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Linn Records Label of the Year ‘Linn is the very model of a modern record company, ensuring that the highest standards are maintained

from the studio right through the company’s CKD 372 very impressive digital store.’ JAMES JOLLY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, GRAMOPHONE

LINN, GLASGOW ROAD, WATERFOOT, GLASGOW G76 0EQ UK t: +44 (0)141 303 5027/9 f: +44 (0)141 303 5007 e: [email protected] d Christe qui Lux es a4 (I) ...... 2.50 (CA. 1540~1623) f In nomine a5 (II) (‘on the sharp’) ...... 2.32 director, treble g Christe qui Lux es a4 (II) ...... 2.42 WENDY GILLESPIE treble & tenor Complete Consort Music h In nomine a4 (II) ...... 2.35 tenor viol j Fantasia a6 (II) ...... 5.08 MARKKU LUOLAJAN-MIKKOLA bass viol q Fantasia a3 (III) ...... 1.04 k Miserere a4 ...... 1.33 MIKKO PERKOLA tenor & bass viols w Browning a5 (The leaves be green) ...... 4.37 l Fantasia a4 (I) ...... 2.22 EMILIA BENJAMIN tenor viol e Te lucis a4 ...... 2.20 ; Christe qui Lux es a4 (III) ...... 1.07 Recorded at r In nomine a5 (III) ...... 2.31 2) In nomine a5 (V) ...... 2.51 Merton College Chapel, Oxford, UK t Christe redemptor omnium a4 ...... 3.16 2! In nomine a4 (I) ...... 2.25 6–8 September 2010 y In nomine a5 (IV) ...... 2.43 2@ Pavan and Galliard a6 ...... 3.57 Engineered by Philip Hobbs u Fantasia a4 (III) ...... 2.08 2# Fantasia a6 (III) (‘to the vyolls’) ...... 4.16 Post-production by Julia Thomas i Sermone Blando a3 ...... 2.02 2$ Pavan and Galliard a5 ...... 3.56 at Finesplice o Fantasia a5 (‘Two parts in one in the 4th above’) .....6.03 2% Sermone Blando a4 (II) ...... 2.15 Design by John Haxby a Fantasia a6 (I) (A song of two basses) ...... 3.38 2^ Fantasia a3 (II) ...... 1.39 Photography by Marco Borggreve s Fantasia a3 (I) ...... 1.47 2& Prelude and Goodnight Ground a5 .....5.40 www.phantasm.org.uk 2 3 Music’s glimpse of happiness is not only a gift of God, but boasts a psychic (CA. 1540~1623) WILLIAM BYRD advantage for man: as Hoby notes ‘it is a credible matter that it is acceptable Complete Consort Music unto Him, and that He hath given it unto us for a most sweet lightning of To experience William Byrd’s complete consort music at one sitting is to our travails and vexations’. Among the ‘chief conditions and qualities in a confront a richly textured portrait of one of the most acute thinkers of Courtier’ enumerated are the ability ‘to sing well upon the book’ (that is, the Elizabethan Age. For Byrd is a composer who relishes mastering and to sight-sing), ‘to play upon the Lute, and singe to it with the ditty’ and ‘to transforming the host of musical traditions handed down to him while ever play upon the viol and all other instruments with frets’. Fretted instruments anxious not to repeat himself. The result is a condensed if unparalleled are those whose necks are tied with seven adjustable strands of animal gut oeuvre of undeniable beauty composed over some forty years from the which guide the tuning of all pitches. These instruments are therefore ‘full early 1560s until the first years of the 17th century. of harmony, because the tunes of them are very perfect, and with ease may do many things upon [them] that fill the mind with the sweetness Consort music for viols was still a rarefied activity in 16th-century and of music. And the music of a set of viols doth no less delight a man, for had yet to be transformed into the domestic ‘home entertainment centre’ it is very sweet and artificial’. If one adds to this mixture Byrd’s leaning it became in the early 17th century in the houses of well-to-do gentry. It was toward the serious side of life – he was ‘naturally disposed to Gravitie and rather at the royal court, at leading aristocratic houses, some cathedrals Pietie’ according to Henry Peacham (1622) – we can identify the goals of and theatres, and at Oxford and Cambridge where in Byrd’s day one would delight, sweetness, melancholy and technical artifice upon which Byrd set play viols. Still, composers leapt at the chance to develop a range of music his musical sights. His achievement, though forgotten after his death, is genres freed from secular poetic texts (or ‘ditties’) and church liturgy while never less than remarkable. also devising ways to evoke references to verbal poetry and the spirituality of sacred music. Like drawing, painting, fencing