This is possibly one of the best and most enjoyable recordings of early 17Th
century Italian musicI have heard in some time.
— Early Music review (Canada)
L’art des musiciens de l’ensemble montréalais est d’avoir su
rendre saisissante la modernité de cette musique, la soutenant avec un brio technique
et une musicalité irréprochable.
— La Scena musicale (Québec)
The vigour exhibited by these performers is reminiscent of the popular Italian
ensemble Il Giardino Armonico, but the Canadians speak with there one voice and as a
highly unified ensemble (their accuracy of intonation alone is a marvel).
— Opus (Québec)
Il Giadino Armonico et La Fenice sont inimitables, certes. Mais ce disque
n’est pas moins personnel, et les musiciens des Boréades — qui ne copient
personne, quelle que soit la mode du jour — ne cherchent qu’à se faire
plaisir, et à nous le faire partager. (Recommandé par Répertoire)
— Répertoire (France)
Dario Castello Francesco Cavalli Giovanni Battista Buonamente Girolamo Frescobaldi Arcangelo Corelli Salomone Rossi Antonio Vivaldi
Les Boréades Francis Colpron Hélène Plouffe Susie Napper Eric Milnes Grégoire Jeay Olivier Brault
“Modern,” the term by which historians designate the period of Western
history that began in 1600, seems ever more surprising as time passes. The word, of
course, originally denoted “that which is contemporary or in the style of the
day.” Since, however, every generation naturally considers and proclaims itself
modern relative to the preceding generation, so, by constantly being associated with
artistic expressions that time or fashion makes obsolete—think, for example of
the “modern” style of the 1930s—the word has, in our day, lost much
of its original sense.
It was, however, vigorous and full of meaning at the dawn of the 17th century, and
the artists who made the transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque, arguably one
of the most radical transitions in the history of art, were fully aware of the novelty
of what they were creating, of their modernity.
In the world of music, and especially in northern Italy, it took barely a few
decades for the break with the old polyphony to occur, and for the foundations of a new
way of composing to be laid: for the invention of accompanied monody, of the basso
continuo, of musical drama and, a corollary of all these, the discovery of the
expressive power of harmony.
The break with polyphony was not a complete rejection. Neither Claudio Monteverdi,
one of the great pioneers of the new music, nor his contemporaries ever questioned the
science of counterpoint. For them, the complete musician was one who added the modern
practice, the seconda prattica, to the old one, the prima prattica. Similarly, that
other Baroque invention, the stile concertato, was not so much the abandonment of the
polyphony of the previous centuries but rather its natural evolution under the
influence of melody with its new-found autonomy.
Renaissance musicians had written the first purely instrumental compositions. Almost
all of these works, except for the various dances, appeared as transcriptions or
adaptations of polyphonic vocal works. From the early years of the 17th century,
however, aided by developments in the making of instruments, particularly of the
violin, there was an explosion of instrumental music, with both new compositional
techniques and new musical forms and genres. What the composers were striving for in
this instrumental music, as in vocal music, were the essential aims of the Baroque:
leaving the abstractions of counterpoint aside and even in the absence of a poetic
text, they wanted, above all, to express and excite the passions, to astonish, to
seduce, to convince. They wanted, in short, to represent the great spectacle of
life.
To do this they rapidly mastered the techniques and resulting idiomatic expressive
capacities of a variety of instruments. They discovered that musical instruments had
more freedom, life, and range than the human voice; free from the technical limitations
imposed by the voice, they could now write melody lines with extraordinary leaps,
intervals, and turns. As Johann Mattheson put it, a century later, “instruments
permit of more artifice than does the human voice.”
A new virtuosity in ornamentation developed. According to Rémy Stricker, “this
taste for brilliance served both to release emotional energy and, at the same time, to
intoxicate…. The appearance of shining splendor, so dear to the Baroque, was
created by the virtuoso’s ease.”
Composers generally cared less about timbre than brilliance, though their
indifference to timbre was not as widespread as the phrase “con ogne sorte di
strumenti” in the titles of published collections might suggest. (There are many
such publications designed so that interpreters can pick and adapt the pieces that suit
as they will.)
