Not just Dowland Songs for soprano and lute Carolyn Sampson Matthew Wadsworth Carolyn Sampson soprano Matthew Wadsworth lute & theorbo Recorded live at Wigmore Hall, London, on 7 December 2008 01 PhiliP RosseteR Prelude solo lute 01.30 02 RobeRt Johnson Away delights 03.18 03 Oh, let us howl 02.36 04 Care-charming sleep 03.58 05 Alfonso feRRAbosco Pavan IV solo lute 03.48 06 Anonymous Galliard solo lute 02.20 07 John DowlAnD Fortune my foe 06.32 08 RobeRt Johnson Pavan in C minor solo lute 06.02 09 John DowlAnD Can she excuse my wrongs 02.52 10 In darkness let me dwell 04.55 11 clAuDio monteveRDi Quel sguardo sdegnosetto 02.18 DDD WHLive0034 12 AlessAnDRo GRAnDi O quam tu pulchra es 04.02 C 2010 The Wigmore Hall Trust P 2010 The Wigmore Hall Trust 13 AlessAnDRo Piccinini Toccata XIII solo theorbo 03.16 Made & Printed in England 14 Partite Variate Sopra La Folia solo theorbo 05.25 All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, public performance and 15 Giulio cAccini Amarilli mia bella 02.53 broadcasting prohibited. 16 GiovAnni KAPsbeRGeR Toccata arpeggiata solo theorbo 02.54 LC 14458 17 ‘Kapsberger’ solo theorbo 04.31 Wigmore Hall 18 Tarquinio meRulA Canzonetta spirituale sopra alla nonna 09.22 36 Wigmore Street London W1U 2BP www.wigmore-hall.org.uk John Gilhooly Director encore The Wigmore Hall Trust 19 announcement 00.06 Reg. Charity No. 1024838 20 RobeRt Johnson Have you seen the bright lily grow? 03.03 Total time: 76.16 b0034.qxd 18.11.2009 13:28 Page 2 NOT JUST DOWLAND — SONGS FOR SOPRANO AND LUTE The days were becoming shorter, the nights ever one of John Webster’s most grisly plays, The darker and, at the end of a particularly cold St Duchess of Malfi. Webster, according to T.S. Eliot, Nicholas Day, December 2008, crowds swarmed was ‘much obsessed by death, And saw the skull into Wigmore Hall for a warm and intimate beneath the skin’. It certainly shows in this mad- evening of seventeenth-century music for voice song, with the improvisatory, skeletal chords and and lute. Matthew Wadsworth, who devised the declamatory style for which Johnson was famed. evening, told us it was the culmination of many After a return to the more sombre, lute-ayre years of work, from his earliest student days style of ‘Care-charming sleep’, Wadsworth enjoys listening to the recordings of Julian Bream. his second solo spot of the evening. The Pavan Wadsworth had switched from guitar to lute the by Alfonso Ferrabosco was included in Robert minute he discovered the theorbo – the entirely Dowland’s popular 1610 compilation, A Varietie irresistible long-necked lute, which features in the of Lute Lessons, and is a sedate, courtly dance of second half of this programme. Italian origin, written for the court of Elizabeth I. Wadsworth drew his audience in with a gently The Pavan, in Thomas Morley’s words, ‘staid intimate Prelude by the English court musician music, ordained for grave dancing’ was frequently and theatrical manager, Philip Rosseter (1567– coupled with the lively Galliard (from the Italian 1623), lutenist at the court of James I. Then, cosily ‘gagliardo’, meaning ‘vigorous’ or ‘robust’) – and remaining in the same key, he turned to another this anonymous example is typical of the triple- man of the theatre, Robert Johnson, the last of the metre courtly dance in which kicking, leaping and great lutenists, and musician to The King’s Men jumping were not unknown. Players, the foremost theatre company in London, The shadows return with the appearance of which performed at the Globe and at Blackfriars. one of the greatest English song-writers of all Johnson is the only composer known to have time: John Dowland. ‘Semper dolens, semper provided music for Shakespeare – his ‘Full fathom Dowland’ was his tag: this not only gives us a clue five’ and ‘Where the bee sucks’ are still performed as to the pronunciation of his name, but and loved. But here, with Carolyn Sampson sitting epitomizes his love of pathos and of melancholy at his side in story-telling mode, Wadsworth in his poetry and his music. It was a conceit of the introduces us to a song from Beaumont and time, yes – a pose for a certain fashionable affect Fletcher’s play The Captain. ‘Away delights’ and affectation – but Dowland had indeed known adopts the fashionable melancholic tone of the sorrow in his long exile from England: as a time, less theatrical, and more intimately ayre-like Catholic he had been unwelcome at court. But his in its alternating long and short lines and sighing sojourns on the Continent equipped him with melismas. In ‘Oh, let us howl’, Johnson turns to first-hand knowledge of the latest French and 3 2 b0034.qxd 18.11.2009 13:28 Page 3 Italian musical fashion which enriched his music Johnson's