and dancing, the playing Only two of Byrd’s consort works found their way into print in his own day – of ensemble music was hailed as a pursuit to be cultivated by courtiers the Fantasia a4 (I) and the Fantasia a6 (III) in the Psalms, Songs and Sonnets and gentlemen as well as by their female counterparts, though to a lesser (1611), though even these works – stamped with the composer’s seal of extent. In 1561 – just as Byrd was beginning to compose his consort music approval – must have been written much earlier. For a chronology of the – Sir Thomas Hoby published an influential English translation of Baldassare entire corpus, one can infer a dating based on the still authoritative analyses Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier (1528) where we read that ‘just as bodily of Oliver Neighbour, whose monograph from 1978 still best illumines exercise maketh the body more lusty’, music ‘brings into us a new habit that the history, context and construction of these marvellous works. Based is good, and a custom inclining to virtue which maketh the mind more apt on Neighbour (though without his consent!), I offer a rough, speculative to the conceiving of felicity’. chronology for Byrd’s forty years of experimentation.

4 5 POSSIBLE DATE The implied time line suggests that Byrd began with the polyphonic TRACK WORK OF COMPOSITION enhancement of devotional hymns (measured out in semibreves) from the 8 Sermone Blando a3 1560 dusk-to-dawn offi ces of Vespers, Compline and Lauds before moving to the 12 Christe qui Lux es a4 (I) 1560 equally venerable tradition of the In nomine, a mystical consort rhapsody 14 Christe qui Lux es a4 (II) 1560 on a famous snatch of sacred vocal music (by John Taverner) in which the 17 Miserere a4 1560 cantus fi rmus sounds in breves – twice as slow as in the hymns – and can no 3 Te lucis a4 1561 longer be related to the words of the original plainsong. From there, after 19 Christe qui Lux es a4 (III) 1561 a dense early experiment in Fantasia a6 – which fi nally ‘fugues’ on a Tudor 15 In nomine a4 (II) 1562 fi ve-note motto called ‘Praise him praiseworthy’ – Byrd tried his hand at 21 In nomine a4 (I) 1562 contrasting sets of highly artifi cial variations (or ‘descant divisions’) on bass 10 Fantasia a6 (I) (A song of two basses) 1563 grounds or popular tunes such as ‘The leaves be green’ in which the subject 4 In nomine a5 (III) 1564 keeps migrating between parts and keys. He then takes on the mimetic 6 In nomine a5 (IV) 1564 gestures of dancing in writing stately pavans and elegant galliards – some 20 In nomine a5 (V) 1564 further works a5 might still be salvaged from his keyboard music – before 5 Christe redemptor omnium a4 1565 developing a sectional fantasia which unexpectedly quotes popular ballads 13 In nomine a5 (II) (‘on the sharp’) 1565 25 Sermone Blando a 4 (II) 1565 (‘The Sick Tune’ or ‘Greensleeves’) as well as including forays to the dance 27 Prelude and Goodnight Ground a5 1569 fl oor with the easily recognised leaps of the galliard. The question of how to 24 Pavan and Galliard a5 1572 end these fantasies and grounds seems to have plagued Byrd enough that 2 Browning a5 (The leaves be green) 1577 he devises a novel instrumental apotheosis as a worldly equivalent to the 7 Fantasia a4 (III) 1585 ‘Amen’ in his sacred polyphony (for example, Track 16, 4:30 and Track 27, 16 Fantasia a6 (II) 1586 4:50), thereby raising the tonal register and the value of the genre. Finally, 9 Fantasia a5 (‘Two parts in one in the 4th above’) 1590 at the end of his compositional travels in writing for consort, Byrd strips 18 Fantasia a4 (I) 1590 away every sign of the outside world – dancing, song, religion – in the three- 23 Fantasia a6 (III) (‘to the vyolls’) 1590 voiced fantasies, and, in the most compressed form imaginable, crafts three 1 Fantasia a3 (III) 1595 musical jewels. Here, following Thomas Morley (1597), ‘more art may be 11 Fantasia a3 (I) 1603 shown than in any other music because the composer is tied to nothing, 22 Pavan and Galliard a6 1603 but may add, diminish, and alter at his pleasure’. In taking a succession of 26 Fantasia a3 (II) 1603 unmarked ‘points’, each laden with its own refi ned gradients of character,

