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Early Music Alphabet (Sampler, pre-1650)

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#21 ·
D1 John Dunstable, 1390 – 1453 : Information on Dunstable's life is largely non-existent or speculative. Much English church music was lost in the dissolution of the monasteries. That so much of Dunstable's work survives in continental editions is an indication and his fame and its popularity.

This is the famous isorhythmic motet which combines the hymn Veni creator spiritus and the sequence Veni sancte spiritus :


Dunstable's unusual treatment of harmony and the equality of the vocal parts is displayed here. Although a beautiful sound and a brilliant technical exercise, the combination of the two parts merely muddies the sense of what is being sung. One can see why polyphony was rejected as distracting from the essential focus on scriptural text .
 
Discussion starter · #22 ·
D2: John Dowland (1563 - 1626)
Possibly born near Dublin, or in Westminster of Irish stock; lutenist and songwriter - 'semper Dowland semper dolens' - always Dowland, always doleful.

Based on my own experience, I can't help thinking that anyone who hears him, loves him.
His most famous work is Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares, published in 1604.

The YouTube Video begins with Lachrimae Antiqua, probably the most famous tune. The blend of melody, harmony, pace is simply angelic and it always does make me feel reflectively melancholy. It does what it says on the tin!

 
#23 ·
D3: Guillaume Du Fay - also Dufay, Du Fayt; 5 August 1397(?) – 27 November 1474) was a French composer and music theorist of the early Renaissance. He is considered the leading European composer of his time, during which his music was widely performed and copied. He was well-associated with composers of the Burgundian School, particularly his colleague Gilles Binchois, but was never a regular member of the Burgundian chapel himself. Like Binchois, Du Fay was deeply influenced by the contenance angloise style of John Dunstaple, and synthesized it with a wide variety of other styles, including that of the famous Missa Caput, and the techniques of his younger contemporaries Johannes Ockeghem and Antoine Busnois.

Du Fay composed in most of the common forms of the day, including masses, motets, Magnificats, hymns, simple chant settings in fauxbourdon, and antiphons within the area of sacred music, and rondeaux, ballades, virelais and a few other chanson types within the realm of secular music.

Of Du Fay's masses, his Missa se la face ay pale and Missa L'Homme armé are listed on AllMusic as essential compositions.


Link to complete album -

Dufay: Les Messes à Teneur

Cut Circle, Jesse Rodin

 
Discussion starter · #24 · (Edited)
D4: Baldassare Donato : 1525-1530 – 1603)
Italian composer & singer of the Venetian school. According to Wiki, the Venetian school showed progressive trends, and Donato was even more progressive. He developed a light secular form called the villanella, a form of madrigal that was sometimes danced to, which uses 'vigorous cross-rhythms', though his sacred music was written in more conservative style.

The Music & Influence Section in the Wiki article on Donato explains in what way he was 'progressive' and in what ways he used traditional forms of polyphony.
.
I wasn't able to find a lot on YouTube, but here are a couple of short videos as samples of his work.
Both have a glorious, heart-lifting 'full-on' sound.

Donato, Baldassare - Quatro dei, cantata a 4


O Dolce Vita mia - Baldassare Donato- Schola Martialensis

 
#25 ·
D5 Donato da Cascia (fl. c. 1350 – 1370) : (also da Firenze or da Florentia) an Italian composer of the Trecento.He was probably also a priest, and the picture that survives of him in the Squarcialupi Codex shows him in the robes of the Benedictine order.


Most of his surviving musical is secular and this is a nice little two voice madrigal.
 
Discussion starter · #26 ·
D6: Comment Post:

Dunstable, Dowland, and Dufay are the Big Names here, and especially Dufay. I haven't listened to much Dufay at all and feel daunted by all the music that I have missed.

The other two composers - to make up the numbers, we had to scrape the barrel, but it's still nice to have some names.

But tomorrow will be E - an even more hard-to-find letter.

To allow some leeway, let's say that each day one should try to find at least three Composers with samples. Five will always be welcome, but that should take some of the pressure off.

Best wishes for a peaceful night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 
#27 ·
E1 Michael East 1580–1648 : English organist and composer. He wrote madrigals, published in Morley's The Triumphs of Oriana. His most highly regarded works are his five-part fantasies for viols.


A very nice viol fantasia well played.


Nice interplay of voices in this madrigal.
 
