The legend of Victor and Corona in the medieval codices

Approximately from the thirteenth century onward, as the cult for the saints spread over the West, also as a response to the quest for tangible figures of faith that might recall the drama of the death of the incarnate Christ, new musical forms bore witness to an emerging sensitivity. Their modernity competed directly with the great Gregorian tradition , which had been firmly established for more than five centuries, and whose liturgical function had fixed the rhythms and modes both of the solemn rite , Mass, and of the monastic cult of the Office of Hours. This emerging sensitivity, which gave rise to “original creations that were typical of a geographic area, a diocese, or a religious institution” (S. RoNCROFFI , Canto gregoriano e culto dei Santi, in AA. Vv. Atlante storico della musica nel Medioevo, Milano, Jaka Book, 2on, p. uo), expressed the search for a greater closeness to the liturgical repertoire than that allowed by the Gregorian chant’s specific characteristics of text and performance: as a singing that sprang from the Scriptures, chiefly the Old Testament, Gregorian chant preserved its strict observance. So the style moulded on the Scriptures tended to exclude any reaction of human sympathy, with the risk of generating a certain distance between these means of contemplation of the truths of faith and the faithful themselves.

Undoubtedly a concrete need also underlay this emerging sensitivity: that of a catechesis suitable for simple people. Because of the very low diffusion of literacy, most people could not read or interpret the Scriptures. Listening had to be stimulated by figures and forms that were closer to the common people, and by a genre that was within everybody’s reach and was added to tradition without replacing it.

Within the vast sphere of the saints, martyrs offer their dramatic life stories as a basis for the cult of relics, whose function is not only religious and spiritual, but also social and cultural. In actual fact, a place that preserves the remains of a martyr has an additional importance and value. A sanctuary or basilica that is named after a martyr and preserves his relics, besides being a goal that is shared by the civil and ecclesiastical community and a beacon that directs people to faith and reminds them of it, is pure blood consecrated in Christ, from which the church, fortified through him, arises. Lastly, it is one of the most powerful symbols available to Christianity in the present -past-future time perspective and in the interconnection of different citi es and territories that share the same name . The latter were sacred places of spi rit u a l i ty and art, and their building and preservation, entrusted also to the a tive pa rtici p,11ion of local people , ensured their recognition within their own comm u n i ty.

It seems likely, therefore, that the ltistoria genre tu rned out to be pa rti cula rly adequate, even more so in the case of a Passio , whose ancientness brings us back to the earliest, tormented centuries of Christianity. I f a li re imbu ed with holiness undoubtedly gives the reader or listener food for thought, death through martyrdom following the example of Christ’s sacrifice paves the way from a state of contemplation to a pathetic dimension, putting to the test, in turn, the inward life of those who are involved. Courage, strength, patience, perseverance and determination are a measure of the faith that supports the martyr; but they also testify to the ineffectiveness of the punishments inflicted by the persecutors , who are astonished by the persistence of life in the tortured body. The martyrology tradition is full of vivid images of this sort, and undoubtedly testifies, beyond any possible exaggeration or distortion, to the hatred that was directed to the Christians during the earliest centuries, a hatred that was not only religious, but also political and socially compensational.

In the collective memory of the faithful, martyrs renew the Christological core of faith in immortal life. To die in Christ means to be re-born in Him; through the martyrs’ example, the Church cements its presence , keeping pace with the building of places of cult. Lastly, the narration of the martyrdom, which is never a mere chronicle of the tortures undergone by the martyr, but is a detailed report of the hours of penalty, formed of accusations, arguments, refutations – formed of soul, mind, body – touches several chords on the continuum between considering and feeling, and fully reaches the faithful.

The prolonged Passio of Victor belongs to the ltistoriae of martyrs from the earliest centuries of Christianity, whose trials are reported in the Acta drawn up by the proconsuls of the Roman legions. Along with Ignatius of Antiocha, Hermagoras and Fortunatus, Cyprian, Theodore, among the most ancient names, Barbara, Cecilia, Lucy, Justina, at that time martyrdom was shared by soldiers in the service of the

imperial state and by women, often from high-ranking families, who were devoted to Christ’s message; by apostolic fathers of the Church who were .1lso t he .1uthors of fundamental theological writings ; and by subjects with a lowly soci.11 role. These martyrs were characterised by a passionate defence of their own choi ··, which was declared and confirmed by them during their trial, tu rning ma rtyrdom i nto an active gesture, with no way out but never undergone passively. The atrocities were equal to the cruellest persecutions of all time inflicted on religious or ethnic minoriti es: a cruelty against fellow creatures that appears only in the human race and disguises deep tensions of a social, political and economic nature. In many cases, persecution was a strategy of the government meant to distract the masses, offering a gratifying image of efficiency against the current enemy.

In the Passio, Corona is almost an embodiment of Wisdom. There are many scriptural sources to which she refers when comparing Victor to several biblical personages who preceded him in highly courageous spiritual choices and physical trials, down to the extreme one of martyrdom: among them, Abel, the Fathers Abraham and Jacob, the latter’s son Joseph, Job, the prophets Isaiah and Samuel, and the three young men thrown into a furnace by Nebuchadnezzar . Lastly, Victor’s wisdom, to which he owes the patience that makes it possible for him to contrast and defeat the devil’s deceptive provocations, is compared to that of King Solomon. The choice of martyrdom emerges since Stefania’s first declarations to the dux: “Christiana sum [ …] Ego Stefanae vocor quae est corona recondita ob hoe non sacrifico, ut accipiam Dei coronam” (Bcv, ms. xcv, c. 58, 202; 2r6-2r8).

My name is Stefania / Corona; a name, a symbol –nomen-omen – that contains the passing of the hardest of tests. In actual fact, within the spiritual dynamics of the couple, Victor’s crowning is symmetrical to Corona’s victory, in a m u tual exchange, since they are complementary figures in the same story: the “feminine” Victor is mild , and opposes pondered arguments to Sebastian’s cruelty, while the “masculine” Corona is direct, determined and full of cou rage. Victor undergoes beheading, after having unnerved his executioner with the inefficiency of the torments inflicted on him, no less than ten atrocious tortures. Corona is killed by being dismembered , tied to two palm trees – this tree is a symbol of the blessed souls – that are first drawn together, then released. He, a devastated, headless body, receives the greater crown of the two that Stefania sees carried down from the sky by angels; the other crown – recondita, that is prepared for her – is a mark, as in the rite of the nuptial virgins, of her eternal, indissoluble union with Christ.

Compared with the earliest medieval version (Bcv, ms. xcv), the repertoire in St. Mark’s Basilica is a drastic shortening of the text, including the omission of three tortures: the poisoned food, the perforation of Victor’s eyes and the flaying, while the torture of the incandescent lamps on his hips is not associated to his being hung on a rack, so the two tortures turn out to be distinct moments, though this is a mistake from a logical point of view. The shortening of the text was undoubtedly determined by the requirements of the time available for the liturgical celebration, including the numerous psalmodic chants that were prescribed . The presence of Corona is marked by the short acclamation after the completion of Victor’s martyrdom: Beatus es, Victo1; et beata opera tua sancta; but in his martyrdom – cogis me diversas tibipenas imprimere, Sebastian declares while pitting his strength against Victor’s tenacity -her death is also included, prefigured by those same words. The Vespers of St. Victor, that this co presents for the first time in the modern age, are included in one of the Registers that form the Antiphonaries of St. Mark’s Basilica (called VAM in the musicological milieu ) and were drawn up between the thirteenth century and the fourteenth for the sung liturgy in St. Mark’s Basilica. The corpus of five books, numbered from n4 to II8 and indica ted as PSM de Supra (Procuratori de Supra), Chiesa, Registri, preserved in the State Archives of Venice, follows the yearly liturgical calendar from the first Advent Sunday to the presentation of Mary at the Temple, and preserves the litu rgical repertoires of the time, of the saints and of the common of the saints.

The repertoi re on which the co is based , is an appendix to YAM 118. The originals can be consulted in digital format, in black and white: they had fortunately been copied in microfilm before the theft of the manuscript during the last years of the twentieth centu ry, with the folia in Book iv (vAM 117) that were supposed to entirely reproduce the Vespers of St. Victor already omitted. So, following the musicological suggestion offered by Cattin, VAM n8 was taken up again, comparing and completing the transcription work. The notation , on a fou r-line stave, corresponds to the square format with ligature that was widespread i n the la te Middle Ages; as a rule is it easily understood; infolio 131 there is an evident ga p right after Victor’s declaration as a miles magni imperatoris, marked by the interruption of the notation after the passage Sebastianus dixit ad beatum Victo[rem]. However, if we compare this musical section with the text of the Passio , the logical meaning is not disrupted, since it is the introductive section of the verbal exchange between Sebastian and Victor, in which the former was brandishing the imperial order to execute all those who did not offer sacrifices to the gods (a trace of this is left i n the fragment . . . penis et tormentis illos subiacere ), while the latter argued on his own condition as a soldier of God. As we gave up the attempt to reconstruct what had been omitted, we were comforted by the textual and musical consistency of the performance , in succession , of the passages that precede and follow the gap. Lastly, a few erosions and shadows due to humidity made it necessary to perform small integrations, which in any case were satisfactorily carried out once we had understood the style of composition.

This recording presents a complete performance of the Vespers of St. Victor from St. Mark’s Basilica ‘s source, in full notation. We have decided not to emend an obvious mistake of the copyist in a sentence relevant to the boiling-oil torture: infundi partibus eius occultioribus in scv, ms. xcv, c. 56, 119-120; infundi per partes corporis eius occulti oneribus in VAM n8 (In 111 Nocturno, Antifona ).

Remaining faithful to the logic of the texts, we have added the following pieces as a comment to some salient points of the Passio: two of the twelve psalmodic chants prescribed in the repertoires, as a tribute to the performance practice of alternating the singing of the antiphon with the cantillarion of the psalms; three monodic pieces (a Gregorian hymn and two laudi); and five polyphonic pieces (in the forms of carol, conductus, mote/us and tropus) from European sources of English, Spanish and German origin. All the pieces are from a period between the eighth century and the fifteenth, and correspond aptly to the course of the legend, catching some of its key points. In order of performance, Ad ce/i sublima foreshadows the life that in the Christological perspective is not death but true life: eternal joy, triumph of humilitas as the mother of a ll virtues, and shining presence of God; Benedicite Deo anticipates and develops _Yictor ‘s assertion : “Ego unum deum adoro, qui fecit celum et terra mare et omnia que in eis sunt “, sung as an opening versicle in the morning pra ises; Gloria laus resu mes and replaces the psalmodic chant on the theme of Christ / Lord of glory, whose triumph , which heralds the victory of martyrdom , is celebra ted on Palm Sunday; Christi patientia celebrates the immolated Christ right after the trial of drinking vi negar mixed with lime to which Victor has been subjected; De la crude/ and Onne homo are grand, powerfully stirring choral frescoes: the weeping of the former is followed by the exhortation of the latter, and in both the presence of the Virgin Mary near the cross is also felt and anticipates the acclamation of Corona in the second versicle of the morning praises; Congaudeanl catholici celebrates the acceptance of faith inspired in many people by the sight of Victor’s sacrifice, transposed by analogy from the repertoire dedicated to St. James the Greater, the martyr whose remains were placed in Compostela; lastly, Cruxforma I Cruci Domini I Portare, glorifies the cross as a symbol of true, everlasting life.

In conclusion, though this production does not claim to have integrally reconstructed the minor liturgy for St. Victor that was sung in St. Mark’s Basilica during the late Middle Ages, it does offer a complete narrative excursus: it is based on the source dedicated to St. Victor in St. Mark’s Basilica , and broadens the latter’s outlook with its various additions in different styles, turning the story into a historia and extending its breadth well beyond the local memory, whether it be referred to Venice or to Veneto.

ELENA MODENA

[ testi e maggiori informazioni sono disponibili al seguente link: Texts and more info are available on our website: www.tactus.it / testi – Codice I Code: 220002

Strumenti I Instruments

Arpa gotica – Paolo Zerbinatti (San Marco di Mereto di Tomba, Udine) da iconografie de! sec. xrv circa

Organistrum – Paolu Zerbi na tti , daJ repertorio iconografico scultoreo del Portico de la Gloria , Cattedrale di Santiago de Compostela (sec. xm)

Viella a s corde (sec. xrv) – Marco Onone (Velletri , Roma)

Fla uto soprano di Gottinga (sec. xm) – Philipp Bleazey (Lancaster, Lancashire, Inghilterra)

Fla uto tenore basso Medioevo da Rafi – Eugene Ilarionov (Kiev, Ucraina )

Organo portativo in do (sec. xrv) – Francesco Gibellini, (Sassuolo, Modena) decorato da llario Gregoletto

“I saw it on the telly”
– The history and revival of the Meråker clarinet

By Bjørn Aksdal

Introduction

One of the most popular TV-programmes in Norway over the last 40 years has been the weekly magazine “Norge Rundt” (Around Norway)¹. Each half-hour programme contains reports from different parts of Norway, made locally by the regional offices of NRK, the Norwegian state broadcasting company. In 1981, a report was presented from the parish of Meråker in the county of Nord-Trøndelag, where a 69-year old local fiddler by the name of Harald Gilland (1912–1992), played a whistle or flute-like instrument, which he had made himself. He called the instrument a “fløit” (flute, whistle), but it sounded more like a kind of home-made clarinet. When the instrument was pictured in close-up, it was possible to see that a single reed was fastened to the blown end (mouth-piece). This made me curious, because there was no information about any other corresponding instrument in living tradition in Norway. Shortly afterwards, I contacted Harald Gilland, and we arranged that I should come to Meråker a few days later and pay him a visit.

The parish of Meråker has around 2900 inhabitants and is situated ca. 80 km northeast of Trondheim, close to the Swedish border and the county of Jamtlandia. Harald Gilland was born in a place called Stordalen in the

¹The first programme in this series was sent on October 2nd 1976.

Map of the Trondheim-Meråker region

southeast corner of the parish. Even though many people were working as miners in Stordalen (1761–1920), farming and forestry have been the main industries up to now. The mountain dairy farming was also maintained well into the 20th century.²

Harald Gilland received me in a little house with a good view of Meråker. Generally, he appreciated visits, and especially now, because his wife died suddenly a few months ago. We sat down in the kitchen, as one often does in the countryside. Gilland began by telling me about musical life in Meråker when he was young in the 1920s and 1930s, and he dwelt particularly on the music traditions of the mountain dairy farms. On such farms, dairymaids and shepherds used various kinds of mountain calls, such as the “kulokk” (cow call). They also played the “lur”, a long wooden trum- pet, as well as the “bukkehorn” (shepherd’s horn), which had finger holes and was normally made from the horn of a goat. In addition, there were different types of whistle flutes. Among the shepherds, there was a particular kind of instrument which was referred to as a flute, but which actually was

²See Bjørn R. Krokstad: Samhold og strid. Bygdebok for Meråker. Bd. 2. Meråker 1987.

a simple folk clarinet. Gilland remembered that his father Hans Gilland (1878–1951) made such a “flute” for him when he was 6–7 years old. Later, his father told him that the use of such instruments was widespread among young people in his early childhood in the 1880s. But in Harald Gilland’s childhood around 1920, this simple clarinet had become almost obsolete. Harald made himself a few such instruments in his younger days, the last time being in 1930. This instrument is still kept in the local museum.

After having played some dance tunes for me on the clarinet, Gilland led me into the workshop in his tool-shed, where he fashioned his instruments. He told me that he had made several clarinets for relatives and young people in the parish since he resumed making instruments in the1950s, but up until my visit no one had been interested in really learning to play the clarinet. As I stood and watched Harald Gilland making an instrument, I started to wonder about the history of this apparently unique clarinet tradition in Meråker.

In this article, I will try to figure out what could be the historical and organological background of this local tradition of making and playing folk clarinets in Meråker. Finally, I will describe the process that led to the revival of the Meråker clarinet in the 1950s.

I have interviewed Harald Gilland thoroughly, as well as other oral sources in the local community. Additionally, I have mapped and examined several old instruments, which still can be found in Meråker and in neighbouring districts. I have also been through a lot of written sources looking for information about clarinet traditions in Meråker as well as in other parts of Norway. However, I will start by looking at the general history of clarinet instruments in Europe and then discuss what position clarinets have had in Norwegian traditional music.

Harald Gilland playing his homemade clarinet. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

Idioglot and heteroglot clarinets

Today, the name clarinet is normally used to indicate wind instruments which in general have a single reed. These instruments can be cylindrical, like the European clarinet, or conical, like many types of folk clarinets. The single reed, which can also be called a tongue, may be one of two different types, and this divides the clarinets into two main groups: The heteroglot and the idioglot clarinets. When the reed is cut directly from a part of the body of the instrument, the clarinet is described as idioglot. Heteroglot clarinets have a separate reed, which is fastened to the mouthpiece by a thread or a thin rope (Rice, 1992, p. 1). The European clarinet is the most well-known representative of the heteroglot clarinets, while the Sardinian launeddas is a good example of the idioglot type. The Meråker clarinet belongs to the heteroglot type.

Heteroglot clarinet. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

An historic-organological approach

The name clarinet came into existence early in the 18th century because of the overblown register of the European clarinet, which was called clarinetto. However, the principle of using single reeds had already been known for a long time. The Egyptians used single reeds on their instruments as early as the 3rd century BC. Similar instruments still exist in the Middle East as duple clarinets (arghul, zummarah) or as the Sardinian triple clarinet launeddas.

Arghul, Arabian duple clarinet. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

In Europe we also find different types of clarinets being used in the Medieval Ages and in the Renaissance. But most of these clarinets were in all probability of the idioglot type (Rendall 1954, p. 62ff). There is little information about heteroglot clarinets before around 1700, when an instrument called the chalumeau, which used a separate reed, first appears.

There is reason for believing that the name chalumeau and the instrument with the same name are two different things. To begin with, the name, which is derived from the Greek kalamos (reed) via the Latin word calamus, represents the French form of the instrument name shawm (eng.) or Schalmey (ger.). At the same time the name chalumeau also seems to be

Clarinet horn from Solør, Norway, dated 1714. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

used as a general term in French for small reed instruments used in folk traditions. Many written sources exist that indicate that only idioglot clarinets were favoured in many parts of Europe. But in art music these clarinets were indeed absent. Some organologists have claimed that because the use of instruments with a single reed was so widespread in many folk music traditions, there is a reasonable possibility that the heteroglot clarinets first developed in traditional music, and later spread to European art music (Lawson, 1981, p. 1ff ).

