interests

the jacobean court masque

The court masque represented a strong collaboration between poetry, music, dancing, acting and stage design. In the Jacobean Era an emerged need for creating drama per musica reached its peak. This reflected strongly on the actual politics and intellectual pathways of a modern society on the British islands, showing James I's and Anne's literary tastes and political awareness. The court masque’s richness in providing numbers of different ways of self-expression and mediums for making various statement and meanings is significant. These aesthetic modes collaborate with each other and create an organic mixture of rhythm, sound, mathematical shapes and visual effects. The masque is an early Gesamtkunstwerk. A very good example here is the Lords Masque, performed on 14 February 1613, is one with a generous number of surviving scores and authentic music, building on classical mythology in a spacious cosmic setting with rapidly shifting episodes. A small universe of its own.  

Great productions such as the court masque must have been a crucial playground and workshop, where different styles and technics where melting together. Some players were reading the old fashioned lute tablature, others were thinking in the new order of continental basso continuo. The court masque in Jacobean era was a space for development and looking outwards to Italy and France for the necessary technical and theatrical skills.

thomas campion

Thomas Campion, who lived from 1567 to 1620, was a medical doctor practicing in London and an amateur musician and great poet of his time. Campion’s style in composing the music for his lute songs, masques and instrumental intervals is different from such contemporaries as John Dowland in England. At the same time there is a significant similarity with such leading composers from Italy as Giulio Caccini, the key figure of the new monodic style of expressive repertoire for solo voice and basso continuo. Caccini’s Le Nuove Musiche challenges the performer with virtuoso passages and a strong need for sprezzatura in performing them. Surely Caccini’s music was very fashionable, circulating in European households for private entertainment and intellectual discussion.

We can imagine the environment that Campion worked in quite well.  It is however more difficult to recreate or reimagine the manner in which his music was performed in. The preparation process for the court masques involved serious training and studying for the performers. It is hardly imaginable that the coaches of such celebrations would not have aimed for the latest fashion in performance practice. Campion would have known such continental fashions and taken advantage of his experiences from continental living and studying medicine in Caen, northwestern France, where he received his degree in 1605.

To be able to follow the performers’ practices we need to look at regional treatises which are touching upon our topic. One very important consideration here is that there is no printed treatise or other discussion writings about ornaments from this period in England. All the important textbooks were born on the continent. However, we have some ornamented versions of Campion’s songs to look at, and from these we can get an idea about the performance practice taste of the early 17th century English performers. Surely the ornaments cannot be taken as unquestionable codes for embellishment, because not all of them are well established ornaments or else they look forward to a later date.

italian early baroque

It has always been an inspiring thought for me to imagine the environment of the so-called Florentine Camerata, a group of intellectuals in flourishing renaissance Florence under the patronage of Count Giovanni de’ Bardi who recomposed fashions in literature and music. With particular reference to music, the Florentine Camerata based their ideals on a perception of ancient classical Greek drama, looking back to the tradition of monody. The reawakening and influence of this can be seen in wonderful examples such as Giulio Caccini’s collection of songs Le Nuove Musiche.

Instruments such as the cornetto, dulcian and violin joined the virtuoso passages of singers, creating a baroque illusion of melting together, often entering an engaged dialogue. The violin became a leading instrument in chamber music, partly because of its possibility of free intonation (“fret-less playing”).