Musicall Humors

London, April 1604. With the freshly printed partbooks of his Lachrimæ under his arm, John Dowland walks from the printing house to his home in Fetter Lane. He should have been back in Denmark long ago, but for the moment all his thoughts are on the new publication he is carrying, his latest and most ambitious work to date: a complete cycle of instrumental music, twenty-one dances, honourably dedicated to Anne of Denmark, Queen of England.’ For Dowland has just completed one of the greatest masterpieces of Renaissance music. He had left England to enter the service of the Danish court, disappointed at not being appointed court composer to Elizabeth I, but he seems to have made the best of all his setbacks to compose this magnificent collection of purely instrumental works, much of it bathed in the melancholy typical of late sixteenth-century England.

This first disc from the muso label features the young early music generation in France. Julien Léonard, one of the finest gamba players of his generation, champions these works with brio and elan. He is accompanied by Thomas Dunford on theorbo and François Guerrier on harpsichord. A fantastic first disc for this dynamic trio.

This first disc from the muso label features the young early music generation in France. Julien Léonard, one of the finest gamba players of his generation, champions these works with brio and elan. He is accompanied by Thomas Dunford on theorbo and François Guerrier on harpsichord. A fantastic first disc for this dynamic trio.

Tobias Hume (c.1570-1645) was a professional soldier and a ‘gentleman’ (read amateur) composer, and virtuoso of the bass viol. His Musicall Humors (1605), a large collection of solo pieces, is the first publication devoted to the lyra viol, a style of playing that treated the instrument polyphonically, like a lute. Hume reveals himself as a distinct, even eccentric, personality, and an inventive composer, expanding the viol’s normal range with such unusual devices as col legno (‘Drum this with the backe of your Bow’). Jordi Savall’s cultivated, elegant style is very appropriate for much of the music; occasionally he adopts a more earthy manner to great effect – for example in A Souldiers Resolution, with its trumpet and drum imitations.

The works for viola da gamba of Elizabethan soldier and composer Tobias Hume are wonderfully eccentric, highly entertaining, and often deeply moving, but not often recorded, so new recordings are always welcome. This 2009 Hyperion disc by German gambist Susanne Heinrich may not be the most poetic, soulful Hume recording ever made – that honor would go to the incomparable Jordi Savall – but it is nevertheless a fine addition to the composer's catalog. With her warm but penetrating tone, polished but passionate technique, and acute sensitivity, Heinrich is a first-class player and interpreter, and her performances are wholly sympathetic to the music. Her account of the bleak "I am Melancholy" is as effective as that of the droll "Tickell, tickell," and her reading of the cheerful "Life" is as moving as that of the grim "Deth." Recorded in transparent and present digital sound, this disc deserves to be heard by all admirers of music for viola da gamba.

More Tobias Hume can never be a bad thing. In an age of odd composers – Carlo Gesualdo was, after all, his almost exact contemporary – Hume still stands as one of the oddest composers of his time or any other. He was, after all, surely the only composer who spent his life as a mercenary and one of the few composers who died in the poor house.

Marianne Muller - fierce player of viola da gamba, recently applauded for her outstanding interpretation of Folies d’Espagne of Marin Marais on Zig-Zag Territoires - brings us solo and consort pieces of Tobias Hume - captain and eccentric English composer of XVIIe century. Committed to her instrument, Marianne Muller commissions to contemporary composers new pieces for viola di gamba… Eric Fischer created a piece dedicated to Tobias Hume.