#28 ·
E2 - Bartolomé de Escobedo - (1515 – August 11, 1563) - was a Spanish composer of the Renaissance. He was born in Zamora, studied at Salamanca where he was a singer, and in 1536 joined the papal choir in Rome as only the second Spaniard to be admitted after Cristóbal de Morales. He had his share of difficulties while in Rome, mostly due to his short temper and illness. Records from the Vatican, the Diarii Sistini, show that he was fined on two occasions for calling a fellow singer an "ar$e" and a "fat pig", and that he was inexplicably excommunicated for one day in 1546. Despite this, he was well regarded as a theorist and was famously involved in judging the public debate of 1551 between Nicola Vicentino and Vicenzo Lusitano over the relevance of ancient Greek modes to 16th century music.

It's a genuine shame that after five hundred years have passed, this is the sole extent of his less than flattering reputation but the work selected here - Missa Philippus Rex Hispanie - is wonderful - a genuine delight - and completely unexpected from someone who managed to get himself "inexplicably excommunicated for one day in 1546".


Link to the complete work -

 
#29 ·
E3: Jacob van Eyck - (c. 1590 – 26 March 1657) was a Dutch nobleman and blind musician. He was one of the best-known musicians of the Dutch Golden Age, working as a carillon player and technician, an organist, a recorder virtuoso, and a composer. He was an expert in bell casting and tuning, and taught Pieter and François Hemony how to tune a carillon. Van Eyck is credited with developing the modern carillon together with the brothers in 1644, when they cast the first tuned carillon in Zutphen. He is also known for his collection of 143 melodies for recorder, Der Fluyten Lust-hof, the largest work for a solo wind instrument in European history.

This is "Derde Doen Daphne D'over Schoone Maeght" as played on the recorder -



and this is the same song "Derde Doen Daphne D'over Schoone Maeght" as played on the carillon -


Once you hear the carillon version you'll quickly understand why there are very few - if any - recorder and carillon duets...

Link to complete album -

 
#31 ·
E5 Johannes Eccard (1553–1611) : German composer and kapellmeister. He was an early principal conductor at the Berlin court chapel.

The presentation in the temple


Great piece of choral(e) singing.

Christ lag in Todesbanden


Eccard's setting of Luther's Hymn is excellent. The piece is better known in Bach's more ornate version but this is a straightforward setting of the hymn.
 
Discussion starter · #34 · (Edited)
F1: Pierre Fontaine (c. 1380 - c. 1450)
Wiki says that he was a 'French composer of the transitional era between the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance and a member of the Burgundian School of composers. While he was well known at the time, most of his music has probably been lost. All of his surviving music is secular, and all his compositions are chansons.'

Here's one of Fontaine's Chansons, J'aime bien celui que s'en va:


I have nothing profound to say about this, except that I think it's a gorgeous tune with parts, and I only wish I could get the music and we could play it in our local folk music group. :)
 
#35 ·
F2 Girolamo Alessandro Frescobaldi 1583 -1643 : An Italian composer and virtuoso keyboard player. His work influenced Johann Jakob Froberger, Johann Sebastian Bach, Henry Purcell, and other major composers.

Both pieces are taken from his 1615 Toccate e partite. Wiki describes this as establishing expressive keyboard style; unfortunately both players have taken this to heart. The videos are best listened to rather than watched.

The second toccata


Gentle and tuneful. The music is a delightful display of harpsichord effects.

The seventh toccata


A much more thoughtful piece. A ripple of notes expressing a melancholy mood.
 
#36 ·
F3 - Antoine de Févin (ca. 1470 – late 1511 or early 1512) was a Franco-Flemish composer of the Renaissance. He was active at the same time as Josquin des Prez, and shares many traits with his more famous contemporary.

All of Févin's surviving music is vocal. He wrote masses, motets and chansons. Stylistically his music is similar to Josquin's in its clarity of texture and design, and its relatively progressive nature: Févin evidently wrote in the most current styles, adopting the method of contrasting imitative sections with homophonic sections which came into prominence around 1490. Unlike Josquin, he was less concerned with the careful setting of text than with formal structure; his setting of individual words is occasionally clumsy, though his larger-scale structures are easy to follow. He also particularly liked the device of using vocal duets to contrast with the full sonority of the choir.

Some of Févin's music uses the technique of free contrapuntal fantasy, later perfected by Josquin, where strict imitation is absent; fragments of a cantus firmus pervade the texture, giving a feeling of overall unity and complete equality of all the voices.

Of his music, 14 masses (one of which is a Requiem Mass), 3 lamentations, 3 Magnificats, 14 motets and 17 chansons survive.


