This album is meant to be a journey through Italian Baroque lute music.
In Baroque Italy the specification "for lute" was almost considered equal to "for archlute" and vice versa. Italian archlute compositions from the late 1500s until the 1700s would be commonly adapted and played on the lute too.
Italian archlute music from the 1600s changes a lot depending on the author.
Compositions by Piccinini, Kapsberger, M. Galilei, Melli have rather few common
features. This is due to the fact that in the 1600s these compositions had three
different styles of composing and performing: the first one is the most
"avant-garde" and it involves the use of the archlute or of the theorbo, which
had just been invented. The main representatives of this style are Kapsberger
and Piccinini. They worked for the nobility, but never for the same one through their whole career, so they were rather independent.
The second type of background was that of the court, where music was composed by lutenists such as Garsi, in a less innovative language, which better fit the festive events of the courts. The music composed by Melli and by Falconieri is to be considered of the first background under some aspects and at the same time, under other aspects, it is of the second background. The typical character of this background is the lutenist who isn't just a performer, yet he can also be as a teacher, a gentleman, a valet or a chronicler at the same court. The instrument involved can be both the lute and the archlute.
The third type of background was that of the domestic use of the lute, that of
the beginners or of the amateurs, who often play the lute, not the archlute,
because it was simpler and more convenient. This wide range of people used
manuscripts with a lot of music by anonymous composers.
My journey through Italian Baroque aims at covering this whole period, so you
will hear some pieces composed by Santino Garsi, from the late 1500s or early
1600s, all the way to the 1760 pieces by an anonymous Neapolitan composer, which
are included in Filippo Dalla Casa's manuscript (drafted 1759-1811). These
Neapolitan pieces are, in my opinion, closer to the Classical style rather than
the Baroque.
The Toccata I from Alessandro Piccinini's second volume, published in 1639,
after his death it is here recorded for the very first time.
In the 1600s lute music composition background this is a rather long,
complicated piece, with daring dissonances and well-diversified and distinct
sections. One of its peculiarities is it goes over the common range of the
archlute: it gets to very high notes that require frets the archlute does not
have. I also included three piece from Giuseppe Antonio Doni's manuscript
(around 1640).
The first one is a Toccata del Signor Arcangelo: it probably refers to Arcangelo
Lori, a lutenist-composer who worked in Rome, of whom we now know several vocal
compositions, but only this lute piece. It's a Toccata with no dense composition
structure (which Piccinini's Toccate do have), but it seems to be meant as a
series of baroque eloquent and voluptuous theatrical gestures, so in this sense,
it has an innovative style. The second piece of the manuscript is attributed to
Andrea Falconieri and I chose it in order to give a sense of lightness amidst
the other rather dramatic and intense pieces. The last of these pieces is an
anonymous passacaglia which, through its simplicity, brings us back to the
essence of this widespread baroque ground.
The other authors I included in this album are nowadays well-known, it is rather
easy to find their music and their biographies, so I won't explain about them,
I'll let the music speak to you.
