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ID: E023
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Chamber Music
Subcollection: Chamber EnsembleFirst world recording of the complete 6 trios opus 3. Anna Bon di Venezia, one of the few women composers from the baroque, hasn’t yet had the exposure her music deserves. This is a unique opportunity to get to know her music in an performance on period instruments. |
| 15.00 eur Temporarily out of stock |
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ID: GMCD7232
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Baroque
Subcollection: KeyboardRecorded: The Priory Church of Our Lady and St. Cuthbert, Worksop, Nottinghamshire on 1-4 January 2001 by kind permission of the Vicar, the Reverend Fr. Andrew Wagstaff SSC.
The instrument used in this recording.
The clavichord was made by Derek Adlam in 1982. It is a copy of an instrument of 1763 by Johann Adolph Hass, Hamburg, Russell Collection, Edinburgh.
Brass strung, the clavichord has a five octave compass of FF to f3, unfretted, with an additional 4 foot string in the bass. The pitch is a1 = 405Hz, an approximation of mid-18th century Hamburg pitch.
Tuning: a sixth-comma system is used (Young 2), allowing free modulation but retaining a sense of key and chord colour.
The Clavichord
The clavichord appeared in Europe towards the end of the 14th century. By 1404, the terms clavichordium and clavicymbalum described clearly distinct stringed keyboard instruments. Many 15th century representations of keyboard instruments appear in stained glass, carvings, and in paintings and manuscripts. No instruments survive from before 1480, the approximate date of an upright harpsichord in the museum of the Royal College of Music, London. No clavichord before about 1540 has come down to us, but many depictions, treatises and poems relating to the clavichord give us a clear view of these earliest instruments and their use.
The clavichord’s method of tone production is unlike any other stringed instrument. The strings pass over a bridge glued to a soundboard, and their opposite ends are wrapped in a ribbon of woollen cloth which prevents their vibration. The strings are sounded by metal blades called tangents, driven into the distal ends of the key levers. When a key is depressed, the tangent rises to strike the string and, remaining in contact with it while the finger rests on the key, defines its speaking length like a second bridge. The tangent also isolates the speaking section of the string from the damping material, leaving it free to vibrate. When a key is released and the tangent falls away from the string, the damping fabric can once again stop the string’s vibration.
>The singular feature of this simple system is that the tangent strikes the string at one end of its speaking length, i.e. a part of a string normally fixed. In striking the string at a non-vibrating part, the tangent can supply it with only a very small amount of energy. The tangent’s sudden but slight displacement of the string from its plane of rest, and a small shock wave which travels down it towards the bridge, cause it to vibrate and produce its sound.
What then is the advantage distinguishing the clavichord from the harpsichord? Despite the small sound, a clavichord player can achieve a considerable range of loud and soft tone. This effect was impossible to achieve on any other keyboard instrument by the fingers alone before the invention of the Florentine piano at the end of the 17th century. The clavichord player also is in contact with the string itself, so remains in control of the means of tone production. By varying the pressure, effects (including a vibrato) can be obtained which are achievable only on the clavichord. The instrument takes on some of the characteristic inflections and modulations of the human voice, an ideal instrumentalists have aimed at throughout the history of western music. Its intimacy of tone led to its association with personal expression and philosophical reflection. It became a spiritual confidant and comforter in times of distress.
Throughout the 17th century, use of the clavichord became more localized and especially in France, Italy and England, it gradually fell from favour. In these countries, schools of composition developed which exploited the rich tonal characteristics and potential for brilliant technical display of plucked keyboard instruments. In Germany, the clavichord remained highly important as a study and practice instrument, particularly for organists. It also suited a tendency towards spiritual introspection amongst German composers.
