Trabaci

Giovanni Maria Trabaci lived from 1575 till 1647. A highly prolific composer he left a vast oeuvre of vocal and instrumental music. Especially his works for keyboard are important: his bold, forward looking style, full of daring chromatisms and unexpected harmonic turns, have paved the way for Frescobaldi and others.

Giovanni Maria Trabaci was born in Monte Pelusio (Irsina) around 1575, and died in Naples on 31 December 1647. This close contemporary of Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583-1643) spent his entire career at Naples. He was engaged as a tenor at SS Annunziata at the age of nineteen, and in 1597 was invited to examine the organ of the Oratorio dei Filippini, whose organist he subsequently became. On 30 October 1601 he was appointed to the prestigious post of organist of the chapel of the Spanish Viceroys of Naples, where he was joined in 1602 by his contemporary Ascanio Mayone, who played the second organ…

I believe that this was Andrew Lawrence-King's first recording (1986) – a sterling effort which is ample proof of why he went on to become a well-established figure in his field. He has appeared on numerous recordings, including many with Jordi Savall's Hesperian XX, and is currently the director of the Harp Consort. The program is both musically interesting and eminently listenable; and given Lawrence-King's credentials (he won an Organ Scholarship to Selwyn College, Cambridge and completed his studies at the London Early Music Centre), his understanding of the material is unquestionably comprehensive. His technical execution is equally impressive.

A baroque harp called arpa doppia (meaning double harp). It was an instrument that strongly fascinated people, coloring all kinds of music, including vocal, instrumental, religious, and secular music. Although much of its history is ambiguous, it was written by V. Galilei (father of astronomer Galilei and a music theorist). Shortly before 1580, his double-stringed harp (corresponding to the white and black keys on a keyboard) containing semitones arrived in Italy. It seems that it was conveyed. In the early 17th century, he devised an instrument with three strings (corresponding to white keys, black keys, and white keys). All six of his composers included here are from or have ties to Naples. Although they are rarely mentioned in the ``Harp'', they ushered in a new style of keyboard music and greatly expanded the possibilities of the harp.

The King's Noyse are a terrific ensemble who have made a lot of very good discs indeed over the years. This is among them. It is billed as a disc from 1995 of dance music and song from Italy between about 1580 and 1650, which though strictly accurate, may be a little misleading. Lively dance rhythms are certainly there, but a good deal of the disc is contemplative and sometimes rather melancholy in feel. There are single works by both Monteverdi and Gesualdo but the other works are largely by much more obscure composers, and although I know a little of some like Rovetta and Castello, most were completely new to me. I always like to be introduced to new composers, and the music is very fine throughout the disc.

Liuwe Tamminga is considered one of the major specialists of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italian repertoires for organ. He is the organist of the historic organs at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna together with Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, where he plays the magnificent instruments by Lorenzo da Prato (1471-75) and Baldassarre Malamini (1596).

Sigismondo d'India, 'nobleman of Palermo', as he called himself, composer, singer and poet, was a true child of dawning century. Like his great contemporary Monteverdi, he succeeded in integrating polyphony into the new monodic style. But it is above all in his Musiche da cantar solo that he showed his measure as an innovator. These madrigals for solo voice, selected from around a hundred works he wrote in this genre, provide dazzling evidence of the fact.