Viol Consort

You may remember a film from the early 1970s called Henry VIII & his Six Wives, starring Keith Mitchell, Donald Pleasance, and Charlotte Rampling; it was notable for its score, which not only featured authentic music of the period (nearly unheard-of at the time), but also was, according to David Munrow, “the first historical film in which the music has been scored entirely for historical instruments.

I return to the large genre of early music, the renaissance to be more precise, the work is of spanish renaissance and starring David Munrow & The Early Music Consort of London…

John Ward - Upon a Bank with Roses: Consort Music
Classical, Renaissance | 1 CD | EAC | FLAC, CUE, LOG | Scans | 410 MB
Recorded: 7-10 Apr. 1998, Forde Abbey, Somerset, UK | TT: 71:38
Released: 2003 | Label: cpo 999 928 | RS
Rose Consort of Viols (John Bryan, Alison Crum, Sarah Groser,
Roy Marks, Susanna Pell, Peter Wendland)

The Rose Consort of Viols was created to play music like this, and the collective and individual virtuosity of the six performers on this disc are on full display throughout the generous (72-minute) program. Particularly satisfying are the selections with organ, whose unique colours add another, very sonorous dimension to the viols' already warm, ear-pleasing consonance. The sound, from the very complementary acoustics of Forde Abbey, is appropriately full-bodied yet intimate. (David Vernier, classicstoday.com)

Did the world need to hear Gershwin played by a viol consort, with an occasional recorder tootling along? If so, then why not Purcell accompanied by a jazz piano? The idea of combining the two composers in one performance is an attractive one, and the mix of vocal and instrumental pieces by each composer here is intelligently grouped. Arranger and leader Jay Bernfeld offers several parallels. Both composers were, in the broadest sense, urban sensations and musical-theater composers with bigger things on their minds; both managed to complete one towering opera before dying young. He might have added more items to his list: the ground basses of Purcell's time are elaborated by their melody lines in a manner akin to, if not precisely comparable to, the structure of Gershwin's songs.

William Lawes (1602-1645) - Richard Boothby - Complete Music for Solo Lyra Viol (2016) {Harmonia Mundi Digital Downloads}
FLAC (tracks) - 44kHz/16 bit - Official Digital Download (qobuz.com) -> 272 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 139 Mb
Artwork (pdf+jpg) -> 11 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2016 Harmonia Mundi | HMU907625
Classical / Baroque / Early Baroque

Lock the doors, close the curtains and turn the lights down before putting this disc on. Here is music for an intimate space: solo music for solitary souls. This is a rare opportunity to hear solo lyra viol music from the early 1630s played on a beautiful period instrument by one of today’s foremost exponents of the Jacobean repertoire. Richard Boothby has been playing English consort music (some of it by Lawes) with Fretwork for over 30 years, so is as well placed as anyone today to interpret this body of solo music, most of it recorded here for the first time.

William Lawes, who was shot and killed during the English Civil War, was the intellectual of English viol music in the 17th century, and the pieces heard here will appeal most to those whose interests run to the brainy and slighly shocking: Gesualdo, Zelenka, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. "Consorts to the organ" are viol consort pieces with the accompaniment of a small organ, which here blends almost imperceptibly into the texture only to emerge into unexpected short solos.

Jenkins was relatively unknown, having spent most of his life quietly in the employ of wealthy landowners in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk up to the Restoration, when he took up a court appointment as a lutenist. His pupil-patrons Sir Nicholas and Roger L'Estrange and Roger North were, however, much quoted figures of the period.