Toccata - Touched : Alex McCartney

Alex McCartney : Toccata - Touched.
Reflective, historically-informed performance on the lute.

Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger's (c.1580-1651) works for theorbo are virtuosic, exploratory and peculiar: his baffling and brilliant use of rhythm (at a time when most other virtuoso players were pounding the semi-quavers) stewed with his surprisingly-odd chromatic harmony lends his music an obscure and surprising quality. As a result of his unconventional style his direct musical influences are ephemeral. He spent most of his life working in the same household (Cardinal Barberini's: the nephew of Pope Urban VIII) in Rome as Girolamo Frescobaldi; inevitably close during their presumed co-development of the toccata form: - 'toccata' translates as 'touched' - but otherwise much of K's life and music eludes us. By the 1610s the toccata was a fantasy form born out of sixteenth-century preambulatory forms such as the prelude, ricercar and 'tastar de corde' (to tune the strings): juxtaposed sections of blindingly florid passages and fugal polyphony are abruptly joined in a theatrical improvisatory style.

This album focuses primarily on Kapsberger's preludes and toccatas with only a few dance movements (gagliarda, corrente etc.) thrown in for their notable and enjoyable peculiarities. All the pieces recorded are from Kapsberger's 3rd (1626) and 4th (1640) books for theorbo. Kapsberger's 2nd book of theorbo (chitarrone) music still remains to be found.

'[Kapsberger] with his superb genius and other scientific skills in which he was expert, successfully penetrated the secrets of music.'
Anathasius Kircher: Musurgia Universalis (1650)

Songs:

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Release date: 01/12/2018
Alex McCartney lives in York England

Tagged as: Classical, Renaissance, Baroque, Instrumental, Composer: Johann Hieronymus Kapsberger, Theorbo

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