15th Century Song and the Bowed Vihuela

CANTAR ALLA VIOLA
Nadine Balbeisi and Fernando Marín created Cantar alla Viola in 2004. The duo has devoted more than seventeen years of research and interpretation to rediscovering the exquisite musical practice of singing with a viol (which is what their name means). Using different kinds of viols to accompany the voice, such as the Spanish Vihuela de arco (the bowed vihuela) and the English lyra-viol, has opened up a wide variety of repertoire ranging from the 14th century to early baroque.
Cantar alla viola carefully researches historical reproductions of Renaissance models and materials for their instruments, including building techniques and gut strings. The harmonies of the instruments are sustained by using a special and refined bow technique, creating a sound that blends well with the human voice. The intensive search for specialized repertoire has led this group to the recording of unique and undiscovered works.

Cantar alla Viola has performed in festivals and concert series in the UK, the US, Belgium, Germany, Spain, and the Czech Republic making guest appearances at the Viola da Gamba Society of America and on radios such as the BBC. The duo is particularly dedicated to performing lesser-known composers, and bringing them to a wider public.

“an almost-lost practice of the Renaissance — how to take a multi-part vocal work and play it with just a solo voice and a viola da gamba — it is worth its weight in gold.”– Early Music America

Originally from Alicante, Spain, Fernando Marín is a cellist, viola da gamba player and musicologist specialising in Renaissance and Baroque bowed instruments, historically informed performance and chamber music. He holds a doctorate in musicology; his thesis examined the Hispanic vihuela de arco, its sound and gut strings. His research into the origins, playing methods and repertoire of early bowed instruments has informed his work on bowing techniques for accompanying the voice and on the manufacture of historical gut strings.

He studied in Oviedo, Prague, Cologne, Brussels and Barcelona, with Wieland Kuijken among his principal teachers. With soprano Nadine Balbeisi he founded Cantar alla Viola, a duo devoted to medieval and Renaissance music. Their recordings include the complete polyphonic works of Juan Blas de Castro, Robert Jones’s The Second Booke of Songs and Ayres (1601), music for the vihuela de arco in the Kingdom of Aragon, William Corkine’s Each Lovely Grace: The Second Booke of Ayres (1612), and Segreti Accenti, featuring works by Luca Marenzio, Costanzo Festa and Luzzasco Luzzaschi.

His solo recordings include eVIOLution, exploring the origins and development of the viola da gamba; sCORDAtura, devoted to historical gut strings and different tunings; The Art of the Vihuela de Arco; Magia consoni et dissoni; and Cello’s Inside. He designs and builds historical instruments and produces and supervises his own recordings. He also collaborates regularly with Carles Magraner and Capella de Ministrers in concerts and recordings.

Marín has published articles on musical rhetoric, improvisation, gut strings and early music performance in musicological journals, including Nassarre and Quodlibet. With Nadine Balbeisi and composer, choral director, jazz pianist and harpsichordist Jean Kleeb, he formed the trio Viola da Samba, which recorded De rio a Rio.

His research and teaching in historical performance and early bowed instruments have taken him throughout Europe and the United States. In 2017 he received a Leonardo Grant for Researchers and Cultural Creators from the BBVA Foundation for a project on the recovery and musical interpretation of Renaissance bowed vihuelas. He has taught viola da gamba at the Conservatorio Profesional de Música in Zaragoza since 2003.

Official website ↗

Nadine Balbeisi
The lithe and distinctive voice of American/Jordanian soprano Nadine Balbeisi blends perfectly with the sound of the viols. She began her international solo career when she moved to Germany, singing oratorio, chamber music, opera and recitals. The University of Michigan, where she received her Bachelor’s degree, honored her with an Emerging Artist Award. She specializes in early music, her repertoire extending from the XIV through the XVIII centuries. She has performed as a soloist with various ensembles and orchestras, such as the women’s schola Ars Choralis Coeln directed by Maria Jonas and in the ensemble Atalante, directed by Erin Headley. The latter ensemble focuses on repertoire from 17th century Rome and has released a series of CDs; “Lamentarium,” featuring Nadine as a soloist, received a “Diapason d’Or” and was hailed by Musicweb International as “Recording of the Year 2011.” Since 2021, she has received yearly grants from the German Music Council - Deutscher Musikrat - Neustart Kultur and from the city of Cologne for numerous projects on 17th century Italian music, research on Renaissance singing and repertoire.
www.nadinebalbeisi.com

Alexander Agricola (c. 1445-1506) was a Franco-Flemish Renaissance composer whose career took him to several European courts. His sacred and secular music is distinguished by intricate counterpoint and rhythmic invention. His chansons and motets circulated in vocal and instrumental versions.

Alonso de Alba was a Spanish composer active around 1500. His Ave Maria is included in Cantar alla Viola’s programme of Renaissance polyphony, performed in an arrangement for soprano and bowed vihuela.

Francisco de Peñalosa
(b Talavera de la Reina, c1470; d Seville, 1 April 1528). Spanish composer. More works by him survive than by any of his Spanish contemporaries, even though it is also clear that quite a considerable number of his compositions have been lost. Six complete masses, six Magnificat settings, five hymns, three Lamentation settings, over 20 motets and 11 songs are attributed to him in Iberian or New World sources; surprisingly, it appears that none of his music has been preserved elsewhere.

