Loutna česká ed. by Petr Daněk, et al (review) Geoffrey Chew

Music and Letters, Volume 102, Number 1, February 2021, pp. 148-149 (Review)

Published by Oxford University Press

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. the spreadand success ofanemerginglanguage of town of Jindr› ichufi v Hradec (Neuhaus) and harmonic tonality. But it made me wonder why much of his output is now lost. Even those of his we couldn’t make an equally compelling case for works that have survived have been published many instrumental genres of popular music in only sporadically in modern editions, and there which we may find similar chordal experiments. is still no comprehensive collected edition, I am thinking in particular of the collections of largely because most of his output comprises dance pieces and bass patterns played on Catholic sacred music with both Latin and keyboards or strummed instruments such as the Czech texts, and the publication of sacred music guitar and lute. To be sure, Long has was often blocked during the post-war years of acknowledged how many of the part-songs she communism in Czechoslovakia. analyses were also transcribed and intabulated Among Michna’s works, two substantial for these instruments. But there were hundreds of published hymnals with vernacular Czech texts additional indigenous dance genres played on stand out for their remarkable originality: these them that were not just intabulations; they were are his C› eska¤maria¤nska¤muzika (Prague, 1647, independent dance forms that also tested, and modern edition 1989) and Svatoroc› n|¤ muzika must have reinforced, harmonic tonal patterns (Prague,1661, modern edition 2001). Chronologic- and expectations. The popular publications and ally between them falls the Loutna c› eska¤(‘The manuscripts in alphabeto notation of rasgueado- Bohemian Lute’), published in Prague in 1653, style guitar strumming of chord patterns in the which marks a milestone in seventeenth-century seventeenth century is one case in point. While Czech music. Like the hymnals, it contains boggling in number, these sources still probably strophic sacred songs with vernacular Czech texts, can only hint at what must havebeen aubiquitous but it goes well beyond them in being cast as a and quotidian improvisatory practice through- unifiedcycle of thirteen devotional continuo songs, out Europe (Thomas Christensen, ‘The Spanish allegories of the mystical wedding of Christ with Baroque Guitar and Seventeenth-Century the soul, supplied with elaborate ritornelli for Triadic Theory’, Journal of Music Theory,36 violins and viols, the first of its kind. The new (1992),1^42). edition is the first to present it in full, in score and Butthis is surelyatopic fora different study,and performing parts, with full English translations of one can hardly fault Long for choosing not to the editorial preface, the original dedication of the write that history here, as much as I am quite sure collection, andallthe sung texts. it would complement her claims. Tonality, it The editorial preface well summarizes the seems, came as much from below as above. In fortunes, and lists the sources, of the cycle, which following the many experiments popular seems to have remained entirely unknown after composers such as Gastoldi and Morley made the seventeenth century. It was thought until with harmonic phrasing and tonal pairings in the very recently to have survived only fragmentar- exuberant genre of the homophonic part-song, we ily, but has emerged gradually over almost a can indeedbeginto hear tonality being made. century through chance discoveries. Isolated THOMAS CHRISTENSEN parts were discovered in the late 1920s and Universityof Chicago formed the basis of a published partial edition in doi:10.1093/ml/gcab001 1943. The printed score of the sung stanzas (two ß The Author(s) (2021).Published by Oxford University soprano voices, with full text, and basso Press. All rights reserved. continuo) was unknown until 1968, when it was discovered at Sobeˇslav, and it was published in facsimile and transcription (with a realization of Loutna c› eska¤. The Czech Lute: Urtext. Adam the continuo part) in 1984. This source still Michna z Otradovic. Compositiones, 14. Ed. lacked the string ritornelli between the sung Petr Daneˇk, Adam Viktora, and Tereza stanzas, and an attempt was made by Michael Dan› kova¤ .Pp.132(10booklets)(Ba« renreiter Pospı´s› il to reconstruct them in1998, in an edition Editions, Prague, 2018. ISMN 979-0-2601- that has formed the basis for performances and E 0800-4 (paperback), 8.50.) recordings. However, yet further new sources have emerged since 2003: these are the prints of Of seventeenth-century Czech composers, the first violin part at Slany¤ and of the organ part Adam Michna z Otradovic is generally reckoned at Strahov in Prague, and the former reveals today ‘the most prolific, distinctive, and import- interesting (and unsuspected) differences in ant’, as John Tyrrell put it in a recent review style between the sung stanzas and the ritornelli. (Music & Letters, 98 (2017), 477^8), even though (The second violin part is presumably still Michna spent his entire career in relative obscur- missing, and remains a hypothetical reconstruc- ity as an organist in the