Févin: Requiem d’Anne de Bretagne

Doulce Mémoire, Denis Raisin Dadre (direction)

Link to complete album -


"On the death of Anne of Brittany, her husband King Louis XII honoured her with exceptional funeral ceremonies lasting forty days, which sealed forever her image as Queen of France and Duchess of Brittany.

As he prepared this programme centring on the Missa pro defunctis of Antoine de Févin, and read the exceptionally vivid narrative by the herald of Anne of Brittany (whom her subjects nicknamed simply ‘Bretaigne’!), Denis Raisin Dadre realised that beyond all this official mourning staged by the royal authority, there was also a silent sorrow, that of the Bretons who had lost their duchess and were also in the process of losing their duchy’s independence.

He wanted to make the voices of the people heard behind the voices of the king’s singers, and so he asked Yann-Fañch Kemener to contribute some traditional Breton gwerzioù.

These solo songs act as a counterpoint to the complex polyphony which expresses all the pomp of royalty.

His voice allows us to hear the Breton people, so attached to their Duchess Anne who had bequeathed them her heart and who are still extraordinarily attached to her today."
- Presto Music
 
#37 ·
F4 John Farmer (c. 1570 – c. 1601) : An important composer of the English Madrigal School.

Fair Phyllis I Saw Sitting All Alone


A delightful pastoral madrigal. With a fairly light texture there's a nice interplay of voices.

"Fair Nymphs I Heard One Telling" (For 6 Voices) - no.14 From Madrigales; The Triumphes Of Oriana (1601)


As the texture becomes more complex, the signing style becomes "fruitier". I find this sort of jolly chortle offputting.
 
Discussion starter · #38 · (Edited)
F5: Thomas Ford (c.1580-c.1648)

English composer, lutenist, viol player & poet, serving the court of Henry, Prince of Wales, and after his death, the court of Charles I, before he acceded and afterwards, until 1642, the outbreak of the civil war.

There is a pleasant site here, which includes videos of both instrumental pieces - The Rossignols, Sir Richard Weston's Pavane; Mr Southcote's Pavane; and some songs: Farre, Sweet, Cruel; Go, Passions, to the Cruel Faire; and two versions of Despaire & Delight/ There is a Lady Sweet & Kind (see the third video, below):
sites.google.com

Another lute website - Thomas Ford

Wikipedia: Thomas Ford (1580 – 1648) was an English composer, lutenist, viol player and poet. Ford was attached to the court of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, son of James I, who died in 1612. He was musician to the household of Prince Henry from 1610 to 1612, musician to the household of
sites.google.com sites.google.com

I am listening to the lute pieces now, and they are charmingly patterned and appealing.

Wiki says:
'Ford wrote anthems, for three to six voices; four sacred canons; 35 part-songs; six fantasias for five parts; and a few other pieces for viols. His most important collection was probably the Musicke of Sundrie Kindes (London, 1607), which was in two parts. The first book included lute ayres, described as "Aries for 4 voices to the Lute, Orphorion, or Basse-viol, with a Dialogue for two Voices..."; the second part contained dances such as "Pavens, Galiards, Almaines, Toies, Jigges, Thumpes, and such like..." scored for combinations of viols.'

Thomas Ford - « Come, Phyllis, come into these bow'rs » - Lutes consort and voices

Satisfying craftsmanship in the interweaving of instrumental & vocal parts.

Since First I Saw Your Face - Ford's most famous song:

It's an entrancing tune that fits the words beautifully, but I can't find a version on YouTube that satisfies me. This is a 'modern' treatment but the 'authentic olde-worlde' videos are so much more annoying! :)

Another famous song of rather similar type - There is a Lady Sweet & Kind:

It's justly famous however - romantic and pretty; chocolate box stuff, but then I like chocolate. :)
 
#39 ·
F6 - Comment - You may enjoy this recording - which appears to be closer to what you may be seeking -

Image




The Sypres Curten of the Night

Elizabethan & Jacobean Lute Songs

Michael Chance (counter-tenor), Christopher Wilson (lute)

Link to complete album -


This page from Presto Music goes into greater detail for the track listings -

www.prestomusic.com

The Sypres Curten of the Night: Elizabethan & Jacobean Lute Songs

The Sypres Curten of the Night. Chandos: CHAN0538. Buy CD or download online. Michael Chance (counter-tenor), Christopher Wilson (lute)
www.prestomusic.com www.prestomusic.com


 
Discussion starter · #40 ·
F7: Thank you. I look forward to listening to the Michael Chance, as he was a patron of Norwich Baroque & we had the good fortune to see him in concert with Emma Kirkby in Norwich Cathedral a few years ago. Happy days! :)
 
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