Unfortunately, there was till now very little evidence for such a theory, but some years ago an old playing horn was found in Vågå in Gudbrandsdalen, Norway. The horn was of the heteroglot clarinet type and was dated 1693 (Løchen, 2000, p. 40ff)³. We have also found other similar playing

³The horn dated 1693 is today part of the collections of Maihaugen folk museum in Lillehammer, Norway.

horns in Norway with datings from the early 18th century (Lien Jenssen 2010, p. 22). Among these is a playing horn from Solør in Hedmark with a separate reed and the year 1714 inscribed. In seems therefore that playing horns of the heteroglot clarinet type was well established in parts of Norway by the early 1700s.⁴

In addition to this, a bone clarinet with 4+1 fingerholes was excaved as an isolated find in Västergötland in Sweden during the period 1910-1930. This clarinet, which has a length of 13.1 centimetres, is clearly of the heteroglot type. Ernst Emsheimer and Cajsa Lund write in their article discussing this find that “perhaps the find represents a fusion of pre-existing folk instruments and orchestral clarinet. In this case the find cannot be dated before 1800. Some circumstances, however, indicate that it could have been encountered much earlier. The function and the repertoire of the bone clarinet seems to have been the same as that of the bone flutes in this region of the country, serving the shepherds both to provide musical diversion and as signal instrument for the control of their flocks and to frighten off wild animals” (Emsheimer and Lund, 1982, p. 16).

Copy of Swedish bone clarinet, made by Magnar Storbækken, Tolga. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

Furthermore, we know about an old 13.8 centimeters long, but unfortunately undated, bone clarinet from the Verdal-Levanger district in North

⁴The history, distribution, repertory, use, and practical making of Norwegian playing horns of the clarinet type are dicussed by Atle Lien Jenssen in his Masters thesis: Tungehornet i Norge (The Clarinet Horn in Norway). Telemark University College, 2010.

Trøndelag. Even this instrument is of the heteroglot type with a separate single reed. However, this clarinet differs from the Swedish bone clarinet, especially in two ways: The Norwegian clarinet has only three fingerholes and no thumbhole, and the reed is fastened to the left side of the blown end seen from the players perspective. On the Swedish clarinet the reed is placed on the upper side of the blown end, just like the chalumeau and the early European clarinets. We also find a similar variation in the older Norwegian clarinet horn material. Here, we can see horns with the reed fastened on both the upper and the lower side of the blown end, as well as on the left and right side.

Norwegian bone clarinet from North Trøndelag. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

We can not tell for sure how old these two bone clarinets really are. However, there is a certain possibility that they go back to the time before the European clarinet was introduced into the Scandinavian countries. Consequently, these bone clarinets as well as the old clarinet horns may support the theory that the use of heteroglot reeds first developed in traditional music and later spread to European art music.

Around 1700 an instrument with the name chalumeau emerges in European art music. It referred to a short, cylindrical wind instrument with a wide bore, a single reed and seven finger holes, and it was the first documented heteroglot wind instrument used in art music. However, the modern chalumeau was primarily important in military music, where it featured prominently for a short period.

After the instrument maker Johann Christoph Denner (1655–1707) in Nuremburg improved the chalumeau, it was also introduced into art music. 

Copy of Denner chalumeau ca. 1700, made by Brian Ackerman, London. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

Shortly afterwards, Denner made still further improvements to the chalumeau and invented the European clarinet (Rice, 1992, p. 39ff). This new instrument was not a big success to begin with, and in orchestral music the chalumeau was still preferred both by composers and musicians. It was first around 1750 that this situation changed, much due to the French composer Jean-Philip Rameau (1683–1764), who included the clarinet in the two operas Zoroastre (1749) and Acanthe et Cèphise (1751). An even more significant development was that the German composer Johann Stamitz (1717–1757) of the Mannheimer school started to include the clarinet in his works, and in 1758 the clarinet was included in the prestigious and influential Mannheim-orchestra (Rendall, 1954, p. 77ff). But in its early years, the clarinet was actually played by oboists. Not before the 1760s do we find specialist clarinettists, and it was only in 1764⁵ that the first textbook on playing the clarinet was published (Rice, 1992, p. 66f).

Clarinets in Norway

Unfortunately, we have no evidence of the use of the modern chalumeau in Norway. But we know for certain that the European clarinet was established here in the 1750s (Aksdal 1982, p. 84f). It was first introduced in the cities, but very soon it spread to the countryside, where it became one

⁵Valentin Roeser: Essai d’instruction à l’usage de ceux qui composent pur la clarinette et le cor. Paris 1764.

of the most favoured instruments as early as in the closing stages of the 18th century. The main reason behind this very rapid and extensive distribution of the clarinet is probably to be found within military music. Here, the clarinet had displaced the oboe around 1760. A great many of the military musicians came from the countryside, and for long periods they kept themselves in preparedness at home, waiting for mobilisation. To earn some extra money, they took on assignments as musicians at weddings and on other festive occasions.

In 1782, the privileged town musician (Norw. stadsmusikant) in Christiansand on the southern coast of Norway, Lorents Nicolaj Berg, (1742/31787) published a textbook in music titled “The first step for beginners in the art of music”⁶. In his book, Berg presents the clarinet in a separate chapter. He starts the chapter by telling about a memory from his younger days:

In earlier times there has existed a kind of such reed instruments with one key, which I once discovered among some old instruments in the Latin school in Odense, as remnants of their dead predecessors. At the time the shawm (“Scharmeyen”) was also frequently in use. The clarinets of this century were first made with the two upper keys (…) (Berg, 1782, p. 48, translated by the author).

There is reason to believe that the instrument Lorents Nicolaj Berg saw in Odense was the modern chalumeau. He also mentions the “scharmey”, a variation of the name “schalmey”, which probably was a kind of shawm, a double-reed instrument, which was the predecessor of the oboe. Berg continues:

The clarinets are loud-sounding instruments; they are used among other instruments, especially in the military field music. I have myself a few years ago, before I was employed in this pitiful position as a musician, taught the oboists of the second regiment in Eastern Norway here in Norway to play these and other wind instruments … (Berg, 1782, p. 48ff, translated by the author).

⁶The full title of the textbook in Norwegian is: Den første Prøve for Begyndere udi InstrumentalKunsten, Eller en kort og tydelig Underretning om de første Noder at lære, Til Lættelse ved Informationen paa adskillige Musicalske Instrumenter, I sær paa Claveer, Violin, Alt-Violen, Bas-Violoncel, Citar og en Deel blæsende Instrumenter. Samlet og utgivet ved Lorents Nicolaj Berg, Kongl. Bestalter Instrumentist i Christiansand og dens Handels-District.

Lorents N. Berg’s textbook in music, Christiansand 1782.

The 19th century was a very rich period for the clarinet in Norway, and clarinet playing is referred to in written sources deriving from most parts of the country. Important folk music collectors like Ole M. Sandvik⁷ and Catharinus Elling⁸ mention that the clarinet was a common instrument in traditional music. Additionally, quite a few late 18th century chests and cabinets from central Norway have been preserved with paintings showing clarinets, often together with a cylindrical drum or a fiddle. Some of these chests and cabinets come from the neighbouring parishes of Meråker. From both these and many other regions we also know about old wedding traditions, where a clarinet player and a fiddler played wedding marches and other tunes on the way to the church and back again. These two musicians were often even supplemented by a drummer.

Quite a few European clarinets from central Norway have been preserved, and most of them are connected with the folk music tradition. In Meråker, I have found four such instruments, and they have all been used to accompany folk dancing. These clarinets have 3–5 silver keys, of which one is an octave key. We also know the names of the musicians who played on these instruments,

“The Volla clarinet”, 3keyed clarinet made in Oppdal, Norway ca. 1800. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

 and three of them in particular were much sought-after clarinet players who performed at weddings and dance festivities. One of them also made clarinets themselfes. In addition, we know the names of four other folk clarinettists in Meråker in the late 19th and early 20th century (Aksdal, 1992, p. 9) – and in Jamtlandia in Sweden, which is geographically and culturally very close to Meråker, we also find clarinet players from this period. The last one was Eric Nilsson in Mattmar. He died in 1973, at an age of nearly 90 years, and was active as a clarinet player up to his last years.

⁷Ole M. Sandvik: Folke-Musik i Gudbraandsdalen, Oslo 1919, p. 8.

⁸Catharinus Elling: Vore slaatter, Kristiania 1915, p. 5.

Wooden folk clarinets

It was not too long after the European clarinet came to Norway that people started to make their own clarinets. As early as in the 1790s, written sources tell us about clarinet making in the county of Oppland⁹, and many clarinets dating from central Norway in the 19th century have been preserved.

Almost all of the preserved instruments are homemade variants of the European clarinet, and only a very few clarinets seem to have been imported. What then might have been the reason for there also being a tradition in Meråker of making very simple clarinets, which in many ways look more like a wooden whistle flute?

As we already have shown, the European clarinet had a very strong position in Meråker. There is reason for supposing that this might have been one important reason why people started to make their own instruments. Some individuals, like the clarinet player Martin Haugtrø (Aksdal 1992, p. 12), tried to make copies, which were as close as possible to the European clarinet, while others made the far simpler shepherd’s clarinet. In addition, elderly people in Meråker that I have interviewed said that if they thought about making a wind instrument in their early days, it was always supposed to have a (single) reed. They also tell us that among the shepherds, especially in Stordalen, the goat’s horn was much in use, and that it was always provided with a heteroglot single reed constructed from juniper, and that it usually had 3-4 finger holes. The shepherds often played so-called nasty tunes, with which to frighten away dangerous, wild animals. According to Harald Gilland wooden lurs (trumpets) were often made with a single reed. So the principle of using a heteroglot single reed was strongly favoured in Meråker, and its usage was thus not confined to the clarinet.

Harald Gilland explained that the procedure for making the shepherd’s clarinet was the following: First, they found a good and suitable piece of wood. This should preferably be from one of the harder types of wood, i.e. birch. When they had split the wood and hollowed out the two pieces with a knife, they took a thin rope, birch bark, or a long and thin root from a

⁹Christian Sommerfelt writes in 1795 that ”…Clarinets are made in Christian’s county” (Sommerfelt 1795, p. 118). Christian’s county is an elderly name of Oppland county.

tree and lashed the two pieces together. Early in the 20th century they started to use a steel wire for this. Then the instrument was made tight by putting it in water for a while. Afterwards, the finger holes were burnt out of the wood and a kind of mouthpiece was made. Finally a splinter of juniper was cut and formed into a single reed, which was then fastened to the clarinet. Was this phenomenon and the method of making simple shepherds clarinets an isolated one, characteristic of only Meråker? There are three other written sources from central Norway, which mention similar folk clarinet traditions. In a book about the people living in the parish of Inderøy, 100 km north of Trondheim, and their habits, we can read that homemade clarinets in earlier times were popular among people living in the mountain dairy farms. The instrument was made from loose wood, i.e. alder, which they split into equal parts and then hollowed out (Ystad and Sakshaug 1973, p. 14).

In Røros, the well-known author Johan Falkberget published an article in one of the local newspapers about “The music of the mountain people from the earliest times up to today.” Written in 1934, it states:

A wind instrument with the name clarinet, a kind of flute, was in use. It was usually made of wood and the reed and the finger holes were whittled out. Its tones resembled the instrument the professional musicians call flageolet. Our ancestors often played the clarinet, or the pocket flute. (translated by the author)¹⁰

In the 1830s, a Scottish traveller, Samuel Laing (1780-1868), spent two winters in Levanger and Verdal in North Trøndelag.” In 1836, he published a diary based on his stay in Norway, and in it provides a great deal of valuable information about daily life, history, social conditions, religion and politics, both among the common people and the upper classes. Laing mentions music and dance several times in his book, and he also tells us about the music of the shepherds:

The herdboy is, ex officio, the musician on every farm. When he is attending the cattle in the summer at the seater, or distant hill pastures, he must make a noise occasionally to keep off the wolf; and that of the clarionet is as good as any. It seems the favourite instrument, and is generally played well enough for the servant girls to dance waltzes and gallopades to it (Laing 1851, p. 118f).

¹⁰The newspaper Fjell-Ljom, December 21th, 1934.

Laing refers to the instrument used by the shepherds as a “clarionet”. This is an older English name for the European clarinet, as opposed to the modern “clarinet” (Sachs 1913, p. 86). The term clarionet can also mean an early, now extinct type of the clarinet (Marcuse 1964, p. 109). It is difficult to tell whether it is the European clarinet or a simpler homemade clarinet that Samuel Laing refers to here. It would be unusual if the shepherd boys in Innherrad in North Trøndelag were playing the European clarinet on a regular basis. On the other hand, he mentions that they played both the waltz and the gallopade, a polka type, on the clarinet. This would indicate that the instrument in question was more sophisticated than the old single reed instruments we find among the shepherds. And because Laing is knowledgeable about music and dance, we would not expect him to mention simple homemade clarinets without giving any further explanation. No matter which of these theories one subscribes to, Laing represents an important source because he establishes a strong connection between the music of the shepherds and the clarinet as a type of instrument.

In addition to this, early in the 1990s a peculiar wind instrument was found in Glomdalsmuseet in Elverum in southeastern Norway. In the museum files, there is the briefest of explanations about its origins – just three words saying “probably from Østerdalen”. Østerdalen (The Eastern Valley) is one of the Norwegian regions where mountain dairy farming has been most widespread, continuing well into the 20th century. The instrument is 50 cm long, has a conical bore and is lashed together with birch bark.

Copy of the Østerdal clarinet, made by Magnar Storbækken, Tolga. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

It has seven finger holes, all of them on the upper side, as well as an oblique mouthpiece, which seems to have had a single reed lashed to the instrument by thread. This is undoubtedly a homemade clarinet, which very strongly resembles Harald Gilland’s descriptions of the old Meråker clarinets. Because of this, some people refer to the instrument as the Østerdal clarinet. What is the actual background for the Meråker clarinet and the other homemade shepherd’s clarinets? There is good reason to believe that these clarinets could represent a combination of two or probably three different instrument traditions: The wooden whistle flute, possibly the lur, and the heteroglot clarinet. The shape of the instrument, the name and the finger holes were already established with the whistle flutes; parts of the production technique were taken from the lur; and the European clarinet entered the musical life of the Norwegian countryside in the end of the 18th century. Additionally, there is a reasonable possibility that heteroglot folk clarinets were in use in Norway already before the European clarinet came to Norway.

This in many ways mixed background of the instrument goes some way towards explaining the special shape of both the older and the modern Meråker clarinet. With the exception of the reed, the instrument very much resembles a wooden whistle flute. The Meråker clarinet has 8+1 finger holes, which we also find on whistle flutes from other parts of southern Norway, e.g. Agder. However, this is not the most usual number of finger holes on these flutes. In Sweden also we could find flutes (“spelpipa”) with 8 finger holes, there sometimes even being a hole provided for the thumb. These instruments are most common in Dalarne, and are called “spilåpipa” in the local dialect. In Sweden, several heteroglot clarinets have also been preserved which are formed in much the same way as the old Meråker clarinets, using what is known as the lur-making technique: two halves which are hollowed out are then lashed together with birch bark. The instrument is subsequently fitted with finger holes and a wooden mouthpiece, where a single reed made of thin, elastic wood is attached and fastened (Kjellström, 1980, p. 188).

According to Finnish ethnomusicologists, there were several types of idioglot clarinets in Finland as early as in the Middle Ages. After the technique of using heteroglot reeds was introduced to Germany, the Finns soon

learnt about instruments like the chalumaeu and the European clarinet. They started to make a local clarinet-type called “mänkeri”, and around 1750 they began to use a heteroglot reed on the goat’s horn, which had been introduced from Sweden towards the end of the 16th century. In the second half of the 1700s quite a few lurs (long wooden trumpets) were also fitted with a separate reed.¹¹

Finnish mänkeri, made by Rauno Nieminen, Vippulo. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

Some mention should also be made of the Danish “skalmej”, of which there were two main types, either a clarinet or an oboe. When it is a clarinet, the skalmej is of the idioglot type. It is made from pinewood, and the two halves are lashed together with metal strings or thin roots from a tree. The clarinet-version of the skalmej has 3-6 finger holes and exists in different sizes from 10 up to 40 cm in length.¹²

The revival of the Meråker clarinet

In the first decades of the 20th century, both the shepherd’s clarinet and the other single reed instruments in Meråker fell more and more out of use. This development was undoubtedly due to the rapid decline of moun-

¹¹The mänkeri and other traditional Finnish instruments are presented in the exhibition Catalogue Ancient Finnish Musical Instruments: Kansanmusiikki-institituutin julkaisuja 18. Kaustinen 1985.

¹²You can read about the Danish skalmej in Mette Müller (ed.): From bone pipe and cattle horn to fiddle and psaltery. Exhibition Catalogue. Musikhistorisk Museum. København 1972.

tain dairy farming. It was especially among the shepherds and the dairymaids that these instruments had a natural and strong position. But in the mid-1950s, something happened in Meråker, which led to a revival of interest in the archaic shepherd’s clarinet. A local historian, whose father worked together with Harald Gilland controlling one of the melting furnaces in Kopperå in 1954-55, writes about this in a letter:

(…) On the night shift, when the bosses were far away, the workers often were engaged in private acitivities between filling in and draining out the furnaces. It was here, a man called Ola Løkken began to make the Meråker clarinet or flute (…) Soon thereafter, Harald Gilland and Peder Bremseth also started to make their own clarinets. But Harald Gilland was the only musician of these, who also could play the clarinet. On the night shifts he held small concerts, and all the men on the shift were the audience. While he played the clarinet he was also making fun, and even on the shift bus from Kopperå and down to Meråker he kept on (…).

Thus, it was people who still remembered the local clarinet tradition from their childhood days in Meråker who brought about the renewal of interest in the shepherds clarinet during the 1950s. Harald Gilland was the only person who brought this tradition a step further, because he also happened to be a very good musician. The other two individuals mentioned, Løkken and Bremseth, made only a handfull of instruments. So Harald Gilland, in his 40s, revitalised the tradition he had learnt from his father, of making and playing the old local clarinet. But gradually, he changed his method of production, and in this way, one can say that he brought the instrument up-to-date, in keeping with the methods and knowledge of our time.