The early Baroque saw an extreme diversity of forms: the canzona, growing
independent of its original model, the chanson parisienne; countless dance tunes; and
what was then the quintessentially modern genre, the sonata. All combinations of
instruments and rhythms could be set on the sonata’s foundation of basso
continuo. Its movements were strung together so as to contrast with each other as much
as possible. When there was a single soloist, the sonata respected the principles of
accompanied monody, but the old fascination for polyphonic play between two or three
voices was not easily abandoned. Hence, when there were several soloists the
“concertato” principle was used; playfully imitating and vying with each
other, the solo voices engaged in a kind of musical dialogue.
With the exception of those rare dances and ritornellos that decorate his operas,
Monteverdi did not compose any instrumental music. However, many of the musicians who
worked under him or in his entourage did apply his dramatic and expressive ideas to
instrumental compositions. Notable among these are Salomone Rossi, Dario Castello,
Giovanni Battista Buonamente, and Biagio Marini. Salomone Rossi (to whose name was
suffixed Ebreo, the Jew) served the Gonzaga family at Mantua from the opening decades
of the 17th century until his death in 1630, a victim either of the Plague or of the
pogrom in which invading imperial troops destroyed the city’s ghetto.
A skillful musician and teacher, his work includes books of madrigals, music for the
theatre, polyphonic versions of Hebraic chants and, as well, four collections of
diverse sinfonie, dances and sonatas, published between 1607 and 1622. The last two of
these collections, entirely in the stilo moderno, comprise pieces for two melody
instruments and bass that exemplify the evolution of the old canzona into what will be
known as the trio sonata, of which they are the first examples.
Mystery surrounds the identity of Dario Castello, known solely for two important
collections of Sonate concertate in stilo moderno, first published in Venice in 1621
and 1629, respectively. The title page of the first of these collections identifies the
composer as the leader of a wind ensemble. The title page of the second collection
identifies him as a musician with Saint Mark’s Basilica, Venice. For the period
when Monteverdi was its music director the basilica’s records show a certain
Giovanni Castello, violinist, on staff from 1624 to 1649. Was this the composer, using
a different first name than that he used on his published music, or a relative? We may
never know. His two collections comprise nothing but sonatas, 29 in total, and for the
first time indicate that either the organ or the harpsichord may supply the basso
continuo. Following the Monteverdian model Castello’s sonatas consist of seven to
nine linked movements and, with their scope, color, ingenuity, sudden pauses, marked
contrasts of tempo, long cadences, and other well-organized surprises, are utterly
charming.
The violinist Giovanni Battista Buonamente was, until 1622, in Mantua at the same
time as both Rossi and Monteverdi. (Monteverdi left the service of the Duke of Gonzaga
in Mantua in 1613 to establish himself in Venice.) After 1622 Buonamente paid several
visits to Vienna. He accompanied Eleanor of Gonzaga there for the marriage of the
Emperor Ferdinand II. He also visited Prague for the coronation of Emperor Ferdinand
III as King of Bohemia. In 1633, we know, he was director of music at the Saint Francis
convent in Assisi, where he died 10 years later.
Only four of his seven collections of sonatas, canzonas, and various dances have
come down to us. Published between 1626 and 1637, they continue Rossi’s
development of the trio sonata. As Buonamente’s work spread beyond the borders of
Italy, so too did the modern instrumental style. Tarquinio Merula, violinist and
organist, held various positions at Bergamo, Cremona, Venice, Bologna, and even Warsaw.
His four books of canzonas, published between 1615 and 1651, show the evolution both of
the trio sonata in general and of writing for the violin in particular.
Biagio Marini, another colleague and possibly student of Monteverdi at Saint
Mark’s, had no equal as an improviser, and was one of the great violinists of his
time. As well as holding posts in Parma, Milan, Ferrara and Venice, he also spent 20
years in Germany, and used violin techniques, such as double stopping, that had
recently been developed by German composers. He was prolific, and between 1617, when he
first published, and 1655, the date of his last publication, his style evolved
remarkably.
Though Francesco Cavalli had been associated with Saint Mark’s all his life,
first as organist and then as director of music, he—like Monteverdi, his
teacher—applied his genius to vocal music, writing dozens of operas for the
public theatres of Venice, Naples, and Milan. The extreme range of the emotions that he
expressed musically, from the most poignant lament to the broadest joke, is still
remarkable; the beauty of his lyricism is well preserved when certain of his lovely
airs, written for the voice, are set for instruments.
