Le retour de Madame Guerre… plus Grumpy

Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre
(Not) Complete Harpsichord Works
Louis-Nicolas Clérambault
Premier livre de pièces de clavecin, 1704
Thurston Dart (harpsichord by Thomas Goff)
L’Oiseau-Lyre  OL 50183 (p. 1959)

Once again, apologies for the long silence. Good news: I’ve more or less finished the thesis! It means I can at last bring you some of the many intriguing LPs I’ve bought recently. I’m also itching to transfer several rare and fascinating 78s. But they’ll have to wait until I hook up the varispeed turntable, buy some suitable styli and a proper pre-amp and, most importantly, a record-washing machine. A couple of LPs have proved too grubby even for Grumpy and will need the kind of treatment Matron used to mete out to us after games.

But I knew very quickly this’d be a good ’un – and so it is, except for one very odd fault and another not so odd. As the Gramophone reviewer put it: ‘The record is unfortunately marred by a persistent technical fault—a kind of rumbling or roaring noise which is only too audible through the delicate sounds of the harpsichord. I am inclined to think that this is caused not by some external nuisance such as traffic, but by some mechanical or electronic failing in the recording equipment used.’

Actually, it only mars about 4 minutes of one suite; but another is afflicted with a different and deliberate defect. More on both problems below. Otherwise, the recording is close but not oppressive, crisp and clear. In fact it mirrors the playing of Thurston Dart and admirably suits his instrument. Mind you, good though Dart is, there’s a slight feeling of him translating a foreign idiom, although he manages some lilting notes inégales. He does a of lot of colouring-in with stops; and he betrays a hint of the 1950s ‘sewing-machine’ aesthetic in the often unrelenting way he zips through phrases and paragraphs.

I was a bit unfair in my title listing: this LP was issued in 1959, well before Mme Jacquet de la Guerre’s first keyboard book, of four suites, was rediscovered in the 1980s. The fifth and sixth suites here make up her Pièces de clavecin qui peuvent se jouer sur le viollon (1707). The first is in d minor and was recorded by Dart in this order: La Flamande (with Double)—Courante (with Double)—Rigaudons I & II—Gigues I (with Double) & II—Chaconne. The second suite, in G major, is more conventionally laid out: Allemande—Courante—Sarabande—Menuet—Rondeau. It’s inventive, striking, instantly memorable music, which I’ve enjoyed several times while getting this transfer ready.

At first, I thought Clérambault was prettier and slighter but he’s grown on me, with some notably expressive moments.  The grave, unmeasured preludes of each suite are especially fine, and well handled by Dart, though one minuet gets too jaunty for Grumpy. The first suite is in C major: Prélude—Allemande (with Double)—Courante—Sarabandes I & II—Gavotte (with Double)—Gigue—Menuets I & II (en rondeau). The second suite is in c minor: Prélude—Allemande—Courante—Sarabande—Gigue. The Allemande is superb, gruffly eloquent in Dart’s well-chosen registration, if a little stiff, but just what this repertoire is all about.

How remarkable that the long tradition of the clavecinistes, which I can imagine at first seems either arid, desiccated, formal, hermetic and frenchified, or pretty, precious, repetitious, inconsequential and … frenchified, is in fact so varied, personal and rewarding.  (I use ‘frenchified’ as an imaginary term of chauvinistic abuse, uttered by an 18th Century British philistine. But there are plenty of 21st Century British philistines.)

But be prepared for a rude shock in the Allemande of Jacquet de la Guerre’s suite in G. To simulate a piano repeat of the opening section, the engineer cranked the level back, a cheat they were wont to use in the 1950s. Something similar but less extreme seems to happen in the Sarabande, too. That’s nothing compared to what afflicts Clérambault’s first suite: from 3:25, some sort of electronic induction sets off a low, wandering buzz, which maunders on, like a dyspeptic theremin at Dart’s elbow, for 4 minutes and 8 seconds. It’s less noticeable on speakers than on headphones. My good friend Jolyon gallantly removed as much of it as he could but, being the ingrate that I am, I present it here untreated – except for the usual light Daviesification (o, bless his name!) (and Jolyon’s).

Download Jacquet de la Guerre’s suites as two mono, fully tagged FLACs in a .rar here.

Download Clérambault’s suites as two mono, fully tagged FLACs in a .rar here.

In der Höhle ward gut getrunken

I’m sorry, it’s been more chaotic than usual in the Cave - which has resounded to the carousing of teutono-oenophiles:

And I’m afraid I’ve done no work and little else of any use... But my kind, industrious friend in the outside world, Jolyon, has lent me a lovely LP of 17th Century German consort music to share with you.