At first, he looked for a well-suited piece of wood, and hard birch wood was recognised as being the best material. When the piece was cut to the suitable length, he hollowed it out with a drill and removed the core from both ends. Then he whittled out the piece with a knife and placed it in a lathe. When the turning was finished, he burned out the waste inside the piece and polished it on both sides. Now, it was time for burning out the finger holes. To find the right places for the holes, he used one of his older instruments as a model. It took some years before he managed to develop a model, which he judged to be satisfactory.

The next operation was to make an oblique cut at the end. Then he made a small curved piece of wood, which was glued to the end. Finally, the instrument was laquered with plastic laquer, and the reed was fastened to the mouthpiece with a copper thread. Earlier, he had used a clamp instead of the thread, but was never satisfied with this. He had also used different types of laquer before he found the one, which gave the best result. In later years, Harald Gilland also exchanged the traditional juniper reed with an ordinary B-clarinet reed, which he prepared himself and adapted by making it both shorter and thinner. In his opinion, this reed produced a steadier tone than the reed made of juniper.

Modern Meråker clarinet made by Harald Gilland ca. 1980. Photo: Bjørn Aksdal

While the old shepherds clarinets, in Meråker had a randomly assigned tonic, Gilland made instruments with the A note, or sometimes even B flat, as a tonic. This was done because he wanted to use the clarinet in ensemble playing together with the fiddle, the accordion and the guitar.

The repertory

After the revival in the 1950s, Harald Gilland’s repertory on the Meråker clarinet consisted mainly of old traditional fiddle tunes. In addition to his clarinet playing, Gilland was also a very rich source for and interesting bearer of traditional fiddle music in Meråker. He transformed many of the old dance tunes to suit the Meråker clarinet, which has a far more limited ambitus. The only tune in Harald Gilland’s repertory that he remembered his father was also playing on the clarinet was a short polka-tune. In earlier days, according to his father, they mostly played simple melodies and types of melodies without any connection with the dancing.

The shepherd’s clarinet in Meråker has not only been a solo instrument. In the 1970s and the early 1980s Harald Gilland played frequently with the excellent fiddler Svend Gravåsen (1911–1985) and the guitar player Olaf Tidemann (1911–2009). The ensemble generally played a mixture of arranged parts and free improvisations. Gilland usually performed the melody on the clarinet, while Gravåsen improvised a second on the violin. After the death of Gravåsen in 1985, ensemble performances, which included the Meråker clarinet decreased dramatically. However, from time to time one could meet Gilland and his clarinet, playing together with the guitarist Tidemann and an accordionist, as entertainers in local meetings and other arrangements.

The scale of the Meråker clarinet can vary a great deal from instrument to instrument, depending on how clever, or sometimes lucky, Gilland was with his making, and especially the position of the finger holes. The scale is always heptatonic, and the fifth note is usually a perfect fifth. Compared to the major scale, the second note and the sixth note sound often a bit too low, the fourth note sounds too high, and the third and the seventh note sound like quartertones. This scale is very similar to that we find on many folk recorders.

When Harald Gilland played the Meråker clarinet, he never used the technique of cross-fingering. He always raised one finger at a time when he played the scale upwards. Regardless of the scale of his instrument, he used his intonation technique to get as close as possible to a tempered major or minor scale. On most tunes, he played with the note D as tonic, achieved by raising the three lowest fingerholes. These tunes sounded very close to D minor. However, on some tunes he even played with an A tonic, keeping all the fingerholes closed. Here he intonated the third a bit higher by the help of his breath and his lips, and the tune sounded more like A major.

In my opinion, this shows that Harald Gilland in fact used two different basic scales, one when he made the instrument, and a second, and sometimes even a third scale, when he played tunes on the clarinet. However, one could easily get the impression of an elderly non-tempered scale.

The main reason for playing a more modern scale was probably that for several years he had been playing together with other musicians who used instruments like the fiddle, the accordion and the guitar.

Entering the national music scene

I was not the only person who, filled with curiousity, travelled up to Meråker in the early 1980’s to visit Harald Gilland. The folk music department of the Norwegian state radio (NRK) also came to Meråker and produced a radio programme on Harald Gilland and the fiddler Svend Gravåsen. Soon the Meråker clarinet became well known throughout Norway, and Gilland received several letters and phone calls from other musicians who were interested in old traditional wind instruments, and who placed orders for a shepherd’s clarinet from him. During the 1980s, Gilland produced more than 200 clarinets for sale¹³, and he also received many orders from outside Norway. Ringve museum in Trondheim, which is Norway’s national music museum, also showed great interest in the Meråker clarinet and entered into an agreement with Gilland concerning the delivery of instruments for sale. In addition to this, and in co-operation with Ringve museum, I made a music cassette for public release in 1988, presenting old, traditional and new recordings of the Meråker clarinet, played both solo and in ensembles. The museum even sent one of its employees to Meråker to learn the techniques of making clarinets under the guidance of Harald Gilland, so that Ringve museum could provide both continuity in the production and even produce their own clarinets for sale.

Harald Gilland died on January 7th, 1992, at the age of 79. Until his last years, and especially in the winter, Gilland spent much time in his workshop working on a clarinet, a wooden ale bowl, a corner cupboard or something else. When Gilland died, I was busy finishing a little book about the Meråker clarinet. Unfortunately, the book was published a few months too late for him.

¹³Unfortunately, there is no information available about who bought Meråker clarinets from Harald Gilland in the 1980s.

Luckily, Harald Gilland had also taught two local craftsmen how to make such clarinets, and he hoped they could bring this tradition further in Meråker. Today, only one of them, Nils Underhaug, is still occasionally making a clarinet, and at Ringve museum there has been no clarinet production during the last 15-20 years. On the other hand, in Tolga in Østerdalen the experienced instrument maker Magnar Storbækken has developed his own model of the Meråker clarinet. He also makes copies of the original Østerdalen clarinet in Glomdalsmuseet, as well as other traditional Norwegian wind instruments.

“The Meråker clarinet – in solo and ensemble playing”, CD made by Geir Egil Larsen and Bjørn Aksdal, Etnisk Musikklubb 2010.

Today, there are a few young musicians in Meråker who regularly play this instrument. However, the playing of the shepherd’s clarinet has in no way become a common part of the traditional music scene. On the other hand, occasionally one still comes across this instrument being played by folk musicians from other parts of Norway. This includes, among others, outstanding musicians such as Geir Egil Larsen, Ånon Egeland, Steinar Ofsdal and Hans Fredrik Jacobsen. And even the world famous Norwegian jazz musician Jan Garbarek occasionally plays the Meråker clarinet, for example on one of the tracks of his CD “Visible World”, produced in 1996 by the German quality label ECM.

Conclusion

In my introduction, I wrote that the objective with this article was to figure out what could be the historical and organological background of the local tradition of making and playing folk clarinets in Meråker. Additionally, I wanted to give a description of the process that led to the revival of the Meråker clarinet.In this article I have described how Harald Gilland and two of his colleagues in the 1950s caused a revival of the wooden shepherd’s clarinet by making a modernised version of it. Over the next years, Gilland developed the clarinet even more. Originally a solo instrument, the clarinet could now also be used in ensemble playing. About the same time, people outside Meråker became aware of this instrument, first through a popular television program, which featured Harald Gilland and his clarinet. This led to the instrument eventually becoming known as the Meråker clarinet. Harald Gilland subsequently received letters and phone calls from different parts of Norway and even from abroad, ordering clarinets. In this way, the local shepherds clarinet was introduced to a new and larger audience. Today, the Meråker clarinet is played by musicians coming from many parts of Norway, and even by some jazz musicians.

The history of the heteroglot Meråker clarinet can be traced back to the 1880s, but the instrument is probably much older. The Meråker clarinet seems to combine three different traditions of instrument making: Parts of the production technique were taken from the lur, the shape of the instrument, the finger holes and the name were influenced by the traditional whistle flutes, and the reed were probably taken from other old heteroglot clarinets and later from the European clarinet.

The Meråker clarinet was primarily an instrument favoured by shepherds and young people. My research has shown that similar clarinet traditions among shepherds seem to have existed also in other parts of Norway, especially in the Trøndelag region and probably in Østerdalen. These folk clarinets even have their close relatives in Sweden and in Finland. There have existed several types of heteroglot folk clarinets in Norway as well as in the other Scandinavian countries. In my article I have described bone clarinets, clarinet horns, clarinet lurs, and wooden shepherds clarinets, such as the Meråker clarinet. The Norwegian heteroglot clarinets go back at least to the 1690s, and this indicates that there is a reasonable possibility that heteroglot folk clarinets were used in Norway already before the European clarinet was introduced. Especially from an organological point of view, this would represent a quite new insight into the history of the clarinet in Europe.

Literature

Aksdal, Bjørn (1982): Med Piber og Basuner, Skalmeye og Fiol. Musikkinstrumenter i Norge ca. 1600–1800. Trondheim.

Aksdal, Bjørn (1984): Har klarinetten noen plass i norsk folkemusikk, in: Norsk folkemusikklags skriftserie 1. Bergen.

Aksdal, Bjørn (1992): Meråkerklarinetten. Trondheim: Ringve museum. Aksdal, Bjørn (1999): Volla-klarinetten, i: Bøgda vår. Oppdal Historielag 1999. Oppdal.

Aksdal, Bjørn (2001a): From shepherds pipe to Meråker clarinet. The case of the Norwegian traditional clarinet, in: Musikklidenskapelig årbok 2001, Institute for Musicology, NTNU.

Aksdal, Bjørn (2001b): En nyoppdaget gjeterklarinett i Meråker, in: Spelemannsbladet no. 1, 2001.

Berg, Lorents Nicolaj (1782): Den første Prøve for Begyndere udi Instrumental-Kunsten. Christiansand.

Elling, Catharinus (1915): Vore slaatter. Kristiania.

Emsheimer, Ernst og Cajsa Lund (1982): En svensk benklarinett, in: Sumlen. Årbok för vis – och folkmusikforskning. Stockholm.

Jenssen, Atle Lien (2010): Tungehornet i Norge. Historie, utbredelse, repertoar, bruk og praktisk instrumentmaking. Master thesis in traditional art, Telemark University College.

Kansanmusiikki-instituutti Kaustinen (1985): Ancient Finnish Musical Instruments. Exhibition Catalogue. Kansanmusiikki-instituutin julkaisuja 18. Kaustinen.

Kjellström, Birgit (1964): Spelpipan i Dalarna. Uppsala.

Kjellström, Birgit (1980): Om folkliga instrument, in: Jan Ling, Märta Ramsten and Gunnar Ternhag (eds.): Folkmusikboken. Stockholm.

Krokstad, Bjørn R. (!987): Samhold og strid. Bygdebok for Meråker. Bd. 2. Meråker.

Laing, Samuel (1851): Journal of a Residence in Norway. New Edition. London.

Lawson, Colin (1981): The Chalumeau in Eighteenth-Century Music. Ann Arbor.

Lawson, Colin (2000): The Early Clarinet. A Practical Guide. Cambridge.

Løchen, Leif (2000): Fra skorofele til salmodikon. Vågå: Nord-Gudbrandsdal Folkemusikkarkiv.

Marcuse, Sibyl (1964): Musical Instruments. A Comprehensive Dictionary. London.

Müller, Mette ed. (1972): From bone pipe and cattle horn to fiddle and psaltery. Exhibition Catalogue. Musikhistorisk Museum, København.

Rendall, F. Geoffrey (1954): The Clarinet. London.

Rice, Albert R. (1992): The Baroque Clarinet. Early Music Series 13. Oxford. Roempke, Ville & Dan Lundberg (2008): Eric Nirsas låtbok. Klarinettspelmannen från Mattmar. Svenskt visarkiv. Stockholm.

Sachs, Curt (1913): Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente. Berlin. Sandvik, Ole M (1919): Folke-Musik i Gudbrandsdalen. Kristiania.

Sommerfelt, Christian (1795): Efterretninger angaaende Christians  Amt. Top. Journ. for Norge, Bd. 4. H 14. Christiania.

Ystad, Andreas and Ingvald Sakshaug (1973): Inderøyboka. Bind 1 Den ålmenne delen. Del II. Steinkjer.

The historically informed performance of early music on period instruments or their reproductions has been for the last few decades an obvious part of the European and worldwide musical life. In Poland, however, the wide-ranging development of this movement, referred to by some as ‘novelties from the West’, didn’t take place until after the so-called Iron Curtain had collapsed in 1989. Since then there have emerged many early music ensembles, quite a considerable number of festivals have been organised and young musicians have gained access to professional training in playing historical instruments at universities and music academies, both at home and abroad.

Few could now recall, how the origins of the early music revival movement in Poland looked like in the years of the Polish People’s Republic. One might even think, according to the common opinion of young musicians, that early music was simply non-existent in the ‘rightly forgotten’ post-war period.

One of the half-forgotten, outstanding personalities connected with the beginnings of this movement in Poland in the sixties of the last century was Kazimierz Piwkowski. A bassoonist and a multi-instrumentalist, a chamber and orchestra musician, an academic and the establisher of the first Polish professional ensemble playing on historical wind instruments, a builder of reproductions of period instruments; he was, to sum it up, a highly unusual person, a true Renaissance man, who lives to the present day in reminiscences of his friends and co-workers as a great enthusiast, always ready to make sacrifices for his ideals, always looking for new solutions, endowed with an extensive imagination, and at the same time a charming talker in the type of an Old Polish ‘Sarmatian’.

Kazimierz Piwkowski was born in 1925 in Żnin, an old town lying in central Poland, between Wielkopolska and Cuiavia, in a cultural region called Pałuki. Till the end of his life he was very fond of his homeland, which, as he used to tell, was not only placed near the famous archaeological site Biskupin, but also surrounded by villages Wenecja, Rzym and Paryż (which names are the same as those applied in Polish for well-known European capitals Venice, Rome and Paris). According to him, such a noble neighbourhood was bound to have influenced his future interests and passions.

He was an offspring of a large family of musicians. His grandfather was an organist in Gorzyce, his father Paweł for more than thirty years was hired as the organist in St. Florian’s in Żnin, directing at the same time the parochial choir of St. Cecilia’s and a male vocal ensemble, known today under the name of ‘Choir Moniuszko’. His uncle also was an organist, and his mother was remembered as a music-loving person, gifted with a beautiful voice.

Kazimierz had his early experiences with music as a three years old boy, when he was helping his father to pull out stops during organ-accompanied masses in the parochial church. As a six-year-old he already tried to harmonise church hymns by himself. Paweł Piwkowski desired his son to become in future a military bandmaster. According to his plan, the boy was to start attending a school preparing for this career. The scheme was abandoned after the outbreak of World War II. The time of the Nazi occupation Kazimierz spent in Żnin, working in the former printing house of Alfred Krzycki, then taken over by Germans. After many years he still used to jokingly boast about ‘printer’s papers’. This job – and he was a good professional – probably saved him from being transported to forced labour in Germany. The time of the war didn’t mean for him a complete separation from music – there was an upright piano in the house, so he was devoting every minute of his leisure time to making music. There occurred even some small quarrels about whose turn it was to sit by the instrument – the father’s or the son’s?

After the war had ended, Kazimierz Piwkowski left for Warsaw, where he finished a secondary music school. In 1949, already a student of the Higher State School of Music in Warsaw, he started to work in the Polish Radio under Władysław Szpilman, quite well-known today thanks to Roman Polański’s movie ‘The Pianist’ (2002). Since 1951 he was employed as the first bassoonist of the National Philharmonic, conducted at the time by famous Witold Rowicki. He graduated from the Higher State School of Music in 1953, having completed his studies in the class of professor Benedykt Górecki, one of the most outstanding Polish bassoonists. In the same year together with the oboist Janusz Banaszek and the clarinettist Józef Foremski they established Warszawskie Trio Stroikowe (‘The Warsaw Reed Trio’). Even as he was still studying in the Higher State School of Music, Kazimierz Piwkowski won a two-year scholarship provided by the Ministry of Culture and Art, which enabled him to study in Paris with professor André Rabot. In consequence, he perfected his playing technique and was charmed by the sound of the French bassoon, decidedly dissimilar to the used in Poland bassoons of German construction. Afterwards, the National Philharmonic bought two French bassoons especially for Kazimierz Piwkowski and for quite a long time he was the only one bassoonist in Poland using this type of the instrument.

A wind quintet, Kazimierz Piwkowski second from the right.
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During his residence in Paris Kazimierz Piwkowski not only was refining his skills as a bassoonist, but he also acquainted himself with the finest musical monuments of French libraries and museums of art. His enthusiasm often made curators allow him to touch historical instruments kept in glass cases. A crucial discovery for him was the encountering the second volume of the treatise ‘Syntagma Musicum’ by Michael Praetorius, titled ‘De Organologia’ (Wolfenbüttel 1619), where he found construction, sound and application of musical instruments of the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries meticulously described. The contents of the appendix ‘Theatrum Instrumentorum’ proved to be singularly inspiring. In fact, Kazimierz Piwkowski was scrutinising the appendix in search of some information about construction and disposition of old pipe organs, but eventually it was the drawings minutely presenting Renaissance wind instruments (chiefly crumhorns) that fascinated him to a great extent and for his whole life. He was later to observe, that measurements of these instruments, given by Praetorius in Brunswick ells, their outside proportions and the position of finger holes – it all corresponded with the measurements of preserved historical instruments.

All those experiences kindled in Kazimierz Piwkowski a desire to reconstruct early instruments and perform on them the music of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and early baroque.

After his return from Paris, Kazimierz Piwkowski worked in the National Philharmonic as the first bassoonist till 1968. Moreover, 1958-1979 he was connected to the Higher State School of Music in Warsaw, at first as a lecturer, then a professor, a faculty dean and a pro-rector.

