Tickle the Minikin: 17th-century lyra viol music
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Genre:
Instrumental
Label: Resonus Classics
Magazine Review Date: 10/2014
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 65
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: RES10132
Author: David Vickers
Smith employs eight different scordatura tunings to reap the benefit of different techniques and open-string resonances in 35 short pieces, all drawn from original tablature sources in a book preserved in Manchester and an enigmatic manuscript of unclear origins in the British Library. He exposits that the latter might have belonged to the Dutch musician Dietrich Steffkins. Smith produces an endearing imitation of bells in a Carillon by Thomas Mace and applies some tastefully executed plucking with the thumb contrasted with finely balanced bowed chords in an anonymous Thumping Almaine. In a couple of folky pieces Smith uses an extraordinary ‘Lancashire pipes tuning’ which uses crossed strings to produce a bagpipe drone.
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