Hassler 4 Intradas (1601)
Demantius 4 Galliards (1601)
Franck 4 Dances (1604)
Rosenmüller Suite in d (1654)
Biber Serenata ‘Der Nachtwächter’*

Philomusica of London, leader Granville Jones
*plus some people shouting in the distance
directed by Thurston Dart (harpsichord)

L’Oiseau-Lyre OL 50175, rec. July 1957

I say lovely - the sounds are lovely but I do wonder why Dart recorded this and similar repertoire (such as Dowland’s complete Lachrimae) with many strings. From someone with his flair for the dramatic, these beautiful but plush sonorities seem a miscalculation, slightly disarming this wonderful music. Still, I can’t agree with The Gramophone’s reviewer who, in August 1960, found the dances a bit samey and was unimpressed by the Biber. 17th Century German consorts are some of my favourite fare, as are nobly rotten Rieslings, and the deeper recesses of the Cave are well stocked with both.

5 mono, fully-tagged FLAC files in a .rar archive can be downloaded here. Apologies, I guessed a recording date of 1959 and uploaded the files tagged thus, before checking CHARM and finding that Michael Gray gives July (possibly 1st July) 1957.

Dart’s characteristic sleeve-note says it all:

‘The spectacular development of violin music by Italian composers of the 17th and early 18th centuries has tended to overshadow in our eyes its growth in the other countries of Europe. Yet it was in France that the first professional string orchestra was established, as early as 1555, under the direction of the Frenchified Italian, Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx. Later this body became the famous Vingt-Quatre Violons, and it provided the French court with all its music for ballet and dancing during the next hundred years or so. Itinerant French dancing-masters taught all Europe the new French dance-steps, to the shrill sounds of their little violins (kits or pochettes); and similar string bands had been established in most of the princely courts of northern Europe by the third decade of the seventeenth century. Some extracts from the repertoire of the 24 Violons have been issued on OL 50174 (‘French String Music, Louis XIII to Louis XV’).

‘In Germany the development of dance music was enriched by elements persisting from the older, native style of the 16th century – the Allemande, after all, is only a Frenchified version of a native German dance – and by the English consort music circulated in Germany by such expatriates as Thomas Simpson and William Brade. Both Simpson and Brade held important posts in North Germany and Denmark during the first twenty years of the 17th century; some of their dances have been recorded on OL 50127 (‘Dances of Shakespeare’s Time’).

‘Side 1 of the present disc explores some of the string music composed by three leading composers of German-speaking Europe: Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612), born at Nuremberg and working in Augsburg, Ulm, Prague and Dresden; Melchior Franck (1573-1639), born at Zittau, and working in Augsburg, Nuremberg and Coburg; and Christoph Demantius (1567-1643), born at Reichenberg, and working in Leipzig, Zittau and Freiberg. The side begins with four Intradas from Hassler’s ‘Pleasure-Garden’ (1601: nos. I, II, V, IX), for six-part strings – effortlessly polyphonic and richly sonorous music. Next come four 5-part Galliards selected from the ten contained in Demantius’s collection of ‘77 ... dances in the Polish and German style’, published in 1601. The side ends with four 4-part dances by Melchior Franck, from his ‘German Secular Songs and Dances’ (1604: nos. 11, 3, 26, 21): an untitled dance, which any French dancing-master would have classed as an Allemande; an eloquent Pavana; a brisk Galliard; and another untitled Allemande.

‘Side 2 tries to illustrate how these seeds grew into the more elaborate and mature style of later 17th-century orchestral music from central Europe. The side begins with a Suite for 5-part strings and continue by Johann Rosenmüller (1619-1684), born in Saxony, assistant master of the Thomasschule, Leipzig, from 1642 to 1655, and later working in Hamburg, Venice and Wolfenbüttel. His collection of ‘Music for Students’ was published in Leipzig in 1654, and was intended for the predecessors of Bach’s club of young University musicians. From it we have chosen the second Suite in D minor: Paduan, Alemanda, Courant, Ballo, Sarabanda. Rosenmüller has contrived the last four of these so that, if need be, they can be played in only three parts, without violas. Since the Paduan cannot be so played, he has supplied an alternative 3-part Paduan – omitted from this disc, since we use a five-part orchestra.

‘The side ends with a Serenade for five-part strings and continue by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704), born in Bohemia, and working in Prague, Olmütz (Olomouc in Czecho-Slovakia) and Salzburg. Biber was one of the most gifted composers of his time, with a highly original style; many historians speak admiringly of his rather eccentric music for solo violin, but few have paused to examine his much finer music for various orchestral ensembles. His Serenade, written while he was at Olmütz, begins with an Intrada (called simply ‘Serenada’) in two contrasting sections, followed by an Allemanda and a triple-time Aria. A Ciacona comes next; in this the lower strings are silent, the violins and violas play pizzicato throughout, imitating the sound of lutes, and the night-watchmen are heard in the distance, singing their traditional curfew song. For the recording I have made an English adaptation of the original German words: ‘Praise the Lord, may he be praised; the bell has now struck nine (ten) o’clock; douse fire, and bolt the door; and praise the Lord our Saviour, and our sweet Lady’. This most original movement is followed by a Gavotte, and the Serenade ends with a Retirada (‘Retreat’), as the musicians move away into the darkness and the town falls asleep.’