Independently from these activities, his ardent passion for the early music induced him to search constantly for preserved in Poland early instruments, musical iconography and other relics and monuments of this kind. He did it in cooperation with musicologists, including Mirosław Perz, a distinguished scholar, conductor and humanist, a researcher of the history of Old Polish music. Mirosław Perz remembers Kazimierz Piwkowski as ‘a pioneer of revival of the European early instrumental music’ and ‘a man of enormous abilities and imagination’. These last qualities decided, that Kazimierz Piwkowski undertook an almost crazy at that time task of reconstructing Renaissance instruments; at first crumhorns, then other wind (cornetts, sackbuts, pommers, shawms, dulcians and recorders), string and keyboard instruments, known him from museums, the drawings of Praetorius and Polish iconographic materials. Amongst his ‘craftsman’s’ achievements, besides wind instruments, we may find a medieval three-stringed viola constructed after the polyptych of St. John the Merciful in Kraków (1500), a portative organ after the triptych of St. Trinity in Wawel, Kraków (1464) and a regal built after the original instrument kept in one of museums in London.

The bell of the sackbut built by Kazimierz Piwkowski..

The ‘Fistulatores et Tubicinatores’ ensemble playing on the instruments from the workshop of Kazimierz Piwkowski (1975). From the left: Jacek Piwkowski – portative organ, Eugeniusz Sąsiadek – vocal, Marcin Piwkowski – medieval viola, Leokadia Piwkowska – bells, Leon Piwkowski – crumhorn, Maciej Piwkowski – recorder, Kazimierz Piwkowski – psalterium..

In order to realise his plans, Kazimierz Piwkowski had to acquire specific craftsman skills as well as construct, all by himself, needed machine tools. Chronic difficulties with supplies in the times of the People’s Republic of Poland didn’t make this task easier. To obtain required materials, e.g. tin for casting of organ pipes, or components for machines, it was necessary to walk for many days through bazaars or to make use of personal contacts to procure strictly rationed goods. After many years, Kazimierz Piwkowski was recollecting that for construction of a special kind of a lathe (for drilling bores in woodwind instruments) he had used a steering wheel found in a junkyard in Żnin and a chain from a combine harvester.

His first workshop was situated in the little kitchen of his 50-square-meter flat in Warsaw. Professor Mirosław Perz, a friend of the family, stresses the part played by Leokadia, the wife of Kazimierz, who supported her husband and later joined his ensemble. ‘In the tiny kitchen there were chisels and grinders, used for manufacturing of crumhorns, bassoons, recorders and shawms’, relates Perz. ‘Those instruments, made by trial and error, were constantly being perfected. Kazimierz’s instruments have the quality of masterpieces. He knew how to build them, had learnt to play them and taught it other people.’ Leokadia recalled, how the kitchen walls had kept changing colours according to the kind of wood in which her husband had been presently working. When he was building crumhorns of pearwood, the kitchen was all pink, and if he was using boxwood or sycamore wood, the walls took on a creamy shade of white. If the lady of the house wanted to make a meal for the family, she had to do some dusting before. Under all the beds Kazimierz Piwkowski used to store his supplies of wood, so, by force of circumstance, the whole family was from the very beginning really close to the idea of reconstruction historical instruments.

In 1964 Kazimierz Piwkowski founded the consort ‘Fistulatores et Tubicinatores Varsovienses’, which, after a year of rehearsals, gave its first concert of Old Polish music in the National Philharmonic in Warsaw (24th November 1965). The name of the ensemble which may be translated as ‘the Pipers and Trumpeters of Warsaw’ alluded to medieval and Renaissance traditions in Poland, when a term ‘fistulator’ was applied to a musician playing any woodwind instrument (Latin ‘fistula”), and a word ‘tubicinator’ – to a musician using a brass wind instrument (Latin ‘tuba’). The ideological principle of the ensemble was the return to common medieval and Renaissance practice of versatile and free performing in fraternities of musicians, when everyone practised the art of playing various instruments and was able to easily change them even during a piece of music. The original members of the consort included eminent players of the National Philharmonic, such as the flautist Jerzy Chudyba, the oboist Emilian Werbowski and the trombonist Jerzy Karolak. Soon they were reinforced by the trombonist Leon Piwkowski (brother of Kazimierz), and they often cooperated with such well-known vocalists as Krzysztof Szmyt, Eugeniusz Sąsiadek and Wojciech Śmietana and with the violist Włodzimierz Tomaszewski. Leokadia Piwskowska performed on percussion instruments, working at the same time as the manager of the ensemble. Two sons of Kazimierz (Jacek and Marcin) and his nephew Maciej also joined the consort; as young boys they singed higher vocal parts, than started to play instruments – so after some years the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses became in fact a family business; all the more so because not all of the philharmonics had enough enthusiasm and conviction to induce them to sacrifice their time for study of historical instruments, which activity was commonly considered rather an interesting hobby than a professional work.

Very close collaboration of Kazimierz Piwkowski with renowned musicologists resulted in the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses often having in their repertoire some newly-discovered compositions of Polish early music. In this way many well-known today, most precious medieval and Renaissance musical treasures (including oeuvres of Mikołaj z Radomia, Mikołaj z Krakowa, Mikołaj Gomółka, Krzysztof Klabon, the organ tablature of Jan z Lublina) emerged from oblivion and made Polish culture famous in the world. The Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses since the very beginning of their activity displayed a high level of music performance, and their presentations greatly impressed the audience – till then nobody in Poland played such a music and, what’s more, nobody did it on reproductions of period instruments.

The Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses (1976, the cellars of the Royal Castle in Warsaw) – consort of recorders and a triangle. From the left: Kazimierz Piwkowski, Jacek Piwkowski, Maciej Piwkowski, Leokadia Piwkowska, Marcin Piwkowski, Leon Piwkowski.

The Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses very soon made themselves known on the world music scene – what was not so easy in the political situation of those times. All the international contracts of Polish artists had to be accepted and managed by the Polish Artistic Agency ‘PAGART’, an institution of a very dubious reputation in artistic society. A renown Polish singer Maryla Rodowicz stated after many years it was an organisation infiltrated by Służba Bezpieczeństwa (Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs). The financial aspects of those contracts were also supervised by PAGART, which meant of course exploitation of Polish musicians. Nevertheless, as early as in 1966, the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses participated in the early music festival ‘Ambroser Schlosskonzerte’ in Innsbruck, Austria (now the ‘Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik’). The vocalist Krzysztof Szmyt relates: ‘I started my cooperation with the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses, when I was still studying singing. My adventure and being in love with early music dates back to the journey with the ensemble to this early music festival in Innsbruck in Austria. After our performance, the organiser of masterclasses given in the same place by René Jacobs, suggested that I should attend them. By this occasion I learnt things which it was then impossible to acquaint with in Poland – about realisation of recitative and singing of the da capo aria, about baroque embellishments.’

The ensemble was performing in Poland and all over the world, giving about 500 concerts in 20 years, warmly applauded by the audience. They played in London, Paris, Montreux, Moscow, Berlin, Stockholm, Tokyo and other places. There has been preserved a typed list of chosen, more important concerts of the consort in years 1965-1984:

The list of the most important concerts of the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses in years 1965-1984.

In the artistic output of the ensemble we may also find music for Polish history movies (‘Pan Wołodyjowski’ 1965, ‘Hrabina Cosel’ 1968, ‘Kopernik’ 1972, ‘Czarne chmury’ 1973) as well as the following three recordings:

Professor Kazimierz Piwkowski continued his scholar, artistic and teaching activity in Saarbrücken, where he came invited by the rector of the Hochschule für Musik Saar as an outstanding specialist in the field of historical wind instruments. This happened to coincide with the politically inflicted worsening of his situation in the Higher State School of Music in Warsaw. In his remembrances he described this situation with the diplomatic phrase: ‘When the Higher State School of Music had enough of me, or maybe the other way round…’. When martial law was introduced in Poland in December 1981, Kazimierz Piwkowski was still remaining in Saarbrücken. He decided then to stay permanently in Germany with his family. He worked there for more ten years, tirelessly popularising amongst student the art of playing historical wind instruments. In 1989 he retired and moved to Lübeck, but he purchased a real estate in Żnin, so to have a possibility of returning with Leokadia to his home town for as long a time as they wanted. There he made himself a workshop, inside which he could still cultivate his passion for building early instruments. In 2015 he celebrated in Żnin his 80th birthday and the 60th anniversary of his artistic activity, and in 2007 was distinguished with the title of the Honorary Citizen of this town. Kazimierz Piwkowski died on 3 April 2012 in Lübeck and was buried in the family vault in Żnin.

We may learn the history of his life and of the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses thanks to the television documents, made by Polish TV:

If we look backwards at the beginnings of the early music revival movement in the years of the activity of the Fistulatores and Tubicinatores Varsovienses and compare it to the present-day situation on the Polish musical scene, we may (and should) be amazed with enormous changes, which took place there in the last fifty years. In the sixties of the last century, the performance of early music on historical instruments was in Poland an absolutely marginal phenomenon. On the one side, as something new and ‘exotic’ it attracted the audience, on the other side, it was perceived as a pastime activity, carried on at the periphery of the professional work of a musician. There wasn’t almost any possibility of professional training in this field, and any access to historical methods, treatises, scores and instruments was very limited. Nowadays young adepts of art are welcome to study playing historical instruments in eight higher music schools in Poland (in Warsaw, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, Kraków, Katowice, Gdańsk and Bydgoszcz) and to participate in numerous early music master classes and workshops conducted by Polish and foreign specialists. There are many early music associations and foundations, as well as scores of, more or less important, festivals dedicated exclusively to the music of past eras (including Festiwal Bachowski in Świdnica, Szczeciński Festiwal Muzyki Dawnej in Szczecin, International Festival ‘May with Early Music’ in Wrocław, Forum Musicum in Wrocław, Festiwal Muzyki Dawnej ‘Pieśń Naszych Korzeni’ in Jarosław, ‘Muzyka w Raju’ in Paradyż, Ogólnopolski Festiwal Zespołów Muzyki Dawnej ‘Schola Cantorum’ in Kalisz). On the Polish music scene we may encounter not only numerous small consorts playing early music, but also quite big, regular ensembles, including Capella Cracoviensis, Wrocław Baroque Orchestra and the orchestra of the Warsaw Chamber Opera.

All that wouldn’t be possible if not for those magnificent pioneers of the early music revival movement, who began their activity in that difficult and unwelcoming time behind the Iron Curtain – such as the hero of this article, professor Kazimierz Piwkowski. As it is, we are glad to notice some new publications commemorating their struggles. Amongst these we should indicate ‘Andrzej Szwalbe i jego dziedzictwo’ (‘Andrzej Szwalbe and his heredity’, ed. Marek Chamot, Stefan Pastuszewski, Aleksandra Kłaput-Wiśniewska, Bydgoszcz 2018), a monography presenting Andrzej Szwalbe, the director of the Pomeranian Philharmonic, thanks to whom an early music formation ‘Zespół Muzyki Dawnej’, established in 1960 by the Philharmonic, was two years later turned into the regular ensemble ‘Capella Bydgostiensis Pro Musica Antiqua’. Personalities connected with pioneer times of early music in Poland have been described also on pages of the ‘Notes Muzyczny’, the semi-annual periodic of the Grażyna and Kiejstut Bacewicz Academy of Music in Łódź, in the articles of Małgorzata Łyczakowska (‘Postać Emmy Altberg 1889-1983 w świetle zachowanej korespondencji. Przyczynek do biografii łódzkiej klawesynistki’, in: ‘Notes Muzyczny’ No. 2/6 2016 – ‘Emma Altberg 1889-1983 in aspect of preserved letters. A contribution to the biography’) and of Jolanta Smolska-Kempińska (‘U źródeł działalności Zakładu Muzyki Dawnej. Początki i historia’ in: ‘Notes Muzyczny’ No. 1/7 2017 – ‘At sources of the Early Music Department. Origins and the history’). Amongst some new, not as yet published writings we should mention ‘Wpływ kaliskiego festiwalu Schola Cantorum na rozwój amatorskich zespołów fletów prostych w Polsce (‘Influence of the festival Schola Cantorum in Kalisz on development of amateurish recorder ensembles in Poland’, a master’s thesis written at the Academy of Music in Łódź 2014) by Emilia Kinecka. Very interesting, though an older and nowadays virtually unreachable paper is a master’s thesis written in Academy of Music in Wrocław by Krzysztof Górski, titled ‘Polskie zespoły muzyki dawnej i historyczne podstawy ich tendencji wykonawczych’ (‘Polish early music ensembles and historical foundations of their performing tendencies’, 1996), supplemented by an extensive bibliography, where we may find numerous articles about the beginnings of performing of early music in Poland, published in seventies of the last century in the periodics ‘Ruch Muzyczny’ and ‘Zeszyty Naukowe’ of Karol Lipiński Academy of Music in Wrocław.

Magdalena Pilch

An Introduction to the Renaissance Flute

By Kate Clark and Amanda Markwick

The Attaignant Consort, from the CD Madame d’amours – Music for Renaissance Flute Consort, Ramée (RAM 0706) 2007

Playing music together was once what music was all about. In our current times of “social distancing,” we need, perhaps more than ever, the opportunity to come together, even if only in smaller circles. We believe profoundly that making music together for pleasure (including professionally but equally at all other levels) benefits individual health and fulfillment. In this time of limited possibilities for attending concerts, the act of making music together enhances community life through the shared experience of learning and interacting that results in sounding music.

The transverse flute is our instrument of choice, and the renaissance transverse flute has a special draw for both of us. Many people have written to us over the years for advice about renaissance flutes, both instruments and repertoire. We have since co-authored an entire book addressing everything related to the renaissance flute. The Renaissance Flute: A Contemporary Guide was published in August 2020 by Oxford University Press. We are happy to present a short introduction here, in the hopes that you will be inspired to try these beautiful instruments and their gorgeous repertoire for yourself.

Source: “Woman Playing the Flute,” woodcut, anonymous, French, 16th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchase, Janet Lee Kadesky Ruttenberg Fund, in honor of Colta Ives, and A. Hyatt Mayor Purchase Fund, Marjorie Phelps Starr Bequest, 2013.

INSTRUMENTS

There is an appealing rawness and directness to the sound of the renaissance flute, with wood and air present in the tone. The sound is at times haunting, reminiscent of air blowing through reeds, and at times penetrating, harkening back to the military associations of the flute through the fife-and-drum pairing. The visual simplicity of the instrument belies the extraordinary color palette animated through the skilled player’s airstream. Sounding sometimes like a cornetto, at other times like a human voice, the renaissance flute is as alluring to today’s listeners as it was to those who heard it throughout all major European courts (and also many humbler homes) of the 16th century.

A thin-walled instrument with a cylindrical bore, the renaissance flute is built from one slender piece of wood, with one mouth hole and six finger holes drilled into it. It has no keys on it at all, which limits the tonalities it can play in. Yet the instrument is perfectly suited for renaissance music in all its variety, ranging from simple melodies to highly sophisticated polyphony. For those who love sound, who love poetry, who want to access the beauty of the past and bring it into the present, this is the instrument for you.

The tenor renaissance flute in D is the most versatile, as it is able to cover the soprano, alto, and tenor ranges of nearly any 16th-century piece of music. A bass flute in G completes the flute consort, although adding the bright color of a descant flute in A or in G can really contribute to a jovial character (especially nice in dance music, or light-hearted chansons, for example).

PITCH

Original 16th-century flutes are at all different pitches, but there is a large group of extant instruments pitched at around 408. All makers copy at original pitch, but most also scale flutes to 415 or 440. While many early music ensembles today prefer to play at 415, others are willing to experiment with pitch. This will of course have an influence on the pitch you choose for your flute. An instrument in 415 is certainly closer to the original pitch of that group of extant flutes pitched around 408, but one other element you might consider is the bass flute. This is a very long instrument, and the stretch between the finger holes is very challenging for many flutists. An instrument at 440 is of course a little bit shorter than one in 415 or 408, and that might be an important factor in your decision.

MUSIC

A flutist’s repertoire will include mostly vocal pieces, but a variety of purely instrumental works became increasingly available during the 16th-century. We encourage you to try any and all musical forms on the renaissance flute. Simple bicinia (duets) can help you learn the characteristics of renaissance modes; florid diminutions expand your imagination and test your technique; Italian madrigals will make your heart ache, while French chansons will make you smile with their charm; and more cerebral, complex three- and four-part instrumental ricercari satisfy those who like structure, order, and mathematics.

When starting the renaissance flute by yourself, Jacob van Eyck’s “Der Fluyten Lust-hof” is a lovely place to begin. The preface to the 1649 edition even shows an engraving of a (descant?) flute in G, indicating that these pieces were not solely the recorder player’s domain. Though Van Eyck’s publications are quite late in the renaissance flute’s repertoire, the simple melodies set in increasingly more complex diminutions are very accessible to a beginner.

Once you are feeling more secure with your renaissance flute fingerings, you might try some of the diminutions in the Trattado de Glosas (1553) by Diego Ortiz. The madrigal and chanson melodies he uses are the most popular tunes from the Renaissance, and you will find many reworkings of these melodies by other composers, the more music you play from that time.

Source: Urs Graf (1485-1527), Zwei Eidgenossen und zwei Landsknechte blasen die Querpfeife (1523), ink drawing, Kunstmuseum Basel, Kupferstichkabinett, Amerbach-Kabinett, Inv. U.X.94. Sammlung Online View, accessed 24.10.2018

Martin Agricola, Musica instrumentalis deudsch (1532 edition),

Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum (Book 2, 1619)

RESOURCES

• Clark, Kate, and Amanda Markwick. The Renaissance Flute: A Contemporary Guide. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.

• Smith, Anne. “Die Renaissanceflöte und ihre Musik.” Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis, vol. 2 (1978), 38-49.
• Hadden, Nancy. “From Swiss Flutes to Consorts: History, Music and Playing Techniques of the Transverse Flute in Switzerland, Germany and France, ca. 1470-1640.” PhD diss., The University of Leeds, School of Music, September 2010 (http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/2581/).

Amanda Markwick received both a double Bachelor’s degree (Modern Flute/French Language and Literature) and a Master’s degree (Early Music) from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A. Her flute professors included Kate Lukas, Thomas Robertello, and Barbara Kallaur. Awarded a Huygens scholarship by the Dutch Ministry for Education, Culture, and Science, to attend the Koninklijk Conservatorium in the Hague, The Netherlands, Amanda completed her second Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical flutes with Kate Clark, Wilbert Hazelzet, and Barthold Kuijken.