At the beginning of the Baroque era, composers insisted on great freedom, and gave
to the nascent musical form of the sonata an air of unrestrained, unpredictable and
brilliant improvisation. This was so particularly in Italy, the laboratory in which the
most exciting experiments and discoveries in sound were being made. The new style of
composing for instruments emerging in Italy was named, appropriately, stylus
phantasticus. In his Musurgia universalis, published in 1650, Athanasius Kircher wrote,
“the fantastic style is the freest of all the compositional styles, and is free
to show its innate character utterly unconstrained by text or predetermined
harmony.” As examples of this free style he mentions the toccatas of Girolamo
Frescobaldi, the illustrious organist of Saint Peter’s in Rome.
Major changes were taking place around 1670 in the world of instrumental music. Of
all the forms that had been developing over the previous half century, only two were
retained: the sonata with one melody instrument, and the trio sonata. These two forms
have common characteristics: a clear division into movements with paired subsections;
rhythmic stability and steady tempi within movements; and an affirmation of
tonality.
Towards the end of the century, in the period we can call the high Baroque, the
leading architect of this new modern style was Arcangelo Corelli. Virtuoso violinist,
the protégé in Rome first of Queen Christina of Sweden and then of Cardinal Ottoboni,
he was the most “classical” of the Italian Baroque composers. His work set
the standards of perfection, moderation and balance against which all music was judged
in Europe for several decades. One of his many claims to fame is the popularization of
the concerto grosso, a kind of sonorously expanded trio sonata, in which there is
interplay between a larger and a smaller group of strings. His work found particular
favor in England; several versions of the 12 concertos of his opus 6 adapted for
amateur chamber ensemble were published there.
For the generation after Corelli, the trio sonata became the genre in which young
composers showed their skill in simultaneously shaping melodies and weaving
counterpoint. Thus just after Antonio Vivaldi was ordained a priest and just before he
became maestro di violino at the Pietà in Venice he published his first work, a
collection of 12 sonatas for two violins and basso continuo. The last of these sonatas
is a set of variations on La Follia, a popular theme of the day. It is founded on a
sequence of four chords, in the manner of a chaconne. Vivaldi may not have been just
copying Corelli who, in his opus 5, had also published variations on this theme;
Vivaldi may implicitly have been claiming at the beginning of his career that he was
Corelli’s equal.
Despite the apparent unity in its ideals and compositional principles, the music of
the century and a half that is known, for various convenient and non-musical reasons,
as the Baroque actually comprises a great diversity of constantly evolving styles. It
is fascinating to identify, within the creative ferment of the early Baroque, examples
of those elements that later generations would retain and develop. We should be wary,
however, of judging this music only on the basis of what it led to. It remains fresh
and extravagant and eminently worth listening to. In fact, compared to the later
Corellian style with which we are so familiar, it is the music of the early Baroque
with its free flights of fantasy that strikes us today as the more
“modern.”
Cavalli’s thirteenth opera La Calisto was set to a libretto by Giovanni
Faustini and composed in Venice in the autumn of 1651. It tells the story of how
Jupiter came down to this world to see the damage done when Phaëton fell, only to fall
himself for Callisto, one of Diana’s followers. The nymph, however, was devoted
to her chaste goddess and, in the aria Non è maggior placere, takes umbrage at
Jupiter’s advances. He then assumes the form of Diana so that he can be close to
the nymph and pursue his suit. Meanwhile a secondary intrigue is underway: in the aria
Ninfa bella che mormora a little satyr maliciously courts another of Diana’s
retinue, the old nymph Lymhée, who, of course, rejects him. After innumerable mix-ups,
in which Callisto learns of Jupiter’s trickery and Endymion, who loves Diana,
declares himself to the disguised Jupiter, Juno has a fit of anger and has Callisto
bound in chains by the furies. Jupiter then casts off his disguise, reveals himself and
his love to the nymph and frees her. Finally, in the duo Mio foco fatale / Beata mi
sento, he spirits her away from Juno by changing her into the constellation Ursa
Major.
