lasting only half a minute? Most of it was composed as occasional or functional music—to punctuate courtly rituals, to dance to, and to accompany plays (announcing and filling in between acts of plays and underscoring action on stage)—and not intended to be listened to divorced from a visual context. Holman kindly provides probable scenarios for the music, which encourage the listener to imagine the visual context—something which few of us are equipped to do. The result, even so, is unsatisfactory: with few exceptions, the music is bitty and not inherently memorable nor, like film soundtracks, was it particularly intended to be. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to hear for the first time music by Banister and Grabu (a French-trained Catalan composer whom Holman champions) and Purcell's recently discovered Staircase Overture.'
Holman is attentive to detail over period instruments and playing techniques: in this recording the violins, played with short bows which let the music breathe, are copies of the sort of early seventeenth-century Italian instruments the king's musicians favoured: silvery-toned violins, translucent violas and soft-edged bass violins. The branles by Locke and the incidental dance music by Grabu for Valentinian are performed without continuo, in accordance with Holman's research. The use of continuo (harpsichord and theorbo) elsewhere adds a pleasing gravitas to the ensemble texture and the addition of oboes and then recorders (played by Paul Goodwin and Lorraine Wood) to the ensemble in the first two airs of Grabu's Valentinian music creates particularly striking contrasts, at least in the context of the recording. For many the difference will be a novelty.
Laudable on so many planes, the recording nevertheless raises a vexing question: how should one listen to a single CD of 49 tracks, some of them lasting only half a minute? Most of it was composed as occasional or functional music—to punctuate courtly rituals, to dance to, and to accompany plays (announcing and filling in between acts of plays and underscoring action on stage)—and not intended to be listened to divorced from a visual context. Holman kindly provides probable scenarios for the music, which encourage the listener to imagine the visual context—something which few of us are equipped to do. The result, even so, is unsatisfactory: with few exceptions, the music is bitty and not inherently memorable nor, like film soundtracks, was it particularly intended to be. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to hear for the first time music by Banister and Grabu (a French-trained Catalan composer whom Holman champions) and Purcell's recently discovered Staircase Overture.'
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