6 7 Byrd ‘wrests and turns [the point] as he wishes’, forming a kaleidoscope of Some Textual Notes: intense yearning and delight. At times it is hard to believe there are only The Fantasia a6 (I) exists in a later version as a Latin motet Laudate pueri three voices. (and even later as an English anthem Behold now praise the Lord) from which we’ve taken Byrd’s ‘improved’ dotted figure in one rising ‘point’ of Our recording – which in its eighty minutes omits only the spurious or imitation. The text to the tune called ‘Browning, my dear’ starts: inadequately reconstructed works such as the In Nomine a5 (I) and other incomplete hymn settings – attempts a continuous flow between the The leaves be green, the nuts be brown, contrasting musical genres. In so doing, we weave in and out of an Elizabethan They hang so high, they will not come down. tableau where the daily, even bawdy, pleasures of dance and popular song The cheeky duple-time quotation from the song ‘Greensleeves’ which are calmed by quiet moments of rapt meditation in the devotional hymn appears in the Fantasia a6 (II) (Track 16, 3:05) refers to the refrain: settings and elevated with the more ecstatic confessions of the In Nomines. Greensleeves was all my joy, In the lusty variations (Browning and the Goodnight Ground), and in the Greensleeves was my delight: cerebral fantasies, one relishes the dense, democratic counterpoint along Greensleeves was my hart of gold, with the canons and ‘fugueing’ as the work of an extraordinary intellect who And who but Lady Greensleeves. never fails to flatter the senses. What’s remarkable is that the genre of each The ‘Sick tune’ appears in canon in the two treble viols midway into the piece is often unrecognisable from its opening gesture, making the journey Fantasia a5 (Track 9, 3:02) and derives from a ballad called ‘Captain Car’ through Byrd’s consorts a tantalising voyage of discovery. Though he builds recounting a bad night at sea: on the work of his predecessors and contemporaries such as Robert Parsons, Sick, sick and very sick, Alfonso Ferrabosco and Robert White, Byrd always manages to turn an And sick and like to die; imitated theme or gesture into a quite inimitable invention which remains The sickest night that I abode, wholly his own. Good Lord have mercy on me. Shakespeare refers to the ballad in Much Ado About Nothing (III, iv), when Hero asks, ‘Why, how now! Do you speak in the sick tune?’ to which Beatrice replies, ‘I am out of all other tune, methinks.’ The verses of the hymn settings we play are those which exist intact or have been reliably reconstructed. Because of the mismatch between the numbers of Byrd’s polyphonic verses and the strophes of the hymn itself, it is unlikely

8 9 that the pieces were intended to be alternated with monophonic chant in a Procul recedant somnia, From all ill dreams defend our sight, liturgical setting, though they might certainly be performed that way today. Et noctium phantasmata: From fears and terrors of the night; Sermone Blando is for Lauds from Low Sunday until Ascension and begins: Hostemque nostrum comprime, Withhold from us our ghostly foe, Ne polluantur corpora. That spot of sin we may not know. Tristes erant apostoli The Apostles’ hearts were full of pain de nece sui Domini: for their dear Lord so lately slain: Praesta, Pater piisime, O Father, that we ask be done, quem poena mortis crudeli that Lord his servants’ wicked train cum Spiritu Paraclito, Through Jesus Christ, thine only Son, servi damnarant impii. with bitter scorn had dared arraign. Patrique compar Unice Who, with the Holy Ghost and thee, regnans per omnes saeculum. Doth live and reign eternally. Sermone blando angelus With gentle voice the Angel gave Amen. Amen. praedixit mulieribus, the women tidings at the grave; ‘In Galilaea Dominus ‘Forthwith your Master shall ye see: Christe redemptor omnium is a hymn from Vespers at Christmas: videndus est quantocius.’ He goes before to Galilee.’ Christe, Redemptor omnium, Jesu, the Father’s only Son, ex Patre, Patris unice, whose death for all redemption won, Christe qui Lux es is from Compline: solus ante principium before the worlds, of God most high, Christe, qui, lux es et dies, Christ, thou who art the light and day, natus ineffabiliter. begotten all ineffably. noctis tenebras detegis, who chasest nightly shades away, Tu lumen, tu splendor Patris, The Father’s Light and Splendor Thou lucisque lumen crederis, thyself the Light of Light confessed, tu spes perennis omnium, their endless Hope to Thee that bow: lumen beatis praedicans: and promiser of radiance blest: intende quas fundunt preces accept the prayers and praise today Precamur, sancte Domine, O holy Lord, we pray to thee, tui per orbem servuli. that through the world Thy servants pay. hac nocte nos custodias; throughout the night our guardian be; sit nobis in te requies, in thee vouchsafe us to repose, I owe a great debt to Oliver Neighbour for helping me with decisions quietas horas tribue. all peaceful till the night shall close. on sources, versions and authenticity, allowing me to exploit his expert knowledge of – and enthusiasm for – Byrd’s consort music; to Warwick Te lucis also stems from Compline and includes the same poignant fall of the Edwards for his generosity in giving us permission to play his reconstruction minor third as in Christe qui Lux es. of Fantasia a4 (III); and to Katie Hunter who kindly gave permission to record Te lucis ante terminum, To thee before the close of day, from the editions of Northwood Music and make use of George Hunter’s Rerum Creator, poscimus, Creator of the world, we pray reconstructed Galliard a5. Ut pro tua clementia, That, with thy wonted favour, thou sis praesul et custodia. Wouldst be our guard and keeper now. Laurence Dreyfus © 2011

10 11 PHANTASM, LAURENCE DREYFUS, treble viol and director, an award-winning consort of viols, was founded in 1994 by Laurence Dreyfus. The was born in , (USA). After cello studies with Leonard Rose ensemble catapulted into international prominence when its debut CD of works at the in New York, he turned to the viol, studying with Wieland by won a Gramophone Award for the Best Baroque Instrumental Kuijken at the Royal Conservatoire at Brussels, which awarded him its Diplome Recording of 1997. Specializing in music from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the supérieur with highest distinction. As a bass viol player, he has recorded CDs of quartet have been applauded across the globe for their moving performances, Bach’s viola da gamba sonatas, Marais’s Pièces de violes and Rameau’s Pièces which embrace the eloquent fantasies of Byrd and Gibbons, the magical works of de clavecin en concert (all on Simax), and collaborated with Sylvia McNair in Lawes and Purcell, even arrangements of Bach and Mozart. Since 1997, they have a Grammy-winning album of Purcell songs (on Philips). As a musicologist, he released twelve further recordings which have won several awards, including a has published Bach’s Continuo Group and Bach and the Patterns of Invention further Gramophone Award in 2004 for the music of , and have (Harvard, 1987 and 1996); the latter won the Kinkeldey Award from the American become recognised as the most exciting viol consort active on the world scene Musicological Society for the best book of the year. Dreyfus taught at Yale, today. Their last recording on the Linn label – named Gramophone’s Record the , Stanford and the before Label of the Year in 2010 – was devoted the consort works of the 17th-century becoming Thurston Dart Professor in 1995 at King’s College . In 2002 he composer John Ward and was Editor’s Choice in BBC Music Magazine as well as was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, and in 2005 took up a University a finalist for the 2010 Gramophone Award(Linn CKD 339). Lectureship at the in conjunction with a Tutorial Fellowship in Magdalen College. He received the title of Professor at Oxford in 2006. His The consort has performed in festivals and on concert series throughout the latest book, Wagner and the Erotic Impulse, was published by Harvard University world, in cities such as Paris, Prague, Tokyo, and Washington DC. Recent Press in October 2010. engagements have included the Edinburgh Festival, the Barcelona Early Music Festival, the Bergen International Festival, the Lufthansa Early Music Festival in WENDY GILLESPIE, treble and tenor viols, London, Mazovia Baroque in Warsaw, the Stockholm Early Music Festival, the Vantaa Festival, and concerts at the Brussels Palais des Beaux Arts and in Ghent’s was born in New York and, after attending Wellesley College and the Amsterdam De Bijloke concert hall. Conservatoire began her performing career with the New York Pro Musica Antiqua. Since then she has played all over the world with leading ensembles Phantasm’s international membership (from Britain, Finland and the USA) has