The New York Cornet & Sacbut Ensemble - German Brass 1500-1700 скачать в хорошем качестве

The New York Cornet & Sacbut Ensemble - German Brass 1500-1700

The New York Cornet & Sacbut Ensemble Allan Dean & Raymond Mase ~ Cornet & Trumpet, Ronald Borror ~ Tenor Sacbut & Slide Trumpet, Terry Pierce ~ Tenor & Bass Sacbut, Ben Peck, Dirctor ~ Alto sacbut & Slide Trumpet, Charles McKnight ~ Bass Bacbut Guest artist: Lou Barranti ~ Percussion The earliest composer represented here, Heinrich Isaac, though not a German, played an important role in the German musical tradition. As Kapellmeister (director of music) to Emperor Maximilian I from 1497 to 1517 and teacher of young German musicians, he brought German music directly into the mainstream of the leading style of the day, the Netherlandish style. His A la bataglia, written for voices, before he worked for Maximilian, survives in a textless version. During the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, most vocal music was fair game for instrumentalists, and composers rarely specified scoring for ensemble music. Thomas Stoltzcr, a first-rate composer of the generation after Isaac, worked in Breslau before becoming director of music at the Hungarian court in 1522. Included here are two of his eight late Octo tonorum melodiae ("Instrumental Pieces in the Eight Modes"), the first modal cycle of instrumental works and perhaps the finest large-scale pieces for instrumental ensemble before 1550. European domination in musical matters by Netherlanders around 1500, slowly passed to the Italians, who by 1600 were exporting musicians to Germany. A Vcnetian student of Giovanni Gabrieli, Giovanni Priuli became Kapellmeister to the future Emperor Ferdinand II in 1614, four years before publishing the canzona performed here. This is a brilliant work, notable for its tempo indications (tardo and presto), rare at this date. Unlike this canzona, published in a collection of sacred music and intended for church, the canzona of William Brade was published in a collection of dances. Brade, who unlike all composers mentioned so far wrote no vocal or sacred music, was one of many English instrumentalists who worked in Germany around 1600 and influenced the German instrumental tradition. Michael Praetorius, an extraordinarily prolific composer, arranged hundreds of dance tunes popular at the French court around 1600 and published them in his Terpsichore. We have grouped three of these with other dance pieces of the same period to form a suite of the sort that a brass consort might have performed. The association of brass Instruments with chorales and generally with church music in Protestant Germany was particularly long and rich. Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ, a joyful Christmas chorale often set by Praetorius, is presented here first in a simple setting. In the second version characteristic motifs of the tune are developed simply, and in the third, this development becomes more complex, with motifs appearing now in short, now in long notes. Johann Schmelzer, like Priuli before him. was Kapellmeister at the Emperor's court in Vienna. He wrote several pieces for six trumpets for the carrousel (“Baletto a cavallo”) that was part of the elaborate festivities celebrating the marriage of Emperor Leopold II and Margareta of Spain in 1667. This was perhaps the loudest, most brilliant music to be heard in an age innocent of electronic amplification. The free city of Leipzig long fostered an active musical life. Johann Pezel worked there as a musician for seventeen years. eleven as a Stadtpfeifer. He wrote literary works and published several collections of music - tower music that is tuneful and idiomatically conceived, music for strings and for voices. At one point he applied for the post of Cantor at the Thomas-Kirche but was nor accepted. In 1723 J. S. Bach successfully applied for this post; some of his works from this period included demanding high trumpet pans that would have been taken by Gottfried Reiche. Reiche worked in Leipzig for forty-eight years and exemplifies the skill and versatility of the Stadtpfeifer. In addition to his famed virtuosity as a high trumpeter, he played alto sacbut and violin and published a collection of tower music, twenty-four attractive four-part pieces for cornet and three sacbuts, two of which are performed here. Both pieces. especially the second. show a mastery of fugal technique that in no way hinders his ability to write idiomatically for brass or to give a coherent shape to a work. – Ben Peck