Relatively little is known about his life before his appointment to the Aragonese royal chapel on 11 May 1498; the document recording his appointment gives only his place of birth. He served there until the death of King Ferdinand in 1516, his salary having been increased in May 1501 to 30,000 maravedís, the maximum paid to a singer-chaplain in that household. Although Cristóbal de Villalón described him as maestro de capilla (Ingeniosa comparación entre lo antigua y lo presente, Valladolid, 1539), he is not referred to elsewhere under this title. He was, however, ‘maestro de música’ (music teacher) to the king’s grandson, Ferdinand, who was brought up and educated in Burgos; Peñalosa held this position from 1511. In December 1505 he had been presented, at royal request, to a canonry at Seville Cathedral, but the position was contested and it was several years before the case was decided in his favour. He visited Seville from time to time while continuing to se

rve at court, but he took up residence there following the king’s death. In the autumn of 1517 he received an invitation to go to Rome, and he served as a member of the papal choir until the death of Leo X (December 1521). Even the high esteem of the pope was insufficient to convince the chapter of Seville Cathedral to allow Peñalosa to receive the income from the canonry in absentia, and in the summer of 1518 he renounced it for the position of Archdeacon of Carmona. After the pope’s death he returned to Seville, resumed his canonry and in March 1525 was granted the rights to the post of treasurer. He died in Seville on 1 April 1528 and was buried in the cathedral.

Gilles Binchois (c. 1400-1460) was a Franco-Flemish composer associated with the Burgundian court. His chansons helped shape the lyrical style of fifteenth-century secular music. Their expressive melodies circulated widely and were performed in a variety of vocal and instrumental arrangements.

Heinrich Isaac (c. 1450-1517) was a Renaissance composer active in Italy and the German-speaking lands. His works encompass sacred polyphony, secular songs and instrumental settings. He served the Medici in Florence and later the court of Emperor Maximilian I.

Juan del Encina(b Salamanca, 12 July 1468; d León, late 1529 or early 1530). Spanish poet, dramatist and composer. He was born Juan de Fermoselle in Salamanca, where his father was a shoemaker; it has been suggested that he was of Jewish descent. One of at least seven children, he, like several of his brothers, pursued a career that brought him into contact with the higher echelons of society. Diego de Fermoselle was professor of music at Salamanca University from 1479 until 1522, and may well have taught his younger brother. Juan became a choirboy in the cathedral in 1484, where another of his brothers, Miguel, was a chaplain. By 1490, when he, too, briefly held a chaplaincy at Salamanca Cathedral (a position he was forced to resign as he was not ordained), he had adopted the name Juan del Encina, probably his matronymic, but also perhaps a conscious reference to the Castilian holm oak as well as the ilex of Virgil’s bucolic poetry which clearly exerted considerable influence over him. He would have coincided with the great Spanish humanist Antonio de Nebrija at Salamanca, where he studied law probably between 1488 and 1492, and it is assumed that he would have come under his influence. It has previously been accepted that he entered the service of the Duke of Alba, Don Fadrique de Toledo, immediately after graduating in 1492. However, it is possible that his first post was as a magistrate or corregidor in northern Spain, which would have been a royal appointment. If this were the case, Encina would not have become a member of the duke’s household until 1495, which has implications for the chronology of his works, especially the plays he composed for performance at the ducal palace at Alba de Tormes, close to Salamanca; most of his works, including the first eight eglogas, were published in Salamanca in 1496. He may have entertained hopes of serving Prince Juan (d 1497), son and heir of Ferdinand and Isabella, who in that year had taken up residence in the city. In 1498 Encina applied for the post of cantor (maestro de capilla) at Salamanca Cathedral, but was unsuccessful; after much prevarication on the part of the chapter the position was divided among three singers, including his rival Lucas Fernández. He sought promotion elsewhere, and by 1500 was in Rome, securing benefices in the Salamancan diocese with papal support. Two years later, and despite the opposition of the cathedral chapter, a papal bull decreed that he should hold the benefice assigned to the cantor, which by then belonged to Fernández. Encina did not, however, return to Spain, having found Rome congenial and obtained the favours of successive popes and cardinals. By October 1503 he may have secured a place in the household of Alexander VI, and later in that of Cardinal Francisco Loriz (d 1506). In 1508 he was granted the archdiaconate of Málaga Cathedral by Julius II, and he attended his first chapter meeting in 1510, although the chapter curtailed his responsibilities because he was still not ordained. It did, however, entrust him with cathedral business, and over the next eight years he travelled several times to Rome, notably in 1512–13, when his play Placida y Vitoriano was performed at the house of a Valencian cardinal, and to the royal court in Valladolid. In 1518 he resigned his position at Málaga for a simple benefice at nearby Morón, and the following year he was finally ordained and travelled to the Holy Land in order to sing his first Mass in Jerusalem. Before his journey, of which he wrote an account in verse, he had been nominated by Leo X for the priorship of León Cathedral, and he attended his first chapter meeting there in November 1523. He held this position until his final illness in December 1529, his will being presented on 14 January 1530. It was his wish that he should be buried beneath the choir of Salamanca Cathedral, and his remains were moved there in 1534.