minor-key Pavan, elegantly turned in and made it entirely distinctive. The melody of the hands of Wadsworth. ‘Can she excuse my ‘Fortune my foe’, for example, is thought to bear wrongs’, from The First Booke of Songs and Ayres resemblances to a French Pavan called ‘Belle qui of 1597 is the epitome of Dowland’s skill tiens ma vie’. This song, with its major-minor in creating an exquisite piece of both artifice ambivalence, is the perfect example of how a and tenderness. Sampson recreates with great sense of the power of fate, in both private love sensitivity Dowland’s minute care for the ever- and in the politicking of Elizabethan courtly life, is shifting metre and inflection of the English transmuted by music into a broader expression of language. ‘In darkness let me dwell’ (from A pain and melancholy. Alliteration and repetition Musicall Banquet of 1610) is Dowland at his slow and numb the verse and its setting, and darkest and his greatest: both voice and fingers return the listener to a mood of sobriety for Robert relish the dissonances and lurching harmonies 4 b0034.qxd 18.11.2009 13:28 Page 4 which incarnate the ‘hellish, jarring sounds’ of the innovatory of composers. Born to a Bolognese consciousness of the insomniac with his repeated family of lutenists, his Intavolatura di Liuto e plea to ‘let me living die, till death do come’. Chitarrone of 1623 encourages the use of After the interval, Wadsworth put his lute aside, ornament, vibrato, rubato and many changes of and took up a beautifully crafted long-necked tone colour – something exploited to the full by theorbo. It was time for the masters of the Italian Wadsworth in his Toccata and his Variations on air and madrigal, starting with the master of them the endlessly popular ‘La Folia’. all, Claudio Monteverdi. From his many collections After giving an airing to Caccini’s ‘Amarilli mia of madrigals for any number and combination of bella’, one of the most popular arie antiche, voices and instruments, Wadsworth chooses a late beloved of students and singing-teachers even piece called ‘Quel sguardo stegnosetto’ – a perfect today, Wadsworth turns to the less well-known example of the more declamatory, freely Giovanni Kapsberger, Venice-born son of a composed, almost improvisatory style which so German nobleman. He was known as ‘Il Tedesco seduced English composers. Even in a strophic della Tiorba’, and acknowledged as ‘the finest song (with each verse set to the same music), master of the theorbo in Rome’. Quite an act for Monteverdi relished the opportunities for word- Wadsworth to follow; but he relishes the painting and for variation. Here, the repeated bass complexities of the ‘Toccata arpeggiata’ – writing patterns, drawn out so cunningly by Wadsworth’s as wayward and tricksy as though it had been theorbo, discover almost endless new harmonic improvised spontaneously. progressions, as Sampson’s soprano, resisting the This winter evening ended, as it began, temptation to be over-coy, teases, leaps and sighs warmly and gently, with a lullaby sung by Mary to its way through to the final, improvised cadence, Jesus: the ‘Canzonetta spirituale sopra alla celebrating the healing power of laughter. nonna’ by Tarquinio Merula. Wadsworth claims to Next, a setting of the Biblical Song of Songs by have rehearsed this in the presence of his then Monteverdi’s pupil Alessandro Grandi, who was three-month old son: the mesmeric repetition of to die of the plague before his master’s madrigal just two notes in the bass evokes the movement had even been published. With its gasping sighs of a foot rocking a wooden cradle, or perhaps the of ecstasy, and its ever shortening sequences beat of the somnolent human heart. It’s up to the leading to the words ‘Surge, surge, veni, veni’ singer to make what she will of the song as it (‘Rise, rise, come, come’) O quam pulchra es was grows more impassioned, and ends in recitative – considered too erotic to be performed in church, by which time one can only hope the baby, if not and was forthwith banned. this audience, will have fallen, irresistibly and Alessandro Piccinini, a contemporary of happily, fast asleep. Monteverdi, was considered one of the most Notes by Hilary Finch © 2010 5 4 b0034.qxd 18.11.2009 13:28 Page 5 PHILIP ROSSETER (1567–1623) 4 Care-charming sleep Care-charming sleep, thou easer of all woes, 1 Prelude Brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose. On this afflicted wight, fall like a cloud ROBERT JOHNSON (1583–1633) In gentle show’rs; give nothing to it loud Or painful to his slumber. Easy sweet 2 Away delights And as a purling stream, thou son of night, Away delights, go seek some other dwelling, Pass by his troubled senses; sing his pain For I will die.