Amanda has performed and recorded with, among others, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra; the Bach Orchestra of The Netherlands; the Hong Kong Early Music Society; the Rheinische Kantorei and Das Kleine Konzert (Hermann Max); die Hannoversche Hofkapelle; die Lautten Compagney (Wolfgang Katschner); Cantus Thuringia & Capella (Bernhard Klapprott); Elbipolis; and Cantus Cölln (Konrad Junghänel). She is an active member of several chamber music ensembles. With Barcelona Barroc, she has given chamber music and orchestral concerts in The Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden. She plays music of the 16th century with the Renaissance flute consort The Attaignant Consort. With Ensemble Eloquentia and Trio Delta, she performs chamber music of the Classical period. As a member of Il Sussurro, she explores the quiet and nuanced colors of the early Classical flute in combination with clavichord.

Amanda has also participated in the Bloomington Early Music Festival, in Bloomington, Indiana, the U.S.A.; the International Harp Convention in Prague, the Czech Republic; the Corso Internazionale di Musica Antica in Urbino, Italy; the Casa de Mateus Festival in Vila Real, Portugal; the Festival Internacional de Musica de Cadaques in Cadaques, Spain; the 3rd Festival Internacional de Música Clásica de Ribadeo, Spain; the Early Music Festival in Utrecht, The Netherlands; the Köthener Bachfesttage, in Köthen, Germany; and the Trigonale Festival der Alten Musik, in Austria. She was invited to perform in the prestigious “Solissimo” series at the Magdeburger Telemann Festtage in 2020 (postponed until 2022).

In addition to maintaining her performing agenda, Amanda is regularly invited as a guest lecturer, most recently at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, The Netherlands; H.I.P.S.T.E.R. Ireland and the Irish World Academy, both in Limerick, Ireland; Renaissance Workshops, Berlin, Germany; the Bauhinia Musik Haus in Hong Kong, and the Kuopio Conservatory in Kuopio, Finland. Her article “Advice for Traverso Beginners” was published by “Fluit” magazine in The Netherlands. With Kate Clark, she co-authored The Renaissance Flute: A Contemporary Guide, the first modern handbook for the Renaissance flute, published by Oxford University Press in 2020.

Amanda lives and teaches in Berlin, Germany.

Links

• https://amandamarkwick.com/

• mail@amandamarkwick.com

Recordings and videos:

• https://amandamarkwick.com/listen/

Amanda’s 12-minute introduction to the renaissance flute (a performance of Bassano’s Ricercata Quinta starts at 8:52)

Bassano, Ricercata Quinta (by itself):

Troubadours and the Crusades: The case of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras (d.1207)

By Dimitris Kountouras

The Troubadours

The Troubadours were poets and composers of the medieval West, coming from Southern  France. Their name derives from the Provençal verb trobar meaning to invent and, by extension, to compose verse and music. They wrote in the langue d’oc by contrast to the trouvères of Northern France, who wrote in the langue d’oil. Basic themes of their poetry were knighthood and courtly love and their basic poetic forms were the alba, a lyrical genre treating of the lovers’ separation at dawn, the canso, lyrical with erotic content, the descort, also lyrical with erotic content often with unusual rhymes, the partimen, a dialogic poem, the pastorela, a poem with a pastoral subject matter, the planh, a lament, the sirventes, a poem of moral or political character and the tenso, a poem in the form of a dialogue between two poets. The basic theme of courtly love, fin amors, had as its main characteristics the principles of knighthood, heroism, virtue and the coded relationship of the lover with his lady whom he serves faithfully and secretly.

There are about 250 works preserved with music while the total repertoire is found in around 95 manuscripts all of them compiled in later years having the earliest in 1254 and continuing into the 14th c. 

The codices, the collections of the works, were put together a lot later than the period in which the works were written or their music was performed.

There are four main manuscript sources with music of the troubadours:

-Ms Milan, Ambr. R 71 (G)

-Ms Paris, BnF, fr. 22543 (R)

-Ms du Roi, Paris, BnF, fr. 844 (W)

-Ms, Paris, BnF, fr. 20050 (X) 

Despite the fact that their history coincides with the crusades, only a few troubadours took part in them. The ones who did take part in the 4th crusade and found themselves in the Greek territories of the Byzantine Empire were the Provençal troubadours Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and Elias Cairel, the Lombard Oberto di Biandarte and possibly, the Provencal Gaucelm Faidit.

The Fourth Crusade

In March 1201, the count Thibaud III de Champagne (1179-1201) died and Boniface I del’ Monferrato (1150-1207) was elected leader of the crusade. In December of the same year, Alexios VI Angelos (1182-1204), escaped from the prison of Constantinople, where he had been incarcerated with his father, emperor Isaakios II Angelos (1156-1204) after the two had conspired against his uncle, and Isaakios’ brother, Alexios III Angelos (1153-1211). Alexios IV reached Germany and met with Boniface of Montferrat in the court of Philip of Swabia, asking within a month, the help of the crusaders in getting reinstated as emperor, offering in exchange assistance with the crusade under way to the Holy Land. In April of 1202, in Venice, a crusaders’ army gathered from Champagne, Flanders, Burgundy and other parts of France as well as Northern Italy. An agreement was signed between the crusaders and the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo under the terms of which the Republic of Venice would provide the army with ships and food, in exchange for 85,000 silver marks. The agreement wa signed by Pope Innocent III (1161-1216) who, nevertheless, demanded that they respect the Christian populations they would encounter. The crusaders left Venice on May 24, 1203. After pillaging Zara on behalf of the Venetians, they departed for Corfu. In Zara, Alexios IV met the crusaders and renewed his promises of money and soldiers, if they helped him reclaim his usurped throne in Constantinople. On June 24, the army arrives at the outskirts of Constantinople. The French historian Geoffrey of Villehardouin describes how impressed the Latins were by the spectacle of that city, its spacious churches and high fortifications, while the denizens of the city were equally impressed upon facing the enormous army of the Franks. The conquest became final on the 13th of the same month. The catastrophic pillaging which ensued, lasted for two days. The dissolution of the empire resulted in the partitioning of the state and the relevant document became known as Partitio Terrarum Imperii Romàniae.

Raimbaut de Vaqueiras

After the fall of Constantinople Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, who took part in the beginning of the crusade attached to his patron Boniface of Monteferrat, was connected to the newly established Kingdom of Thessalonica under Boniface.

According to the biography of Raimbaut, he was born in Provence, in Vaqueiras, near Orange, France. He was a minstrel of humble origins who was later appointed knight.
The razo from codex P 43 begins by giving basic information on his descent and his attribute as a minstrel (joglar). Also, it provides information about his relationship to important rulers of the time.

Raimbautz de Vaqueras si fo d’ un chastel c’ avia nom Vacheras, e fu filli d’ un paubre chavalier c’ avia nom Peirols….
Raimbaut comes from a castle named vacheras and was a son of a poor knight called Peirol…
…Et Raimbautz si fetz joglar, et estet longa sason con lo prince d’ Aurenga, c’ avia nom en Guillelm de Baut. En sabia cantar et far coblas et serventes.
…and Raimbaut was a jogler and stayed a long period with prince of Orange named Guillelm de Baut. He knows how to sing and how to compose verses and sirventes.

His life was eventful and tumultuous and he was one of the few troubadours to participate in such a large number of expeditions. He established an association with Boniface of Montferrat from a young age and followed him in travels and wars to Northern Italy, Sicily and finally in Romania where he took part in the siege and conquest of Constantinople (which he describes in his epic letter) and later in Boniface’s expedition to Macedonia, Thessaly, Evia, Attica and Corinth. In all likelihood, he died alongside him in the Bulgarian ambush of 1207, as he left no work after that date nor wrote and lament, planh, for the loss of the ruler, as was common practice.
Before the crusaders’ expedition, on the occasion of the crowning of Boniface de Montferrat as its leader at Soisson, in March of 1201, he wrote the crusade song, chanson de croisade, “Ara pot hom connoiser”. Raimbaut urges his comrades to raise the banners and march against the infidels at a point in time when the decision to march against the Byzantine empire had yet to be made. The initial plan was to attack Egypt and then march on to the Holy Land. Following Venice, however, and with the pillaging of Zara on behalf of Venice, they decided to heed the call of Alexios IV for help and veer towards Byzantium.

In Romania, he wrote four works which are to be found in important sources of that time.
In chronological order, his works that engage with this last period of his life, include the sirventes “Conseil don a l’ emperador”, composed in 1204 in Constantinople. This is an advisory poem towards the Latin emperor, written after the crowning of Henry of Hainaut and reflects the disappointment of his protector Boniface at not being elected to the highest rank.
The partimen “Seigneur Coine” is a dialogue between the poet and the French trouvère Conon de Béthune. It was written in Constantinople in the summer of 1204.

His two last poems are the historically significant epic poem “Valen Marquis”, written in the spring of 1205, and his last recorded composition is titled “No m’agrad’ iverns ni pascors”, written in June or July 1205, whose music survives as well.
His epic poem is addressed from the poet to his patron and friend, King Boniface. It’s similar to a chanson de geste gives a lot of valuable information, often autobiographical in nature, from the time when the poet met and became friend with the young marquis in northern Italy and during their more recent adventures in Romania. From the events described in the poem we can conclude that it was written in the spring of 1205, before the catastrophic defeat of the Franks by the Bulgarians in Andrianople, and after Boniface of Monferrat had concluded his conquests in southern Greece.
The canso-sirventes “No m’agrad’ iverns ni pascors”, survived with music, starts out as an elegy and ends in a dithyrambic tone, with promises of more conquests. It was written in all likelihood shortly after the epic poem and in the aftermath of the crusaders’ heavy defeat in Adrianople on April 14, 1205, which would place it in June or July of that year.
Raimbaut wrote in a great many and diverse genres. The style of his poetry is thoroughly unburdened from the complicated style of previous troubadours and he is known for one of the most famous troubadour works; the estampie “Kalenda maya”. He was more closely allied to the house of Monferrat than any other troubadour and his influence on Italian court poetry was decisive.

Performance

The art of the troubadours, their monophonic songs and elaborated often highly sophisticated poetry, was strongly connected to the rhetorical art. Their poetry was meant to be recited aloud in front of a courtly audience as well as  their songs too. Unfortunately the notation and the sources does not give us many concrete answers on rhythmical aspects, on performance traditions, on the use of specific instruments or whether the singers should perform with accompaniment or not. There were, though, joglars that played musical instruments and probably accompanied some troubadours. In the manuscripts we find some depictions of troubadours with instruments too. The popular instruments of the time, like the fiddle, the harp and the lute could have been in use for accompaniment.

The text-music relations do not give specific associations between particular types of sounds with particular melodic figures. According to E. Aubrey we find open and closed vowels both with single notes or melismas and on high or low pitches.

The challenge of the modern performer would be to experiment on different ways of singing expression and instrumentation in order to deliver the, often obscure, meanings of that poetry. The sound of the old Occitan being already a sound perspective of musical value on its one.

Last but not least one could make an effort to dive into the medieval culture and mentality, through readings, sources, visual material, theology, philosophy and world view in order to be acquainted with the spirit of the time and understand its music and poetry as an expression on a cultural context.      

Ai, las tan cuidava saber

D’amor, e tan petit en sai

Bernart de Ventadorn

Selected bibliography

• Aubrey, Elisabeth, The Music of the Troubadours, Indiana University Press, 1996.
• Linskill, The Poems of the Troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, Mouton, 1964.
• Kountouras, Dimitris, Music of the Τroubadours in the Latin Kingdom of Thessalonica after 1204, Nefeli/Fairead, 2017.
• Tricht, Filip van, The Latin Renovatio of Byzantium, Brill, 2011.

Born in Greece Dimitris Kountouras studied recorder, traverso and early music in Utrecht, Milan (on a Marco Fodella scholarship), Vienna and Trossingen with Kees Boeke, Heiko ter Schegget, Wilbert Hazelzet, Daniele Bragetti and Marcello Gatti. He got a PhD on historical musicology from the Athens University and he was a post doc scholar for the Centre of Humanistic Studies in 2016 for his research on the Troubadours at the Latin Kingdom of Thessalonica.

He founded Ex Silentio ensemble in 2001 specializing on early music and on Mediterranean musical traditions. He collaborated with Armonia Atenea (G.Petrou), with Harmony of Nations Baroque Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (Ph.Jordan). He appeared in venues and festivals in many European countries, in the Middle and the Far East, such as Sala Verdi in Milan, Pablo Casas Hall in Tokyo, Konzerthaus in Vienna, Megaron in Athens, the J.S.Bach Festival in Riga, the Blumenthal Festival in Tel Aviv, the Styriarte in Graz, the Bahrain Festival, the Banchetto Musicale in Vilnius, the Via Medieval in Mainz, the Mousike’ in Bari etc.

His research interests are including the relations between the renaissance humanism and music, the troubadours and the crusades and the historical performance practice. He published articles and essays for Brepols editions, for Nefeli and for Fagottobooks. Next to the renaissance and baroque recorders and flutes, he plays medieval transverse flutes and traditional winds of the Mediterranean. 

Ex Silentio ensemble specializes on early music and on Mediterranean musical traditions. Founded and directed by the recorder player Dimitris Kountouras the ensemble performed in important venues and festivals such as the Banchetto musicale in Vilnius, the Via Medieval in Mainz, the Trollhaettan Early Music Days, the Styriarte in Graz, the Nicosia Early Music Festival, the Megaron and the Hellenic Festival in Athens, the Musica Antiqua in The Hague etc. Ex Silentio recorded five CDs for Carpe Diem Records Berlin (Mneme: Medieval music from the Mediterranean, Lethe: In the courts of the Orient), for Talanton (Nell’autunno di Bisanzio) and for Nefeli (Music of the Troubadours at the Kingdom of Thessalonica and Music in the Court of Lusignan).

Links

Ex Silentio – www.exsilentio.org

 The early piano or fortepiano

by Ilario Gregoletto

The invention of the “gravecembalo”(extended harpsichord with piano and forte) is due to Bartolomeo Cristofori (Padua 4 May 1655 – Florence 27 January 1731), harpsichord maker at the Medici Court of Florence between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Of the three surviving instruments, (next is the image of the one preserved in Rome), Cristofori conceives the new instrument around 1698; the official communication of the invention takes place in 1711 by Scipione Maffei in the „Giornale de ‚Letterati d’Italia”(The journal of italian literates published in Venice, in which the instrument is called “gravicembalo” with piano and forte since it is in fact, in terms of construction criteria, of an Italian harpsichord in a false case from which Cristofori removes the jacks of the pinch system and adapts a hammer mechanism.

For centuries, therefore, the idea that the rope can be struck rather than pinched has been smoldering under the ashes. The moment comes at the end of the 17th century when Hebenstreit Pantaleon invents in 1687 what we could define a super-psalter – in the sense of a psalter that is four times larger than the normal instrument used up to then, armed with 185 strings (grouped in choirs of three strings each) for an extension of 6 octaves, partly of gut and partly of metal, which he plays with psaltery sticks but, in this case, covered with leather.

Pantaleon, evidently very skilled also in personal relationships, it was a huge success in the European courts thirsty for novelty, even more so if a little exotic. Fans and musicians are impressed by the fact that he manages to create effects never heard before: in the meantime he can play pianissimo or fortissimo at will, without having to use stops, and in addition he obtains effects of crescendo and diminuendo never heard before, if not, to a much lesser extent, with the voice or with other melodic instruments, but never with a similar instrument; moreover, the instrument itself has an unusual (for that time) basic sound power, which fills very large and crowded rooms. We recall that the Dresden orchestra – a city of extraordinary musical vitality – astounded in its time (early 18th century) because it had the ability to do crescendo and diminuendo, while all the other musical ensembles still adopted a terraced sound in correspondence with the sections, episodes, engraved, in which the composition was divisible. At an exhibition by Pantaleon Hebenstreit in 1705 in Paris, at the court of Louis XIV, the King gives the instrument the name of Pantaleone. Pantaleon Hebenstreit continues to tour Europe with his Pantaleone; he became a „Pantaleonist” in the Dresden orchestra around 1727, and had instruments made by Gottfried Silbermann. Theinstrument, meanwhile, is being adopted in numerous European courts.

We do not know if Cristofori had also had the opportunity to hear a performance by Pantaleon Hebenstreit. It is known for sure that, inspired by an audition of a Hebenstreit concert, a German organ builder and harpsichord maker, the Schroeter, built in 1717 and presented (but perhaps preceded by the Parisian Jean Marius who in 1716 had presented 4 projects for the construction of a hammer instrument) percussion psalters with keyboard and with a mechanism that acts from above.

The pantaleone characterized the chronicles for almost a century until around 1770 (still in 1767 we remember the performance in London of a certain Georg Nölli with an instrument of 276 strings, perhaps with four strings for choir). Although conceived in the middle of the Baroque period, as already mentioned by Bartolomeo Cristofori, it will have to wait until the second half of the eighteenth century for the fortepiano to begin to spread in the regions of Europe, thanks to the work of the Austrian builders (Vienna will be the „capital of the fortepiano” in those years) and, at the end of the century, French and English builders.

The new keyboard instrument, in fact, proposes new aesthetic concepts, ahead of its time. We will have to wait for a new generation of musicians (and listeners, let’s not forget it) for the fortepiano to begin to impose itself on the music scene, until it definitively established itself between the 18th and 19th centuries, to become the protagonist instrument of a new musical season and the instrument preferred by an increasingly large audience of enthusiasts, listeners and performers.

Political revolutions as French Revolution, changed social customs due to a profound change in society itself with the advent of the bourgeois classes (the fortepiano will be the instrument for excellence of the bourgeois class and will identify itself deeply with it), the growing interest demonstrated by musicians such as Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and his brother Johann Christian, Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and most recently Franz Schubert (for the Viennese area); the multiplication of public performances with the progressive development of a supplied literature designed for the new instrument; the ability and dedication of builders who are particularly sensitive to technical improvements and innovations and open to conversations with composers and teachers; these factors, in addition to the prodromes of Pantaleon Hebenstreit, determined the rise after 1750 of numerous craft shops in London, Augusta, especially Vienna, Dresden, Magdeburg, Paris, marking the initial phase of the history of the piano. The end of the eighteenth century saw the elaboration of specific construction plans, different types of mechanics, almost industrial management criteria. The well-known manufacturer Stein made an average of 25 grand instruments per year and produced a total of 700 one during his activity; in the same years only Vienna – in which 300 shops were able to operate between 1815 and 1833 – boasts names of famous craftsmen such as A. Walter, J.A. Stein, M. Müller, J.A. Streicher, J.W. Schantz, A. Zierer, C. Loeschen and many more.