Despite the clavichord’s popularity in Germany, almost no music was written specifically for the instrument before the musical innovations of Johann Sebastian Bach’s sons and the growth of a new, expressive Empfindsamer Stil, the ‘style of sentiment’. We have no definite proof of Bach’s opinion of the clavichord beyond a statement by his first biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, 1749-1818, whose information supposedly came from Bach’s sons:
"…. he considered the clavichord the best instrument for study and for any music performed in an intimate setting. He found it the most able to express his most refined thoughts …. [and] capable of so many subtleties within its small scale…."
Forkel was one of a group of enthusiastic "Bachists" who continued to revere the works of Johann Sebastian and to promote the clavichord as an ideal instrument even in the face of the increasing popularity of the fortepiano. Even if Forkel’s report is not completely impartial, clavichords would without question have been used frequently in Bach’s household. It is appropriate to perform Bach’s keyboard music on the clavichord, even when the scale of a work seems to suggest a more powerful and extravert instrument. The scale of the instrument may be small, but its dynamic and expressive range can meet the requirements of music conceived on the largest scale. When heard with a receptive and unprejudiced ear, the clavichord’s limitations become insignificant. |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: RRC1160
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Baroque
Pachelbel's Canon. |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: DDV24108
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Baroque
The Georgian Concert was formed in 2000 to continue and extend the work of Concert Royal, one of England's longest established early music ensembles. Peter Harrison (flautist and leader of Concert Royal) is the artistic director, and 'cellist Rachel Gray and harpsichordist John Treherne are joined by violinists Simon Jones and Rebekah Durston, violist Duncan Druce, Jane McDermott (violone) and John Green (chamber organ). The ensemble's remit is to specialise in the historically informed performance of (mostly English) works of the eighteenth century
leader: Simon Jones - - - - -artistic director: Peter Harrison |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: DDV24107
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Baroque
Concert Royal |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: BR0021
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Great Performers
Featuring Felicja Blumental on piano, this is the first of two volumes released to celebrate 300 years of Carlos Seixas. This collection presents the keyboard works of by Iberian composers, Soler, Angles, Albéniz, Cantallos, Seixas, Jacinto and Carvalho. |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: GD174
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Baroque
Subcollection: ChoirThe CD includes works by famous composers from the epoch of late-Renaissance and Baroque. Claudio Monteverdi, the creator of the first important operas in the history of Europe's art of music, is represented by eight works. The songs and the psalms performed by the Sofia Madrigal Choir, specialised in the interpretation of Renaissance and Baroque music, demonstrate not only Monteverdi's exceptional ability to develop polyphonic compositions but also his mastery of the new emotional style strongly influenced by Italian folklore. Secular or sacred, these works are imbued with a sincere emotion and with the humanistic spirit of the time. They demonstrate a new attitude towards the text set to music and the melodic invention of Monteverdi, who lived and worked in the second half of the 16th and the first half of the 17th centuries. Carlo Gesulado, his near contemporary, also created models of madrigal art, sparkling with creative wit and invention, featuring virtuosity and poetry. And next to them ranks the German composer Heinrich Schutz, who laid the foundations of the Baroque style in German music. He is the author of many remarkable sacred works - passions, masses, madrigals, an opera, one ballet, vocal and instrumental opuses. The CD contains some of his secular songs, admirable for their melodiousness and beautiful vocal texture.
Soloists: Vanilia Kissyova (soprano), Nikolina Pankova (soprano), Assya Ivanova (soprano), Alis Bovarian (alto), Valentin Vassilev (tenor), Konstantin Marinski (bass), Stoyanka Slavova (harpsichord, spinet, organ), Vesselina Korchakova (spinet), Angel Stankov (violin), Yossif Radionov (violin), Bogomil Karakonov (cello), Nikolai Tonev (lute)
Stoyan Kralev, conductor |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: FRC9103
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Vocal Collection
Evelyn Tubb, soprano accomp: Anthony Rooley, lute, Michael Fields, lute English Trumpet Virtuosi |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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ID: GCCD4012
CDs: 1
Type: CD
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Collection:
Baroque
Anthony Aarons / Andrew Arthur - organ and trumpet combination in Royal Court baroque |
| 15.00 eur Buy |
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