A Musical Tour, from Renaissance to Baroque 20 Years of Cantar alla Viola

Composer(s)

Antonio de Cabezón
(c1510 - 1566). Composer and organist. Blind from childhood, he was probably educated at Palencia Cathedral under the care of the organist García de Baeza. In 1526 he entered the service of Queen Isabella and on 12 February 1538 he was appointed músico de la cámara to Charles V. On Isabella’s death in 1539 he was entrusted with the musical education of Prince Felipe and his sisters. Between 1548 and 1551 he accompanied Felipe on his travels to Milan, Naples, Germany and the Netherlands, and between July 1554 and August 1555 to London on the occasion of Felipe’s marriage to Mary Tudor. Cabezón married Luisa Nuñez de Mocos of Avila and they had five children. In his will, dated 14 October 1564, Cabezón described himself as ‘músico de cámara del rey don Felipe nuestro señor’.

Cabezón is ranked among the foremost keyboard performers and composers of his time. His music is rooted in the instrumental tradition of Spain and was composed for keyboard, plucked string instruments and ensembles (curiosos minestriles, ‘skilful minstrels’) that probably included string as well as wind players. Some of Cabezón’s compositions appeared in Venegas de Henestrosa’s Libro de cifra nueva (Alcalá de Henares, 1557). However, the greater part of his works were printed posthumously by his son (4) Hernando de Cabezón in Obras de música para tecla, arpa y vihuela (Madrid, 1578; ed. in MME, xxvii–xxix, 1966). Together, these two volumes transmit some 275 works (migajas, ‘scraps’ or ‘crumbs’) by Cabezón. (His collected works are edited by C. Jacobs, Brooklyn, NY, 1967–86.)

Costanzo Festa
(b c1485–90; d Rome, 10 April 1545). Italian composer and singer, for many years (1517–45) a prominent member of the Cappella Sistina in Rome. His birthplace, like that of his putative kinsman Sebastiano Festa, may have been in Piedmont, somewhere near Turin; in a papal breve of November 1517 he is referred to as a cleric (he apparently never became a priest) in the diocese of Turin.

The earliest notice of Festa as a composer is the attribution to him of a motet, Quis dabit oculis, written (as was a motet on the same text by Mouton) to commemorate the death (9 January 1514) of Anne of Brittany, Queen of France. Speculation that Festa may have spent some time studying in France (Lowinsky, 1968) remains unproved. The discovery that he visited Ferrara early in March, 1514, bringing with him several motets, tells us both that he could not have lingered in France and that he was by this time a recognized composer; the presence of Quis dabit in I-Bc Q19, a manuscript compiled in northern Italy c1516–19, suggests that this motet could have been among those brought by the composer to Ferrara.

At some point between 1510 and 1517 (probably the last few years in this period) Festa lived on the island of Ischia, in the bay of Naples; he was employed as a music teacher for Rodrigo and Alfonso d'Avalos, members of a powerful Neapolitan princely family. A document recording this engagement refers to Festa as ‘musico celebrato’. In 1517 he joined the papal chapel in Rome; from this period come a group of motets in the Medici codex (I-Fl 666), including Super flumina Babylonis with its tenor on a requiem chant, a lament for an unspecified person (there is no proof that it was written for the death of Louis XII in 1515).

Francesca Caccini
(b Florence, 18 Sept 1587; d after June 1641). Italian composer and singer, elder daughter of (1) Giulio Caccini. She was the first woman known to have composed opera and probably the most prolific woman composer of her time.

As the daughter, sister, wife and mother of singers, Francesca Caccini was immersed in the musical culture of her time from earliest childhood. In addition to training in singing, guitar, harp and keyboard playing, and composition, she must have received a literary education, for she is known to have written poetry in Italian and Latin. Along with her sister (3) Settimia and her stepmother Margherita della Scala, she is assumed to have been one of the ‘donne di Giulio Romano’ (Giulio Caccini) who performed in Jacopo Peri’s L’Euridice and her father’s Il rapimento di Cefalo in 1600 and who dominated the official chamber music of the Medici court in the first decade of the 17th century. After 1611 this ensemble was replaced by a group described in court diaries as ‘la sig.a Francesca e le sue figliuole’ (Francesca and her pupils), who regularly performed chamber music for women’s voices until the late 1620s.