Listen

Grand piano by Johann Andreas Stein about 1770/1780 years, with knee levers for resonance stop this is the instrument where Mozart played his compositions original fortepiano belonged to the de Chiusole family in Rovereto like in the upper image.

Listen

The institution of the concert, as we are still used to considering it, will favor the diffusion of the new instrument and at the same time will itself be possible thanks to the continuous innovations that will characterize this musical machine, aimed at an ever greater mechanical perfection, aiming in turn to an ever greater beauty of sound, dictated by the evolution of a wholly Western sound taste, and finally, to an ever greater sound power.

In the early nineteenth century, the concert will come out definitively, from the walls of the living rooms where a few lucky fans could enjoy the first fruits of this or that composer, still a performer of himself; at the same time, the figure of the musician takes on new connotations. Ludwig van Beethoven among the first embodies the figure of the emancipated artist, no longer lackey in the service of a noble protector. Only twenty years have passed since Mozart went to the Prince of Colloredo with a kick in the butt: times have really changed! No longer the frock coat that the prince stopped to reward the performance of Mozart who was little more than a child, nor silver snuffboxes with some gold coins (or exchange-compensations of a similar nature) for the Mozart concert as a teenager, now Beethoven can negotiate on a par with Prince Lichnowski, protector, of course, but friend above all.

The concert takes place in large rooms, often it is the composer-performer himself who acts as his own impresario: the concert is now an institution within the reach of ever wider audiences and the musician rises to the top of culture, a figure recognized in for all to see. Even in the post mortem recognition the terms change substantially: following Mozart’s coffin, his wife and a few others, and we don’t even know where he was buried; Beethoven’s funeral will be attended by a massive mass of ordinary people.

Within the instrument park, the spread of the fortepiano throughout the nineteenth century was at the top; there was no family that did not own at least one, you want the cheapest fortepiano a table, you want the most expensive concert model, grand. So much so that at the end of the same century, after the transition between fortepiano and piano, the American piano companies, new productive forces of the most advanced model, agreed to a roundup of as many fortepiano tables as possible, an operation considered necessary to unlock a market that was now showing signs of fatigue; a huge pyre of tools was made, which was mercilessly set on fire;

Italy and Germany, which boast the birthplace of Cristofori first, Schröter and Silbermann later, finally had to submit to the domination of technology of the Viennese school. In fact, the mechanical solutions proposed by the three manufacturers did not immediately meet the market’s favor, to speak in modern terms, and their inventions would later converge in the so-called English mechanics, developed precisely in the Anglo-Saxon country at the end of the second half of the 18th century.

In the first period of the emergence of the fortepiano, the resistance was not few. We recall the episode of J. S. Bach who was able, for the first time in 1733, to play a fortepiano in Dresden. It is an instrument of Silbermann, a renowned organ builder, and the German composer is perplexed by the novelty. His judgment is decidedly negative: he complains of imperfect mechanics, of sound; in short, the instrument does not respond to his expectations, and dispenses advice for making improvements ..

We do not know whether Silbermann took Bach’s observations into account or not. The episode is undoubtedly significant but, in my opinion, not so much to emphasize the fact that the German composer did not like the instrument as to the too disconcerting novelty aspect, so much so as to displace the great musician; the harpsichord is too different from the fortepiano, too distant from each other both in the instrument-instrumental relationship and in the aesthetic of the sound.

Silbermann action

Still some time will have to pass for Bach, now at the end of his years, but still active, in 1747 in Potsdam, in the presence of Frederick the Great, to have the opportunity to play on an instrument also by Silbermann and proclaim its sure success for the future. ; However, three decades had passed and Bach, a figure of a musician in continuous evolution, also due to a sort of rivalry with his three children, had, alongside the explorations of an Art of Fugue or Musical Offering, in the meantime able to welcome the new trends , increasingly approaching the expressive genre and the new frontiers of keyboard technique (see compositions such as the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, the Goldberg Variations, the Capriccio over the distance of his beloved brother – the latter a sort of anticipation of the Sonata Les Adieu op. 81 by Ludvig van Beethoven)

The mechanics of Cristofori, Schröter and Silbermann, albeit with the necessary differences, are similar to each other; they have in common the principle that the hammer is pushed against the string by means of a second lever by a „pivot” or trigger that gives a considerable kinetic force to the hammer shank. This is an interesting fact that denotes, once again, an identity of sound taste that unites Italy and Germany and, in particular, the Venetian musical environment always particularly linked to the German world (it is no coincidence that the scientific news appears in the Giornale dè Letterati published in Venice). Venice and, in a broad sense, the Republic of Venice had always had contact with the German and surrounding territory; we think of the well-known seventeenth-century composer Agostino Steffani of Castelfranco, ambassador in Germanic territory, or of Anna Bon, a talented flutist and composer, in correspondence with C. Ph. E. Bach; or, again, the relationships maintained by Vivaldi for his publications at Le Céne in Amsterdam; not to go back to the sixteenth century with the presence of Flemish composers in Venice such as Adriano Willaert.

After Cristofori and Silberman, in the first phase of placing on the market, it was the Viennese type who met the favor of composers, concert performers, amateurs. Its phonic emission was appreciable over the entire range, and a different sensation of touch for the player compared to English mechanics (which had actually welcomed much of the same mechanics invented by Cristofori) was established at the end of the eighteenth century in particular with Anton Walter and Andreas Stein, in the example with knee pads (the precursors of the resonance and piano pedals); Stein’s daughter Nannette, later married to Streicher, took up the inheritance. The affection shown by Mozart for the instruments of Stein and Walter is equal to that of Beethoven for the Streicher fortepianos and to that felt by Haydn for the instruments manufactured by Schantz; and even in the years that followed, composers often became deeply attached to specific examples, for example Ignace Moscheles to the Viennese Loeschen, Schubert to the Viennese Conrad Graaf; the romantics preferred French instruments: Chopin the Pleyel fortepianos, Liszt the Erard for their marked phonic qualities and mechanical characteristics.

Grandpiano Anton Walter 1780

In summary, the supremacy at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries belongs to the Austrian Empire which, composite in its various identities, manages to condition other cultures even outside its borders both from a technological point of view and for musical taste. Viennese mechanics (which is divided into two branches: prellmechanik – without escapement – and German-action or German mechanics after the application of the escapement by the by Stein in 1777), in which the action of the hammer is much simplified compared to the experiences matured by Cristofori and the German precursors. The success of this mechanism will be complete after the innovations of Andreas Stein and Anton Walter, the two leading manufacturers who, at the end of the 18th century, will bring this mechanism to complete evolution, no longer modified until its disappearance.

In addition to the strengthening of the instrument’s structure, which progressively enlarges but which essentially maintains the basic morphological characteristics, the evolution of the fortepiano is essentially characterized by the changes made to the mechanics: without prejudice to the principle

of percussion given by a covered wooden hammer in leather, it is the way in which this hammer is thrown against the strings that is decisive and makes the difference between the various schools that will alternate on the musical scene, replacing, chronologically, one with the other. Between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century the Viennese fortepiano will present two variants: with a truncated and square tail, as in the Walter fortepiano illustrated above; with rounded tail (according to modern usage) as seen in the Stein fortepiano (see photo above). This derives from different construction criteria that will last for a long time, even if the rounded shape will prevail which ensures greater strength to the structural part of the tail where the thicker strings are hooked, which emit the low notes.

After Bartolomeo Cristofori, it will be another Italian, composer, pianist, entrepreneur, publisher, the Roman Muzio Clementi (Rome 1752- Evesham, Worcestershire 1832) who will collect the legacy of the Florentine harpsichord. Convinced supporter of the technology linked to the invention of Cristofori, who moved to England as a teenager following a patron admired by his musical qualities, he will contribute significantly to the rise of English mechanics, already at the end of the 18th century, with valuable advice to John Broadwood, the most important builder of fortepianos in English at the time. In 1800 Clementi opened a fortepiano factory in London, allying himself with Collard, in order to promote his fortepiano ideal with English or push-button mechanics, which owes much to Cristofori’s mechanics. Clementi will spend many years of his life on important trips to Europe. The first took him, in 1780, to Vienna where he competed with W.A. Mozart in the presence of the Emperor; it is on this occasion that Mozart, in a letter to his father Leopold, defined him with contempt as a „cowardly mechanic”, referring to the particular playing style of Italian. These testimonies should be read not so much to the letter (the winner of the competition was, incidentally, Mozart) but in the light of factors that go beyond the strictly musical and interpretative data. Clementi goes to Vienna as a composer, pianist and teacher, and promotes his compositional style intimately linked to the type of fortepiano with English mechanics. The phonic, expressive, stylistic result is completely different from that given by a Viennese fortepiano (with Viennese mechanics, therefore). The competition announced by the Emperor, however, takes place on a Viennese instrument. Therefore, Clementi is very disadvantaged in the fight, his technique and the musical path linked to it (Mozart will underline in his letter, in negative of course, the passages in ‚double thirds’ – in a certain sense a technical novelty – of the Roman composer) it is not well suited to the instrument with Viennese mechanics, which still responds to a harpsichord aesthetic; certainly Clementi will have deeply regretted his instruments.

After 1780 the Italian will undertake many other stays, stopping for long periods in the most important cities of Europe, always with the aim of promoting his compositional ideas and his style, his instruments and his publishing house which in the meantime had founded. In his long stops (overall he will remain almost thirty years away from home) he will also have the opportunity to carry out his fundamental activity as a teacher of the fortepiano, which will be crowned by the drafting and publication of the monumental Gradus ad Parnassum, a sum of the knowledge of the time in fact of piano technique, still adopted today in the ordinary course of modern piano. Clementi musically embodies the figure of the Enlightenment. In his Gradus ad Parnassum (a sort of performative encyclopedia of the technical problems related to pianism then in the maturation phase, explored in the form of the study; of the musical forms of classical derivation that from the harpsichord are adapted, expanding them, to the fortepiano: prelude, fugue, suite , sonata time, bipartite sonata, rondeau etc .; of the sonata form that in those years was settling with other composers such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven) he collects the legacy of the Encyclopedias for that aspect addressed to the educational path, so dear to a Jean Jacque Rosseau. As a teacher he will train pianists and teachers at his school such as Cramer, Moscheles, Kalkbrenner, still adopted today in the training path of the modern pianist, and an English composer and pianist, John Field, (inventor of the nocturnal piano) who will particularly influence the style of the great Frederyk Chopin .

Listen

L.van Beethoven: 8 Variations on a Theme by Count Waldstein, WoO 67

Original Fortepiano Bartolomeo Cosner with ‘Turcherie’– Civic Museum of town Feltre

Granpiano, with 2 pedals by John Broadwood (on the left there is the ‘sordino’ or moderator, on the right the dampers lifting). This instrument was a gift for Ludwig van Beethoven.

About a century after the invention of Bartolomeo Cristofori, the time is ripe for the application of his ingenious invention. John Broadwood, whose factory still operated well into the twentieth century, was the one who sent as a gift to L. van Beethoven in the last years of his life an instrument with 4 strings per choir because the master could hear something despite his almost total deafness. The journey of this instrument was absolutely adventurous: by ship from England across the Strait of Gibraltar to Trieste and then on an ox cart to Vienna. The instrument arrived very poorly and its rearrangement was entrusted to her friend Nanette Streicher – nee Stein, who had taken over the management of the fortepiano factory when her husband passed away. Beethoven had numerous fortepianos that determined the stylistic evolution of his compositions, and in particular the 32 Sonatas for solo piano. It is known that until 1803 he composed on Viennese instruments: in 1801 he used an instrument by Walter, in 1802 he owned one by Jakesch and one by Bohak (or Pohak) and in 1803 one by Moser.

In this ‘symphonic’ piece almost like a ‘grand opera’ and not a ‘military’ one, the use of ‘turcherie’ as an orchestral effect seemed justified.

Grandpiano by Sébastien Erard, 1801 (Finchcocks Collection, Richard Burnett, Gondhurst, Kent). The four pedals are: bassoon, dampers lifter, moderator, one string.

The Beethovenian style changes with the Sonata op. 53, dedicated to Count Waldstein: in 1803 he had received as a gift a fortepiano from Erard of Paris (a move by the French manufacturer to advertise himself), therefore an instrument with French mechanics; in 1804 he also has a S.A.Vogel of Budapest (this too, probably, a gift); between 1810 and 1815 his sympathies are for the fortepianos of Schanz, which he always recommends to those who wanted to buy a new instrument and he himself declares to own one. In 1817 he has a Kirschbaum and in 1818, Broadwod’s instrument whose troubles we have told. In 1825 a Graaf is documented that Beethoven declared to be the preferred instrument and remained so until 1827, the year of his death.

Around the second decade of the nineteenth century the Viennese instrument (but sometimes also the Erards, French instruments) for about fifteen years, was equipped with turcherie (as well as the organs of the time, especially in the north Italian area) which was evidently the result of a particular historical moment: on the one hand the discovery of the exotic with the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt and with the Near East to be identified and exorcised at the same time: Turkey; on the other, the Napoleonic wars first, the Congress of Vienna then. The romantic Europe of the time certainly could not help but incorporate the exotic charm of the East (Egypt or Turkey) into its own culture. Here, then, in those years a rage of sphinxes in cabinetmaking (the golden legs and in the shape of a half-length sphinx of the fortepiano J. Brodmann with his Egyptian-style chair, for example, or of moretti similar to caryatids of the fortepiano Haschka reproduced below), but also the compositional style is influenced by it. Therefore, between 1810 and 1825 approximately the Viennese fortepiano will often be equipped with turcherie: bells, cymbal and bass drum, all operated by special pedals.

Here some photos of a fortepiano Anton Zierer to explain what pedals move:

In upper photo is possible to see the front of the piano Anton Zierer with the six pedals on the Lyra:

the pedal sixth moves all three gadgets of the Turkish system; if the pedal is well adjusted and so also the three devices, it is possible to activate only the little bells that ring first, then the cymbals and finally the drum whose mallet final head strikes internally against the soundboard;

of course must be well regulated because there is the risk, otherwise, of breaking through the soundboard itself.

In this second photo we are inner the instrument and we see the ‘head’ of the mallet of the drum that strikes against the sounboard.

From left to right, the first pedal moves the bassoon

the second pedal is a partial raising of dampers in the part of ‘soprano’ (very useful when playng four hands music);

the third moves the moderator or ‘sordino’;

the fourth is 1 string device like in modern pianos;

the fifth pedal rises completely all the dampers;

Vivace in E-Flat Major – here you can hear various gadget under the name of Turkish device (drum, bells and music cymbals, bassoon)

In the Trio we have introduced a large use of the bassoon to characterize the obstinate element almost a forced march…

In the Haschka instrument reproduced above, we see an incredible accuracy in the wood inlays and bronzes decorations – which can be better appreciated in the following color photo of another instrument by the same author.

With instruments of this type we are at the apex of the evolution of the Viennese fortepiano not only for the sumptuousness of the piece of furniture but also for the balance achieved in the relationship between mechanics and structure of the instrument, which will soon have to give way to the French and English ones.

Wanting to take a quick look at the chronological evolution of the devices that the Viennese fortepiano was equipped with, in addition to the raising of the dampers (the pedal of the „forte” or resonance of the current piano), present since the invention of the instrument, we have the sordino (also called moderator), a thin felt cloth to be placed between the hammer and the string to obtain an artificial „piano” (the Beethovenian prescription on the title page of the Moonlight Sonata is famous and equally misrepresented, as the most common lesson reports that it is performed with the pedal „una corda” while the Beethovenian intention is that the interpreter uses only the lightness of the fingers and does not use the mute to create an artificial piano, which is obtained precisely with this mechanism); both of these effects are always operated by the two knee pads as they are two basic mechanisms in the fortepiano.

From the early nineteenth century in addition to these two devices that were therefore always present, we also find the bassoon register: a parchment paper that was lowered at will on the bass strings through a mechanism regulated by a knob placed at left on the front panel of the instrument, the sound obtained, similar to a buzz, can sometimes approach that of a hurdy-gurdy if the musical line of the left hand is treated by the composer in order to exploit this particular sound. When the instrument is permanently equipped with a pedal board and therefore will now be of considerable size, in addition to the aforementioned stops, a string or lateral movement of the fingerboard will be added as in modern grand instruments. The one string causes the hammer to hit only one string of the three that make up the choir, thus obtaining a lighter and more velvety sound. You can also find a special pedal for the partial lifting of the dampers that affects only the right area of the keyboard, that is the treble, designed for four-handed performances; as very often, in this repertoire, there is the need that the performer on the right can enrich his musical line by lifting the damps, without however affecting the clarity and transparency of the musical line that is on the bass, as instead it would inevitably happen with a single damper pedal as is found today in modern instruments. This is a proof of how widespread the four-hand chamber repertoire was then and held in high regard. Lastly, the pedal that will move the turkey appears, always located at the far right of the row of pedals and therefore operated exclusively by the player on the right. It should be noted that the latter effect is found exclusively in the four-handed repertoire, never in the solo repertoire.

It is worth specifying that in spite of this rich series of sonic possibilities the composers never indicated in their scores if, how, where and when to use such effects. Although from Beethoven onwards there are indications regarding the signs of f, ff, p, pp, ppp, dim. cresc., and so on, they never bothered to indicate the appearance of one sound effect rather than another (except in the unique case of the aforementioned explicit indication on the title page of the Beethovenian Sonata op. ‚). It is a real shame, if not a serious and penalizing lack for us today, and it concerns not only literature and the instruments we are talking about but practically all musical literature, even from centuries ago: Bach himself, for example, never indicates only one organ recording and much less harpsichord. The interpreter who wants to approach the revival of repertoires with contemporary instruments will therefore have to carry out research and executive practice for a long time, making use of contemporary treaties as much as

possible in order to get closer to the taste of the time and make sensible stylistic recovery operations. In our case, for example, we could be facilitated by the fact that a military march written in the period in which the fortepiano with turcherie is attested will be in its musical revival certainly made with the use of such sounds that will fully render the color effects typical of a band.

‘Turcherie’

Turkish system where we see the three bells of different dimensions with three wooden fingers to play the bells, and the brass plate.

another image where we can see on the left the long Black box of the bassoon and on the right the little box of the plates and back the bells.In the center the box with dampers.

