Gibbons - Locke - Purcell (New Music String Quartet)
00:00 Fantasia No. 1 (Orlando Gibbons, 1583-1625)
04:08 Fantasia No. 2 (Gibbons)
08:00 Consort of Four Parts No. 6 (Matthew Locke, 1622-1677)
18:05 Pavane in G minor (Henry Purcell, 1659-1695)
22:33 Chacony in G minor (Purcell)
NEW MUSIC STRING QUARTET
Broadus Erle & Matthew Raimondi, violins
Walter Trampler, viola
Claus Adam, cello
Art: Allegory on the consequences of the execution of King Charles I (c.1666-69), by Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601-1678)
To the modern string quartet player chamber music begins with Haydn and reaches a high point of developmentwith Beethoven, and in more recent times, Bartok. It is not generally known that a large and significant literature of chamber music for strings, in its purest sense, existed in seventeenth century England. A natural outgrowth of the great vocal music of the Elizabethan era, instrumental group-playing stemmed from the very spirit of the times. At the height of that golden age when English music was acknowledged the best in Europe, madrigal singing was one of the chief sources of recreation at court as well as among the great mass of the cultivated middle class. Peacham, a writer of the time, tells us that “the compleat gentleman” was expected not only to “sing his part sure and at first sight”, but also “withal to play the same upon the viol”. We are often reminded that every well-ordered house was equipped with recorders, lutes, virginals, and above all, a “chest of viols”, including two trebles, two tenors, and two basses. Numerous madrigal collections were published, described as being “apt for voyces or violls” and the playing along with or without voices, became common practice and fertile soil for the development of a true instrumental chamber music. An independent literature sprang up, free of the poetry, giving the concerted instruments for the first time a more idiomatic expression. This new art was so avidly taken up throughout the reign of James I that it completely eclipsed the madrigal as a favorite pastime. Once a manner of writing peculiarly suited to instruments was established, many of the finest composers were attracted to it and in a relatively short time a great profusion of compositions, particularly for consorts of viols, appeared to satisfy the ever-increasing demand.
Curiously enough, during this era there was hardly any trace of orchestral writing, such as was being created incontemporary Italy and Germany. Dynamic stress and mass color effects did not appeal to the English palate. But this idyllic state of cultural isolationism was destined to be slowly engulfed by foreign influence. Charles II, returning from exile, brought with him a predilection for the gayer type of dance music which he had acquired in his travels abroad and before long, he established his “four-and-twenty fiddlers” in the manner of the French court. The critically-minded Pepusch noted that along with his love of dance music Charles had an “utter detestation of fancies” (fantasias for viols). Certainly no reflection on the music, but an indication of which way the wind was blowing! The serious amateur and professional musician did not share the king’s passion for the violin. They held out against the introduction of an instrument “belonging to a common fiddler”, which Thomas Mace (1676) decried as “fit to make a man’s ears Glow and fill his Brain full of Frisks”. Nor did they relish the Italian type of music written for it, to the accompaniment of a figured bass. They clung as long as they could to their ideal of the refined and intimate ensemble of the soft-spoken viols. However, the new Italian style which had spread all over Europe, in Purcell’s time finally turned the tide. It was not until well into the eighteenth century that the strings became free of the so-called continuo bass, so they could again carry on as a homogeneous, blended group, a career so auspiciously started more than a century before.