"The Passinge Mesures" - harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani's recent recording of music of the English Virginalist School

Photo: Kaja Smith

Iranian/American harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani’s recent CD “The Passinge Mesures” offers a representative selection of music of the English (and Welsh) Virginalist school, much of it appearing in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, but not all. The artist takes the listener on a journey into the riches of this genre and into his own very personal relationship into it, a “repertoire which I increasingly came to feel I was born to play”, in the artist’s own words.

 

We are talking about an entire genre that developed and functioned over only a few of decades, the entire school dying out completely by the middle of the 17th century. William Byrd, the first great master of the English Virginalist school of keyboard composition, presided over this era.  Indeed, Esfahani’s playing of Byrd’s “The nynth pavian and galliarde, the Passinge Mesures” (from which the disc takes its title, “Passinge Mesures” apparently being an English miswriting of “passamezzo”), the two dances written in the 1570s to a passamezzo antico bass, bristles with ideas, buoyant figurations and registration changes.  Esfahani’s resourceful playing of the two dances and the variations on each is validation of the fantasy and exuberance there to be unleashed in this music. As to John Bull’s Chromatic (Queen Elizabeth’s) pavan and galliard, its opening pavan emerged meditative and bewitching, with the artist’s playing of the galliard, albeit ornate, still reminding the listener of the joyful dance’s leaps and hops and of its defining feature - a vigorous jump on the last two beats of a phrase.

 

The great Welsh composer Thomas Tomkins, Byrd’s last surviving pupil, is represented on the disc. His setting of the popular 16th century ballad tune “Barafostus Dreame” (it is not clear who this man was and what kind of dream he had) opens majestically; Esfahani’s playing of the work is stylish, varied and exhilarating, the artist’s hallmark dexterity and incisive playing spelling out the course of the eight variations as he highlights the individuality of each. To me, one of the disc’s highlights is the performance of Tomkins’ Pavana (FVB CXXIII), ceremonious, plangent, and eloquent, Esfahani’s ornamentation sometimes profuse, indeed always fascinating, as are the unexpected harmonic shifts embedded here and there in the score. Other dances featured include the elegant Pavin ‘M.Orlando Gibbons’ by Gibbons himself and “Nobodyes Gigge”, a cheerful, compact piece by Richard Farnaby (Giles Farnaby’s lesser-known son, employed to teach Sir Nicholas Saunderson of Fillingham’s children ‘in skill of musick and plaieinge uppon instruments’)

 

With the simple melodic style of popular songs and folk tunes serving as a starting-point for composers of the English Virginal School to engage in elaborate forays into keyboard virtuosity, the disc also includes a selection of pieces based on song melodies - an anonymous setting of John Dowland’s wistful “Can she excuse my wrongs?” and Esfahani’s serene playing of  William Inglot’s empathic setting (one of several) of “The leaves bee greene”, a popular tune of the late 16th. Century, also referred to as “Browning”:

‘Browning Madame, browning Madame,

So merrily we sing browning Madame,
The fairest flower in the garden green,
 Is in my love's breast all comely seen,
And with all others, compare she can,
Therefore now let us sing browning Madame.’

Then there are a number of song-based pieces by Giles Farnaby, whose cousin, Nicholas Farnaby, a maker of virginals, may have been instrumental in pointing him in the direction of keyboard music and his subsequent contributions to the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. I have heard performances of Farnaby’s “Wooddy-Cock” sounding like a lexicon of harpsichord techniques. Esfahani’s reading of it speaks of its temperament, invention and spirit; in his bold, unfettered playing of some variations, Esfahani does not waive articulacy in the name of harum-scarum complexity.

 

And if the fantasia is the composer’s unbuttoned invitation to spontaneity and free expression, this great keyboard artist meets him at eye level, as in John Bull’s Fantasia “Mr Dr Bull”, Esfahani identifying- and celebrating John Bull’s daring and individuality with his own, both their excursions into keyboard virtuosity taking the listener to the edge of his chair. Indeed, no less so in William Byrd’s “Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la”, also referred to as the “Hexachord Fantasia”, featuring the stepwise ascending and descending Guidonian hexachord as a recurrent subject (seventeen times, in fact) and including two song melodies. Esfahani, however, takes it a step further as he invites the piece to burgeon with the rich palette of his own natural and spontaneous expression.

 

Recorded in 2017 for the Hyperion label, most of the pieces are played on a double-manual harpsichord by Robert Goble & Son, Oxford (1990) based on an instrument made by Carl Conrad Fleischer, Hamburg (1710), with some works performed on virginals made by Huw Saunders, London (1989) and a copy of an instrument made by Thomas White, London (1642). The temperament used for the recording was quarter-comma meantone. The artist’s personal and informative liner notes make for interesting reading. Listening to the warm, richly resonant recording quality of “The Passinge Mesures”, with just enough of a hint of keyboard action heard, I felt as if I had been seated in Mahan Esfahani’s own music room to experience this music together with him. A disc of remarkable performance, conviction and originality! The album is dedicated to the memory of Canadian historic keyboard artist Bradford Tracey (1951-1987).

 

Photo: Miri Shamir

Ensemble William Byrd (France) closes the 2011 Felicja Blumental International Music festival

The 2011 Felicja Blumental International Music Festival ended with a concert performed by Ensemble europeen William Byrd (France) and pianist David Selig on April 16th 2011 in the Recanati Hall of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The festival, dedicated to the memory of Polish-born pianist Felicja Blumental, was directed by Blumental’s daughter, soprano Annette Celine together with Avigail Arnheim. One focus of the festival, in cooperation with the Australian Embassy, was on the music of Australian pianist and composer Percy Grainger, marking 50 years of his death.