including Les Filles de Sainte-Colombe, the Ensemble for Early Music, Ensemble been based at the University of Oxford since 2005 when they were appointed , the Waverly Consort and the English Concert. She has participated in Consort-in-Residence. In autumn 2010, they took up a new association as Consort- over 80 recordings for Virgin Classics, Decca, Nonesuch, , among in-Residence at Magdalen College (Oxford), where they perform, develop viol others. Whilst her specialty lies in consort music, Gillespie has participated in consort playing among the students, and collaborate with Magdalen College many performances of both Medieval and contemporary music. Gillespie was . a founding member of the viol consort Fretwork, and appeared with them

12 13 worldwide, having won both a Grand Prix du Disque and a Gramophone Award. well as in the Netherlands, Italy, Russia, Estonia, and Poland. His recording of President of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, she is also Professor at Marais’ Suite d’un goût d’Etranger on ALBA records won a national award for Indiana University, teaching at the Early Music Institute. excellence in his native Finland, and other solo CDs have likewise garnered critical acclaim, including discs of virtuoso viol music by Forqueray, Couperin, Marais, JONATHAN MANSON, tenor viol, and JS Bach’s gamba sonatas, the latter two issued by BIS. His special interest is in contemporary music composed for the bass viol as well as in designing and was born in Edinburgh and received his formative training at the International commissioning modern reproductions of viols built to his specifications. Cello Centre in Scotland under the direction of Jane Cowan, later going on to study with Steven Doane at the Eastman School of Music in New York. While in America, he became involved with the performance of early music and from MIKKO PERKOLA, tenor and bass viols, there went to The Hague to study viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken. On studied viola and viola da gamba at the Sibelius-Academy and the Royal both cello and viola da gamba, Jonathan regularly plays and records with many Conservatoire of The Hague, working under such teachers as Arvo Haasma, leading early music ensembles. Recent chamber music recordings include a Markku Luolajan-Mikkola and Wieland Kuijken. His main interest lies in early disc of Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin en concert with and Trevor music and as a viol player he has toured throughout Europe with Retrover, Pinnock and the Bach gamba sonatas, also with Pinnock. From 1999 until 2009 Battalia and the Spirit of Gambo as well as with the Helsinki Baroque he was principal cellist of the Amsterdam , with whom he and the Norwegian Baroque Orchestra. Perkola is also active in the performance recorded the complete cantatas of JS Bach. Jonathan makes his home near of contemporary music and has premiered several works involving the viola da London, where in 2003 he was appointed a professor at the Royal Academy of gamba and viola. His recording of Bach’s viola da gamba sonatas on Naxos was Music. His recordings of Bach and Rameau have been acclaimed widely, as has his released in 2007. Purcell recording for Linn Records with the group Retrospect (Linn CKD 332). He has teamed up with the flautist Emmanuel Pahud to give Bach recitals throughout EMILIA BENJAMIN, tenor viol, Europe, the USA and the Far East. studied viola da gamba with Sarah Cunningham and Baroque violin with at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. She spent a year at the MARKKU LUOLAJAN-MIKKOLA, bass viol, Brussels Conservatoire with Wieland Kuijken and is a core member of Sonnerie, studied cello with Arto Noras at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, which awarded playing viol, violin and viola. She is a member of the viol consort Concordia, him its diploma in 1983. An interest in led him to a summer with whom she has recorded extensively, and also plays with The Early Opera course in Norway with Laurence Dreyfus and later to Holland where he studied Company. with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague and received postgraduate diplomas in viola da gamba and Baroque cello. He is active as a chamber musician and has given many solo recitals throughout Scandinavia as

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