Another original Fortepiano – Bartolomeo Cosner 1815 with ‘Turcherie’ – on wich we have recorded the CD with music of Weber and Beethoven you can hear

Listen

Weber: 6 Petites pièces faciles pour piano à 4 mains, Op. 3, No. 5: Marcia in C Major

This vaguely turquoise piece was characterized by the use of the bassoon, clearly outlined at the beginning of the piece itself and in the central part as well as by the bells alone and together with the drum; the effect is certainly comic, as is the central character of this piece.

In this period the Viennese instruments are still entirely made of wood, that is, they do not have those iron reinforcement bars that will soon arrive above the soundboard in order to strengthen the structure. (the first to adopt them seems to have been J. Broadwood in 1808). This solution was imposed, first with a single iron bar, then with two and finally with three, as the tensions of the strings, gradually increasing, meant that a simple wooden structure, however well studied and calibrated , was led to deform to the point of making the instrument useless. In fact, any structure in order to perform the functions for which it was designed cannot and beyond its “critical mass”: for example, in order to obtain an increasingly powerful and grave sound, the appropriate string must be inspired more and more. However, it is a process that cannot be developed indefinitely and at a certain point it was possible to progress only by finding a different solution: covering the rope itself with another one wound in a spiral. One of the major problems for the strong tops, whether they are tail or table, is precisely that of the bending and torsion of the structure subjected to the increasing tension of the strings.

In short, the history of the fortepiano is endowed by the continuous search for greater sound volume, so:

_ Viennese mechanics: thin soft iron strings rich in carbon, thin hammers covered with deerskin, harpsichord structure;

_ English mechanics: thicker strings in soft iron purer of carbon, more taut and thicker hammers covered in leather, more massive structure of the instrument;

_ French mechanics: even thicker strings in even purer soft iron, but also steel strings, even greater tensions, thicker hammers covered in leather but also in felt, an even more massive structure with the need for reinforcements in iron bars.

With Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) and Franz Schubert (1798-1828) the Austrian musical environment reached its apex, as well as the Viennese fortepiano that is intimately linked to them. One – the musicians – could not have existed without the other – the world of builders – and vice versa. In order to open one’s own business, it was then necessary, after a long internship in the workshop, to produce the masterpiece: an instrument that was judged by a special commission and was perfect. After five years the license could only be renewed by proposing the patent of some new technological solution that the others had not yet reached, and so on. It was therefore a system for fueling ruthless competition between the various artisans and for continually encouraging innovations. With Schubert we are in the last season of the Viennese fortepiano; musical taste is in fact evolving to full romanticism, with composers such as Frederyk Chopin and Franz Liszt. Their musical aesthetics will find full realization in symbiosis with the new instruments equipped with the most perfected and ductile French and English mechanics: Chopin will prefer the instruments built by Ignace Pleyel; Liszt will prefer those of Sebastien Erard. But the English instruments of Broadwod and Collar & Collard (formerly Clementi) were also renowned in England.

Alongside the production of concert grand instruments, then as now there was an equally thriving production of home or „chamber” instruments. The choice of the type of instruments was much wider at the time than today, it was not limited only to the „upright” or „wall” piano that the market today offers.

Listen

The most popular chamber instrument was undoubtedly the “table” fortepiano, so called because it could be presented, once closed, as an elegant table and as proof of this, between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was also equipped with a shelf for books or drawers cleverly inserted between the legs that supported it.

GANER SQUARE (1779)

Soon the structure becomes more massive, as can be seen in the following photograph of an instrument by Clementi.

As we have already mentioned, among his many activities, he had founded a factory that exclusively produced table fortepianos much sought after by the bourgeoisie who delighted in music. The instruments were particularly cared for in the external appearance so as to fit perfectly into the furnishings of the most elegant homes. From the images it can be seen that in the table instruments of

the XVIII century, for exclusively domestic use, in general any device is missing and in particular they do not have a pedal board or even knee pads, always present instead in the grand instruments; moreover, the extension is still equal to about five octaves, like a harpsichord, and is, after all, still little more than a harpsichord in terms of tone and sound power. The musical literature performed in the home did not yet have great demands, on an instrument of such characteristics it was difficult to deal with the great repertoire of the time (for example a Sonata by the last Beethoven) and it was limited above all to chamber music, where the role of the keyboard instrument was more contained. In the instrument depicted on p. 17, built in 1825 with the Clementi trademark, there are instead the two traditional sordino pedals (generally on the left) and the resonance pedal, proving that these devices were now an essential requirement. In this period the range of the keyboard exceeds six octaves even in table instruments and the instruments are equipped with English mechanics.

In addition to the very popular table fortepiano, there were, however, other models that were the result of the imagination of the builders and organological reminiscences from previous centuries.

As we have already mentioned, the fortepiano is essentially a psalter – so is the harpsichord – to which a mechanized keyboard has been applied. The plucked psaltery was played vertically held in the lap of the performer, so it was natural to also create a keyboard instrument that developed vertically:

naturally the first was a ‘vertical harpsichord’ with a regular keyboard and called a ‘claviciterio’. Technological research and the need to have a more present sound, perhaps, or perhaps trivially the need to save space

by exploiting, as today, the space in height, could be the reasons for the creation of this instrument that never had the diffusion of the horizontal brother. but which, however, is always found in the various centuries. Even in the 19th century,therefore, the solution was adopted of creating fortepiani that developed in height with the most varied shapes but which all recalled the experiences of the past.

The first to have this idea in reality was once again, an Italian, Domenico Del Mela, who was the first in 1739 to have practically applied hammer mechanics to a claviciterio. In the comparison between the images it is worth noting the similarity and continuity of forms between the various instruments belonging to such different eras. In the upper image, a ‘vertical fortepiano’ absolutely out of the ordinary for the monumentality of the architectural system that is revealed to our eyes and for the organological equipment – note the six pedals. This type of instrument was called ‘fortepiano a giraffe’, a name that is all a program and well describes its exotic taste. The identity with the claviciterio reproduced in Praetorius’ table two centuries earlier is completely out of the question.

There were equally impressive instruments but with a more traditional shape, as illustrated below, which combined useful with pleasure as they brought together a library and a musical instrument in the same piece of furniture. The fortepiano called cabinet (wardrobe, walk-in closet), although less elegant than the French one, was quite successful by combining the traditional line of the external furniture, similar to that of a wardrobe, without excessive frills, with this practical aspect. With regard to the instrument itself, structurally it was a fortepiano with the tail placed vertically, as already seen with regard to the giraffe-shaped fortepiano, but which does not reveal itself to the listener and the performer only when the cabinet doors itself.

Let’s see in the following image how the structure inside such an instrument, completely analogous to the one reproduced above, could be intelligently exploited.

Among the unusual shapes, however attributable to the examples just illustrated, the fortepiano reproduced below also stands out, in the shape of a lyre, dating back to 1825.

From the monumentality of the Empire Style we move on to the simpler “piano”, that is the real vertical fortepiano with the meaning that we today attribute to this term; instrument from the early nineteenth century, almost identical in shape to the current one, but in truth not very widespread in the early nineteenth century. The reason for this lack of success can presumably be explained by the fact that in those years it was the Viennese piano that held the supremacy of diffusion, in particular the table fortepiano with Viennese mechanics; it will take a few more decades and the progressive change in taste with the advent of full romanticism and the consequent decline of Viennese mechanics, as well as changed social conditions for the new instrument to invade the homes of the petty bourgeoisie. It seems that the invention of the vertical fortepiano, the piano, dates back to Isaac Hawkins who patented it in 1800.

In the upper image, an 1812 instrument built by the British Wilkinson and Wornum. They were cheap instruments, easily transportable, with keyboards, for the time, reduced to just five octaves or a little more. When Frederyk Chopin, for health reasons, stayed in Palma de Mallorca in 1838/39, an almost uninhabited fishing island in those times, in the isolated Valldemosa convent, he will have an instrument like the one next to it transported there, a small Pleyel, on which he will compose some of his most poignant preludes. All the instruments illustrated make use of English mechanics. It should be noted that Viennese technology never produced instruments like the two small pianos illustrated here. They are the result of a very advanced industrial world such as the English and French, now careful to meet the most disparate market needs that the new and powerful social class, which was rapidly replacing the noble one, required. As we have already mentioned, the role played by the bourgeoisie in decreeing the absolute success of the fortepiano was fundamental.

Now at the end of the fortepiano’s evolutionary parable, the second image shows an anticipation of the Art Nouveau style, due to the essentiality and characteristics of the absolutely innovative design, all the more so if we consider the year of production of the instrument. Both Pape’s and Lichtenthal’s instruments were in fact produced in 1840. The console shape, however, is quite uncommon for the fortepiano and testifies, especially in this case, in addition to the variety of shapes, the commercial concern that the instrument finds suitable placement among the furniture of the house. Instruments such as Lichtenthal’s could also be placed on the first ships of the line that connected Europe to the Americas, in which case the instrument could be conceived with the interesting possibility of having the tip-up keyboard. retractable, in order to avoid accidents to people in case of rough sea.

A greeting with the hope that this article may have met your favor.

Ilario Gregoletto has learned degrees in piano and harpsichord with studies in organ and early wind instruments at the Conservatory Benedetto Marcello in Venice. He has devoted himself to early music for over thirty years. He began with music of the late Middle Ages and its instruments arriving at Classicism with fortepiano and harpsichord. Prof. Gregoletto has played about one thousand concerts in Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Greece, Germany, Holland and Belgium. He has been Professor of Harpsichord for over twenty years in Italian Conservatories and, from 1991, at the Conservatory of Udine. From 2004 is furthermore teacher at the Conservatory Buzzolla in Adria (History of Ornamentation) and from 2005 at the Ca’ Foscari University (TARS Department) in Venice (History of Musical Instruments). He has recorded as harpsichord continuist, harpsichord soloist, fortepiano soloist in duo and in ensemble, with labels Rivoalto, Tactus and Brilliant, and recently, with Marius Bartoccini, a CD with the complete 4 hands sonata by Frantisek Xaver Dusek and the complete 4 hands sonata by L.Kozeluch for the Brilliant label on his original Schanz fortepiano.

He is interested in the conservation of early instruments and has with E. Modena a wide collection of wind and string copies of instruments from medieval to baroque period, harpsichord copies and original fortepianos from the second half of XVIII’ s. to late XIX’ s. Ilario Gregoletto has published in Recercare an important article about an original 18th century Venetian fortepiano of Luigi Hoffer, one of two extant restaured instrument of this type which can still be played and of which he is the owner. (The other instrument belonged to Gioacchino Rossini).

Hildegard von Bingen (1098–1179)

Singing Hildegard

by Elena Modena

www.centrostudiclaviere.it

Hildegard’s music is not only music. Her sacred repertorie is a place of culture, theology, poetry, and a precious casket of sounds and words heard from heaven, written then in neumes so that even today we could listen to it and sing it.

In Hildegard’s thought, music is at the center, like a directing light bringing women and men back to their original harmony.

 Naturally, the importance of the role of music is part of the Benedictine monastic rule, ora et labora, according to which she had been educated at Disibodenberg, the monastery in which she entered very young (about 1105/6), entrusted to the spiritual mother Jutta von Sponheim.

The rule combines the needs of daily life – manual maintenance and organization of the convent spaces and functions, cultivation of land products and cooking, management of the guesthouse, assistance to the sicks – with the needs of the spirit and religious practice – study of sacred books, meditation and prayer, singing, artistic activities like ars illuminandi and painting, copying of ancient texts to the scriptorium.

Although she defines herself as a paupercula femina (Ep. 149R), Hildegard is a culture woman, with a wide knowledge of Platonic-Christian theology, including Hugh of St. Victor, and promotes culture and awareness of her nuns, who generally came from noble families. This intent, like a life project, was best done when she founded, in 1147, the monastery of St. Rupert, at the confluence of the Nahe and the Rhine, in Bingen am Rhein; so Hildegard with several nuns become an autonomous female community, settling in 1150. Here, in addition to playing the role of abbess, she was able to respond fully, encouraged by St. Bernard of Clairvaux and Pope Eugene III, to her divine calling as a visionary and prophetess, then dictating the contents which she saw and heard inspired by the living Light. Her writings are all in Latin, the language of the Church, and two of the three theological texts are illuminated: Scivias (1141–1151, miniatures made at Rupertsberg scriptorium) and Liber divinorum operum (1163–1173), illuminated about 40 years after Hildegard’s death, in Codex Latinum 1942, I-Lucca, State Library.
The musical repertoire includes about 70 carmina and one liturgical drama, Ordo Virtutum; it’s entitled Symphonia harmoniae celestium revelatiomun and is noted in gothic neumes, on tetragrammaton. The main codes are Rupertsberger Riesenkodex: Wiesbaden Handschrift n. 2, and Codex Dendermonde: Sint-Pieters-en Paulusabdij– ms. 9. It was certainly composed starting from 1141, as the latest vision of Scivias demonstrates; in fact, some of the texts of the Symphonia and some passages of the Ordo virtutum are there reported, although without music.

Since different music and sounds accompanied the visions, it is likely that Hildegard dictated his compositions together with the writing of her texts, which were not only theological but also scientific and medical, and that she wrote until late maturity.
Hildegard’s music and sacred lyrics, always of her composition, reflect the vastness of her being, perceiving, thinking; contents sound like a poetic theology, absolutely original but never in conflict with the doctrine of the church.
Her message, although so far in time, is still recognizable today, especially by people sensitive to themes such as divinity of the human creature, purity and original power, micro and macro cosmos, and by people listening and searching for sacred, beauty and harmony as true nourishment (pabulum) for soul, mind and body, in a holistic vision.

Hildegard’s actuality is confirmed by the renewed interest that her proclamation as Doctor of the Church, on 7 October 2012, rekindled.
But the current pandemic has also highlighted her thinking, due to the acute attention she had devoted to nature and the relationship between man and nature, already compromised at that time according to what she wrote: in fact, in Liber vitae meritorum (1158–1163) the elements complain about the way humanity treats them. Between her favorite themes, now really topical, is music. Without music, without musical harmony between different aspects of the human creature, humanity is depressed, degraded, debased. At Rupertsberger music was so important that Hildegard composed a proper repertorie, enclosed in Symphonia harmoniae. Music from heaven for the abbess and her nuns, music to make more united the monastic community; but also music for her soul and heart, as documented in the Acts of the canonization process: Hildegard sang the Marian sequence O virgo ac diadema with a radiant face, inspired by Holy Spirit, walking in the cloister (Acts of the canonization process, XIII century)
Hildegard’s carmina, being poetry, summarize theological themes – specially the same as Scivias, Liber vitae meritorum, Liber divinorum operum – linking them to the destiny of humanity. So she calls everyone back to the best condition of soul and body within the nature to which we belong and to interior of God’s creatural project. An example of this unique poetic style is when she sings the purity and virginal strength of Mary comparing them to the beauty of nature, the luxuriance of vegetation, the heavenly song of birds, the budding of plants and flowers. The attention to the Marian theme, as well as to the local Saints, characterizes her repertoire; in fact, in the same years St. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote the Praise (Laudes) to the Blessed Virgin, recognizing to Mary a centrality in the salvific role of humanity unknown to the sacred texts.

Singing Hildegard was projected during the first period of the pandemic and it was realized at the end of 2020 like a crowdfunding. Why a similar project in the year just ended (…but not finished yet)? Hildegard von Bingen is the first voce, into the Christian era, who declared how much is important music for human life as a whole. A life without music is a life that lacks its wholeness, because human psychic and corporeal system is like a musical ensemble, a vibrating set of pitches, sounds and tunes that harmonize mind and heart with each other. Silence, which characterizes monastic life, is systematically alternated with “ruminant” reading (ruminatio, the practice of reading in a low voice to oneself) and singing; silence prepares it by creating the space that listening needs.
But the cloistered silence is the preliminary condition for the soul to seek in the stillness within itself; while the silence that we experienced in 2020 was often an empty, forced silence, and without music. No music in the churches, in the theatres, in the schools and academies. We have all suffered from the lack of music, just as Hildegard suffered from the ban on singing imposed on his community in 1178 by the Diocese of Mainz for the accusation of having buried a man suspected of heresy within the convent walls. Like she wrote to the prelates of Mainz, to impose silence by removing the possibility of singing the Office of Hours and the Mass was like making a deal with the devil, who neither sings nor speaks more rationally because of his fall – the loss of the original condition of angel. Thus, singing is the first way to preserve health and to save soul and body in life on earth and in heaven, prefiguring the life of angels.

Hildegard’s message is the same as what neuroscientists said in the XX century: a society without music does not die, but gets sick, loses strength, goes into depression. So, singing Hildegard inspired and sustained us through long difficult months, in the belief that her music and sacred poetry could also be good for others. Although her texts deal with Christian truths (Mary, the saints, God, the Trinity …), Hildegard’s style speaks to many people for the personality, the intense impulses, the sensations of wonder for the divine and natural beauty: therefore, it sounds modern. Here an exemple, from the responsory O vos imitatores, last track on the CD.

O vos imitatores excelsae personae in pretiosissima et gloriosissima significatione. O quam magnus est vester ornatus, ubi homo procedit solvens et stringens in Deo pigros et peregrinos, etiam ornans candidos et nigros, et magna onera remittens.

O You! who are in imitation of the Most High in a most precious and glorious form, how great is your dignity! In it proceeds the Man (Christ) who loosens and binds the lazy and wandering in God, dressing those in the light and those in the shadow with beauty, and freeing everyone from their burdens.

And in the verse Hildegard reveals that she is writing and singing about confessors, men and women of great faith, witnesses of God – who is unity, beauty, total light – without shedding blood like martyrs.
V. Nam et angelici ordinis officia habetis, et fortissima fundamenta praescitis, ubicunque costituenda sunt, unde magnus est vester honor.
You carry out your task among the angelic choirs and your solid foundations already know in advance where to place them. Therefore great is your honor.

Precious and glorious form, dignity, honor: these are all words of great quality, that elevate human thinking and feeling, in all those who live seeking and practicing goodness and beauty; for Hildegard, acting in favor of life.
In this sense, for the examples it offers (the saints, the martyrs, the fathers of the church), the depth of the texts, the spaces of beauty at its disposal, the very high value of the musical repertoire – as human heritage in all – the image of the sacred that today Hildegard gives us back should be a model of a life in fullness, regardless of personal choices of faith.