For almost 20 years, Ensemble europeen William Byrd has been performing Renaissance and Baroque vocal music, with particular emphasis on music of the 17th century, the six singers presenting it in a one-to-a-part setting. The ensemble is directed by Australian singer and musicologist Graeme O’Reilly.

The concert began with works by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), the first being “Si ch’io vorrei morire!” (Yes, I would prefer death) from the composer’s Fourth Book of Madrigals, to an anonymous text depicting the state of abandoned lovers. The group lavished it in pathos and drama. And to “Lamento d’Arianna” (Arianna’s Lament): a work that was so significant that it created the “lament” as a recognizable genre of vocal chamber music. Monteverdi completed the five-voiced madrigal setting of the text based on his opera of the same name to a text by Rinuccini, publishing it in his Sixth Book of Madrigals, with the monody reworked into the madrigal settings. Here again, we are presented with the drama of the soul – mostly suffering and despair - sketched in chromaticism and dissonant leaps. At the end, in the final stages of Arianna’s despair, when nobody hears Arianna’s tears, Monteverdi takes the voices into the low register to express this. Ensemble William Byrd’s performance of it was expressively crafted, capricious and theatrical, the effective use of dark and light vocal colors providing contrast, the power of words being “the master of the harmonies”.

Thomas Tomkins’ (1572-1656) died 13 years after Monteverdi. His “When David Heard” is surely among the most tragic and moving works of the genre of the English sacred madrigal. The Byrd Ensemble presented the work’s blend of polyphonic- and harmonic writing, leaning into the dissonances that speak of David’s state-of-mind, stressing key words (in authentic pronunciation) and clothing them in clear resonance.

In “Thule, the Period of Cosmography”, a six-part madrigal from Thomas Weelkes’ (1576-1623) collection of “Madrigals of Five and Six Parts” (1600), the amazing travelogue of an Andalusian merchant returning “with cochineal and china dishes”, Weelkes paints volcanoes, sulphurous fire, frozen scenery (Iceland also being an allusion to the end of the world) and flying fish in musical notes and gestures rife with underlying symbolism. An interesting choice, sung with as much descriptive variety as its text boasts, the audience would have gained more insight into this fascinating work by having the text printed on the program to follow.

The second half of the concert presented works by Australian composer Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961.) It began with the composer’s piano arrangement of his orchestral piece “Blithe Bells” (1930-1931), titled “Ramble on Bach’s ‘Sheep May Safely Graze’ for theater, massed or small orchestra”, “ramble” being the composer’s term for “transcription, arrangement or creative thinking”. A free fantasia, its naïve melody set in a richly polyphonic setting, the title “Blithe bells” refers to sheep bells. Australian-born pianist David Selig challenged the local audience to enter this musical maze inspired by the great Bach - a piece that is grand, delicate and humorous, perhaps bearing cynical undertones. Selig also played the piano version of “Molly on the Shore”, a delightful setting of two Cork Reel tunes, energetic and charming in its dance rhythms. Composed originally as a string quintet as a birthday present for his mother in 1907, it has also undergone several transformations; Grainger’s “elastic scoring” was in keeping with his aim to make pieces available to many players and instrumental combinations. Selig played Grainger’s “Walking Tune”, outlining its inner voices together with its expressive, direct melodiousness. This piece was played in its original form by the Hindemith Wind Quintet (April 14th 2011, Felicja Blumental International Music Festival.)

Percy Grainger was a collector of folk tunes in England and Denmark. In fact, he was an avid collector of plenty of good song melodies. Ensemble europeen William Byrd sang a representative selection of the composer’s song arrangements, many of them a cappella. Folk song settings from the British Isles included the saucy “I’m Seventeen Come Sunday” (British Folk Music Settings no.8) (its piano accompaniment a little too loud) the unaccompanied energetic, homophonic “Agincourt Song” after a 15th century song and “Lord Maxwell’s Goodnight”. In the latter, arranged by David Tall, the text of the first half is from Sir Walter Scott’s “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border” with the second half added by Grainger himself. Here the solo was sung by soprano Edwige Parat.

In his quest to collect and set what might be called “world music”, Grainger was one of the first ethnomusicologists to record on the wax cylinder. His interest lay in melody and harmony, but also in the timbre, inflections and performance style of folk music. Grainger showed much interest in Scandinavian folksongs; he spoke Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. (He knew Grieg and Delius.) The strophic, homophonic, pleasantly asymmetrical “Song of Varmeland” was representative of the phase during which he collected these songs.

Another genre used by Grainger was the “wordless” song, an idea in which he had dabbled from 1899. He spoke of it as carrying “its own special message to the soul” and as being a “natural musical instinct”; he contended that singing in that manner “proves that choirs develop a purer, richer and more voluminous sonority”. We heard the “Australian Up-Country Song”, based on a melody Grainger had composed in 1905 and set for unaccompanied choir in 1928. Grainger wrote: “In that tune I had wished to voice Australian up-country feeling as Stephen Foster had voiced American countryside feelings in his songs”.

The Ensemble europeen William Byrd boasts some fine singers, its signature sound forthright and individual rather than French in elegance. O’Reilly places much emphasis on words and diction. Of his work with the William Byrd Ensemble he writes: “Any performance …stands or falls by the extent to which it makes apparent the relation between the words and the notes, particularized in the context of its period, and universalized into ours.” In this unusual and daring program, presenting Monteverdi, Tomkins, Weelkes together with Grainger in one evening, O’Reilly has introduced did the Israeli concertgoer to Percy Grainger – his diversity, originality and accessibility. With Grainger’s reputation sadly damaged by the details of his personal life, the 50th anniversary of his death is a fine opportunity to remember, appreciate and enjoy the Australian composer’s music.