Thomas Morley (1557-1602): Canzonets, Madrigals, Ballets & Keyboard Pieces скачать в хорошем качестве

Thomas Morley (1557-1602): Canzonets, Madrigals, Ballets & Keyboard Pieces

00:00 Good Love Then Then Fly Thou To Her 03:05 Farewell Disdainful 06:09 Hark! Jolly Shepherds 08:01 Now Is The Gentle Season; The Fields Abroad (2nd Part of No. 40) 10:46 My Lovely Wanton Jewel 13:14 Sweet Nymph, Come To Thy Lover! 14:50 Stay Heart, Run Not So Fast 17:22 O Grief Even On The Bud 18:56 Pasmeasz Pauan in G * 21:54 Pauana in A; (Attaca) Galiarda in A * 29:34 Alman in C * 31:09 Nancie in C * 35:25 Goe From My Window in G * Ambrosian Singers - Denis Stevens, conductor Valda Aveling, harpsichord by Thomas Goff and J. C. Cobby (London, 1952) after Jacob Kirkman (1777) Very little is known of the life of Thomas Morley, although he was one of the greatest of that late Elizabethan group of madrigalists including Weelkes, Wilbye, Farnaby, and Byrd — who was Morley’s teacher. Thomas Ravenscroft said that Morley “did shine as the Sun in the Firmament of our Art, and did first give light to our understanding with his Praecept”, a tribute which clearly refers to the composer's practical musicianship and to his treatise, the “Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke” published in 1597. Morley's life, and indeed his musical style, divides itself naturally into two parts. Being born during the brief reign of Mary I, he was very probably baptized a Catholic, and the evidence of his study with Byrd (who remained faithful throughout his life to the old religion) together with the early group of Latin motets, many of them based on penitential texts, hints at youthful idealism and a healthy respect for tradition. Shortly after his marriage in 1587 he became organist at St. Paul's Cathedral, where he would have been called upon to write services and anthems for the Anglican rite, and his conversion may date either from his marriage or from his cathedral appointment. In 1591 Morley was in Flanders, perhaps on a secret mission connected with political-religious intrigue. His host, a Catholic agent named Paget, intercepted letters addressed to Morley and realized that the innocent-looking organist had other interests besides collecting foreign musical publications. But Morley, conscious that his life was in danger, begged forgiveness and was allowed to return to England. The second period of his life had not begun very successfully; but once established in London, he displayed once more the wily and artful nature that seems to have displaced his earlier idealism. He left St. Paul’s and joined the Chapel Royal, being promoted so rapidly that his colleagues there held a meeting at which all the Gentlemen promised not to canvass the Lord Chamberlain for personal advancement. Later Morley applied for a printing monopoly such as Byrd had enjoyed up to the year 1596, and by writing to Sir Robert Cecil and somehow persuading this influential man of his need for a monopoly, it was eventually granted in 1598. This privilege was however so jealously guarded that Parliament resolved to grant no further monopolies for music printing after Morley’s had expired. Between 1596 and 1601 he lived in the same parish as Shakespeare — Little St Helen's, Bishopsgate. Morley's change of faith brought with it a change of style. From grave motets he turned to light songs and madrigals, modelled closely on the style of Marenzio, Gastoldi, and their contemporaries. Two of his publications were issued with Italian as well as English words, and after his five popular books of canzonets, madrigals, and balletts he edited two anthologies of Italian secular pieces with English words, thus bringing the total number of these concealed imports to 150. No transformation of a musical idiom from one country to another, from one language to another, can be sure of absolute success. There are subtle problems of rhythm, accentuation, and cadence that militate against a musical metamorphosis of this kind. Yet, within his limitations, Morley achieved what few of his contemporaries could have done: he brought into the solid, worthy, but somewhat provincial English polyphony a breath of fresh, warm air from the south; a lightness and freedom of pulse that inspired many other English composers to try their hand at the new fashion, in many instances with remarkable results. Without Morley’s pioneering madrigal books, the flair for this type of composition might never have existed in England except perhaps for isolated attempts. He, as composer, printer, editor, and author, saw to it that the madrigal and its allied forms became a living part of the musical scene.