Music like this can, undoubtedly, be very attractive and probably goes
down very well with audiences. What more could skilled musicians want
than to play music very well and dazzle audiences?
Perhaps this genre - of creating imaginative (and imaginary)
arrangements of early music - should have a specific name. It's a form
of contemporary music because it's musicians of our time creating it.
But it's quite different from early music set by modern composers using
modern rhythms and harmonies.
But this quote from the Echo de Paris album:
"Foscarini's remarkably delicate Zarabande brings to an end what is
such an enjoyable recital." International Record Review, May 2007
is problematic if the Zarabande, as they play it, bears little
resemblance to what exists in Foscarini. On the other hand, to say that
Pierrre Pitzl's re-imagining of a Foscarini piece is remarkably
delicate etc etc, seems fine.
You have summed up my feelings admirably. There is nothing wrong with them
taking the music and using it to create their own entirely original versions
of it.
What I think they should make clear is that this is what they are doing.
They shouldn't give a completely false impression of what the music is
really like and what the sources etc. indicate.
Of course it's perhaps not the fault of the Foscarini Experience if people
are naive enough to believe what they have said in the liner notes. I
would have thought that the name of the group would have given that away
straightaway. But in the end it just creates confusion.
Monica
Stuart
----- Original Message ----- From: "Stuart Walsh"
[1]<[email protected]>
Cc: "Lutelist" [2]<[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2011 9:06 AM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: Foscarini Experience again
On 31/03/2011 22:08, Stuart Walsh wrote:
On 31/03/2011 19:53, Monica Hall wrote:
I came across this CD by the group Foscarini Experience with
the title
"Bon voyage" some time ago.
I looked around to see if I could hear some of the tracks as
samples. Couldn't find anything but I did find an album by 'Private
Musicke' (who played at Edinburgh last year with an opera singer)
and there are some samples from this album, Echo de Paris:
[3]http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Accent/ACC24173#listen
It's interesting that the one solo of Corbetta's and the several of
Bartolotti are played actually as solos - very fluently (but
perhaps, at the gushing rather than the pinched, end of the
spectrum) whereas Foscarini (and Briceno) get a complete makeover.
Actually playing through Foscarini you struggle to find anything
musically coherent at all - but on this album, his (ahem) music
bursts forth as colourful, radiant and beguilingly tuneful.
(i.e. this is all rather curious...where did all these arrangements
come from - and arrangements of what in the first place?)
Stuart
In the liner notes it mentions an
illustration which features Foscarini on a wagon playing the
lute
together with a girl with a triangle and a violone player which
apparently dates from 1615 and is part of an illustration of a
feast
held for the Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia, the wife of the
Archduke Albert.
Does anyone know anything about this illustration and whether
the
lutenist is clearly identified as Foscarini. I have done a bit
of
surfing the net but haven't found any trace of it.
Monica
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References
1. mailto:[email protected]
2. mailto:[email protected]
3. http://www.prestoclassical.co.uk/r/Accent/ACC24173#listen
4. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
