Dutch And Italian Music: Miessen(Rec), Wilson(Org)

Dutch and Italian music in the 17th century The background The years around 1600 were not the most tranquil in the history of music. Countless comments were made by contemporary composers and others who noticed that change was afoot, who hoped (or feared) that music was taking new directions. The title that Giulio Caccini gave to a collection of sophisticated vocal compositions in 1602 was, with good reason, Le nuove musiche ('new music'). Indeed, there was plenty of experimentation going on, especially in Italy. In 1628, Heinrich Schtz wrote that composers there were trying out all kinds of things, in order 'to tickle today's ears with new inventions. Schtz was in a position to know because, from 1609 to 1613, he had studied in Venice with Giovanni Gabrieli. This put him in the forefront of a long line of Northern European composers who went to Italy to become acquainted with new composition techniques. That marked a significant change in trends. Many Northerners had preceded Schtz in the Renaissance, but their aim had been to teach composition to the Italians, not to learn it from them. The move south had been heralded in the 14th century by Johannes Ciconia, a singer and composer from Lige. Later Guillaume Dufay, Josquin Desprez and Heinrich Isaac were among those to follow in his footsteps. To the ostentatious Italian principalities, they exported the secret of polyphony, the art of counterpoint in which three, four or more voices sounded together in ingenious and harmonious combinations. The Flemish composers Cipriano (Cypriaan) de Rore and Giaches (Jacques) de Wert were among the last to realize their musical talents in Italy. In the second half of the 16th century, Italian composers took over control. They started to have their doubts: northern harmony was all very beautiful and malleable, but how could six voices be the most individual expression of the most individual emotion? Because that is what the Italians were looking for: music that was closer to the emotions than the opulent polyphony that largely evoked associations with heavenly choirs of angels. The emancipation of instrumental music Italians considered that human beings were the heart of the matter, with their motives and feelings. So it is no surprise that they focused on the madrigal, which was in fact a grand finger exercise for the development of opera. As soon as the writings of poets like Tasso and Guarini evoked a tear or nagged with remorse, Italian composers quickly set them to music. At the same time, people looked for ways to catch 'natural' speech in notes. One of the 'new inventions' of which Heinrich Schtz had spoken in 1628, was monody: one voice with a fairly elementary instrumental accompaniment, the basso continuo, provided by instruments such as harpsichord, organ, lute, viola da gamba and dulcian. It soon became apparent that monody did not just pave the way for the recitatives and arias with which opera was to triumph, it also encouraged the development of instrumental music. Purely instrumental music had existed for a long time, but it was largely borrowed from vocal compositions. It is significant that 16th century manuals for how to play instruments like the recorder and gamba largely focused on skilful embellishment of vocal music. Monody however provided instrumental music with a way to tear itself free of the vocal embrace and continue under it's own steam. At first it was a little insecure and sometimes instrumental music had to lean on the reliable support of the vocal style, but in the course of the 17th century, instrumental music managed to stand on it's own two feet. Old and new In the first decades of the 17th century, a variety of old and new instrumental forms existed side by side. One form with a respectable past was the canzona. This was originally an instrumental arrangement of a chanson, but by 1600 canzoni were also composed in the new fashion, in other words for solo instrument with the accompaniment of a basso continuo. The opening remained characteristic: one long and two short notes, as can be heard i