Francesco da Milano
(b ?Monza, 18 Aug 1497; d 2 Jan 1543). Italian composer and lutenist. He was a member of a family of musicians, including his father, Benedetto (d before 1 Sept 1555) and his elder brother Bernardino (d after 1562). The date of his birth is given in three horoscopes, the earliest in a marginal note by Girolamo Aleandro (dated 1525), the others published by Girolamo Cardano (Libelli duo … item Geniturae LXVII. insignes casibus et fortuna, Nuremberg, 1543) and Luca Gaurico (Tractatus astrologicus, Venice, 1552). Gaurico also wrote that Francesco was taught by Giovanni Angelo Testagrossa, though this cannot be confirmed; if it is true, the instruction must have occurred in Milan between about 1505 and 1510. Francesco spent most of his career in the orbit of the papal court. The earliest indication of his presence in Rome is a listing as ‘Franciscus mediolanensis’ or ‘de Millan’ among the ‘esquires’ in the roll of the papal household prepared in May 1514. He and his father were among the private musicians of Pope Leo X between October 1516 and December 1518, succeeded by Francesco alone until March 1521. In a letter of 14 March 1524 the Ferrarese ambassador to Rome mentioned Francesco's participation in a banquet attended by, among others, Baldessare Castiglione and Paolo Giovio. In the same year there is a record of a ‘Barbero che sona di liuto con Francesco’; it is not clear whether a North-African Berber or a barber (like the 15th-century lutenist Pietrobono) was meant.

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.

Henry Purcell (ii)
(b ?Westminster, London, ?10 Sept 1659; d Westminster, London, 21 Nov 1695).
Composer and organist, son of (1) Henry Purcell (i). He was one of the most important 17th-century composers and one of the greatest of all English composers.

Jakob Kremberg
(b Warsaw, c1650; bur. London, 20 Sept 1715). Composer, lutenist and music copyist of Polish birth, later active in England. He was registered at the University of Leipzig in 1672, became a chamber musician to the Duke-Administrator of Magdeburg in 1677, and joined the royal music at Stockholm the next year. He was an alto at the Dresden court between 1682 and at least 1691. Between 1693 and 1695 he directed the Hamburg opera with Johann Sigismund Kusser; he may have been the author of the libretto for Georg Bronner's opera Venus, oder Die siegende Liebe (1694; lost). Some time in the following two years he was at the University of Leiden, where he composed a setting of a poem by the physician and scientist Herman Boerhaave and perhaps taught John Clerk of Penicuik (Davidson).

Juan Blas de Castro
(b ?Barrachina, Teruel province, c1561; d Madrid, 6 Aug 1631). Spanish composer, singer, guitarist and theorbo player. On 11 August 1592 in Alba de Tormes (near Salamanca) he received 30 reales for vihuela strings in his capacity as musician to the 5th Duke of Alba. At the duke’s court he formed a lasting friendship with Lope de Vega, through whose Arcadia of 1598 we know that Blas de Castro sang and played at courtly festivities as well as setting Lope’s poems to music. In 1596 he was in the service of the future king, Felipe III, singing his own compositions in a scene incorporated by Lope into his comedy La bella malmaridada (dated Madrid, 17 December 1596), and in 1597 he entered the service of the aged Felipe II as a part-time chamber musician. At the accession of the new king in 1599 the chamber musicians obtained full-time posts with annual salaries of 30,000 maravedís, and Blas de Castro was offered an additional post as usher of the king’s privy chamber, with a total salary of 43,800 maravedís.

Robert Jones (ii)
(fl 1597–1615). English composer. He graduated BMus at Oxford in 1597. In 1600 he published the first of his five books of lute-songs, and in 1601 contributed a madrigal to The Triumphes of Oriana (RISM 160116). His single collection of madrigals is dated 1607. On 4 January 1610 Jones, together with Philip Rosseter, Philip Kingham and Ralph Reeve, was granted a patent to ‘practice and ex'cise in the quality of playing [a group of children] by the name of Children of the Revells of the Queene within the white ffryers’, and on 31 May 1615 the four men were permitted to build a theatre for these children on the site of Jones's house near Puddle Wharf in Blackfriars. However, objections were raised by the civic authorities, who successfully petitioned the Privy Council for the demolition of the nearly completed building.