provincial Bohemian tion in this edition, though the editorial preface 148 is silent about its status; if it is a reconstruction, no legacy of the communist period, in which doubt it is more plausible than Pospı´s› il’s.) Michna’s devotional, quasi-erotic poetry was A number of the editorial decisions that have interpreted solely as a covert account of his own been made strike this reviewer as curious and personal erotic experiences. unhelpful. The first is the distinction drawn by Ifthe secondviolinpart is stillmissing, it istobe the editors between what they call the ‘score’ hoped that it too may emerge; but even without (partitura) and the ‘short score’ (particello, it, one may dare to hope that a more scholarly corresponding to the source at Sobeˇslav) respect- editionçand indeed one more practicable for ively.These are printed separately in this edition, performanceçmay one day be published in a and neither is complete. The ‘score’ is the full folio volume to match Sehnal’s existing editions score, including the ritornelli, but with the texts of Michna’s works, and that critics may take up for the stanzas of each song restricted to the first the challenge of elucidating the music and texts stanza alone, and these texts are underlaid only of this remarkable collection and its remarkable in the first soprano part. The ‘short score’ omits composer. the ritornelli but supplies the full texts for all GEOFFREYCHEW stanzas of each song, underlaid in both soprano parts. Both of these include specimen facsimile Royal Holloway,Universityof London pages from the original prints, but not complete doi:10.1093/ml/gcab008 facsimiles. Neither the so-called ‘score’ nor the ß The Author(s) (2021).Publishedby Oxford University Press. so-called ‘short score’, nor indeed the separate This is an Open Access article distributedunder the terms of ‘organo’ part, provides any suggestions for the Creative Commons Attribution License realizing the figured bass of the continuo part. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),which And it is not clear why modern barring permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in conventions (as used, for example, by Jir› ı´Sehnal any medium, providedthe originalwork is properlycited. in his standard edition of Michna’s C› eska¤ maria¤nska¤muzika (Prague, 1989)) have been jettisoned throughout this edition: barlines are Allegri’s‘ Miserere’ in the Sistine Chapel. By Graham very sparse, and do not correspond even with O’Reilly. Pp. xvi_372. (Boydell Press, Michna’s own practice, and one cannot imagine Woodbridge and Rochester, NY, 2020. ISBN that modern performers will find these parts 978-1-78327-487-1 (hard cover), »45; -7449015 readily legible. Most will need to consult earlier (ebook),»19.99.) editions, and none of these parts will be unprob- lematic in use. There have been various attempts in recent years As for the texts, the spelling and punctuation to tell parts of the Allegri Miserere story, but have mostly been modernized‘to ensure compre- Graham O’Reilly’s book is the first to survey the hensibility for present-day performers and complete performance history of this iconic audiences’, with no detail given of variants. And work.Tellingly,only seven pages out of 254 of dis- the purpose of the collection is not explored; cussion are devoted to Gregorio Allegri, who, in even the relationship, either in text or music, the 1630s, composed a simple framework of two between the Loutna c› eska¤and its presumed model harmonized chant verses, one for five voices and in the Bavarian Johannes Khuen’s collection of the other for four, alternating with each other vernacular German songs, his Epithalamium and with plainchant. It was written with the ex- marianum (1636), is glossed over as insignificant, pectation that singers would embellish their lines although their correspondences are striking and and it was these added abellimenti, together with have been noticed since 2004. (It has been various peculiarities and subtleties in perform- suggested by Alexander J. Fisher that Khuen’s ance, that attracted increasing fameçand ever- collection and its sequels ‘can be connected larger crowdsçover the following two hundred directly or indirectly with Munich’s communities years and more. The passage of time, as well as of female religious’ (Music, Piety, and Propaganda: the embellishing process, took the work ever The Soundscapes of Counter-Reformation Bavaria further from the original. The papal singer (NewYork,2014),135).This lackof adequate com- Giovanni Biordi rewrote the five-voice template mentary or context is an unfortunate feature also in the early eighteenth century; around the same of the edition of Michna’s hymn texts published time, another member of the choir, Tommaso without music (Ba¤snicke¤d|¤lo: Texty p|¤sn|¤1647^ Bai, composed his own version in close mimicry 1661, ed. Mirek C› ejka (Prague, 1999)), which of Allegri, so that the same abellimenti could be restricted commentary to the identification of used. By the late eighteenth century, listeners biblical and other references and to the explan- were as likely to have heard Bai’s setting as ation of obsolete words. This is ultimately a Allegri’s and could not have told the difference; 149