Elena Modena
1 March 2021

InUnum ensemble

Elena Modena voice, gothic harp, lyra, tenor fiddle
Ilario Gregoletto medieval recorders, double recorder, romanic fiddle, organistrum

Ilario Gregoletto has learned degrees in piano and harpsichord with studies in organ and early wind instruments at the Conservatory Benedetto Marcello in Venice. He has devoted himself to early music for over thirty years. He began with music of the late Middle Ages and its instruments arriving at Classicism with fortepiano and harpsichord. Prof. Gregoletto has played about one thousand concerts in Italy, Spain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Greece, Germany, Holland and Belgium. He has been Professor of Harpsichord for over twenty years in Italian Conservatories and, from 1991, at the Conservatory of Udine. From 2004 is furthermore teacher at the Conservatory Buzzolla in Adria (History of Ornamentation) and from 2005 at the Ca’ Foscari University (TARS Department) in Venice (History of Musical Instruments). He has recorded as harpsichord continuist, harpsichord soloist, fortepiano soloist in duo and in ensemble, with labels Rivoalto, Tactus and Brilliant, and recently, with Marius Bartoccini, a CD with the complete 4 hands sonata by Frantisek Xaver Dusek and the complete 4 hands sonata by L.Kozeluch for the Brilliant label on his original Schanz fortepiano.

He is interested in the conservation of early instruments and has with E. Modena a wide collection of wind and string copies of instruments from medieval to baroque period, harpsichord copies and original fortepianos from the second half of XVIII’ s. to late XIX’ s. Ilario Gregoletto has published in Recercare an important article about an original 18th century Venetian fortepiano of Luigi Hoffer, one of two extant restaured instrument of this type which can still be played and of which he is the owner. (The other instrument belonged to Gioacchino Rossini).

Johann Kaspar Kerll (1627-1693),
Missa In fletu solatium obsidiensis Viennensis

by Arno Paduch

Arno Paduch

Photo: Musacchio & Ianniello

Johann Kaspar Kerll is by no means unknown among seventeenth-century composers. Modern dictionaries of music all mention him as an outstanding composer of organ works that are available in various new editions and can regularly be heard in concerts. It will therefore probably come as a surprise to most informed musiclovers that Kerll’s contemporaries esteemed him above all for his sacred vocal compositions and chamber music. The intention of the present recording is to acquaint a broader audience with this unknown side of Johann Kaspar Kerll.

Johann Kaspar Kerll was born in the town of Adorf in Vogtland on April 9, 1627. He probably received his first instruction in music from his father Kaspar Kerll, an organist and organ builder. The family stemmed from St Joachimsthal (Jáchymov) in Bohemia, which they had been forced to leave because they were of the Protestant faith. Johann Kaspar Kerll’s extraordinary talent won him the position of organist at the court of Archduke Leopold William in Vienna, where he took lessons with the imperial Hofkapellmeister Giovanni Valentini. The archduke soon sent him to study with Carissimi in Rome, where it is possible that he met Frescobaldi. And it was in Rome that Kerll’s first known composition was published, as part of Athanasius Kircher’s Musurgia universalis (1650), which was dedicated to Archduke Leopold William. It is not clear whether, after completing his studies at the court, Kerll went to Brussels, where Archduke Leopold William had resided since 1647 as regent of the Low Countries. Nor do we know exactly when he went over to the Catholic faith, but it seems probable that his conversion was a prerequisite imposed by the archduke in connection with the organist’s post and the scholarship.
On February 27, 1656, Kerll became vice-kapellmeister in the service of the Bavarian Elector Ferdinand Maria in Munich, where he was to assist Hofkapellmeister Giovanni Giacomo Porro, who had been ill for a long time. Porro died at the beginning of September and on September 22 Kerll was appointed Hofkapellmeister. In spite of the havoc wreaked by the Thirty Years’ War, Munich possessed an admirable Hofkapelle, and Kerll raised it to new standards of excellence. January 1657 saw the premiere of L’Oronte, the first of at least four operas Kerll wrote. They have all been lost, together with the school dramas written for the Jesuits in Munich and the additional pieces for ballets, pastoral plays and the like.

The great upsurge in court music in Munich under Kerll’s direction caused the elector to reward the composer with a title and various gratuities over and above his salary. When the Munich Hofkapelle presented itself at the convening of the Regensburg Parliament in 1664, Kerll was given noble rank by Emperor Leopold I. Only two authenticated works written during his term of office in Munich survive: a Requiem in the old style and Delectus Sacrarum Cantionum, a collection of 26 sacred concertos for various forces, two of which can be heard on this CD.

Kerll resigned from the post of Hofkapellmeister in 1673 and moved to Vienna. The exact reason for his leaving Munich is not known, but it does seem that the assertion Johann Mattheson makes in his biographical dictionary Grundlage einer Ehrenpforte (foundation of a triumphal arch – Hamburg 1740) gets to the heart of the matter: “The resentment, especially on the part of the foreigners [Italian members of the Hofkapelle] at last reached a head and could no longer be contained.” Initially, Kerll seems to have earned a living in Vienna by teaching; from 1675 he received an imperial pension and was appointed organist to the imperial court in 1677.

Two momentous events occurred during Kerll’s time in Vienna which left their mark on Kerll and on his works: the loss of his wife to the plague in Vienna whilst he himself was away in Prague with the imperial court in 1679, and the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683, which he experienced at first hand. The latter event occasioned his Missa in fletu solatium obsidionis Viennensis (mass as consolation amid lament over the siege of Vienna), a work whose oppressed tone reflects the horrors of war. The extreme chromaticism in the “Amen” sections of the Gloria and Credo is unparalleled in the music of the time. Kerll returned to Munich after the liberation of Vienna. Apart from the publication of two musical works, we know almost nothing about his activities in the final years of his life.

Kerll’s Modulatio organica super Magnificat of 1686, to which the composer appended a catalogue of his keyboard compositions, is dedicated to the Bavarian Electress Maria Antonia, one of Emperor Leopold’s daughters. Kerll had composed these pieces a few years earlier during the epidemic in Vienna, when Maria Antonia herself contracted the plague, so that they must have had special meaning for her.

The last item Kerll published was the collection Hoc opus, hic labor. Missae sex a IV.,V.,VI. vocibus…, which was dedicated to Emperor Leopold I in 1689. This “work and labour” of six masses for four to six voices would seem to represent a kind of final musical testament, since each of the first five masses, including the Missa in fletu solatium, were connected with events in Kerll’s life. He composed the Requiem, the sixth work in the collection, for his own funeral. Kerll died in Munich on February 13, 1693 and was buried three days later in the crypt of the Augustinian abbey.

Kerll’s composing exerted powerful influence on the generations after him. One direct line is represented by his pupils Agostino Steffani, Franz Xaver Anton Murschhauser and Kerll’s youngest son Hans Christoph (while there is no evidence proving that Johann Pachelbel, Johann Joseph Fux or Georg Reutter the elder studied with Kerll, his influence on their work is obvious). But Kerll’s influence also spread in the many copies of his works which circulated throughout Germany. It would be beyond the scope of this article to enumerate all the libraries in which Kerll’s vocal works are still to be found today or in which inventories are all that survive of works now lost. But this is a good place to mention a few interesting facts. On September 4, 1680, before Johann Philipp Krieger left Halle, he made over to the Marktkirche a collection of more than fifty vocal compositions, Kerll’s Angelorum esca among them. It is possible that the young Handel performed this work in Halle under the guidance of his teacher Friedrich Zachow. A handwritten organ book by Handel, unfortunately now lost, also contained compositions by Kerll, and Handel used Kerll’s Canzona in the chorus “Egypt was glad” in his oratorio Israel in Egypt. Moreover, works by Kerll were reputedly among the compositions which Johann Sebastian Bach is supposed to have copied by moonlight as a boy in Ohrdruf and which his brother Johann Christoph forbade him to use. Though doubts have often been raised as to the truth of this story, C.P.E. Bach nevertheless mentions Kerll as one of the composers who influenced his father. Both Johann Sebastian Bach and his successor Georg Harrer revised Kerll’s Missa superba, which had become part of the repertoire of St Thomas’s choir in Leipzig at the latest by the time Johann Schelle became Thomaskantor (1676-1701). The publisher Breitkopf still listed Kerll’s masses in 1764.

More about J. K. Kerll

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Caspar_Kerll

More about Battle of Vienna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna

Credo

Sanctus, Osanna, Benedictus, Osanna

About Arno Paduch and his Rosemuller Ensamble

Photo: Mathias Marx.

Arno Paduch studied musicology in Frankfurt am Main, and cornetto and historical performance practice at the Schola Cantorum of Basel. He regularly performs with such well-known early music ensembles in Germany. In addition to concertising throughout Europe, he was participated in numerous European radio and television productions, as well as over 80 CD recordings. He has thaught cornetto and chamber music in the early music department of the Leipzig Conservarory since 1992, and has published various articles in noted  learned journals. In 1995 he founded the Johann Rosenmüller Ensemble, named after the famous german composer Johann Rosenmüller, who worked in Venice from 1658 until 1682 as „maestro di coro“ at the Ospedale della Pieta. The focus of the ensemble’s efforts is the performance of little-known music from the 17th and 18th centuries. Great importance is attched to historically accurate performances wich are based on a careful study of the historical sources and are played on copies of period instruments. From 2015 to 2018 Arno Paduch was the artistic director of the Festival „Dalheimer Sommer“ in northern Germany. Since 2018 he is the President of the International-Heinrich-Schütz-Society.

The Johann Rosenmüller Ensemble was founded in 1995 by Arno Paduch. Since then, it has given several very well-received concerts in Germany, including performances at the Handel Festival in Halle/ Saale, the Heinrich Schütz Festivals in Bad Köstritz and Weissenfels, the Middle German Radio Summer of Music, the Weserbergland Music Festival, the Bach-Tage Leipzig, the Festival for Early Music in Zywiec, Poland and in Switzerland.

The ensemble is named after the most important German composer of the generation between Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Rosenmüller, whose contemporaries regarded him as the “alpha et omega musicorum”. The focus of the ensemble’s efforts is the performance of little-known music from the 17th and 18th centuries. Great importance is attched to historically accurate performances wich are based on a careful study of the historical sources and are played on copies of period instruments.

The repertoire comprises solo sonatas and motets with basso continuo, polychoral music in the Venetian style, and the cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann.

The Johann Rosenmüller Ensemble recorded some well-received for Christophorus an Rondeau.

Discography

Johann Rosenmüller: Deutsche geistliche Konzerte
Christophorus CHR 77419

Johann Kaspar Kerll: Missa in fletu solatium obsidionis Viennensis
Christophorus CHR 77249

Albrecht von Brandenburg und die Reformation
Christophorus CHR 77254

Johann Pachelbel: Geistliche Festmusik
Christophorus CHR 77257

Sebastian Knüpfer – Thomaskantor: Geistliche Konzerte
Christophorus CHR 77276

Andreas Hammerschmidt: Geistliche Vokalmusik
in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Knabenchor Hannover
Rondeau Production ROP 7001 – Ausgezeichnet mit dem Echo Klassikpreis
Den Trailer zu dieser CD finden Sie im Internet unter: 

Coronatio Solemnissima – Die Krönung Kaiser Leopolds I. (1658)
Christophorus CHR 77283

Michael Praetorius: Michaelisvesper
in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Knabenchor Hannover
Rondeau Production ROP 7007
Den Trailer zu dieser CD finden Sie im Internet unter:

Johann Rosenmüller: Venezianische Abendmusik
Christophorus CHR 77333

Davon ich singen und sagen will – Eine musikalische Hommage an Martin Luther
in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Bachchor Siegen
Gerth Medien 939435  
Den Trailer zu dieser CD finden Sie im Internet unter:  

Michael Altenburg:”Gaudium Christianum” – Festmusik zur Reformationsfeier 1617
in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Kammerchor Bad Homburg
Christophorus CHR 77363

Johann Rosenmüller: Marienvesper
in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Knabenchor Hannover
Rondeau Production ROP 7007

Daniel Bollius: Johannesoratorium “Rapresentatio harmonics”
Weltersteinspielung
Christophorus CHR 77389

Georg Philipp Telemann:”Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” – Festliche Kantaten zur Reformations
in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Kammerchor Bad Homburg
Christophorus CHR 77405

Verleih uns Frieden – Musik zum Dreißigjährigen Krieg
Christophorus CHR 77424

Georg Philipp Telemann – Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott
Festliche Kantaten zum Reformationstag und Michaelisfest
in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Kammerchor Bad Homburg
Christophorus CHR 77405

Machet die Tore weit
Weihnachtsmusik an der Thomaskirche
Werke von Knüpfer, Schelle, Horn & Kuhnau
in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Kammerchor Bad Homburg
Christophorus CHR 77449

When approaching for the first time an instrument representative of the Renaissance and early Baroque, as is the Cornetto, I think that there is nothing more appropriate than understanding the philosophical and aesthetic ideals of music and the arts of the moment. In summary, put us in context.

The human voice has been the sound ideal to be followed by both theoretical and practical musicians of the Renaissance and the Baroque. Silvestro Ganassi tells us that “just as the worthy and perfect painter imitates all the things created by nature with the variation of colors, in the same way [the worthy and perfect musician], with the wind and string instruments, he can imitate the expression of the human voice. (La Fontegara, Venice, 1535)

Così come il degno & perfetto dipintor imita ogni cosa creata ala natura con la variation di colori, così con tale instrumento di fiato e corde potrai imitare il proferire che fa la humana voce.
(Like the painter imitates all created things and the nature by the middle of colors, on same way the wind and string instrument can imitate the pronunciation of human voice.)

Eighty-five years later Francesco Rognoni writes: The voice is nothing other than the instrument to express the emotions of the soul, more than mere speech. (Selva di Varii Pasaggi, Venice, 1620).

Following the same line Marín Mersenne, wise French Renaissance, author of “Harmonie Universelle” (1638) writes that the expression of the passions of the soul in the song is a necessity: “one must consider, understand and express the meaning and intention of each word, in such a way that each one achieves the effect of which he is capable, which happens particularly when the composer himself is moved by the feeling that he wishes to express in the spirit of the audience (…) Like a speaker, who has more power before the auditorium, when he feels touched by his message. “

On doit bien considérer, comprendre, et exprimer le sens, et l’intention des paroles, et du sujet, afin de l’accentuer et de l’animer en telle sorte, que chaque partie face tout l’effet dont elle est capable ; ce qui arrive particulièrement lors que le Compositeur est luy mesme frappé du sentiment qu’il désire imprimer dans l’esprit de ses auditeurs, (…) comme il arrive que l’orateur a plus de puissance sur son audience, quand il se sent esmeu et entièrement persuadé de ses raisons.

The cornetto is one of the instruments most concerned in it, if not the most, since vocality is its most praised characteristic, as will be seen in the next chapter referring to sources and chronicles. 

Following these lines, the objective of this lines is to invite cornetto students to build a technique based on the need and raison d’être of the music that concerns us: that of communicating feelings.

This work will lay its foundations in the search for the emission of a harmonic sound and, taking into account the importance of the said Renaissance ideals, study the historicist articulation from the beginning, building up a “heart-spoken” technique.

Some technical principles

Objective: To assimilate sound production as a balance between air flow, muscular support of the lips and diaphragmatic support.

Little amount of air, little lip muscle, gradually increasing concentration of air, quantity, temperature (warm air) and bodybuilding of the lip.

The air is transformed into sound. Following the ancient philosophic ideas, te resonances of harmonies are eternal, so, as a picture, just imagine at emission of one sound, that you’re appropriating for an instant a stuck of harmonies of the spheres, and when stoping playing, your last note will remain.

To put this imagine in physical side of technique, is the challenge. Basic exercise of emission towards principles of historical articulation.

1. 1. “Haaaaa” only air, from zero point to focus the clean emission, looking for just support and tension. The sound can / should come late.
   2. “Aaaaaa” Once the clean emission point has been achieved, make the sound impulse come from the diaphragm only. Assimilate your speed and intensity needed.Achieve a firm and effective emission from the diaphragm
   3. “AaaaAaaaAaaa …” Once obtained the emission from the diaphragm, on the same sound, accentuate, always from the diaphragm metric accents (every 2,3,4 times) taking care not to interrupt the line of sound. This causes awareness of points of tension and relaxation of the diaphragm musculature, these inflections of sound will be the basis for a conscious articulation.
   4. “TaaaAaaAaa …” In this instance, accompany the impulse of the diaphragm with a “t”, gradually transforming this muscular support, in an articulated phrase, on a note first, joint degrees, then..

The objective of this exercise is to find the “heart of sound”, using a progressive air flow, both in its speed and in its “temperature”, privileging a sound rich in harmonics and the consonance of the articulation over the volume.

Conceive the action of the diaphragm as the basis of a clean emission as well as the basis of the articulation. Once the support of the diaphragm has been mastered, on that basis, apply the following exercises, destined to gradually apply the main historical articulations: 

The articulation in primary sources

We find an ancient testimony in the Annali of Quinto Ennio, considered the first Roman epic author. In this book, as its title indicates, it tells, year by year, the history of Rome.

The author describes the sound of the trumpet “al tuba terribili sonitu tarantantara dixit”.
Although, the context is military, the characteristics of the onomatopoeias present resemble those that Girolamo Fantini exemplifies in his “Mode per imparare a suonare la tromba”.

The air is exited from the lungs, passes through the larynx, and then passes under the action of articulators and resonators of the vocal tract.

The function of the respiratory system is identical to the speech process, but considerably higher in amount of air and muscular control

The difference occurs in the larynx and vocal tract.

The air passes through the vocal cords before coming into contact with the GENERATOR (tongue and embouchure o), while the vocal cords must remain open so as not to produce “secondary sounds”.

in the vocal tract, CONSONANTES and VOCALES are formed while playing.

The function of the ARTICULATORS is similar in the instrument and in the speech, only their possibilities are reduced.

The labial consonants P B W F are excluded from their use in articulation The nasal M N where the air is diverted to the nose, are also usually not considered.
The fricasivas Z S produce an incomplete closure of the air, not precise for attacks.

Only T D R K C G L remains useful in our practice.

Treaties dedicated to the practice of improvisation give us some rules on articulation.
Ideal imitation of the human voice in the divisions (gorgia), melismatic passages

Exercise to practice historical articulation

(first only air and diaphramal support, then articulation)