Settimia Caccini
(b Florence, 6 Oct 1591; d Florence, c1660). Soprano and composer, younger daughter of (1) Giulio Caccini. According to Severo Bonini, she established ‘an immortal reputation’, having ‘mastered to perfection the art of singing’. She was taught to sing and compose by her father, and by 1600 was performing at the Florentine court. Although not mentioned by name, she and her elder sister (2) Francesca are undoubtedly the ‘figliuole’ of Giulio Caccini who sang in Il rapimento di Cefalo in October 1600 for the marriage of Maria de’ Medici and Henri IV of France. Four years later, at the invitation of Maria de’ Medici, the Caccini family spent six months in Paris, performing at the courts of Modena and Turin en route. It was once thought that Settimia went to Mantua in 1608 to sing in Monteverdi’s L’Arianna but it is now known that the singer was another Florentine woman. In 1609 she married Alessandro Ghivizzani; both remained in Medici service until the following year. In October 1611 they left Florence without permission for Lucca, where in 1613 they were recruited by Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga, and Settimia soon became one of the highest-paid musicians at the Mantuan court. The couple returned to Lucca in 1620 after her dismissal from Mantua, and in 1622 they settled in Parma, where Settimia sang Dido in an intermedio and Aurora in Mercurio e Marte (1628), both by Monteverdi. After the death of her husband she returned to Florence. She is listed on the Medici payroll in December 1636, and a few months later sang in Giovanni Carlo Coppola’s Le nozze degli dei. Of her own compositions only eight songs are extant (in I-Bc Q49 and CZ-Pnm II-La.3) of which three appear also anonymously, or attributed to ‘Parma’ or ‘Ghivizzani’.

Tobias Hume (b ?c1579; d London, 16 April 1645). English composer and viol player. As a professional soldier he served as an officer in the Swedish and Russian armies, and as a viol player published two important volumes of music, principally for the Lyra viol. When in 1629 he entered the Charterhouse almshouse he was probably 50 (the minimum age of admission); he later died there.

The profession of arms, his vivid and personal literary style, his insistence that the viol ‘shall with ease yeelde full various and as devicefull Musicke as the Lute’, and the fact that most of his music, being in tablature, is inaccessible to most modern musicians, have been the cause both of modern neglect of Hume as a composer of talent, and of his reputation as a musical eccentric.

What is remarkable is that Hume regarded himself primarily as a soldier: ‘I doe not studie Eloquence, or professe Musicke, although I doe love Sense, and affect Harmony: My Profession being, as my Education hath beene, Armes, the onely effeminate part of me, hath beene Musicke; which in mee hath beene alwayes Generous, because never Mercenarie’. Hume's addresses to the reader herald a new vigour that the 17th-century pamphleteers were to bring to English prose; his claim for the viol as a worthy rival to the lute as a solo, an ensemble and a continuo instrument, was an accurate forecast of change in English musical taste.

All of Hume's known compositions are contained in his First Part of Ayres (1605) and Captaine Humes Poeticall Musicke (1607), the former constituting the largest repertory of solo music for the lyra viol by a single composer in the early 17th century. Together, these works comprise instrumental dances, pieces with descriptive, fanciful or humorous titles, programmatic pieces and songs. Hume's First Part of Ayres contains what may be the earliest examples of pizzicato: ‘play one straine with your fingers, the other with your Bow’, ‘to be plaide with your fingers … your Bow ever in your hand’ and col legno: ‘Drum this with the back of your Bow’. This book includes a number of playfully suggestive titles – My Mistresse hath a prettie thing, She loves it well and Hit it in the middle – as well as a Lesson for two to play upon one Viole which requires one player to sit in the lap of the other. His second collection, dedicated to Queen Anne, is more staid in tone; it earned for the composer ‘according to her highnes comandment and pleasure [by warrant, 6 June 1607]: 100 s[hillings]’. While making no great technical demands on the performer, the music displays much skill and invention, both in the exploitation of the potential of the viol and in the effectiveness and the variety of sonorities in the ensemble works.

William Corkine
(fl 1610–17). English composer. The dedication of his first collection (1610) to Sir Edward Herbert (later Lord Herbert of Cherbury) and Sir William Hardy suggests that he served his apprenticeship under them. Little is otherwise known of his life. A receipt dated 2 February 1612 shows that he performed with John Dowland and Richard Goosey at a Candlemas entertainment at the Middle Temple. In 1617 he was one of a group of musicians given permission to go and work at the Polish court.

Corkine's books of Ayres contain both songs and pieces for the lyra viol. Most of the songs have an accompaniment for lute and bass viol, but some of those in the second book are accompanied by bass viol only; the wording on the title-page, ‘to the Base-Violl alone’, seems to preclude the addition of a chordal continuo part. Some of Corkine's songs, such as Some can flatter and Sweet restraine these showers of kindnes, recall the ‘light airs’ of Thomas Campion, with their simple textures and flowing groups of two notes per syllable. Corkine's graceful melodic style, with its happy use of sequence, is heard at its best in What booteth love. Other songs, however, such as the setting of Donne's Tis true tis day, foreshadow the new declamatory style in their wayward melodic contours and irregular rhythms. Corkine's music for the lyra viol, which is intabulated and chordal like that of the lute, consists of dances and variations on popular grounds. His settings of Walsingham and Come live with me and be my love represent early high points in the repertory of the lyra viol.